PAST MASTERS 241

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

12 November 2025

Contents

1: Stripper Sal / Evan Slyter

2: Modern Melodrama / Hubert Crackanthorpe

3: Will You Walk Into My Parlour? / Ian Hay

4: The Pigeons of Wong Foo / J. Allan Dunn

5: Dark Laughter / J. Allan Dunn

6: The Crime Master / J. Allan Dunn

7: The Stepping Stone / Alice C. Tomholt

8: What a Handsome Pair! / F. Scott Fitzgerald

9: "Secret Service" / Arthur Gask

10: Tom Silver's Bus / Warwick Deeping

11: Amos Kilbright / Frank R. Stockton

12: Dematerialization / C. Mason

13: The Cataleptic / Ernest Favenc

14: The Rats in the Walls / H. P. Lovecraft

15: The Deposition / Luigi Capuana

16: The Shot / R. S. Warren Bell

17: The Mystery of Pinkham's Diamond Stud / John Kendrick Bangs

18: The Cave / Beatrice Grimshaw

19: The Coffin Merchant / Richard Middleton

20: In the Boat of the Sarah Bligh / John Arthur Barry

21: "Page 189" / Stacy Aumonier

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1: Stripper Sal

Evan Slyter

Leslie Evan Schlytter, 1896-1950

Racketeer Stories Nov/Dec 1931

YOU'D think that when three decent guys from the North Woods— meaning Crusty Royles, Sam Petarsky, and me, Bill Akers— come to Chicago for a little vacation, they could have a good, respectable time without getting mixed up with a lot of crooks, gangsters, and other politicians.

Yeah! You'd think so unless you knew we had Sam Petarsky in our midst. If Sam had let me and Crusty follow the even baritone of our ways, everything would have been jake. But with Sam on a vacation there ain't no logical plot to it. Sam just makes life into one thing after another without no more sense to the whole thing than there is to an arithmetic problem about a chicken and a half laying a egg and a half.

And it wasn't Crusty's or my fault either. After the first few days of trouble in Chi we'd made up our minds to be peaceful. We started out like this:

"Bill," says Crusty in our hotel room on the evening we was going to be doves, "let's go to a show tonight without Sam. This is a vacation, and we ought to start enjoying ourselves."

"Right," I says, grabbing for my lid. "Sam, you can go to hell."

"Hell ain't open this early," answers Sam, dropping his hold on a bottle of stomach-bitters. "I'm comin' with you guys."

When that dumb onion says he's associating with somebody, it's less bother to let him associate. Crusty shakes his head when Sam weaves to his feet, all bittered up and feeling sweet with the world.

"I'VE got a hunch I ought to smack you asleep and leave you here," Crusty remarks, "but my ma brought me up to be kind to animals. Now if we let you go along will you promise to behave yourself?

"There ain't going to be any of this shooting paper-wads at the chorus sisters tonight. You remember what the desk sergeant said to you about that last night. And in the Apollo Theater you pull things like that too. Tsk. Tsk! You ought to be ashamed."

"Yeh, I forgot where I was. Seein' them dames in short dresses made me think I was back in the grades. But what did I do to get away from the desk sergeant, hey? When he says that if I gotta shoot at chorus sisters I should aim for the whites of their eyes, what did I say? Didn't I tell him that I thought I was still handlin' a machine gun in France?"

"And didn't he say was I in the machine-gun corpse, and didn't I say that I was a hero in that corpse, and he says discharged because the law couldn't blame a man for defendin' his country? Gettin' around a desk sergeant on a army record is what you call tack, I'm here to tell you."

Well, we quit arguing. We left our artillery in our suitcases, and moseyed toward the elevator. Sam insisted on running the damned thing and we nearly went through the roof. One more floor of skyrocketing with Sam at the controls and the elevator boy under his knee and we'd have landed in the basement of heaven. Crusty knocked Petarsky down just in time, and I sat on him till the elevator boy put us out at the ground floor.

I never see anything like the way stomach bitters puts confidence into a man. Sam would have tackled the job of running the Uncle Sam Congress the way he was feeling, and a feller told me that driving a cantankerous mule and an asthmatic elephant in harness through a suicide tariff is just as hard as to cross-haul maple logs with binder-twine. But Sam would have tackled anything that night.

With our chests kinda sagging toward the knees, Crusty and me got Sam past the girl at the cigar-stand and hailed a taxi. That's where we made our first big mistake. We should have picked a steam-roller.

No sooner than Sam was in that taxi than he wanted to ride in front where there was more air. We humored him to keep the bitters from souring, and the next thing we knew the taxi-driver was stuck head-first through the little window between the front and back seats. Sam wedged him in so tight that we couldn't move him either way. Before we could do anything, Sam grabs the wheel and off we go.

When Sam ain't bittered up he can drive any car and do it decent, but when he's full of medicine he always thinks he's Barney Oldfield's son. We went shooting through Chicago Loop traffic like there was a fire on Michigan Avnoo and we had to go to Cicero after the fire department. Crusty and me says some pious words and drops down in the tonneau to keep from looking at the scattered scenery. Besides, we had no reason whatever for wanting to meet any cops. They was poison to us. From our dugout we figgered we could sneak if a cop showed up. Then Sam could go to jail for life and we'd have a little peace.

AS IT happened, I guess Sam's bitters didn't make him blind. We skittered along at a healthy clip and there wasn't no funny noises like come from hitting a soft member of the suicide clubs that will keep walking city streets in spite of all the death notices in the papers.

The taxi-driver was looking down at us with a desperate look in his eyes and howling for help about every two blocks. He couldn't move back or forward and was in a real jam. Crusty told him to shut up on account the cab had a horn and Sam was using it regular.

"When you're stuck," howls Crusty as a finish, "never get nervous and lose your head! Shut up and think! If you can't think, just shut up! Death always comes quicker to these strong, silent men!"

The cab-driver wriggles in reply and shuts up. Sam's pushing the horn-button made enough noise anyway.

"Will we live through this?" I yells at Crusty.

"I'll tell you when we stop," returns Crusty.

That was good sense, so I just keeps repeating, "Now I lay me...," until my tongue got twisted and made it, "Mow I nay le...." Nobody could understand a prayer like that so I shut up.

All of a sudden the cab swings to the curb and Sam yells, "Taxi, lady?"

Before Crusty and I could get untangled, the door opens and in hops a dame and a man. Sam bangs the door shut and away we go.

The dame wasn't none of these screaming kind. She put one of her high heels into my chest, and when she finds out what I am she sticks a nasty little lead-hypodermic into my map and asks:

"What is this? A holdup?"

She had a voice like a concrete aqueduct, high and hard. While she was throwing it at me her pal was poking twin automatics at Crusty and the cab-driver, both of which was helpless, Crusty on account of the dame's pal having both feet on his chest.

"I don't know," says I. "But it looks like one."

"You wouldn't kid a lady, would you?" asks the dame sarcastic.

"You're no lady," I answers. "Ladies don't ride with strange guys in taxies."

"Wise-cracker, eh? You're right. I'm no lady. I'm the girl they call Stripper Sal. This looks like a rich evening. Four boys instead of one."

"My name's my business. The pleasure is all yours."

"Every bit of it," says the dame. "Stop that driver and we'll get their cash."

"Ma'am," puts in Crusty, "if you can stop that driver you can have our cash with the Lord's blessing."

"I'll stop him all right," says Sal, producing another foot for me to squirm under. She leans forward and taps on the glass back of Sam's dome. "Pull up to the curb!" "Hey?" produces Sam.

"Pull up to the curb or I'll blow your head off!"

The cab was going so fast then that the ticker didn't have any meaning to us. Sam just laughs.

"That'd be foolish," says he. "You'd get your neck busted if I let go this wheel. Heh, heh!"

THE cab makes some funny sideslips and the dame flops back in the seat, pushing her heels here and there on my landscape. It was my chance to disarm her, but I was too busy trying to fight off them heels. That dame knew more foot work than Tunney, and was careless about my health.

I don't know how long the thing would have kept up if Sam hadn't turned around to see what all the fuss was about. Right away that dumb onion eases in toward the curb and stops.

"What's goin' on back there?" he asks.

Right away he looks into Sal's gun.

"Turn off the motor!" she orders.

Sam blinks kinda foolish and does it.

Our two robbers hopped out and looked around. Nobody was in sight. They ordered us out. We pulled the cab-driver loose under orders, and lined up with our hands reaching for nothing.

The man goes through our pockets and takes all our cash and valuables, worth about a hundred and fifty bucks. We'd left most of our cash in the hotel safe.

The robbers step back and still hold guns on us.

"Off with your pants!" orders Sal.

"Aw-aw, listen," says Sam. "You don't mean that!"

"Off with your pants!" repeats Sal, waving her gun. "And make it snappy!"

"Now, Sal," I says, "you know that ain't nice right out here in pub—"

"Quick!" snaps Sal, her voice crackling.

Well, what could we do? In a few minutes us four boobs was doing the short-and-cool act in our new fancy panties what we'd bought just a few days before. Sal takes our nice new pants and drapes 'em over her arm. She laughs out loud.

"Now I know why men cover up those funny-looking knobs they call knees," says she to her pal. "Some joints!"

Sam was blushing so you could see it in the light from the street-lamp, and he was stooping to make his shirt-tails do more'n they bargained for.

"Here comes a car!" says Sal's partner. "Quick, you birds; into the back seat!"

We didn't need no pushing. Sal and her pal got into the front with him at the wheel and she holding a gun on us. We drove away from there fast.

We went out toward the city-limits, Sal tossing away our pants as we passed a vacant lot.

We huddled there pretty hopeless when we saw our embarrassment-savers shot to the winds that way.

It seemed like the man robber knew where he was going. He made a lot of twists and turns and brought up where there was a lot of vacant lots with a few dark buildings scattered around. We was ordered out of the cab again and stood on the sidewalk waiting.

Sal and her pal walked us out into the middle of the nearest vacant lot and then looked us over grinning.

"Boy!" says Sal. "Won't the papers have a sweet time writing this up?"

"How'll the papers know?" asks Crusty, his voice uneasy.

"I'm going to phone the news into the reporters myself," laughs Sal.

S AYING the word reporter in front of Sam is like waving a red flag at Congressman Fish. Sam gulps and, says in a funny voice:

"You're goin' to tell the reporters about this?"

"I'll say," grins Sal. "I'm going to give the names of you boys. I found 'em on some letters in your pockets, you see."

"Oh!" says Sam.

The way he said it made Crusty and me perk up and take notice. There was going to be action in about a second and we sort of gathered our legs under us like a cat about to jump.

"That'll be a good joke on us, won't it?" asks Sam, shifting on his feet like he was cold.

"Will it! And how!" haw-haws the dame. "Well, s'long, boys. Those panties will keep you plenty warm in this weather."

The robbers turned to run off, saying something about us staying quiet till they was out of sight.

"There's a cop!" says Crusty.

As the robbers turned just for a glance, Sam and us went into action. It happened so quick that a gun didn't have time to go off. Crusty's fist caught Sal's pal behind the ear and he skidded to a heap ten feet away. Sam and I hit Sal together, as light as we could. I managed to break her fall by tackling her around the waist.

Sam's hand clapped over her mouth. I didn't mean to look, but I could see that Sal had on the same kind of panties I did, besides a petticoat, her dress and coat.

"Tell the reporters, will you!" grates Sam as we stood Sal on her feet.

Sal just mumbled under Sam's hand. Crusty and the cab-driver woke up the other robber and we took back all of our belongings. Then we made Sal take off her coat and slip off her petticoat. Her pal lost his pants. After some argument we let the cab-driver have the pants while Crusty, Sam and me did our best with the robber-boy's coat and Sal's coat and petticoat.

"And Miss Stripper Sal," says Sam, "only because you're a woman and we're gentlemen are you goin' to have that dress to get home in."

Of course, we weren't much to look at. I had Sal's petticoat wound around me so that it reached almost to my knees, and Sam and Crusty was rigged out any old way in the coats. But we felt more modest that way anyhow.

WE MARCHED our prisoners back toward the taxi. We paid off the cab-man out of our funds and stuck the rest of our rolls in our coat-pockets. While we was arguing what to do with Sal and her boyfriend, that rotten cab-man jumped into his cab and beat it full speed. We started to chase after him and right away Sal and the boyfriend took advantage of us and run off toward the nearest alley.

We had their guns, but we had no hankering to use 'em. And there we was, dressed up like a circus and no place to go. We didn't know where we were, and in that deserted street there was no sign of a car. My watch said it was only about half past nine. "Well," remarks Crusty, sitting down on the curb, "that's that. If a cop comes along we'll go to jail and get a write-up in the papers that'll make us fools for life."

"Hell, let's get outa here quick and hide in a doorway or something," suggests Sam.

"And have ourselves arrested as burglars," says I. "That's out."

"So're we. Outa our pants," remarks Sam.

"Sit down," orders Crusty. "We won't be noticed so much that way. Maybe a cab'll come along."

"Yeah. And maybe there's a Santy Claus," I sneers.

Anyway, we all sits down. There being nothing to say, we says only that much. We watched the street in all directions, but it was deserted. In the distance we could hear traffic moving, but we was in a back-water. Anyway, we didn't dare to go where there was much traffic. Sweet stuff, I don't think!

"Gosh, maybe we're in Evanston," I happens to think. "They arrest people there for taking off their gloves in public. I bet they'd electrocute us."

"This ain't Evanston," Crusty disagrees. "It's too lively."

We subsides, praying no cop would come along.

It was maybe fifteen minutes later that a big sedan comes idling down the street. Sam stands up and yells, The sedan stops across the street from us. There's a man at the wheel.

"What do you want?" he yells. "We want to get back to our hotel. Ten bucks if you'll take us." This from me.

"I don't like the risk. You might be holdup men," shouts back the stranger.

We stand up and show him how we're fixed. The man chuckles.

"I'll take a chance. Come on." We got across the street and into that car in a hurry. We explain as we sit back with a sigh of relief.

"You can't get into any hotel like that," says the man. "I'll take you to a place where you can get some pants. A friend of mine runs a restaurant about three blocks from here. I'll get you in the back way."

That sounded like good sense to us, so we told him to hop along. A few minutes later we turned into an alley, to stop back of a three-story building.

"You sure you don't know where you are?" asks our driver as he gets out of the sedan.

"Well, we think we're still in Chicago," says Crusty.

THE feller says all right and for us to follow him. We go into a dark hallway, filled with smells of stale onions and hamburger. Our guide pulls us into a little room, switches on a light, and tells us to wait for him. Pretty soon a beefy guy walks in and gives us the twice-over. He tells us to explain all about ourselves and he'll see what he can do about some pants.

Crusty unloads the dirt about who we are and how we come to be pantless. The beefy guy listens and nods.

"Is all this on the level?" he asks.

Crusty does some more talking and he looks like he's convinced.

"I guess you boys are all right," he admits. "Wait a minute. I'll see what I can do."

He popped out of the room. We sat around the table and waited. We was too worried about some pants to talk. It was maybe five minutes later that we hear footsteps and in comes the beefy guy with another feller. They look us over and then throw guns on us.

"Put 'em up!" says the beefy guy.

"What! Again!" howls Crusty, but we put 'em up.

You can imagine that we wasn't feeling any too good when in strolls Stripper Sal, smiling sort of smart.

She walks around us and relieves us of the guns we'd got from her and her pal. Also she relieves us of her duds, so that we was all back to shorts again. Maybe it's tough to get caught short on the Stock Market, but we was in just as bad a fix.

Sal puts the hardware into the pockets of the two gunmen, and turns to us. "I thought we'd find you hanging around where we left you," says she. "No guys can take my clothes and get away with it if I can help it. Now, if you want to help us out tonight we'll slip you some pants."

"What do we got to do?" asks Crusty.

"Help us pull a little holdup job we've been planning for a couple of weeks. All you have to do is to act as lookouts for us. We're sticking up a gambling joint, and there won't be any squawking to the cops if we pull it right. You in?"

"And if we ain't?" asks Crusty.

"If you ain't?" Sal grins. She ain't such a bad looking dame, only she's polished like steel. "Boys, if you ain't, we're going to put you into a car and throw you out in the middle of the Loop with nothing on but your undies. If I'm any judge, you'd rather get bumped off."

Sam turns pale and I sort of feel my stummick back kick. Imagine it! Being turned loose in the middle of a big city with only undies on. The cops would pick us up and maybe trace us to a mix-up we'd had with them just a few days before, when we bumped-off Three-Torch Tony in self-defense. The reporters would get our pictures and make fun of us.

"SHOOT us!" begs Sam. "Nobody could be as mean as to do nothin' like that!"

"Shut up, dumb-bell!" orders Crusty. "Explain this holdup. You say it's a gambling joint?"

"Yep," says Sal. "We always stick up places that can't make a squawk to the cops, see? Gambling joints, speakeasies and rotten roadhouses. They're our meat. You won't be doing much wrong, because such dumps are illegal anyway. Get the idea?"

"What'll we have for defending ourselves?" asks Crusty.

"Which one of you can shoot straight?" asks Sal.

"Bill, here." Crusty waves to me.

"Yeh, with my own gun I can shoot the eye out of a flea at ten paces," I admits. "But not with a strange gun."

"Oke," says the dame. "Joe, take the heavy set guy down to his hotel and let him bring back pants and that gun. Keep your own rod on him all the time so there's no funny business.

"And, Mister," she says to Crusty, "remember that if you try any funny stuff, your two pals will be pushing up daisies inside of an hour. Beat it."

Joe takes a pair of pants from under his arm and hands 'em to Crusty. Royles slips 'em on and the two go.

Sal takes up the next ten minutes or so explaining to Sam and me that she and her gang couldn't pull this job without some help from people that was strange to the owners of the gambling joint. She tells us just what we have to do.

It didn't look so bad the way she explained it, but I'd been around enough to know that if anybody was going to stand a chance of getting killed, that anybody was going to include three guys from the north woods. It was just Sal's cold blooded way of getting her revenge on us while maybe doing some good for her own pocketbook.

Crusty was back with our stuff inside of forty minutes. Sal took my gun, saying she'd hand it to me, loaded, when the time was ripe. Then, when we was all dressed in decent clothes again, Sal puts a guard on us and we sit and wait. Crusty looked like he wanted to tell us something, but he didn't dare with the guard present.

It was nearly midnight when the party started out in a big car. Of course I was lost, so I didn't know where this gambling joint was when we reached it. Anyway, Sal took my arm and we led the way up a short flight of steps to a dark hallway.

At a door Sal stopped and rapped. A slide opens and Sal whispers something. There was a slipping of bolts and all of our party was admitted except the beefy restaurant man who'd looked us over at his place. He had disappeared along with the driver of the car that brought us.

Well sir, talk about a surprise! You could have knocked me over with a cant-hook stock when we walked into a swell dump filled with tobacco smoke and human volcanoes. We was in a big room, all decorated up with rugs on the walls and floor. There was tables around the outside, where you could get something to eat and drink, and in the middle there was card-tables, and some crap-shooting stands. On the other end of the room there was another door. People was going in and coming out pretty regular.

SAL leads us to a couple of tables to the right of the door. We sits down and orders some ginger ale highballs. We gets 'em in a hurry. Sam sips at his suspicious, finds out there's something in his glass besides ale and ice, and then gulped the whole thing down without no manners. He wants another immediate, and he gets it.

"Pretty soon," says Sal, "we'll hit for the back room and play a little roulette. Bill comes with me, while Crusty and Sam stay near the door over there with Joe."

Joe was her pal. Sal takes a stiff pull at her liquor and adjusts her evening gown, one of these with a bathing-suit top and a balloon-size from the waist down. "Bill and I will play a little roulette and then edge toward the guard in the coop above the door. Sam will make believe he is drunk and start climbing toward the coop from this side, while Crusty follows him trying to quiet him down. Joe will pop off the guard if he tries to use his gun.

"Otherwise, Crusty will sock him and the two can jump down into the roulette room. Bill and I will do the rest. We make our getaway by the back window in the roulette room. Our car is waiting in the alley."

"What kind of a gun has the guard got?" asks Crusty.

"He's got an automatic rifle, a sawed-off shotgun, and a half dozen little rods," informs Sal. "But you gotta see he doesn't use any of 'em."

Sam swallows. "I'll say we do."

"Well, I'm glad I paid off the hotel bill with a check," observes Crusty. "It looks like the hotel will be glad too."

"Buck up!" says Sal. "It's a pipe."

"But I don't smoke pipes," complains Sam. "Waiter, another fizz with lots of ice."

We sat around and tried to look natural for maybe twenty minutes. Then Sal gets up and gives me the high-sign. As she takes my arm she slips my six-gun out of her purse and into my coat-pocket. We strolled across the room to the door, and into the roulette room. The waiters seemed to know Sal, and nobody asked us any questions.

I'd never played roulette since one time when I was up in Alaska, looking for the root of all evil and finding nothing but a few stray twigs. I got rid of fifty bucks of Sal's money trying to guess where the little old ball would stop rolling. Then I made believe I was disgusted, and let Sal try her luck while I edged toward the door.

There was a little coop stuck in the wall right near the ceiling and in it was a guy smoking a cigarette. There was no stairway from the roulette room, but in the main lobby there was a little one leading to a balcony which opened into the coop. While I was leaning against the wall, smoking, I hear Sam's voice from the other side.

"Oooh, lookit the little dove-coop!" says Sam. "I wanta see it!"

"Cut it out, you sap!" says Crusty's voice. "Just because you're green to city ways is no sign you gotta make a fool of yourself. Come down outa that!"

I could hear scuffling and Sam's laughter. Right off the guard above me turned to the other side. I measured the distance to that coop. I'm six feet two, and my reach is long. I caught Sal's eye and she wanders over.

"I'm going up," I whispers. "Get your gat ready."

She was a cool one, that dame. "Oke," says she, without batting a lash.

I LOOKED around the roulette room. Everybody was interested in the wheel. I measured the distance with my eye, gave a short run, caught the sill of the coop window and hoisted myself up. I put my gun on the guard.

"Stick 'em up!" says I.

He whirls, a gun in his mitt. I plinked him where the hair on his wrist was short. He howled and stuck 'em high. Crusty and Sam was with me and each grabbed a rifle. They swung 'em on the crowd, while I turned to line my gun with Sal's. We'd been forced into this, and it was our business now to get out alive.

I rapped the guard on the chin and put him to sleep before I jumped down and joined Sal. She scooped money off the banker's side of the table and ran to the window. She raised it as the rest of us backed to join her. Joe held his rod on the crowd while we crawled through.

Then I was going to cover his retreat when the roulette-banker reached for his gat. Joe gave that foolish little bird a black spot between the eyes; he went down without even a groan. I put my gun on the crowd to let Joe come through, and then banged the window shut. We beat it down the fire escape and crawled into our waiting car.

"A good haul," remarks Sal, as we roared out of the alley. "I must have over eight grand here. You boys were good for a bunch of hicks."

We came into the light of the street just then, and the guy up front with the driver turned around to stick his gat into sight.

"We're policemen," says he. "Don't try any funny stuff." Joe made a move, but Crusty grabbed him and took his gun away. Sam and I was too surprised to move.

"Nice work," says the copper. "Which one of you guys is Crusty Royles?"

Crusty admits he's himself. The car swings up to the curb and all of us are ordered out.

"We got your note, Royles," says the dick. "That was damned clever, writing it on a check you paid your hotel bill with. Our man followed your car out, and sent for two squads to keep track of you. We've got the two who were in this car, and the other boys are raiding the joint now to get some witnesses. Who're your pals?"

Crusty points out Sam and me. "I had to get out of this mess somehow," explains Royles, "because I knew once we were in that joint with this robber gang we would have to keep playing with 'em. Will it be all right to let us go now? We don't want to get mixed up with these different gangs."

THE dick thinks that over. "Well, it ain't regular, but I can see your side of it all right. We got these birds with the goods, and we'll have plenty of witnesses. Yeah, I guess the judge would overlook it if you was to escape by luck.

"Well, well. So smooth St. Louis Lizzie got so hard up she had to play Stripper Sal's little game, eh? Well, old girl, you'll have plenty of time to think this over."

"The dirty hick double-crossed us, did he!" snaps what used to be Sal, but was now Lizzie. "The rotten bum! I'll get you for this, Royles!"

She does some fancy swearing for a minute, and then grins. "Anyway, big boy, that was a smart trick. I gotta hand it to you, but wait till my friends find you!"

"That's going to be tough on your friends," says I. "If I was you, I'd tell 'em to lay offen us."

"Oh, yeah!" sneers Joe, and then ducks when Sam doubles his fist. The dick takes a better hold on Joe's collar.

"Never mind, boys. Lizzie's friends won't find you in a hurry. But if I was you I'd hike out of here before you're recognized by that gambling ring. There's some reward money coming to you on Lizzie. I'll bring it to your hotel in the morning. After that you'd better skip. Well, we'll be moving. S'long."

"You won't put our names in the papers!" asks Sam.

"Nope," says the cop. "I want all the credit for this capture myself. Don't worry."

"Thanks," says Sam. We went away from there.

Back in our hotel room, Crusty explains that he got his guard to let him pay our bill with a check, and by making believe he couldn't write so very well he stalled around long enough to turn the check-blank into a note to the cops. The hotel clerk caught the wink and did the rest. All of which shows that Crusty ain't dumb like Sam is.

The dick brought the reward money the next morning. There was two thousand bucks from a banker's association what was interested in seeing Sal, or Lizzie, back of bars. Of course we offered to split with the copper, and maybe you think he refused it. Like hell he did! When he got through telling us about the policemen's benefit fund for widows and orphans, we had only five-hundred left. I hope the orphans got it, because at least we got some new suits out of it.

__________

2: Modern Melodrama

Hubert Crackanthorpe

Hubert Montague Crackanthorpe, 1870-1896

The Yellow Book April 1894

The author was part of the late Victorian avant-garde movement, mostly writing short stories and vignettes. He led a hugely irregular life, including marriage and divorce and a complex menage of four, and was found drowned in the Seine in Paris in mysterious and unresolved circumstances at the age of 26.

THE PINK SHADE of a single lamp supplied an air of subdued mystery; the fire burned red and still; in place of door and windows hung curtains, obscure, formless; the furniture, dainty, but sparse, stood detached and incoördinate like the furniture of a stage-scene; the atmosphere was heavy with heat, and a scent of stale tobacco; some cut flowers, half withered, tissue-paper still wrapping their stalks, lay on a gilt, cane-bottomed chair.

"Will you give me a sheet of paper, please?"

He had crossed the room, to seat himself before the principal table. He wore a fur-lined overcoat, and he was tall, and broad, and bald; a sleek face, made grave by gold-rimmed spectacles.

The other man was in evening dress; his back leaning against the mantelpiece, his hands in his pockets: he was moodily scraping the hearthrug with his toe. Clean-shaved; stolid and coarsely regular features; black, shiny hair, flattened on to his head; under-sized eyes, moist and glistening; the tint of his face uniform, the tint of discoloured ivory; he looked a man who ate well and lived hard.

"Certainly, sir, certainly," and he started to hurry about the room.

"Daisy," he exclaimed roughly, a moment later, "where the deuce do you keep the note-paper?"

"I don't know if there is any, but the girl always has some." She spoke in a slow tone— insolent and fatigued.

A couple of bed-pillows were supporting her head, and a scarlet plush cloak, trimmed with white down, was covering her feet, as she lay curled on the sofa. The fire-light glinted on the metallic gold of her hair, which clashed with the black of her eyebrows; and the full, blue eyes, wide-set, contradicted the hard line of her vivid-red lips. She drummed her fingers on the sofa-edge, nervously.

"Never mind," said the bald man shortly, producing a note-book from his breast-pocket, and tearing a leaf from it.

He wrote, and the other two stayed silent; the man returned to the hearthrug, lifting his coat-tails under his arms; the girl went on drumming the sofa-edge.

"There," sliding back his chair, and looking from the one to the other, evidently uncertain which of the two he should address. "Here is the prescription. Get it made up to-night, a table-spoonful at a time, in a wine-glassful of water at lunch-time, at dinner-time and before going to bed. Go on with the port wine twice a day, and (to the girl, deliberately and distinctly) you must keep quite quiet; avoid all sort of excitement— that is extremely important. Of course you must on no account go out at night. Go to bed early, take regular meals, and keep always warm."

"I say," broke in the girl, "tell us, it isn't bad— dangerous, I mean?"

"Dangerous!— no, not if you do what I tell you."

He glanced at his watch, and rose, buttoning his coat.

"Good-evening," he said gravely.

At first she paid no heed; she was vacantly staring before her: then, suddenly conscious that he was waiting, she looked up at him.

"Good-night, doctor."

She held out her hand, and he took it.

"I'll get all right, won't I?" she asked, still looking up at him.

"All right— of course you will— of course. But remember you must do what I tell you."

The other man handed him his hat and umbrella, opened the door for him, and it closed behind them.

THE GIRL remained quiet, sharply blinking her eyes, her whole expression eager, intense.

A murmer of voices, a muffled tread of footsteps descending the stairs— the gentle shutting of a door— stillness.

She raised herself on her elbow, listening; the cloak slipped noiselessly to the floor. Quickly her arm shot out to the bell-rope: she pulled it violently; waited, expectant; and pulled again.

A slatternly figure appeared— a woman of middle-age— her arms, bared to the elbows, smeared with dirt; a grimy apron over her knees.

"What's up?— I was smashin' coal," she explained.

"Come here," hoarsely whispered the girl— "here— no— nearer— quite close. Where's he gone?"

"Gone? 'oo?"

"That man that was here."

"I s'ppose 'ee's in the downstairs room. I ain't 'eard the front door slam."

"And Dick, where's he?"

"They're both in there together, I s'ppose."

"I want you to go down— quietly— without making a noise— listen at the door— come up, and tell me what they're saying."

"What? down there?" jerking her thumb over her shoulder.

"Yes, of course— at once," answered the girl, impatiently.

"And if they catches me— a nice fool I looks. No, I'm jest blowed if I do!" she concluded. "Whatever's up?"

"You must," the girl broke out excitedly. "I tell you, you must."

"Must— must— an' if I do, what am I goin' to git out of it?" She paused, reflecting; then added: "Look 'ere— I tell yer what— I'll do it for half a quid, there?"

"Yes— yes— all right— only make haste."

"An' 'ow d' I know as I'll git it?" she objected doggedly. "It's a jolly risk, yer know."

The girl sprang up, flushed and feverish.

"Quick— or he'll be gone. I don't know where it is— but you shall have it— I promise— quick— please go— quick."

The other hesitated, her lips pressed together; turned, and went out.

And the girl, catching at her breath, clutched a chair.

A FLAME flickered up in the fire, buzzing spasmodically. A creak outside. She had come up. But the curtains did not move. Why didn't she come in? She was going past. The girl hastened across the room, the intensity of the impulse lending her strength.

"Come— come in," she gasped. "Quick— I'm slipping."

She struck at the wall; but with the flat of her hand, for there was no grip. The woman bursting in, caught her, and led her back to the sofa.

"There, there, dearie," tucking the cloak round her feet. "Lift up the piller, my 'ands are that mucky. Will yer 'ave anythin'?"

She shook her head. "It's gone," she muttered. "Now— tell me."

"Tell yer?— tell yer what! Why— why— there ain't jest nothin' to tell yer."

"What were they saying? Quick."

"I didn't 'ear nothin'. They was talking about some ballet-woman."

The girl began to cry, feebly, helplessly, like a child in pain.

"You might tell me, Liz. You might tell me. I've been a good sort to you."

"That yer 'ave. I knows yer 'ave, dearie. There, there, don't yer take on like that. Yer'll only make yerself bad again."

"Tell me— tell me," she wailed. "I've been a good sort to you, Liz."

"Well, they wasn't talkin' of no ballet-woman— that's straight," the woman blurted out savagely.

"What did he say?— tell me," Her voice was weaker now.

"I can't tell yer— don't yer ask me— for God's sake, don't yer ask me."

With a low crooning the girl cried again.

"Oh! for God's sake, don't yer take on like that— it's awful— I can't stand it. There, dearie, stop that cryin' an' I'll tell yer— I will indeed. It was jest this way— I slips my shoes off, an' I goes down as careful— jest as careful as a cat— an' when I gets to the door I crouches myself down, listenin' as 'ard as ever I could. The first things as I 'ears was Mr. Dick speakin' thick-like— like as if 'ee'd bin drinkin'— an t'other chap 'ee says somethin' about lungs, using some long word— I missed that— there was a van or somethin' rackettin' on the road. Then 'ee says 'gallopin', gallopin',' jest like as 'ee was talkin' of a 'orse. An' Mr. Dick, 'ee says, 'ain't there no chance— no'ow?' and 'ee give a sort of a grunt. I was awful sorry for 'im, that I was, 'ee must 'ave been crool bad, 'ee's mostly so quiet-like, ain't 'ee? An', in a minute, 'ee sort o' groans out somethin', an' t'other chap 'es answer 'im quite cool-like, that 'ee don't properly know; but, anyways, it 'ud be over afore the end of February. There I've done it. Oh! dearie, it's awful, awful, that's jest what it is. An' I 'ad no intention to tell yer— not a blessed word— that I didn't— may God strike me blind if I did! Some'ow it all come out, seein' yer chokin' that 'ard an' feelin' at the wall there. Yer 'ad no right to ask me to do it— 'ow was I to know 'ee was a doctor?"

She put the two corners of her apron to her eyes, gurgling loudly.

"Look 'ere, don't yer b'lieve a word of it— I don't— I tell yer they're a 'umbuggin' lot, them doctors, all together. I know it. Yer take my word for that— yer'll git all right again. Yer'll be as well as I am, afore yer've done— Oh, Lord!— it's jest awful— I feel that upset— I'd like to cut my tongue out, for 'avin' told yer— but I jest couldn't 'elp myself." She was retreating towards the door, wiping her eyes, and snorting out loud sobs— "An', don't you offer me that half quid— I couldn't take it of yer— that I couldn't."

SHE SHIVERED, sat up, and dragged the cloak tight round her shoulders. In her desire to get warm she forgot what had happened. She extended the palms of her hands towards the grate: the grate was delicious. A smoking lump of coal clattered on to the fender: she lifted the tongs, but the sickening remembrance arrested her. The things in the room were receding, dancing round: the fire was growing taller and taller. The woollen scarf chafed her skin: she wrenched it off. Then hope, keen and bitter, shot up, hurting her. "How could he know? Of course he couldn't know. She'd been a lot better this last fortnight— the other doctor said so— she didn't believe it— she didn't care— Anyway, it would be over before the end of February!"

Suddenly the crooning wail started again: next, spasms of weeping, harsh and gasping.

By-and-by she understood that she was crying noisily, and that she was alone in the room: like a light in a wind, the sobbing fit ceased.

"Let me live— let me live— I'll be straight— I'll go to church— I'll do anything! Take it away— it hurts— I can't bear it!"

Once more the sound of her own voice in the empty room calmed her. But the tension of emotion slackened, only to tighten again: immediately she was jeering at herself. What was she wasting her breath for? What had Jesus ever done for her? She'd had her fling, and it was no thanks to Him.

" 'Dy-sy— Dy-sy—' "

From the street below, boisterous and loud, the refrain came up. And, as the footsteps tramped away, the words reached her once more, indistinct in the distance.

" 'I'm jest cryzy, all for the love o' you.' "

She felt frightened. It was like a thing in a play. It was as if some one was there, in the room— hiding— watching her.

Then a coughing fit started, racking her. In the middle, she struggled to cry for help; she thought she was going to suffocate.

Afterwards she sank back, limp, tired, and sleepy.

The end of February— she was going to die— it was important, exciting— what would it be like? Everybody else died. Midge had died in the summer— but that was worry and going the pace. And they said that Annie Evans was going off too. Damn it! she wasn't going to be chicken-hearted. She'd face it. She'd had a jolly time. She'd be game till the end. Hell-fire— that was all stuff and nonsense— she knew that. It would be just nothing— like a sleep. Not even painful: she'd be just shut down in a coffin, and she wouldn't know that they were doing it. Ah! but they might do it before she was quite dead! It had happened sometimes. And she wouldn't be able to get out. The lid would be nailed, and there would be earth on the top. And if she called, no one would hear.

Ugh! what a fit of the blues she was getting! It was beastly, being alone. Why the devil didn't Dick come back?

That noise, what was that?

Bah! only some one in the street. What a fool she was!

She winced again as the fierce feeling of revolt swept through her, the wild longing to fight. It was damned rough— four months! A year, six months even, was a long time. The pain grew acute, different from anything she had felt before.

"Good Lord! what am I maundering on about? Four months— I'll go out with a fizzle like a firework. Why the devil doesn't Dick come?— or Liz— or somebody? What do they leave me alone like this for?"

She dragged at the bell-rope.

HE CAME IN, white and blear-eyed.

"Whatever have you been doing all this time?" she began angrily.

"I've been chatting with the doctor." He was pretending to read a newspaper: there was something funny about his voice.

"It's ripping. He says you'll soon be fit again, as long as you don't get colds, or that sort of thing. Yes, he says you'll soon be fit again"— a quick, crackling noise— he had gripped the newspaper in his fist.

She looked at him, surprised, in spite of herself. She would never have thought he'd have done it like that. He was a good sort, after all. But— she didn't know why— she broke out furiously:

"You infernal liar!— I know. I shall be done for by the end of February— ha! ha!"

Seizing a vase of flowers, she flung it into the grate. The crash and the shrivelling of the leaves in the flames brought her an instant's relief. Then she said quietly:

"There— I've made an idiot of myself; but" (weakly) "I didn't know— I didn't know— I thought it was different."

He hesitated, embarrassed by his own emotion. Presently he went up to her and put his hands round her cheeks.

"No," she said, "that's no good, I don't want that. Get me something to drink. I feel bad."

He hurried to the cupboard and fumbled with the cork of a champagne bottle. It flew out with a bang. She started violently.

"You clumsy fool!" she exclaimed.

She drank off the wine at a gulp.

"Daisy," he began.

She was staring stonily at the empty glass.

"Daisy," he repeated.

She tapped her toe against the fender-rail.

At this sign, he went on:

"How did you know?"

"I sent Liz to listen," she answered mechanically.

He looked about him, helpless.

"I think I'll smoke," he said feebly.

She made no answer.

"Here, put the glass down," she said.

He obeyed.

He lit a cigarette over the lamp, sat down opposite her, puffing dense clouds of smoke.

And, for a long while, neither spoke.

"Is that doctor a good man?"

"I don't know. People say so," he answered.

______________

3: Will You Walk Into My Parlour?

John Hay Beith (as by Ian Hay)

1876-1952

Collected in: The Shallow End, 1924

The "historic" match at Wembley referred to in the first sentence was the FA Cup Final of 1923, played (for the first time) at Wembley Stadium; Bolton Wanderers 2, West Ham 0. An estimated 300,000 people crammed into the 125,000 seat stadium.

A WEEK AGO George and I decided to attend a football match at Wembley which has since become historic. Unfortunately, a considerable number of other people came to the same decision. That would not have mattered so much, only most of them started before us. Somewhere between Maida Vale and Willesden our train, which had been showing signs of heart trouble for some time, fainted in the middle of the tunnel. Ultimately we decided that it was dead, and were just about to get out and walk, chancing the third rail, when it revived sufficiently to crawl to the next station, where we abandoned it. We emerged into the open air, to find ourselves in what we took to be the Harrow Road, which is a busy thoroughfare on a Saturday afternoon. It was now a quarter to four, so, deciding that the fate of the English Cup would have to be settled without us, we started to walk home.

Presently we passed a shop from which the entire front had been removed, exposing its interior in a rather indelicate manner to every passer-by. It was crammed with people, and a mighty placard above our heads announced that an Auction of Bankrupt Stock was in progress.

"Let's go in here for a bit," suggested George.

"All right," I said. "But don't nod your head, whatever you do, or you'll get stuck with a pair of ormolu vases at least."

George promised to control himself, and we entered.

The shop, as previously noted, was full of people— people, in the main, who seemed to have come out with their weekly wage burning a hole in their pockets. Behind a rostrum at the far end, surrounded by gold watches, silver butter-dishes, and cut-glass flower-bowls, stood a red-faced man of bluff and candid presence. He was supported by two unshaven young gentlemen in their shirt-sleeves, charged apparently with the task of handing round the goods and, when necessary, preventing the auctioneer, who appeared to be subject to fits of impulsive and prodigal generosity, from giving things away for nothing. An altercation on this subject was in progress as we entered.

"Now don't interfere with me!" protested the auctioneer. "Let me sell things in my own way. Am I here to dispose of these articles at a loss? No; because if I do, I get no commission."

"A candid lad, this," observed George.

"You say," continued the auctioneer to his still grumbling assistant, "that the genuine Dresden China Shepherdess that I have just sold to this gentleman for two-and-six is worth ten shillings at least. Well, so it is. And I'll tell you why I sold it for two-and-six. Because I am going to diff— differentiate between the people here who are really out to bid and the people who have simply come in to amuse themselves." (George and I blushed guiltily, but no one noticed). "I'm trying to encourage genuine bargainers, and that's why I gave you, sir, a ten-shilling Shepherdess for two-and-six. Now, to show that I mean what I say, and to teach my assistants not to interfere with a man who was an auctioneer before they were born, I am going to give you your two-and-six back. Hand it to the gentleman, Willie, with my compliments, and stop whispering things to me. That Shepherdess, sir, is yours for nothing. Of course people will say that you are a confederate, or a relation, or a favourite of mine; but take no notice. I have no confederates, no favourites, and no relations— none that I'd give presents to, anyhow!"

There was a little appreciative laughter at this, led, most magnanimously, I thought, by Willie.

"Now we'll go back to the business in hand," announced the auctioneer. "I have to sell four more cases of these Apostle spoons."

Apparently he had sold eight already, for six shillings apiece, but all were still stacked on the desk beside him; for the bargain, it appeared, was void unless a round dozen sets were disposed of. The interest of the company in Apostle spoons was plainly flagging, and the auctioneer began to drop hints of a pleasant surprise, unspecified, which awaited all who adventured the nominal sum of six shillings upon one of the remaining sets. In this way three more were disposed of, but the last hung fire badly. Finally the auctioneer, who was obviously a psychologist of no mean order, suddenly snatched a toast-rack from a shelf behind him and asked:

"Will anyone bid me three-halfpence for this?"

A lady with a string-bag, obviously lured in here from her lawful occasion of buying the Sunday dinner, snatched at the offer. A servant-girl raised the price to threepence; but the owner of the string-bag accepted the challenge, and finally secured the toast-rack for one-and-twopence. She passed up the money from a lean little purse. The auctioneer handed down the toast-rack and, in another sudden paroxysm of generosity, instructed his second assistant, whose name appeared to be Sam, to refund the lady a shilling.

"I did that to establish confidence," he explained. "Now, who will give me six shillings for this last set of Apostle spoons?"

For some mysterious reason he promptly received three simultaneous bids, including one from the purchaser of the toast-rack, who was awarded precedence in the matter, and left the shop in a slightly dazed condition, obviously beginning to wonder what her husband would say when she got home. We noticed that she did not wait for the spoons: possibly the auctioneer noticed too, but he refrained from remonstrance.

To establish further confidence, the auctioneer now placed a pound note inside a solid silver cigarette-case, and sold it to a young man in a coloured neckcloth for twenty-three shillings.

"I sell you that, sir," he announced, shouting down the agonized cries of Willie and Sam, "because you are a genuine bidder. You gave me twenty-three shillings for a solid silver cigarette-case containing a one-pound note. Are you satisfied?"

A self-conscious nod.

"Well, I'm not. Will you kindly accept your three shillings back from me, and buy cigars with them?"

By this time the necessary atmosphere had been created, and a universal impression prevailed that anybody who bought anything whatever would at least get his money back, and probably a handsome present into the bargain.

"So far," said George, turning to me, "he has sold twelve sets of Apostle spoons for three-pounds-twelve all told, one of which sets will not be claimed, and given away a cigarette-case and a Shepherdess, and sold a toast-rack for twopence. When is he going to begin to earn his living?"

"Now here," announced the auctioneer, answering the question, "I have something really good." He produced a glittering gold watch. "Will any gentleman offer me a shilling for this?"

Someone promptly did, and finally the watch was knocked down at a pound. A Treasury note was handed up, but the watch was not passed down immediately. Instead, the note was laid upon the auctioneer's desk, with the watch doing duty on top of it as a paper-weight.

"I know you will trust me with that for a few minutes, sir," he cooed to the purchaser, the self-conscious young man in the coloured neckcloth; and received another nervous nod.

We all waited expectantly. Then:

"I think I have got one more of these watches somewhere," announced the auctioneer.

He was right: he had; in fact, he had several, and he actually succeeded in selling two of them, also for one pound each. The three watches were set out upon his desk upon the notes which bought them, and we all waited respectfully to see what sort of conjuring trick our friend was going to perform with them. The general impression appeared to be that the lucky purchasers would shortly have the notes returned to them, wrapped round the watches. This impression became a conviction when the auctioneer remarked, with assumed ferocity:

"Now, I suppose none of you gentlemen expected to get a real gold watch for a pound?"

It was obvious that they did, but under the auctioneer's hypnotic eye all three shook their heads vigorously.

"And you don't expect anything for the pound note except the watch you bid for?" he continued.

More head-shaking; but the audience smiled at one another. They were certain now that some delightful surprise would shortly be sprung. However, for the moment they had to contain themselves, for the auctioneer, after suddenly selling a butter-dish to someone for seven-and-six, and returning seven shillings before either Willie or Sam could do anything about it, announced genially:

"We have been neglecting the ladies!" and produced a solid gold bracelet, with wrist-watch attached.

"Now this," he announced, "is real gold— not rolled gold, or Abyssinian gold, but the gold they make sovereigns out of. If you went to Mappin and Webb for an article like this, they would probably ask ten pounds for it. Will anybody bid me a shilling?"

A flushed young woman with a baby did so, and the bidding mounted, by a series of shy whispers and furtive nods, to three pounds. Not without much encouraging banter, however, from the auctioneer and the raucous assistance of Willie and Sam; who, scenting really profitable prey at last, commanded the company in a most threatening manner to bid up.

"Of course there's no need to pay all the money now," explained the auctioneer. "A small deposit will secure any article. Give me ten shillings now, young lady, and this watch-bracelet is yours, any day next week, for two-pounds-ten."

The bait was taken. A ten-shilling note was passed tremulously up to the rostrum, a receipt was written and handed down with ceremonial formality, and the watch-bracelet joined its three male companions upon the desk. Now surely the distribution of prizes and surprises would begin! Not at all. The auctioneer, after announcing very sternly that he would not sell to dealers, succeeded in disposing of two more watch-bracelets at three pounds apiece— or, rather, ten shillings on account— to ladies who had obviously lost their heads, and would probably decide with tears to-morrow morning to let their ten shillings go by the board and not throw good money after bad; and at last we arrived at the distribution of bonuses.

Each of the purchasers of Apostle spoons was presented with what looked like a small clothes-brush, though it might have been a large nail-brush. The purchasers of the watch-bracelets, having only paid a deposit, got nothing, and departed sorrowfully, without even the watch-bracelets. This brought us down to the three male protagonists who had invested in the one-pound watches. The auctioneer singled out his especial pet— the young gentleman in the neckcloth.

"Now, sir, you have shown more sporting spirit than anyone else here to-day." He took up a small imitation leather box, which might or might not have contained a safety razor, and continued:

"This little article would probably cost you a guinea in Bond Street. If I were to slip this ten-shilling note inside, as a lining for the lid, would you give me ten shillings for the lot? Would you, or would you not?"

The gentleman addressed, having worked out this rather complicated problem in mental arithmetic, cautiously admitted that he would.

"Very well then," announced the auctioneer indulgently, "you shall! Here is the little article in its box, and a ten-shilling note in exchange for your ten-shilling note. Pass up his note, Willie. No— that's a waste of labour. Keep your note, sir, and I'll keep mine; and I'll assume that you have paid me the ten shillings. There's your gold watch, sir, and there's the little article. Now, here's another little article and another ten-shilling note. Will one of you two other gentlemen make a bid?... All right, Willie, I know what I'm doing!"

"He certainly does," remarked George, as we made our way out of the shop.

"It's a complicated way of earning a living," I remarked.

"Yes. Let me see, how much exactly did he make out of it all?"

"Well, he took three-pounds-twelve for the Apostle spoons. Let's say he cleared fifty per cent. profit: that's thirty-six shillings— assuming that good lady comes back to claim her spoons, which I doubt."

"And he gave away a dozen brushes of some kind, say, at sixpence each— that's six shillings. That makes his profit thirty shillings, neglecting the brush which our absent friend missed."

"Then the toast-rack, and the butter-dish, and the other gadgets which he practically gave away— what about them? Shall we say ten shillings?"

"I don't think we need say more. They were probably sold to confederates: he'll get them back."

"All right. That leaves twenty shillings profit, so far. Now the gold watches at one pound each, say, at fifty per cent. profit— that's thirty shillings. Then 'the little article' in its box, whatever that may have been. There were three of them. Say they were worth two shillings apiece— that's a net profit of twenty-four shillings on the watches. Two-pounds-ten altogether, so far. Then the three ladies' watches at three pounds apiece. I bet there's a profit there, all right! How much would you say— a fiver?"

"Quite, if they pay. But my impression is that when they get home and come out of the chloroform the poor things will decide to forgo their deposit and get out while the going's good. That's a free gift of thirty shillings, and the watches still in stock. How much does that make in cash?"

"About four pounds, I think."

"In half-an-hour! Well, it's more than I have ever earned in the time," admitted George. "Still, on the whole I think I should prefer to make a living in some other way— as a Soccer pro, perhaps. I wonder who has won the Cup?"

__________

4: The Pigeons of Wong Foo

J. Allan Dunn

1872-1941

Adventure 20 Jun 1923

Prolific British author of pulp fiction, much travelled in the South Seas and the Far East. Married at least three times, possibly four.

WONG FOO, hands across his capacious stomach, sat complacently in the shade of his lanai watching the pigeons strut and coo and flirt in the brilliant sunshine while they pecked at the grain he had flung them.

They were a mongrel lot, inbred from a dozen that Wong Foo had brought from Canton when he acquired the little island of Piri, with its lagoon and the pearling rights therein.

But they were beautiful, with their iridescent necks and their coral feet, their well-balanced flight, and Wong Foo loved them for all that and the memories they kept bright of the land to which he hoped soon to return, prosperous in his middle age, able to marry, to raise sons and to live in full content, respected, honored and envied by the less fortunate, the less efficient.

When Wong Foo had first brought them to Piri it was with the intention of varying his fare, but he had changed his mind, there being something of the poet in Wong Foo— something of the philosopher besides a good deal of the merchant. He loved the sight of perfect pearls, symmetrical, prismatic and he had once written a verse about them.

The hues of the sea

And the colors of the sky

At dawn and at twilight,

Are vagrant beauties;

But the pearl,

Born of the sea,

Retains them:

So that a woman may wear them

And be beautiful

In the eyes of her lord.

Now he was meditating over another stanza concerning the pigeons. It was early morning, the palm-thatched lanai was on the west side of the house of Wong Foo, the hard work of the season was over, he had gleaned his harvest and he was very comfortable.

A blue pigeon, with barred wings, flew to the lanai rail and regarded Wong Foo speculatively. They were all fairly tame and fairly friendly, but it was Wong Foo who fed them and sometimes he had extra grains in his hand for the venturesome. The blue pigeon ruffed its gleaming neck feathers, cooed and made a short flight to the rail of Wong Foo’s bamboo lounge-chair, sidling along it to the open palm full of grain that he offered it.

Back of the open space where the rest of the birds paraded was their house, shaped like a pagoda, erected on a pole. Wong Foo’s fancy had hung little bells that tinkled when a pigeon entered one of the numerous doors cut for them. His ingenuity provided a system of closing all the doors simultaneously, after they had gathered in the loft for the night, and of opening them in readiness for their morning egress.

Back of this again coco-palms rustled in the wind, their slim trunks shining silver against the blue of the lagoon and the darker blue of the sea beyond the barrier reef. It was very pleasant on Piri, and Wong Foo fed his pet and amended his poetical phrases and, presently, dozed off to sleep with his hands still crossed on his capacious stomach. The pigeon regarded him curiously, its head cocked to one side, listening to the gentle snoring of the man, then flew back to the flock.

There was quite an establishment on Piri, lying solitary between the Phoenix and the Ellice groups. Buildings and boats and a community of forty natives, Melanesian men, shell-handlers and skin-divers. They were not overpaid, but they were well treated by Wong Foo and they were happy and peaceable enough.

There was Loo Ching, a young and energetic nephew of Wong Foo, who acted as foreman; and there was Ah Chi, a lowly compatriot who kept the house and cooked the simple meals. The natives had their own compound and grass huts, running their own commissary from the stores served out by Loo Ching.

It takes a year or two to produce even a small pearl. It is the custom to allow a lagoon a rest of from two to seven years to recuperate from a thorough harvesting. But Wong Foo held no such intention. It was his plan to clean up the lagoon, first of gems and then of shell, until he had reached the sum he needed for retirement. Then he would sell Piri to the highest bidder for what it was worth as a prospect.

This season’s gathering had been rotted out on the leeward beach of Piri where the trade winds carried the stench far out to sea, and Wong Foo’s calculations on his profits showed him very close to his goal.

It was small wonder that he dozed in peace, his face placid, his plump, well-kept hands rising and falling rhythmically with the swell of his diaphragm. Soon he would allow the nail to grow on his forefinger and guard this token of propserous idleness with a case of shell, inlaid with gold. Then he might be made a magistrate, or a mandarin of the fourth grade, permitted to wear a blue button.

LOO CHING came swiftly, scattering the pigeons, which wheeled in circles. He was lean, with an eager, hawkish face, a quick stride. There are those who, seeing Chinamen only as they face a foreigner, state that the faces of the Chinese show no more trace of sensations than a mask, that their nerves are insensitive, their poise imperturbable. But the face of Loo Ching showed high excitement, a tension of apprehension, and his eyes glittered as he abruptly shook the shoulder of his slumbering uncle and poured a jabber of Cantonese into his drowsy ear.

Wong -Foo shook off sleep as a man flings away a cloak. His almond eyes were bright and filled with quick intelligence as he listened.

“Bring me the glasses,” he said crisply to Loo Ching.

The nephew ran inside and returned with a pair of expensive and excellent binoculars. He also brought with him a-revolver, which he offered to Wong Foo.

“Of what use is force,” asked his uncle, “when it is opposed by a greater?”

He walked the length of the lanai to where there was a clear vista of the sea and focussed his lenses on a shining speck, like a sliver of silver, on the dark rim of the horizon? He gazed for two or three minutes, his plump hands steady. His eyes shone unblinkingly as he handed back the binoculars. His moon-like face seemed to have acquired a firmer mould.

“It is he,” he told Loo Ching. “I have always been a little afraid of this.”

“What are you going to do?” demanded Loo Ching. “They will raid us, kill us, perhaps, if they do not get what they are after. And we have only the one gun and a few knives. The Kanakas will not fight. What are you going to do?”

Wong Foo looked at his nephew reprovingly.

“It is idle to ask a question twice before it is once answered,” he said. “I do not know what I am going to do, Loo Ching, but doubtless I shall know before they make a landing.”

He went into the house, entered his own partitioned chamber and lighted fresh incense sticks before a gilded joss before he knelt down in front of the idol on a flat cushion, bowed his head reverently and closed his eyes. He was not asleep now but very wide awake. As awake as Loo Ching using the binoculars on the silver sliver that grew, little by little, presently dividing into two gleams of argent, the canvas of a topsail schooner, tacking, before it bore up on a long leg for Piri.

Ah Chi, fat as a porpoise, bare-legged, his vellow face shining with sweat from the heat of his stove, came waddling out. He had caught the anxious note to Loo Ching’s query.

“What is it?” he asked. “What is the matter?”

“It is only a fool who doubles his question,” said Loo Ching, passing on his uncle’s chiding precept. “But I will answer you and then you can go and crawl into your oven. That schooner belongs to—”

It sounded like Bhuli Hazi. It was the equivalent of Bully Hayes, poacher, raider, pirate ard unscrupulous blackguard, the bugaboo of unprotected isles and atolls and of defenseless vessels. Looting, murdering, roystering, swashbuckling Bully Hayes, who honored nothing, who carried off women and thought no more of a man’s life than he did that of a pigeon.

Ah Chi shook with terror; his slack jaw dropped.

“What are we going to do?” he stammered.

“Ask Wong Foo,” snapped Loo Ching, picking up the revolver from the chair and regarding it sullenly.

Suddenly his face flamed with balked ferocity, and he flung the weapon away. It hit amid the pigeons, once more on the ground, and they rose with an indignant whirr.

“Go and get that gun, you fat fool!” he said to Ah Chi. “You will not be so fat when the sun goes down.”

Ah Chi looked at him stupidly.

“You wish me to keep it?” he asked.

“You can throw it into the lagoon for all the good it will do us,” Loo Ching said savagely.

“Do not disturb the pigeons,” said the even voice of Wong Foo from the doorway. “Bring me that gun, Ah Chi, and then get some more grain for the birds.”

Ah Chi waddled off, and Loo Ching looked at his uncle amazedly.

“Feeding the pigeons at a time like this!” he muttered. ‘The old man must be going mad.”

Wong Foo regarded him with a glinting glance that suggested humor.

“That which is not understood is not always folly, Loo Ching,” he said mildly. “Pray clean the gun from sand.”

Loo Ching took the retrieved weapon sullenly from Ah Chi.

“Why clean it?” he asked petulantly. “If we use it there will be twenty bullets for one. You said so yourself.”

“Why leave it dirty? Loo Ching, you should talk less and study more. What says Lao Tsze?

That which may not be prevented must be endured with patience. Yet there is a master key for all locks and the name of it is Wisdom.

“Fetch me the unopened bolt of goods on the top shelf in the store. Here is the key. It is at the end of the shelf by the window. Ah Chi, I shall need you. Go and wash your hands.”

Ah Chi gaped and Loo Ching looked his astonishment. Then the latter went sulkily on his errand. Wong Foo leaned on the rail of the lanai and watched his pigeons gobbling the grain that the cook had flung them.

“AIl beauty must be fed,”

he murmured, carefully accenting the rhythm.

“All beauty must be fed

Tis leached by hunger

And, sometimes,

The greediest are the most resplendent.”

The pigeons cooed and strutted, walking jerkily on their coral feet, the shimmer of their irised necks changing like shifted jewelry as they pecked at the grain.

The Melanesian divers massed on the beach, watching the schooner, which had come about once more and was now visible as a single plume of silver, its masts alined, coming fast, a bone under its stem, the wet hull throwing off a dazzle as it caught the light.

“Tell the Kanakas to go into their compound,” Wong Foo ordered the returning Loo Ching. “They are to stay there until I come. Then you will find me in the house. Go quickly.”

BULLY HAYES stood aft of the wheel, balanced to the pitch of the racng schooner. He was driving her, as he drove everything he had a hand in, and his eyes were on the little wind pennant that whipped at his main truck, watching the slant of it, quick to note the least shiver in the weather leech of the mainsail, keen to see that the swift boat was pointing its highest.

His helmsman, a plum-colored boy from Rubiana, magnificently muscled, stark naked save for a strip of red cloth, steered faultlessly, but the nervous twitching of his eyes showed that he knew and feared the result of the close proximity of his skipper.

Hayes was clad in blue denim shirt and blue serge trousers, his feet bare, his legs hairy to the ankles. A scar across his nose gave his rugged face a sneering twist, though his heavy mouth was open in a smile, showing stained irregular teeth through mustache and beard. His skin was tanned deep from the weather and his face seamed with lines of indulgence, besides the sea-wrinkles of the deep-water man. His eyes were green as the crest of a breaking wave, flecked with tiny spots of red.

His first mate stood at the rail, broad, bow-legged and long-armed, scarlet of hair and beard and face. The second was amidships where the crew, all Solomon Islanders, savages, with bleached mops of hair, ragged ear-lobes, scored with tribal weals and scars of war, waited to jump at the word.

It was a roaring morning, bright and full of wind. Trade clouds white as milk were piled in cumulous masses, and the gale blew out of them, vigorous with ozone. The force of the wind snapped the brittle crests from the racing:waves and sent the spindrift scudding in horizontal flurries of spume that looked like driven snow.

The schooner leaped to the surge, crashing down the waves, blue as a druggist’s display solution, till the white brine roared around her and streamed far aft in a yeasty wake. It churned in her lee scuppers and plumed about her bows like white feathers. Many men would have reefed in such a breeze, but Bully Hayes, secure in quality of rigging, hull and canvas, carried on, exulting in the lift and fall and drive of her, eager to gather the prize of his trip.

The islet of Piri lifted fast from the sea. At first it had looked like a cluster of big-headed pins stuck on the horizon line, then the palms seemed wading out to meet them.

The hurl of the waves had weight, but the schooner rather rode than buffeted them. The reef points stood out like spikes of iron, the coiled halyard ends rapped against the timbers as the vessel plunged and reared and bore on close-hauled, seeming to fight for her head like a wild mare while the muscles writhed in the back and calves of the helmsman as he controlled her.

There was a trembling blaze of light where the sun struck the sea, little flashes sparkling out from the facets of the waves.

The helmsman shifted a swift spoke, threw his head on his shoulder, an inquiring eye on his skipper.

“Wind’s shifting!” roared Bully Hayes. “Curse the luck, we’ll have to make another leg to fetch her. Away on the sheets there! Let her pay off easy!”

The first mate jumped to where the second had already re-echoed the order, bawling at the straining crew. The fluttering wind pennant steadied. The schooner heeled and seemed instantly to increase in speed, like a runner lengthening his stride. The course changed to a broader reach with the wind now coming over the rail abaft the beam, singing through the forestays.

Hayes studied the nice balance of wind and sail and cast a glance about the firm sweep of the horizon.

“Hold her as she is,” he ordered. ‘‘We’re well up. We may make it.”

The first mate came aft, soaked to the knees, his face gleaming with spray. The exhilaration of the weather and the lunge of the schooner shone in his eyes.

“By——, she’s a dandy!” he exclaimed.

Hayes nodded.

“She’ll show most of ’em her tail. Come below, Thompson.”

In the cabin he bellowed for his steward, a dish-faced Malay wearing a striped sarong with a kris in a belt, sheathed in bamboo.

“Gin and limes.”

Shields, the supercargo, a foxy-faced and cashiered Scotchman, came into the main cabin from his trade room, treading like a cat.

“Fine weather for pearlin’, Mister Hayes,” he said.

“Aye. Sit down, Shields. We’ll take a drink to the trip. Wong Foo will be pleasantly surprized.”

“He'll have sighted us, no doubt. He’ll be knowin’ the schooner. I wouldna wonder but what he micht have been expectin’ us one time an’ another.”

“Maybe,” said Hayes indifferently, squeezing lime-juice into a tumbler three parts full of raw Hollands. “He’s a bird worth the plucking. I got it straight that he’s going back to China after this clean up. It should be a good haul. The lagoon’s a rich one. I’ve had my eyes on it for a long while, but I thought I’d let Wong Foo do the dirty work. We’ll make for Sydney after this trick and amuse the ladies.”

The others laughed, tossing off their liquor, replenishing as Hayes passed the bottle. He looked occasionally at the compass.

“He'll have hidden the pearls,” he said, “but we’ll make him turn them up. We'll get ’em if we have to sift the beach for ’em. A sharp knife on his slick belly’ll make him talk.

“Thompson, you'll come in with me. You too, Shields. You can sweat the Kanakas. Tide’ll be against us and they say the reefgate’s a tricky one. We’ll not go inside. Haywood can keep her on and off. We’ll take rifles and revolvers. Serve ’em out, Thompson.”

“How about a shotgun?” asked Shields.

“What for?”

“They say Wong’s got a flock of feefty pigeons. They'd make good eating. broiled and in pies.”

“Always thinking of your guts, Shields. It ain’t a bad idea, but there are no more shells. We’ve been too long at sea and the damp has swollen ’em. I tried to get some plover back there on Turua and they were all spoiled. I'll use nothing but brass cases after this and do all my own reloading.”

Shields ceased licking his thin lips.

“Pigeons are good, but pearls are better,” he said. “You can buy a nice little pigeon with a pearl, one without wings. And another, after you get tired of that one. It all depends on the size of a man’s share.”

Hayes surveyed his supercargo with a look inclined to be sinister but said nothing, though Shields’ remark about his share was most distinctly emphasized.

Thompson gazed at his skipper expectantly. He had no especial love for Shields and he knew Hayes’ methods of stamping out any incipient spark of dissatisfaction before it turned to contagious flame.

“Let’s go on deck,” said Hayes. “Come along, Shields. It’s a prime morning and a sea running that’s made for us but would be nasty for an open boat—very nasty. We'll have to be careful landing or we’ll get rolled.”

Again Thompson cocked an eye at, Hayes then at Shields, the suspicion of a grin twitching the corners of his mouth.

The three went to the rail. Piri was in plain view now, line of white surf, light green of bananas arid pandanus, the darker plumes of coconuts, the yellow thatch of Wong Foo’s house and the glaring corrugated sheet-iron roof of the store. A number of specks shot into the air as if bombed and went wheeling far and wide.

“There go your pigeons, Shields. By the way, you don’t seem to be quite satisfied with your berth.”

The supercargo looked at Hayes, sucking in his thin cheeks, his pale blue eyes suspicious. He did not like the tone of his skipper’s question. Mildly as it was put it held a hint as of a rapier grating softly over an opposing blade in preliminary encounter. But he spoke up.

“You mean what I said about my share? It’s never been set, you ken.”

“I ken,” said Hayes and the word was like a thrust.

There was a sudden glare back of his green eyes, and his face darkened.

“Im givin’ you something to chew on, Shields. You robbed the last sucker you worked for. But for me, you’d be in jail at Suva. You don’t know which side your bread is buttered on. But for me, there’d be no butter for you. I’m the provider. What I serve you be thankful for. “If you're not satisfied— quit— now!”

His malignant features were thrust close to the face of Shields as he strode close to him. The harsh fury of his bellow made the supercargo shrink a little.

“Quit now?” he stammered.

“I'll give you a boat,” grinned Hayes. “Then you can row, bail, sink or swim and be ——ed to you! I want no grumblers aboard, d’ye hear me? Take what I give or get out.”

Shields looked at the tumbling seas with their broken crests and his features seemed suddenly pinched.

“I'm no sailor,” he muttered.

Hayes clapped him on the shoulder with a great laugh.

“Now you're showing sense,” he said. “I'll do the sailing and parcel out the shares. You do what I tell you, Shields, and we'll get along together. Balk me—” his voice changed again threateningly—‘“‘and I’ll put you overboard if it’s the middle of a black night with a gale blowing.”

“Bring her up a little, Mr. Thompson,” he added, turning his back on Shields.

The supercargo licked his lips again but not from greediness. He knew he had been given his lesson purposely in front of all hands, and he was a canny man, if he had been careless with other people’s money. Like a cat detected in trying for the cream pitcher, he pussy-footed his way to the companion and disappeared.

As Hayes had predicted, it was no easy landing, for all the skill of the oarsmen and the genius of Hayes at the steering sweep. They got well away from the schooner, flung up into the wind, and clawed their way toward the spouting reef, riding like a cork in a mill-race. But the ebb that had prevented any attempt of the schooner to enter, fought against their strength with a six-knot torrent pouring through the gap in the coral. Hayes might have waited an hour and entered more easily, but that was not his way.

He roared at his men who tugged and threw their weight upon the ash blades until they bent like bows, while the sweat ran down, and the veins showed like snakes beneath their skins. Erect himself, holding the lever of the steering oar in a grip of steel, Hayes watched the swirl of the tide rip, that held them as one may hold a door against intruders.

“Pull!” he bellowed and they pulled until their bones cracked and the smoke of effort rolled off their hot bodies.

They were in a gut with Death and Hayes had put them there deliberately, sharing the risk. He gave the word as he levered the light boat.

“Hai! Hai! Hai!”

An oar broke off, and the man tumbled backward into the bows. There were spare ones and the rest of the rowers labored to hold way until their eyes balled out from their heads with the prodigious effort. The new oar was shipped. Hayes had corrected the swerving lunge.

“Hai, you black-hided dogs. Hai! Pull or drown. Hai!”

THEY were through and racing for the shore, the strain over, their savage faces agrin. Hayes steered them to Wong Foo’s little wharf where they leaped for the planks and moored the boat. Rifles in hand, Hayes and Thompson in the lead, each armed with two guns, Shields bringing up the rear, they ran toward the clearing in front of Wong Foo’s house, the Solomon Islanders giving fierce yell after yell. They were bushmen all and the peaceful beach-blacks of Wong Foo shrank from them, huddling together where Wong Foo had marshaled them in front of his house, where he had watched the pigeons strutting in the sun in the early morning

Wong Foo was there, his kai hidden in his sleeves, his face showing no immediate emotion. Loo Ching scowled, and Ah Chi trembled like a jelly. The boys from the schooner surrounded the divers and shellworkers, covering them with their rifles, jabbering to each other threats of headtaking and oven-baking that made the others turn ashen.

Hayes had put away his guns in their holsters, but Thompson kept his trained on Loo Ching, scenting hatred and the will to resist. Shields had no occasion to menace the trembling Ah Chi.

“What for you come along with gun?” asked Wong Foo. “What for you make so much bobbery?”

There were times when Hayes badgered his victims. This was not one of them.

“Cut out the palaver,” he said harshly. “You know —— well what I’ve come for, Wong Foo. I dont know what your idea of this reception party is, but the round-up suits me. Makes it easier if there’s any trouble. That part of it is up to you. Come across with your pearls!”

Shadows flitted across the two groups as, high up, the pigeons swung in Jong loops and circles, disturbed by the intrusion, by the preemption of their favorite parade and feeding ground. ‘Their crops were full enough, but they did not like these yelling strangers and they wheeled higher, in no mind to perch or alight until the confusion was over.

“No got pearls,” said Wong Foo placidly.

“Don't lie to me, you yellow-faced baboon!” cried Hayes. “I’m in a hurry. Sabe?”

“I tell you I no got. Plently pearl one time. I send away along my fliend ship. I no like keep pearl along island. I think maybe some one come take ’em.”

“You thought right.”

The Chinaman’s voice held a measure of conviction that registered with Hayes, but he was convinced that all Chinese were natural born liars and cheats— as he was himself.

“I come to take ’em. Where are they?”

“Evelly yea’ pearl not so much good. Las’ yea’ velly small, velly few. My fliend ship come, bling chow, take ’em pearl. This yea’ no good, only shell. You like take shell I no can stop.”

“Blast your stinkin’ shell!” cried Hayes, his eyes getting murderous.

He shoved a gun muzzle against Wong Foo’s stomach.

“Masi, Ipoki, take that shivering hog. Shields, make him talk. Slit open his belly bag if he won’t!”

They grabbed Ah Chi, Hayes selecting him as the most likely to talk. Wong Foo, he saw, was of stiffer mettle. The unfortunate cook wriggled in vain as they tore open his blouse and broke the string of his pantaloons, flinging him down on the sand while Shields knelt above him, with bared knife.

“I no sabe. Pearl no catch,” he jabbered. “Pearl all go away. This time no pearl we catch.”

His voice rose to shrieking Cantonese as Shields slowly drew the point of his knife down the yellow skin, across the palpitating stomach, leaving a thin red line where the blood followed it.

Suddenly Wong Foo lost poise.

“Wha’s mally you?” he cried. “I no got. I takee oath along of you. No good you killee. I no got. Suppose I got, I give along. No pearl on this place. I speak

The green eyes bored into the brown and Hayes read there fear of death. There was the absolute ring of truth in Wong Foo’s accents and, for a moment, Hayes credited the statement that the supply ship had taken away the pearls. Thompson had his revolver pressed to Loo Ching’s temple. The latter snarled at him.

“No can do,” he said. “Suppose you shoot, allee same. Pearl all gone.”

“All right, Shields,” said Hayes. “We'll search ’em. They've hidden ’em somewhere, but we’ll find ’em. You can’t tell me,” he said to Wong Foo, “that you got nothing but shell. Your lie’s too good.”

“We catch velly few pearl,” said Wong Foo. ‘Seed pearl, velly few, lele, pearl. No good along of you. Suppose you want, Į give.”

“Is that so?” sneered Hayes. ‘Strip ’em.”

In fifteen minutes the men of Piri were as naked as when they were born, searched as thoroughly as any Kaffir in a diamond kraal, their garments ripped, blouse and loincloth scrutinized inch by inch. Questioning the native divers only elicited the fact that they did not know what Wong did with his pearls. A supply ship did come at regular intervals. It might have taken the gems. It was plausible enough.

“I’ll take the store,” said Hayes. ‘‘Shields, you search that house, thatch and all. Thompson, herd ’em.”’

Two natives went with Hayes, two more with Shields. The three yellow men and the boys of Wong Foo huddled under the blistering sun, not daring to ask for their shreds of clothes, the Kanakas hunkering, Ah Chi prone and moaning, Loo Ching and Wong Foo erect, watching the wrecking of store and house.

Over all the pigeons soared undisturbed until smoke rose from the looted store and flames began to crackle. Then they mounted. Hayes came back in a towering rage, empty handed. Shields ran out from the house with a calabash he had found stowed in the thatch. In it were about a pint of seeds, half that many baroques and nine small pearls, booty hardly worth a landing.

“Those pearl all I catch this season,” said Wong Foo. The fear of death was no longer in his eyes and he had regained his composure; he seemed to have accepted the fate that might come to him with Oriental stoicism.

Loo Ching’s eyes still flashed with anger.

“Sure of your search?” Hayes asked Shields.

“I’ve taken it all apart but the walls, and the boys combed the roof,” he said.

“Burn it.”

More smoke and fire went up in the bright day, driving the pigeons higher yet. Soon the native quarters were in flames. Every likely place was searched, including Loo Ching’s little lugger. Threats brought only the same answers, that the lagoon had been stripped of everything but shell and that all pearls had been shipped for safety against such raiders as Hayes. Slowly and reluctantly Hayes came to that conclusion, still doubtful, hoping against hope.

The search had taken all the afternoon. There was no liquor ashore save one half empty jar of samshu. This the three white men emptied. The pick of the store goods was taken down to the pier and placed in the boat. Hayes glowered at Wong.

He itched to kill, to wipe out all life on Piri, but he hesitated. There were one or two matters of that kind already chalked up against him and they were getting fussy in Sydney. Murder will out, even if he threw their bodies to the sharks. And even his brutality, spurred as if it was by samshu, balked at such wholesale and cold-blooded killing. He had done sufficient damage to take some edge off his spite and chagrin.

He looked to sea for his schooner and saw her, holding off and on with short tacks. In the immediate foreground was the pigeon house on the pole. It was three-tiered, with five entrances to each side and tier. Below them ran the landing-perches, above, the wide eaved roofs that gave it the effect of a pagoda. Green and red and yellow embellished it. It was the pride of Wong Foo’s decorative instinct.

Hayes slapped his thigh. He had already determined to destroy it, but now he had an inspiration. He had overlooked the likeliest cache of all. For an instant his glance rested on Loo Ching’s resentful features then shifted to those of Wong Foo.

The face of the owner of Piri showed only resignation.

“Give Wong Foo an ax,” Hayes said to Thompson. "Wong Foo, chop down that pagoda dovecote of yours. I want to take a look inside.”

Wong Foo made a little protest with his hands. His face was troubled.

“What for you do that?” he asked. “All same you take all I got, you make ’em all bu’n.”

Hayes gloated, sure that his hunch was correct.

“I nearly passed up that bet,” he said. “If we can’t have pigeon pie, we may find some fine eggs. Give him that ax.”

Wong Foo chopped at the pole at the point of a gun. The house swayed, toppled with a crash, the little bells tinkling, the roofs splintering. Hayes, Thompson and Shields reduced the wreck to matchwood, raking off the droppings and sifting them. There were no pearls.

The sun was dropping, the west flaming, shadows lengthening. The smoke had died down and, above the scanty vapors the pigeons wheeled, tired, fearful of the dusk, but more fearful of the happenings on Piri.

“We've drawn blank,” said Hayes at last. “If I ever find out you’ve fooled me, Wong Foo, I’ll hunt you out and skin you alive.”

Wong Foo’s face was inscrutable enough now. He shrugged his shoulders.

“No can fool you,” he said and his voice was that of a broken old man. “You make plenty bobbery. No good.”

“Going to sink his lugger?” asked Shields.

Hayes turned toward his supercargo. His bloodshot eyes seemed to make the Scotchman a little uneasy.

“Want him to starve to death?” he asked. “Glad you spoke though. That reminds me of something. Wong Foo, I’m going. How many pearls did you have in that house along that calabash. Not seeds or baroques. Hold on, Shields, I’m handling this.”

The supercargo had dropped a hand to the butt of his gun with a threatening gesture toward Wong.

“Fo’teen small pearl,” said Wong.

“I thought as much,” said Hayes softly. “You sure of that, Wong?”

“What for I lie?” asked Wong Foo, mournfully surveying the wreck of Piri.

“You dog!” said Hayes to Shields. “Holding out, are you?”

He whipped out his gun and shot Shields through the wrist as the latter tried to draw.

“Go through him, Thompson.”

The mate searched the bleeding supercargo and produced five pearls, all larger than those he had delivered to Hayes.

“All right,” said Hayes. “Get down to the boat, you.”

Shields, holding his wounded wrist, the blood spattering the sand, was hustled down between two of the black boys. The boat put off, reached the schooner.

The booms were swung out as the raiding vessel tacked and soon it gathered speed, sailing into the heart of the sunset, presently a shadow in the failing light.

AH CHI, his split skin tended, scattered grain for the pigeons, which were coming home, hovering uncertainly above where their home had been. Two boys, for the second time that day, held light casting nets ready.

Wong Foo watched the last of the schooner fade out. A pigeon came down and started pecking at the grain. Another followed. Presently the whole fifty of the flock were busy. It was too dark for their irised-breasts to gleam, but Wong Foo regarded them as if they were feathered with gems.

“It is too bad they burned the place,” he said to Loo Ching. “But we have finished with it. Tomorrow we begin to load the pearl and then we sail.”

He contemplated the damage with a certain smug complacency. Then he gave a signal and the nets were deftly cast over the busy flock of birds, enmeshing them.

Yet it was a lucky thing for Wong Foo, with all his guile and gifts of acting, that the damp had spoiled the shotgun shells aboard the schooner. For Hayes, or Shields, might have brought down a pigeon, and that would have disclosed the fact that to the leg of each bird there had been tied a tiny sack of red silk that matched the coral of their feet.

It was at midnight that Wong Foo collected the pearls that had been in the sacks and gazed at them lovingly in the cabin of his pearling lugger, a shimmering mass of perfect gems.

“To him who hath a measure of wisdom and who possesseth patience,”

he quoted to Loo Ching, from the writings of Lao Tsze,

“there is bestowed a fair measure of reward.”

“I wish we had had more guns,” said Loo Ching, bitterly.

IT WAS at midnight that a despairing cry sounded across the sea from a small boat, one taken from Wong Foo’s little fleet for the purpose. The man that uttered the cry gazed with straining eyeballs toward a light that rose and fell as the schooner raced away through the slashing seas. It shone from the after cabin where Hayes sat moodily drinking and fingering fourteen small pearls, some seeds and baroques.

The cock-boat pitched in the trough, shipped water, and rolled in a swirl of phosphorescence. Shields grasped an oar with his one sound hand and strove to head on to the run of the waves. There was a keg of water in the stern, some biscuit and a little bully beef. A short mast and a rag of sail, if he could ride out till morning and ship the one and set the other. But, as he had said, he was no sailor.

__________

5: Dark Laughter

J. Allan Dunn

1872-1941

Alert (Maryborough, Qld), 1 Sep 1939

MERVIN BANE shifted his twisted spine against the back of the chair and squinted beneath his shaggy eyebrows at the man he hated.

Bane was clever, and he was crafty; two attributes that had secured him this job as secretary to Gideon Trent. His cleverness at research, his well-feigned flattery gaining the confidence of the man who considered himself the world's foremost philosopher and philanthropist.

Bane was full of venom as a black widow spider. To-day he was malevolant as a shedding snake.

All his abnegations, his fawnings and adulation, the nausea of listenings and pendering to the other, all his expectations, based upon Gideon Trent's own promises, had come to naught.

Bane would willingly, eagerly have murdered him, but there was a lot of caution in his make-up, an inherent fear of consequences. A man, he told himself, was a fool to commit a crime— unless it should be the fabulous perfect one.

Gideon was compiling a work he believed would establish the welfare of mankind. "The Social Plan," by Gideon Trent, Bane saw no difference between its theme and that of Bellamy's "Looking Backward," save that Gideon larded his with cribbed philosophies, sought for examples to support his theory. That was Bane's job— part of it.

Moreover, Gideon was eternally correcting the script, calling for clean copies in triplicate, ever adding more footnotes, intolerant of the slightest error.

He was unmarried, possessed no near relatives.

Five years ago, when Bane took over, Gideon had told him that he wanted to find somebody he could trust. He said it plaintively, a little petulantly.

"Prove to me I can trust you, Bane, and you shall not go unrewarded. I want accuracy, with haste, in case I should be taken suddenly. My life work must be completed, or set in such shape that it may be completed posthumously. Aid me in this, and you will not find yourself forgotten."

GIDEON TRENT had a bad heart, a cardiac murmur, a leaky valve, flaccid muscles. There were other organic changes in his big, pulpy body that left him open to attacks of angina pectoris.

He had to live carefully, to avoid all excitements. He had cardiant pellets prescribed by his specialist always on hand.

Gideon had a violent temper, against which he had been solemnly warned by his specialist.

"He must suffer no shocks to his nervous system," Dr. Meredith advised Bane. "One might prove fatal."

Yesterday Gideon Trent had knocked over Bane's house-of-cards, dissolved his aerial castle.

"It looks as if the work is done at last, Bane. It has been a studendous task, but I may say I am proud of it. There may be some amendment—we shall see. Complete the final script of the preface to-night. I shall appreciate

"I have watched you, Bane,  tested you. I know you understand and appreciate the Plan. The abolishment of money, of luxury; every man doing his share of work in the community that will entitle him to such mode of living as national psychiatrists have decided he deserves. One world-wide nation living in equity and amenity.

"I shall establish the Trent Foundation with my fortune. All will go toward the propagation and extension of my idea throughout the earth, with the exception of some bequests to those who have been faithful. To Whipple, to Mrs. Freeman, and to yourself, Bane, I am leaving the sum of one thousand , pounds, clear of inheritance taxes."

The fatuous fool! The damnable hypocrite! The work was done. Clever, crafty Bane had been used as a tool. One thousand pounds! One thousand devils, to tear at Gideon's, vitals.

"That is generous of you, Mr. Trent. Very generous."

ALL night the canker of hate had worked within him, polluting blood and brain.

Gideon's dream was not yet fulfilled. To hold the printed volumes, to read the prostituted reviews he would believe genuine, to hear the plaudits of sycophants, to walk in a procession with hood and gown, with academic cap barred sleeves, given an honorary degree.

The fool thought he would get the Nobel Prize!

He had cheated Bane with false hopes. He could be cheated also.

Bane started to bring him the preface sheets, stumbled on a rug, pitched forward against Gideon's desk, clutched at the old-fashioned inkstand and upset it, so that the deliberately ruffled pages of the script in his left hand were blotted with red and black.

Gideon gasped in horror, then in rage. His eyes distended, bulging, like the veins in brow and neck as the surge of his anger flushed the great blood-vessels to the bursting point. His heart checked its beat, the rotten walls collapsing. His lower chest contracted, his tace turned purple, he was suffocating.

"P-p-p-p-pep...."

Bane knew what he was trying to say through the bubbles he blew on his lips.

"Pellets."

The cardiants. They were in the medicine cabinet of the bathroom between the library and Gideon's bedroom.

Bane stared at the tortured man with malignant satisfaction. Gideon glared back, horribly. Bane thought he saw suspicion grow in the blood-streaked orbs.

SUPPOSE, after all, the old fool came out of it, accused him?

He nodded, found the pellets, next to a phial of saccharine tablets, exactly the same size, shape and color as the cardiants. If there was any difference in the taste Gideon would never know it in his condition.

Bane poured hot water in the bottom of a glass, dropped the pellet into it in front of Gideon's eyes, let it dissolve, dribbed it into the gullet that spasmodically swallowed it.

Gideon relaxed for a moment. Then he was seized with a frightful spasm of pain. It brought him to his feet, bowed with excruciating agonies. He slid to the floor, making a rigid arc of his corpulent body between his heels and his bald pate. He flattened out, curds of foam replacing the bubbles. His feet and hands twitched, a last convulsion racked him.

Bane brought a hand mirror. It stayed unfilmed.

Gideon Trent was dead!

Bane returned to the bathroom, and this time picked up the cardiant pellets. Then he fished in the pocket of the corpse for keys, unlocked the desk drawer, placed the pellets in it, relocked, replaced the keys.

He took up the house 'phone.

"Whipple? Bane speaking. Mr. Trent has had an attack, a bad one, I fear. Call Dr. Meredith. Better get Mrs. Freeman to do it, to keep on calling. You come here. We must get him to bed."

He was kneeling by Gideon s body when Whipple arrived.

"I COULD not find the pellets, doctor," Bane told Meredith. "I know he was trying to tell me where he had put them. He was always changing them around recently. He had grown erratic. I went to where I expected to find them but they were gone. Then I had you called. I kept trying to locate them, but by the time Whipple came it was too late. I suppose we shall find them eventually. I did my best."

The specialist nodded. "I am sure you did. Have you any idea what brought on the attack?"

Bane showed him the blotted manuscript.

"It is the final draft of the preface to his book, the last thing to complete it. He was excited about it. I worked all last night to get it ready. It was on his desk and he got up from his chair to pick it up himself. His face was flushed. I fancied he seemed a little clumsy, or dizzy. He fumbled the script, knocked over the ink, and he went down."

Bane wiped sweat from his forehead. He was looking at the body on the bed. It seemed to him that Gideon was grinning at him.

"Do dead men often look like that?" he asked hoarsely. "I thought they appeared at peace. "

The specialist glanced professionally at the twisted corners of the lifeless lips.

"It will pass. It is what we term the rictus sardonicus. It will not last. Do not let it bother you."

GIDEON'S solicitor came the next morning.

"A sad blow for you, Bane. A great loss, in more ways than one. You inherit merely a thousand pounds under the present will."

"I know'that. He told me. I am not disappointed."

"He was only testing you, Bane, to see your reaction. I had an appointment here with him this morning that he made himself, over the telephone. I did not expect to be summoned, for this. If he had lived for one more day, Bane, you would have been a very wealthy and important person, in charge of his affairs. You see...."

Bane did not hear him. Only the sense of sight was functioning, and that inwardly. He was seeing the sardonic grin, the rictus sardonicus, on the dead face of Gideon Trent.

_____________

6: The Crime Master

J. Allan Dunn

Detective Fiction Weekly, 30 Nov 1929

The sinister Crime Master, "The Griffin", and his relentless pursuer Gordon Manning, appeared in six stories in Detective Fiction Weekly, commencing in November 1929, with the final story in November 1930. They were collected by Altus Press in 2020, as "The Complete Crimes of "the Griffin".

THERE were no windows to the curious room, elliptically shaped, the high walls in one continuous curve with no visible sign of a door. Diffused and mellow light flowed in from unseen mysterious sources. There was ample ventilation. From somewhere, diminished, rather than faint from distance, music sounded, music orchestrated in the ultra-modern school that some call decadent. Music that stirred the physical emotions rather than exalted the mind or stimulated the spirit. Not the strident, strenuous phases of jazz, but insinuating melodies, rhythms that seemed to suggest exotic landscapes, the glidings of great, gorgeous snakes, the flight of rainbowplumaged birds, the fall of crystal waters— lovers watched upon by lurking, creeping ape-men.

The walls were tapestried in two shades of gold, dull and burnished, in a pattern that did not obtrude yet made itself manifest. The carpet, ankle deep, was of rare weave, matching the walls. There was a hint of incense, of burning amber. And a strange atmosphere of evil, an influence that abused beauty and harmony, twisted them to its own malignant purposes.

Those walls back of the golden tapestries were of steel. The place was at once a sanctum and a stronghold. The ceiling curved in a shallow dome. On its background of dark blue, certain constellations were accurately inlaid in gold. Two signs of the zodiac, in conjunction, and their attendant stars.

Here and there were divans, deep cushions on the floor. A high chest of black wood with inlays of pearl and ivory, actually a safe of the most modern construction, A chair, carved, like a throne, back of a carved table. On the table a strip of ancient woven silk, once the back of a Manchu princess's robe; a crystal globe, slotted at the top with openings for air, three-quarters filled with water into which streamed constantly a jet of compressed air. Emerald weeds waved. and. contorted goldfish swam solemnly through the subaqueous jungle.

There was a disk of smooth copper-gilt suspended in a frame of ivory. On either side of this smaller replicas. A tablet of white porcelain, illuminated from beneath, on which a man was making notes and calculations with a stylus of agate tipped with lead.

The whole place was bizarre. It might have been the abode of an astrologer, a mystic. The seated figure should have worn a pointed cap, a robe inseribed with cabalistic characters, a long beard.

Instead, there was a clean-shaved man in modern dress. His face was the most arresting thing in the room. At the moment it was calm, cold, rigid, almost, as an ivory mask and nearly as colorless. But the eyes gleamed like jewels; hard, brilliant, the eyes of a fanatic or a madman whose brain, while erratic, still retained control. It was in the eyes that the malignant influence of the room seemed to concentrate, perhaps to emanate.

The features were, in their way, beautiful, but they were stamped with a predatory cast. The lips were thin, cruel, the nose a finely chiseled beak, the whole face dominating. The ears well shaped, but the ears of a faun, pointing up to crisp hair, silver-gray that did not give so much the suggestion of age, but of virility that lacked pigment. The only lines were two scores that ran from nostrils to the ends of the mouth.

This was the man who called himself the Crime Master. He might, as he looked, have been a. fallen archangel, hurled from Heaven, intent upon revenge. He was an arch-enemy of society, of the world of finance, nursing injuries that, in his warped brain, had mounted until he was a foe to all established foundations of modern civilization.

A gong sounded, with a light, sweet note. The music ceased. A voice thin but distinct came from the smaller disks, synchronized. He listened intently, a smile, that lacked all kindness, deepening the brackets about his mouth.

He spoke into the big disk. His voice was smooth, silken-smooth, but forceful, exultant, mocking. He gave swift instructions. Then, as the music once more crept in, he erased, with a moist felt, all that had been on the tablet of porcelain, now transferred to a memory of intense energy annd reception; made another note— a date, and regarded it with the same smile. His long, thin fingers folded themselves about each other. Then, with a swift movement, subtle rather than sudden, he brought heavy paper from a drawer, dipped a quill pen into violet ink, held in a well of onyx whose lid was the head of a griffin, the mythical winged lion, and wrote quickly, still smiling; folding the letter with a chuckle that suggested the soft gurgle of an eddy on the Styx, or of the sacred river of Kublai Khan, running through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea; addressed the envelope, sealed it.

"So," he said softly. "It appears we have a worthy opponent. The real game commences."

He pressed a silver button in the desk-top. From a deeper drawer he drew out a mask that seemed made of gold-leaf, pliant but distinctive, changing his features to the semblance of an Egyptian relief of the Hawk-God. Now he looked not unlike the griffin lid of the inkwell, the device that was on the scarlet seal that closed the letter.

The gong sounded twice. With his foot he pressed on the heavy carpet and a section of the wall slid noiselessly aside. A man appeared, a valet, his sign of service the wasp-striped waistcoat he wore, a human automaton, expressionless.

"See that this is mailed at the Grand Central post office by four this afternoon."

The Crime Master felt in the pocket of his coat, brought forth a tiny box of gold, damascened, enlivened with small, sparkling and exquisitely cut gems. In it was a green paste— hasheesh.

Five minutes later he was at full length on a divan, the phantasies of the hempen extract mingling with the music that now played more and more faintly, lulling him to sleep and dreams. His features relaxed, but they did not lose that stamp of enmity.

ii

THE wise old trainer, owner of Garrity's Gymnasium, looked with professional interest and approval at Gordon Manning, coming out briskly from the needle shower after his daily handball game.

"There you have a man who keeps himself fit," said Garrity to a new and somewhat paunchy patron. "Always has kept fit, if I know anything, and there's not much in the line of athletics he couldn't get away with, if he put his mind to it. As it is, there's worse boxers an' wrestlers swaggerin' round, thinkin' they're champs."

"He doesn't look such a marvel to me," said the other, watching Manning closely, a little enviously, as the latter came striding naked from the shower cabinets, lean and lithe. ' You wouldn't call him much on muscle."

"You wouldn't? Next time you git a chance, you take a look at the limbs of them chimpanzees out to the Bronx Zoo. You won't see much muscle on them. They're skinny, those chimps, they look stringy, but they can take apart a man twice their weight an' size.

"It's quality that counts. Know anything more muscular than a snake? One of them big boas? See any muscles bulgin' on them? Manning is built the same way. His muscles are like first-class rubber bands. They've got resilience. His brain's the same way. Watch him play handball and you'll get what I mean: Coordination."

"What does he do? Anything?"

"He's some sort of a lawyer. I know he's got offices down on Liberty Street. I know he was the youngest major in the A. E. F. where I was top sergeant. An' I'm dead sure he don't loaf. He couldn't, not his sort, any more'n quicksilver'll stay put."

The listener was impressed, almost against his will. There was something out of the ordinary about Manning, his poise, the carriage of his spare person, the lift of head and chin, a certain pride that was not offensive, a suggestion of proved efficiency. Perhaps the trainer had not exaggerated, after all.

"Now you, sir," said Garrity bluntly. "You've got a nice body, but you've abused it. You want to take it easy at first. I'll start you off with the medicine ball. There's a class of gents ready to start in a few minutes."

While the pudgy, somewhat puffy patron turned toward the gym, Manning dressed rapidly, left the place and walked the few blocks to his office, lithe as an Indian, though with a freer tread, swinging his cane. His face was thoughtful.

That was a curious cane he carried, heavier than it appeared. It was made of rings of leather shrunk about a steel core whose end made the ferrule, while the head was capped with a plain gold band bearing the initials G. M. in modest script. A weapon, rather than a cane. The only weapon Manning carried, as a rule, no matter how dangerous his errand, but one that, in the hands of a skillful and powerful man, was formidable, deadly. And even Garrity did not know that Manning was an expert fencer.

He came to his office building, tall though not one of the latest, sandwiched in between others on a strip of land that ran between two streets. There were four elevators, one of them an express, stopping first on the seventh floor, where Manning had his office suite. One car was temporarily out of order, as announced by the card on the grille. The starter gave Manning a military salute. Manning answered it in swift gesture of authority, now discarded yet still recognized by a few.

The car shot up, stopped. The operator opened the door with a friendly grin. They didn't know much about Manning's affairs in the building, but any public servant gets to be a good judge of people he sees every day.

On the outer door of Manning's suite his name appeared above the two words that seemed to designate his profession.

GORDON MANNING

Advisory Attorney

But there was only one man in New York, anywhere, besides himself, who knew Manning's true vocation. So he believed. And hoped.

There was an intelligent-looking redheaded youth in his outer room, two women stenographers in the next, deft, deferential, businesslike. His personal office was well but not luxuriously furnished. In one corner stood a circular safe of ultra-hardened steel, practically impregnable— and empty— though no one knew that but Manning.

It seemed all it was intended to represent, the obvious repository of secrets. It would take experts hours to get into it. And it was only a lure. Manning kept his secrets accurately filed in a trained memory, supplemented by a condensed file in a cypher that he had improved upon from many he had studied. That file was in his desk, ingeniously concealed.

Manning never appeared in court. He had clients, though they were not so numerous as important. He oftener refused advice than gave it. His fees were large, but his cases, turned over to other attorneys for action, did not occupy all his time. Yet, to those who took occasion to comment on him, he was a man of little leisure, of comparatively few friends though many acquaintances. None knew him intimately. He was cordial enough but reserved, although he was not consided an enigma.

He took seat in his desk chair, gazing out to the towers of Manhattan, lining the busy river, with its spidery bridges, its teeming commerce. The window was open, the sounds of the metropolis blended in a symphony of achievement.

His dark eyes were like those of a hawk, or an eagle, made for the fathoming of far perspectives, far-seeing, eager, with a certain fierceness that came into them now. His body lounged, at ease, relaxed, but his mind was centered on a desperate and dangerous quest. He sought a man, a universal enemy of the powers that had built up the city he loved, the greatest city in the world, New York. He sought him in secret and stern resolve, the man who had mocked, was still mocking, at the police— looting, murdering at will, head, without question, of a band that was not only devoted to him, or linked by rites of deviltry, but infinitely resourceful under the direction of their head. The Griffin.

Manning frowned. He admitted himself worried. It was never known where, when or how the Griffin would strike, and he had never failed. Mad perhaps, with a species of insanity that might some day burn out his inflamed brain, but, meanwhile, made it that of an evil genius.

He swung his chair to the desk, always clear of papers not under immediate consideration. He had been set to the trail, but he could find no starting point, no scent toward the following of it, the solution of the mystery that gripped him. The Griffin left no traces, save those of devastation. No clews.

Manning was fresh to the trail, but there was a long count against the offender— the man who had no name that is to say, no name unless it was revealed in a device he used, embossed on— ovals of heavy paper, cartouches he affixed as tokens of his presence— of his absence from the scene of crime— or token that he was the master-mind who originated it.

A device that was the head of the mythical creature known to heraldry as a griffin, stamped in scarlet,

It might, Manning fancied, be a clew to the surname of the man, who seemed more fiend than human. But that was only a fancy and he wanted facts.

It was a waiting game he was forced to play and that harassed him. The hideous certainty that the Griffin would reveal himself, stagger the city with some fresh crime that would come like a bolt from the blue, stagger the very foundations of law and order, without warning, without trace of the offenders.

These acts were like those of the fictional Frankenstein, shaped like a man, minded like a fiend. A fiend of frightfulness and inordinate cunning, of illimitable daring and deviltry, heading an organization growing ever bolder with success.

Manning signed. some letters, summoned one of the stenographers, dictated, ran through typed documents,. digesting their contents, arriving at solutions. But all the time his brow was furrowed.

His subconscious brain busied itself with the main issue for which his business was only a camouflage. It. held a presage of impending trouble that he was powerless to prevent, though he must trace its source. He knew he was up against no ordinary opponent, but one as resourceful and relentless as any he had encountered in his duties in the war opposing the Boche Secret Service.

He finished up the correspondence, gave a word of praise to the girl and got his car from its parking space, easing the powerful but unostentatious machine through the traffic, driving with automatic accuracy, his mind ever prescient of impending calamity, out to Grand Concourse, through the park, on to his home in Pelham Manor, a bachelor establishment catered to by his picked Japanese servants, perfect if remote.

All the way his eyes, that saw the traffic, the lights, were conning with their eagle gaze for an elusive quarry, a fabulous beast, a scarlet griffin.

iii

MANNING picked up the square envelope with its bold superscription in violet ink, he had a premonition, perhaps of the quickened senses, a positive emotion or reaction; that here was something evil. He did not analyse such matters. He believed that all hunches were based upon actualities, that so-called luck was merely the blossom, or the fruit of seed some one had sewed where perhaps he might not pluck.

But he had seen many curious things in his time. In the war, when he was detailed on Secret Service though ostentatiously merely a brass hat. In the Orient and the far-off places he had traveled since the war. He would not have disputed that vibrations for good or wickedness might not persist, did not cling, as some subtle odor, to objects handled by persons of strong vitality and will.

And here was evil. As if the envelope had been defiled by a malignant touch. He opened it without hesitation, abruptly,

My dear Manning:

Allow me to exchange congratulations with you upon your acceptance of the post you have just taken over. I take it that, with myself, it is not entirely the pursuit of— shall we call it crime?— that interests you, whether to achieve or prevent it; but that the adventure of the chase appeals.

It does to me. I trust we shall share many interesting and thrilling episodes. I am complimented, spurred by having such an adversary. It inspires me to further efforts. I fear that we shall never meet. I may, ultimately, have to make sure of that. In the meantime, until you push me too hard, and I grant that possible emergency, I shall thoroughly enjoy playing the game. with you.

It is like playing chess with a skilled opponent. A game in which, however, you labor under a handicap. I always make the first move. Let us pit our resources against each other. We might perhaps both be called Crime Masters. But it will be no stalemate. One of us is going to win. Myself. For, if you seek to master crime, I am its master.

You will hear from me soon. Very soon, I much prefer to dealing with you direct.

There was no signature, only the embossed griffin's head, with its rapacious beak, its rampant attitude, stamped on an oval of bright red, scarlet as blood.

iv

IT was a shock, an unexpected blow from an unseen adversary; rather, not so much a blow as a flick of insult, a challenge.

The man known to the police as the Griffin had, attested the mute evidence of his scarlet seal, committed many crimes. He had robbed, he had at times killed with what seemed mere, diabolical wantonness. His coups were always coupled with great gains, carried out with a precision that bespoke an evil genius in conception and preparation.

He might, Manning reflected, be well termed the Crime Master, juggling the words to make the meaning suit his successes, though, as he had written, they could be twisted to have an opposite interpretation, one that Manning meant to make apposite— to himself— as one who mastered crime.

It would be a hard-fought game, not played in the open, with the quarry always well away. 'The letter told one thing. The Griffin was a man of education, of sardonic humor, with a brilliant, if warped, brain. The use of the seal already indicated that.

The writing, Manning was sure, would lead nowhere. He did not doubt the other's ability to write several distinctive hands, carefully studied. He had shown an infinite capacity for taking pains.

As for the paper and the postmark, if a clever criminal was careful, they were useless as clews. Only the amateur, the person of one, sudden crime, forgot details. The Griffin was a professional.

Every little while, at intervals of weeks or months, a crime tagged by the seal was perpetrated. Every little while, press and public clamored for the police to apprehend him. They suspected Centre Street of concealing the use of the seals in certain cases— and they were not away from the truth.

The chief commissioner, with his newly appointed squad of secret police, could do nothing with the Griffin. He worked alone, he was not a gangster, a racketeer. The commissioner had called in the aid of Manning, enlisted it, a willing volunteer. They had held, so far, no communication, would hold none until Manning had tracked this beast, run it to earth, destroyed it, or been destroyed himself. Yet, the Griffin had discovered his employment. It was something close to magic, which is merely the mystery of the unknown.

Manning accepted it as a fact. There was no use taking time to determine what indiscretion had freed the information. A harassed man might mutter in his sleep. Gossip flies far and often it links are intangible.

It was not himself. He slept soundly. He slept apart. The thing was out. The Griffin had learned of the appointment and, in his bizarre fashion, it had given him greater zest to prove his own powers, to show himself the Crime Master.

"A form of grandiose dementia," Manning diagnosed it. There was nothing to do but wait for the fulfillment of that promised "very soon," to wait for that "opening move" which would be fraught with inevitable tragedy, too late to remedy.

The Griffin might overplay his hand. He might not be playing chess so much as hurling boomerangs. So far, none had swung back to destroy: him. He was like a wolf, captain of a lupine band, swooping down on defenseless, unsuspecting sheep. And Manning was the shepherd.

He ate dinner by himself, waited on by the imperturbable Japanese who had been with him for years, devoted, impeccable retainers who would protect him if he needed them; who maintained the little house Manning had built from his own plans, secure from intrusion.

After the meal Manning read a review, smoking a pipe. His hoped-for encounter with the Griffin might prove only a battle of wits, but, if it ever came to handgrips, with him or any of his followers, the man would need all of a maniac's strength to cope with Manning.

v

IN Manning's private office the next day the telephone rang crisply, imperatively. It was a private line, unlisted, unconnected with the general office instrument. As he lifted the receiver he was conscious, almost as if he had received an electric shock, of the same sensation he had experienced with the letter he had received from the Griffin.

A question, doubtless, of vibrations, himself tuned-in, receptive, expectant, his whole being, body and brain, a coherer.

Manning did not consider the voice disguised. It was resonant, but not harsh, cultured, tinged with maleficent humor, mocking,

"Manning," it said. "It is within a few minutes of eleven o'clock. I trust you have standardized time, so you can check the moments. They are quite important.

"Don't try to trace this phone call. It cannot be done. I told you you would hear from me very soon. This is the first move, now in the making. It will be accomplished by eleven o'clock, precisely.

"Then you can get busy and solve the problem, if you can. To use a vulgar idiom, this is being pulled off under your very nose, Manning. I have chosen the man because of his close proximity to you. In a measure, you are responsible for his selection and his demise, his most untimely and unforeseen demise. Not entirely. He has other qualifications, naturally."

Manning glanced at the clock on his desk. It was accurate to a second. He felt that the Griffin—there was no question of his identity—was talking against time. He knew that he could not trace the wire. Others had tried to do that. The Griffin had some method of using the telephone service without automatic cut-in. He was equally sure that the crime now being predicted would be carried out.

The mocking voice kept on.

"I am afraid, my dear Manning, that you are powerless to prevent my coup, but I shall take precautions. We have another seventy odd seconds. It would be too late for you to take advantage of the occasion by buying certain stocks for a swift fall, as I have done. I have no especial enmity against the man chosen, but his death will be very profitable to me. I have an expensive organization to maintain.

"He dies by a new method I have recently perfected. I shall be interested in your failure to uncover it—and me. It will exercise your ingenuity, And the name of the man—"

The clock on Manning's desk began to chime the hour.

He heard his caller chuckle as the strokes went on to four— to five.

"The name is Richard Ordway. Two floors beneath you, my dear Manning. And quite dead by now, I assure you."

Richard Ordway! Private banker, promoter, financier, manipulator. Manning knew him. They were members of the same club. He often saw him in the building. Stocks might well go into turmoil when Ordway died suddenly, There would be a panic on the Exchange, the Curb. Sales that could not be traced in the mad scramble.

And the Griffin, scattering his orders, using his organization, could not be detected. Yet, because of that quirk in his brain, he had thrown down the challenge to Manning.

Manning's wits worked fast. The supreme impudence, the insolence of the call, sent a surge of hot blood through him. His resolve might hardly be strengthened, but it rose within him, And the Griffin, for all his cleverness, had given out something that might yet betray him.

His voice was distinctive: Manning would not forget its inflections. He had landed more than one spy because of certain shadings and intonations, slight accents. He might never hear it again, but— if he did?

He leaped into action, wasting no time. He knew he could not save Ordway, but, before the last stroke had sounded, he was out of his side door into the corridor, hat on, cane and gloves in hand,

The Griffin had, he fancied, overlooked one other matter, He pressed the button, caught the express descending, stepped into the car. On the third floor they overtook the local. When the latter arrived Manning was lounging at the cigar and news stand. He had bought an impromptu but effective mask that he had used before— a newspaper. Like many other individuals in the district, he buried his face in it, seemingly seeking market news.

He had marked the indicator of the other local— the third still out of order. It was at the top of the building. Four people stepped out of the one that had followed his express car, A young clerk, a girl, a man he knew and another man who carried a brief case, well dressed, self-assured, walking swiftly, but showing no especial signs of hurry.

Manning had certain qualities that make up the born detector. He had studied many things. He did not absolutely believe in physiognomy, but there were certain features he considered evinced undeniable traits. He acted now like a hound that has caught the scent.

He was assured that Ordway, up on the fifth floor, was dead. He could not aid him. He was not anxious to uncover himself in any capacity of investigator until he had to. But he followed the man with the brief case, realizing that, if he was a member of the. Griffin's organization, he might, would, know him by sight.

Manning knew the tricks of shadowing. At Wall Street and Broadway the man dived into a subway entrance, Manning followed,. running to make the express, seeing his quarry enter, two cars ahead. The man kept in the train until Forty-Second Street, and Manning trailed him, up through Grand Central to Madison Avenue.

The man swung aboard a surface car, Manning followed in a taxi, telling the driver what he wanted. A New. York taxi driver is surprised by nothing. He scented a hot tip. Above Fifty-Seventh he stopped and Manning saw his man turn a corner. He left the driver grinning over a two-dollar bill.

The hotel was one that hartioted all sorts and conditions of people, both men and women, who did not obviously work. There was a lobby and a desk, facing two elevators. Between the cars there was a long mirror, used by the lady guests for a- final overlook,

Manning found a pillar, stood back of it, seeing his man in the mirror, marking the pigeonhole from which the clerk gave him his key. He made sure of it as he asked an idle question about an imaginary registration, and then left.

Fifteen minutes later his carefully relayed message got through and was responded to by Rafferty, detective of the old-school, but to be relied upon in ordinary routine. Rafferty had an intimate description óf the man, knew the number of the room. It was sufficient.

Manning's instinct told him he was on the right track, but he had to go warily. He was dealing with no ordinary opponent. There was no reason for him to arrest his suspect, many reasons not to, Manning did not forget the Griffin's boasted "new method" of killing. He acted on inspiration, based on experience. The Griffin would not have expected him to dash down to the lobby of the building to trace the man. At least, he did not think so.

vi

THE death of Ordway was a sensation. When Manning got back down town it had been long discovered by his secretary, who had been immediately hysterical. All had happened as the Griffin must have hoped. On 'Change the news spread like wildfire, Fortunes were made and lost, matters were still in the balance as Manning arrived.

The police were there. Detectives from the homicide squad. There was nothing to show that Ordway had not died from natural causes. He was slumped over his desk, without mark of a wound.

But an alert reporter had been on the spot. He had seen, pasted on the dead man's blotter, conspicuous, flaunting, the scarlet seal of the Griffin. Already the press was reeling off sensational stories. This time Centre Street could not cover up. The Griffin had struck again.

Newsboys proclaimed it. The Street was in disorder. The panic spread through the length of Manhattan.

And Richard Ordway lay on the operating table while experts tried to find out how he died.

Manning read the report of Rafferty, on a flimsy, sent by ordinary messenger service to his office.

Suspect traced to Hermes Hotel, room 637, registered as David Sesnon.Checked out at 1.20. Took Yellow taxi 3748, name Alekko Kalimachos— driver has good record. Two bags. Checked in at Hotel Clarence at 1.30, under name of Daniel Sievers. Same initials. Probably careful of laundry marks. Went to barber shop. Shaved off close-clipped mustache and had hair cut. Looks different, but could identify. Took taxi to Pennsylvania Hotel stockbrokers, watched market. Am continuing shadow. R.

There was some delay at the Morgue. Manning insisted on a special autopsy. He believed he had circumvented the Griffin, but he was not congratulating himself beforehand. Sesnon— Sievers, was still under observation, but they had nothing on him, and the Griffin was not to be caught easily.

The observation of the market, powerfully "bear," suggested that the man he had trailed was more than ordinarily interested, but it did not prove it. The latest editions carried the announcement of the police surgeon that Ordway had died of heart failure, but they hinted at other, more sinister reasons.

The grim operation of autopsy was under way. There were two surgeons present, one distinguished specialist supplementing the regular official, by request of the chief commissioner. Assistants in the laboratory searched the organs,

A third man stood with the surgeons. He was accredited, had proved his identity, shown his knowledge of their craft. He made no suggestions. It was Manning, but he was subtly altered. His skin was darkened, his lean cheeks were plumped, his body was cleverly padded. His voice was altered, his movements slow and deliberate. Glasses veiled his eyes, though their eagerness pierced the lenses.

There was nothing, after long investigation. No sign of a weakened heart, only the body of a man who regularly visited his doctors, who had recently passed a practically perfect test for a vast sum of additional insurance. Dead, he still commanded millions by his demise.

No sign of bullet, of knife. None expected. No trace of known poisons. No unusual traces in any analysis.

Manning had said nothing of his telephone call. This affair was his own, He would conduct it in his own fashion. It could add nothing to their thorough search. The scarlet seal proclaimed that murder had been done, but the men of science stood baffled.

There were no bruises, no discolorations on the body. A blemish or two, a mole, blotches that looked like slight eruptions, lesser pimples, such as might appear on the skin of any man.

A ghastly spectacle, though the proceedings had been conducted with dignity,

Manning moved closer, under the powerful overhead light. He looked at the reddish marks, one in particular.

He knew of poisons in the Far Fast, largely vegetable ones that, even when introduced into the blood, would be absorbed within an hour or so by the tissues, leave no trace by any reactions known to Occidental science, if to Oriental.

"Would you mind examining this mark closely?" he asked the surgeons. "It looks like a half-healed eruption, there seems to be a slight trace of what might be pus. I have a theory it may not be."

His credentials and his manner, his knowledge, made them deferential. They were willing enough to try anything, perplexed, weary.

An incision was made, the pallid and bloodless flesh removed about the spot, the specimen taken off for minute observation,

Manning was examining the dead man's coat when they got back, regarding critically a slight stain, almost invisible, on the sleeve.

"We find no trace of anything toxic," said the specialist. "But there has been a parting of the tissues, not by any sharp instrument, hardly discernible. The curious thing is that stearine, wax of some sort, seems to have been injected. We have not yet determined its exact composition."

"Exactly," said Manning. "And the mark, as you will see, was on the shoulder, beneath this spot on the sleeve. I think you will find your stearine also there, It should show slightly on his shirt. His undervest was sleeveless.

They gazed with animation, energetic to follow his theory, though they did not see what it would prove.

The stain on the fine weave of cloth, on the linen of the shirt, swiftly yielded results. A waxy substance was held in the fibers.

"It passed through," said Manning. "A pellet of wax that has almost dissolved, but not so thoroughly as its contents. You may know that a candle can be fired through a board from a gun. This capsule, loaded with virulent poison, was probably discharged from an air pistol. Probably at close range.

"That, I think, is the cause of death. As for the poison, there are several, not classified, their source in doubt, that I have met with in the Malay peninsula, Borneo, and other places. Unless you can think of some reason why stearine should have been injected through the coat, the shirt and shoulder of such a man as Ordway, immaculate, precise.

There was no such reason and they knew it, all of them, standing about the riven body.

"Damnable!" said one of them. "Damnable! No doubt as to who did it. That fiend must be found."

"I agree with you," said Manning.

"We are much indebted to you," said the specialist. "I wish I knew more of you. Your name."

"I am afraid," said Manning dryly, "that that pleasure, my pleasure, surely. will have to be deferred, doctor. I am known only by my finger whorls. You gentlemen need me no longer. You will bring in your findings without me."

"Those findings are indefinite enough to be losings," said the official surgeon ruefully, "Convincing enough to us. But—"

He shrugged his shoulders. Manning bowed to them and went out with his slow, assumed walk.

"You'd almost think he knew what to look for," an assistant, ventured.

"Thats nonsense, Edwards," snapped the specialist. "We don't know who he is, but his credentials are irreproachable. But, my God, what a devilish device! And advertising his crime with that red seal!"

"The Griffin, if it ever existed," said his colleague, "is extinct, I only trust this one will be soon exterminated. They ought to set this man who was here to-night, whoever he is, on his trail. He might cope with him."

vii

MANNING saw that the key to Sesnon's new room in his new hotel, under the name of Sievers, was in the box and he, presumably, in his room. Manning had already heard Ordway's secretary, in a calmer mood, confirm the arrival of a man with a brief case, giving the name of Sesnon, who had an appointment with Ordway.

That appointment must have been gained through excellent credentials, which may have been manufactured. The main bait had been what he could offer Ordway. Of that, save that it had something to do with an asbestos mine near the Pennsylvania-New Jersey line, the secretary knew little, Ordway kept such profitable matters to himself until he was ready to use them. Long-fibered asbestos in any place easily reached was a thing men had long looked for.

A second appointment had been granted in which, presumably, Ordway would have the tests of the asbestos. Sesnon would give out the exact details, and an expert would be sent secretly to investigate. It was all a blind, and Ordway, trying to make money with himself on the big end, had lost his life.

With his death the pool that he was manipulating was drained dry. His own estate suffered, but many, forewarned, henchmen of the Griffin, made money, Money was the cold-blooded motive for the Griffin's selection of Ordway, coupled with the fact that the "first move" since Manning had taken hold, took place beneath the latter's nose. If anything could have urged Manning on, this semiresponsibility did so.

So far Sesnon was tied up with his arrival in the lobby after the murder. Manning's intuition, his judgment, had been correct. Now the trail led to the Hotel Clarence, and Manning followed it, alone.

The case was far from complete. That trace of stearine in cloth and flesh was not conclusive. The poison had been assimilated. But, if Sesnon— alias Sievers— could be found with poison pellets in his possession, with the air pistol that fired them, they had him. With the vision of the chair facing him he might well talk about the Griffin.

Manning had arrived in a cab, with a kit bag. He registered, looked at Sievers's signature casually, got his own room and followed the boy with his kit bag. He was not on the same floor as Sievers, but that did not matter. He knew the number of the latter's room. It was a sweltering night and the heat suggested a plan, not too novel, but efficient.

He got Sesnon's phone through the hotel exchange. The answer brought a grim smile to Manning's face. He had run the quarry to earth. Sesnon was clever, but Manning did not think he believed himself in any danger, though he had taken precautious of changing appearance, shifting his hotel, taking another name, The rub came in the question as to whether he had got rid of his lethal weapon and ammunition. That would soon be known.

"Did you want a fan?" Manning asked the man at the other end of the wire. "This is the engineer. I can have one sent up right away."

"I didn't order one," the answer came back, "but I could sure use one. You must have got the wrong room."

"Sorry, sir. I'll shoot one up to you."

Two minutes later Manning knocked on the door, As it was opening he spoke his piece.

"Here's your fan, sir." Then he was inside. He had no fan. He had no gun. But he wore his hat, and he carried his cane. He had sprung a surprise, but he had one given to him. There were two men in the room, both with their coats off. There was a whisky bottle on the table, with ice and soda water. Both rose to their feet as Manning strolled in. And both evidently knew him.

The amazing thing was that they might have been twins. Hair cut, general features, coloring, height, weight, and make-up were startlingly similar. Suits and ties were similar.

One was Sesnon, one his "ghost." His appearance was probably brought about for use in drawing off a "tail," if there was any, In all likelihood routine instructions, rather than alarm, for Sesnon regarded Manning coolly enough. It showed the quality of the Crime Master's brain, the action of the expert player, looking moves ahead for all possible plays and contingencies.

Again Manning acknowledged the Griffin's resourcefulness. The man's methods were bold and subtle. He was like a slippery eel that, even when seemingly caught, slides through the hand and leaves only slime behind.

Manning knew which was which.

"What do you want?" asked Sesnon. The presence of his seeming twin did not actually involve him, He might or might not admit that he had called on Ordway. It was not necessarily criminal to shave or shift his hotel. He knew nothing of the results of the autopsy though he might now suspect he had been trailed. He was still confident.

"I want you, Sievers, or Sesnon, for the murder of Ordway. I myself traced you from his office. Also I know how he was killed."

Sievers did not flinch. His eyes narrowed slightly.

"Which of us are you talking to?" he asked.

"You. When you made your changes, Sesnon, you forgot to put in different sleeve links. There will be no question about your identity. I'm taking you both, I have two men in the lobby to take you down. Stand still, the pair of you."

He saw their glances meet, shift quickly and obliquely to the window. It gave out to a narrow alley. Not the best room in the hotel, but it had one advantage for their kind. It was a fire exit.

Sesnon's double moved silently and swiftly. His right hand swung up— inside his partly open vest. The wrist halted, his fingers clutching for a gun. There would be a good tale for the Griffin. The latter had impressed them with the cleverness of Manning, and here they had. him. The gun was muffled. There was nothing to it. Let the two dicks stay in the lobby. They would get clear.

Then he grunted— and then he gasped.

The steel ferrule, with a flick of Manning's wrist, had hit and paralyzed his own, as the end of-the snaky, but heavy cane struck a carpal bone where the radius joined it.

The cane circled, shot forward, stabbed him in the belly. It lifted in a sabreur's sweep and tapped him over the ear. He lost all interest in the proceedings. It took but a second.

But, in that second Sesnon had hurled himself upon Manning, striving to throw him, to knock him out. He had no weapon on him, from sheer precaution, a carefulness overdone in this case. He was powerful, trained, and imagined easy conquest, astounded to find himself grasping a body that was sheathed in muscle and hard flesh, that turned his attack to defense.

He had grasped Manning's right wrist and Manning let his cane fall. He held a private satisfaction in tackling this murderer with his bare hands.

He tied Sesnon in the fierce clinch, held him, and flung him loose, bewildered at the expert handling— loose for a moment— then Manning's uppercut traveled from his hip and connected.

It was all over. Sesnon fell like a Jength of chain, his coordination unlinked.

Manning went over him, went over the "ghost " and found little of value, save money, with which both were plentifully supplied. Then -he called the office, spoke crisply to the clerk:

"Two men there in the lounge. They're from headquarters, Send them up here, right away."

He had two of Griffin's men in the toils, but there was not much to hold them on, save suspicion and limited circumstantial evidence for Sesnon, a Sullivan act charge for his "ghost." No jury was going to convict them of murder. There was no positive evidence that Ordway had died of anything administered externally. Only. opinion, and a scanty showing of grease that an expert lawyer would laugh off. They would undoubtedly have the best legal advice. Unless Manning found the stearine pellets and the gun, found them soon, in Sesnon's room they would be out on bail.

Yet he could hardly have arrested Sesnon on his first hunch that he was the murderer, Now he almost took the room apart and found nothing. The pair were taken away. They would get a good sweating, a rousing third degree. Sesnon, nursing a sore jaw, affected to be jaunty. The "ghost" was still feeling too sick from the jabs and strokes of Manning's cane to say anything. .

"We won't be there long," Sesnon boasted.

Manning relayed through to Center Street, asking to have the two held as jong as possible, but he did not doubt that the Griffin would soon get busy. Because of his minute examination he should be cértain the poison pellets and gun were not in the room, but he was not satisfied,

He went over the search again. Then he retained the room for himself. It was midnight when he once more got through to the commissioner. He had found his evidence. Sesnon had hidden the pistol with a cunning worthy of the Griffin himself.

He had wrapped it in black cloth, a small parcel, for the gun could rest in the palm of the hand. He had wired it underneath the grating of the fire escape, close to the building. It was practically invisible and might have stayed there for months, though no doubt some stranger would have visited that room later, another of the Griffin's emissaries, and removed it, It was a marvelous piece of mechanism, loaded with a tiny capsule of wax, ready for deadly action.

If Sesnon had been able to use it on Manning, the duel for crime mastery would have ended then and there. He had evidently found Sesnon almost ready to leave, not wishing to destroy the gun, not caring to chance carrying it with him any longer.

Strenuous efforts had been made to admit them to bail. Big Jake himself, most famous—and infamous—of mouthpieces, had left guests and tried to spring them. Politicians had been busy. Any amount would have been put up. The Griffin had scored heavily in the falling market. Bail money would be negligible compared to his profits.

But they were still held. Sesnon would have to stand trial for murder. Yet they were faithful. What hold the Griffin held on them could not be shaken. Promises, bullying, long hours of "degree" got nothing out of them. They knew nothing of the Griffin. Nothing. Then or afterward.

Manning drove home to Pelham Manor in the small hours, well satisfied though tired. He ran the car into the garage, went, patent key in hand, to his front door. The inlet of the lock was covered with a scarlet cartouche, red as blood, the head of a Griffin stamped upon it.

____________

7: The Stepping Stone

Alice C. Tomholt

1887-1949

Weekly Times (Melbourne) 10 August 1918

No one is so accursed by Fate,

No one so utterly desolate,

But some heart, tho' unknown,

Responds unto his own.

—Longfellow.

HE HAD MOVED amongst the midday crowd clustered about the platform erected outside the Town Hall, not from any desire to listen to the vigorous speeches of the recruiting sergeants, but for the pursuing of one of his favorite methods of earning a livelihood, viz., the stealthy withdrawal of purses, and other valuables from women's handbags.

Not any of the arguments set forth, not any of the alternate pleadings and passionate demands for help that could be sent to the army of Australians who were gallantly helping to stem the bleeding wounds of a world's agony, and whose numbers had thinned out so pitifully, could pierce the thick hide, of his complete indifference. In his opinion, he owed the world nothing. He had been brought into it with an hereditary curse of criminal instincts, and, occasonally paying the penalty, had used those instincts as a precarious, but fairly prosperous, means of earning a living. And he intended to do that until he died.

His people had washed their hands of him completely, an acknowledgment of his existence would have been an incessant menace to their commonplace respectability. It was only his mother who would have clung to him, who may have proved a haven of refuge against further crimes when he was released from his first imprisonment; but she had died before he had reached his teens; soon after his father had been killed in a drunken brawl. And he had gone swiftly downward with no pitiful helping hand to guide him upward.

Moving now amongst the unsuspecting crowd, his blood thrilled as it ever did, with all the keen excitement of the game. The khaki-clad men on the platform above may have been completely mute, for all the notice he took of them. But at last, above the ceaseless clamor of the wakeful city, the voice of an Anzac, hoarse, passionate, compelling, forced its way into his indifferent brain and arrested his hand half-way, as it reached stealthily toward a woman's hand-bag:—

"Have you men no one dear to you? No one worthy of risking your life for? No one whose brave heart would throb with pride as she saw you going off to do your duty— going off to help those poor war-weary men who are still fighting doggedly, splendidly, that we may live in freedom? God! Men, haven't you anybody like that? Are you so absolutely desolate?"

The voice died away then, to make way for another less compelling; and a dull ache of wholly strange pain caught with a cold hand at his heart. But the next Instant the old bitter outlook on life triumphed. He removed the coveted purse successfully from the woman's bag. No, he had no one dear to him. Out of all the hordes of humanity there was not one who could care whether he stayed to continue his present occupation, or went overseas to take up a nobler one. And, evil as it was, he found his life well worth the living, well worth the hanging on to. Why should he risk it, perhaps sacrifice it, in the hideous hell of war, for the freedom and safety of people who were nothing to him, and to whom he was less than nothing?

A sudden sardonic grin made his lean face repulsive as he stood for a while, listening to the other man's pleading. Then he slouched nonchalantly away beneath the now watchful eyes of a policeman who had recognised him; three purses safely stowed away in the tops of his boots, worn big and loose for the purpose; his pockets the richer for many odd bits of money and jewellery. He had made a good haul, and was being allowed time to make a getaway before the losses were discovered. That was all that mattered. It would be easy enough to forget the passionate words of that Anzac with the multilated body and fierce, compelling eyes. He wasn't fool enough to let that kind of thing upset his necessary nerve for long.

About ten minutes later he reached the room which he rented in one of the dingy lanes on the outskirts of the city. An untidy little creature, with wisps of pale hair about her colorless face, was sweeping the ragged bit of carpet that covered the floor, and when his long, lean figure appeared in the door way, her tired eyes, brightened with a sudden shy gleam of gladness. But, beyond his customary grin, he took no notice of her. She was just Susie, the orphaned niece of the woman who kept the place, and he knew he could trust her. He had always made it worth her aunt's while to keep mum about his doings to any stray detective who happened along. But with the girl it had never been necessary.

She watched him without any unusual curiosity as he drew the purses from his boots and flung them on to the soiled red-flowered green of the eiderdown on the narrow bed. It was a good haul, he knew, without opening them; he never wasted valuable time and risk on the possessions of unpromising looking women.

He turned to the girl with a grin of satisfaction as he thrust his hands into his pockets for the other spoil. She was looking, up at him, her eyes wide and soft with gladness in her peaked face; her pointed chin resting on the little red toil-stained hands clasped over the top of the broom.

"Looks promising, old lady, don't it?" he said cheerily.

"Y-yes," she stammered slowly. "But 'tain't that that's makin' me so glad, Bud. It's the news I jest heard 'bout yer."

He stared at her curiously, and she continued a little breathlessly:

"I allars knew as you wasn't so bad as yer made out. I never said much, 'cos the others would only 've laugh ed, but I allars knew as some day you'd make good. An'— an' I'm so proud, Bud. I— I could eat the broom 'cos I'm so proud!"

Pie still stared blankly at her, and, shyly, she came a little nearer.

"You don't mind me bein' so glad, do yer, Bud?" she asked wistfully. I've bin that way ever since Snowy told me."

His face cleared a little. Snowy Ford, of the same profession as himself, had always made this poor little white-faced creature the butt of his irrepressible joking. He had evidently been spinning her some other impossible yarn.

"What is it yer bein' so mighty glad about?" he asked, not ungently. "Ain't it jest 'cos I made a haul?"

Her little thin face' clouded over. Always, unknown to him, she had been piled with dread of his being caught again on one of his daring criminal ventures.

"No," she replied slowly, "it's not that, Bud. It's 'cos you've enlisted— 'cos you're goin' t' fight for us. Snowy saw yer in the crowd 'round the Town Hall this morning. He told me how yer walked up to them there 'cruitin' chaps an' said as how you were ready to give yer life f'r yer country, while all the people clapped an' clapped!"

"An' listen, Bud," she added shyly. "I've got a few shillings hidden' away were Aunt can't ever find them, an'. I'm goin' t' buy wool'with them an' learn t' knit' an' make socks for yer, even if I have t' sit up half the night!"

He gaped helplessly at her radiant face. How could he tell the kid? He'd knock Snowy Ford's yellow head off for this! But— proud. She said she was proud of him! No one in all his twenty five years had ever said that to him before. And her saying of it went to his head, stirred his blood until his crime-hardened heart throbbed warmly once more in his lean body; He forgot for a moment that that pride of hers was wholly unmerited; that it would die out as soon, as she knew the truth. And when he, did remember, a dull flush slowly stained his sallow, face.

The horn of some heavy motor lorry boomed weirdly down in the lane.

She looked up at him wistfully, a piteous little ill-fed figure that, for the first time, roused his sympathy.

"You will let me knit yer socks, won't yer, Bud? I never let on before, but I allars thought a mighty lot'o' you; allars did your room out far cleaner an' nicer'n the others, even 'fore I dreamed you'd ever turn out so splendid an' fine. But now— oh!"— she clasped her broom-handle tightly, her eyes bright with tears. "I ain't never had a charnce o' bein' proud of anybody before, and it's kinder warmed up all me blood an' made life look heaps better. But," doubtfully, "you don't think I got a cheek, do yer, Bud, for bein' proud an'— likin' you?"

He did not speak. He sat down on the edge of the hard and narrow bed beside the haul he had forgotten, that atom of good that lies for ever in the worst of us, stirring restlessly, demanding a hearing. And through his brain there' floated again the compelling, passionate words of that one-legged Anzac. L,ord! There was someone, after all, who cared whether he stayed here to continue his ignoble occupation, or whether he went to do that which that Anzac had said was every man's duty! There was someone whose heart would throb with pride if she saw him going off to help those other poor devils who had been fighting and suffering for nearly four years! There iwas someone to fight for— to die for, if necessary!

She looked down at. his strained young face with troubled eyes.

"Yer wild?" she asked in a fearful whisper. "Ain't I got no right t' be proud, Bud? I'm sorry. I— I didn't think you'd mind. I kinder forgot I was only— wot I am."

She bit her lips in a sudden pitiful endeavor to stem the tears which welled up swiftly into her eyes, and the old weary look of hopelessness made her young face old as she turned to continue her interrupted sweeping.

But Bud stood up, slowly, and put an arm lightly about her little starved body.

His voice came huskily:

"The papers for really going have not been fixed up prop'ly yet," he said slowly. I— I had to get rid o' this haul first, in case any fuss started. But— I'm goin' down now to swear in an' settle things up."

The weariness in her eyes made way for a wistful gladness. She appeared not to hear the angry woman's voice that called her impatiently from the bottom of the narrow stairs.

"And you're not mad with me?" she said softly. "Yer don't mind me bein' proud?"

His lean throat throbbed painfully. '

"No," he said, unsteadily; "it's jest the sweetest thing that's ever come my way. I— I'm goin' ter use it as a kind o' stepping-stone. And— listen, girl," he added suddenly, as she turned to obey that strident voice that demanded her presence downstairs, "if ever I come back from over there, I'm goin' to ask you f'r more'n yer pride."

She looked up wonderingly for a moment. Then light broke over her face. She went to the door and looked back at him.

"I think you'll get it, Bud," she said softly.

And went down to face the tyranny and anger of her Aunt with a song in her heart.

___________

8: What a Handsome Pair!

F. Scott Fitzgerald

1896-1940

Saturday Evening Post,  27 Aug 1932

AT FOUR O'CLOCK on a November afternoon in 1902, Teddy Van Beck got out of a hansom cab in front of a brownstone house on Murray Hill. He was a tall, round-shouldered young man with a beaked nose and soft brown eyes in a sensitive face. In his veins quarreled the blood of colonial governors and celebrated robber barons; in him the synthesis had produced, for that time and place, something different and something new.

His cousin, Helen Van Beck, waited in the drawing-room. Her eyes were red from weeping, but she was young enough for it not to detract from her glossy beauty— a beauty that had reached the point where it seemed to contain in itself the secret of its own growth, as if it would go on increasing forever. She was nineteen and, contrary to the evidence, she was extremely happy.

Teddy put his arm around her and kissed her cheek, and found it changing into her ear as she turned her face away. He held her for a moment, his own enthusiasm chilling; then he said:

"You don't seem very glad to see me."

Helen had a premonition that this was going to be one of the memorable scenes of her life, and with unconscious cruelty she set about extracting from it its full dramatic value. She sat in a corner of the couch, facing an easy-chair.

"Sit there," she commanded, in what was then admired as a "regal manner," and then, as Teddy straddled the piano stool: "No, don't sit there. I can't talk to you if you're going to revolve around."

"Sit on my lap," he suggested.

"No."

Playing a one-handed flourish on the piano, he said, "I can listen better here."

Helen gave up hopes of beginning on the sad and quiet note.

"This is a serious matter, Teddy. Don't think I've decided it without a lot of consideration. I've got to ask you— to ask you to release me from our understanding."

"What?" Teddy's face paled with shock and dismay.

"I'll have to tell you from the beginning. I've realized for a long time that we have nothing in common. You're interested in your music, and I can't even play chopsticks." Her voice was weary as if with suffering; her small teeth tugged at her lower lip.

"What of it?" he demanded, relieved. "I'm musician enough for both. You wouldn't have to understand banking to marry a banker, would you?"

"This is different," Helen answered. "What would we do together? One important thing is that you don't like riding; you told me you were afraid of horses."

"Of course I'm afraid of horses," he said, and added reminiscently: "They try to bite me."

"It makes it so—"

"I've never met a horse— socially, that is— who didn't try to bite me. They used to do it when I put the bridle on; then, when I gave up putting the bridle on, they began reaching their heads around trying to get at my calves."

The eyes of her father, who had given her a Shetland at three, glistened, cold and hard, from her own.

"You don't even like the people I like, let alone the horses," she said.

"I can stand them. I've stood them all my life."

"Well, it would be a silly way to start a marriage. I don't see any grounds for mutual— mutual—"

"Riding?"

"Oh, not that." Helen hesitated, and then said in an unconvinced tone, "Probably I'm not clever enough for you."

"Don't talk such stuff!" He demanded some truth: "Who's the man?"

It took her a moment to collect herself. She had always resented Teddy's tendency to treat women with less ceremony than was the custom of the day. Often he was an unfamiliar, almost frightening young man.

"There is someone," she admitted. "It's someone I've always known slightly, but about a month ago, when I went to Southampton, I was— thrown with him."

"Thrown from a horse?"

"Please, Teddy," she protested gravely. "I'd been getting more unhappy about you and me, and whenever I was with him everything seemed all right." A note of exaltation that she would not conceal came into Helen's voice. She rose and crossed the room, her straight, slim legs outlined by the shadows of her dress. "We rode and swam and played tennis together— did the things we both liked to do."

He stared into the vacant space she had created for him. "Is that all that drew you to this fellow?"

"No, it was more than that. He was thrilling to me like nobody ever has been." She laughed. "I think what really started me thinking about it was one day we came in from riding and everybody said aloud what a nice pair we made."

"Did you kiss him?"

She hesitated. "Yes, once."

He got up from the piano stool. "I feel as if I had a cannon ball in my stomach," he exclaimed.

The butler announced Mr. Stuart Oldhorne.

"Is he the man?" Teddy demanded tensely.

She was suddenly upset and confused. "He should have come later. Would you rather go without meeting him?"

But Stuart Oldhorne, made confident by his new sense of proprietorship, had followed the butler.

The two men regarded each other with a curious impotence of expression; there can be no communication between men in that position, for their relation is indirect and consists in how much each of them has possessed or will possess of the woman in question, so that their emotions pass through her divided self as through a bad telephone connection.

Stuart Oldhorne sat beside Helen, his polite eyes never leaving Teddy. He had the same glowing physical power as she. He had been a star athlete at Yale and a Rough Rider in Cuba, and was the best young horseman on Long Island. Women loved him not only for his points but for a real sweetness of temper.

"You've lived so much in Europe that I don't often see you," he said to Teddy. Teddy didn't answer and Stuart Oldhorne turned to Helen: "I'm early; I didn't realize—"

"You came at the right time," said Teddy rather harshly. "I stayed to play you my congratulations."

To Helen's alarm, he turned and ran his fingers over the keyboard. Then he began.

What he was playing, neither Helen nor Stuart knew, but Teddy always remembered. He put his mind in order with a short résumé of the history of music, beginning with some chords from The Messiah and ending with Debussy's La Plus Que Lent, which had an evocative quality for him, because he had first heard it the day his brother died. Then, pausing for an instant, he began to play more thoughtfully, and the lovers on the sofa could feel that they were alone— that he had left them and had no more traffic with them— and Helen's discomfort lessened. But the flight, the elusiveness of the music, piqued her, gave her a feeling of annoyance. If Teddy had played the current sentimental song from Erminie, and had played it with feeling, she would have understood and been moved, but he was plunging her suddenly into a world of mature emotions, whither her nature neither could nor wished to follow.

She shook herself slightly and said to Stuart: "Did you buy the horse?"

"Yes, and at a bargain.... Do you know I love you?"

"I'm glad," she whispered.

The piano stopped suddenly. Teddy closed it and swung slowly around: "Did you like my congratulations?"

"Very much," they said together.

"It was pretty good," he admitted. "That last was only based on a little counterpoint. You see, the idea of it was that you make such a handsome pair."

He laughed unnaturally; Helen followed him out into the hall.

"Good-by, Teddy," she said. "We're going to be good friends, aren't we?"

"Aren't we?" he repeated. He winked without smiling, and with a clicking, despairing sound of his mouth, went out quickly.

For a moment Helen tried vainly to apply a measure to the situation, wondering how she had come off with him, realizing reluctantly that she had never for an instant held the situation in her hands. She had a dim realization that Teddy was larger in scale; then the very largeness frightened her and, with relief and a warm tide of emotion, she hurried into the drawing-room and the shelter of her lover's arms.

Their engagement ran through a halcyon summer. Stuart visited Helen's family at Tuxedo, and Helen visited his family in Wheatley Hills. Before breakfast, their horses' hoofs sedately scattered the dew in sentimental glades, or curtained them with dust as they raced on dirt roads. They bought a tandem bicycle and pedaled all over Long Island— which Mrs. Cassius Ruthven, a contemporary Cato, considered "rather fast" for a couple not yet married. They were seldom at rest, but when they were, they reminded people of His Move on a Gibson pillow.

Helen's taste for sport was advanced for her generation. She rode nearly as well as Stuart and gave him a decent game in tennis. He taught her some polo, and they were golf crazy when it was still considered a comic game. They liked to feel fit and cool together. They thought of themselves as a team, and it was often remarked how well mated they were. A chorus of pleasant envy followed in the wake of their effortless glamour.

They talked.

"It seems a pity you've got to go to the office," she would say. "I wish you did something we could do together, like taming lions."

"I've always thought that in a pinch I could make a living breeding and racing horses," said Stuart.

"I know you could, you darling."

In August he brought a Thomas automobile and toured all the way to Chicago with three other men. It was an event of national interest and their pictures were in all the papers. Helen wanted to go, but it wouldn't have been proper, so they compromised by driving down Fifth Avenue on a sunny September morning, one with the fine day and the fashionable crowd, but distinguished by their unity, which made them each as strong as two.

"What do you suppose?" Helen demanded. "Teddy sent me the oddest present— a cup rack."

Stuart laughed. "Obviously, he means that all we'll ever do is win cups."

"I thought it was rather a slam," Helen ruminated. "I saw that he was invited to everything, but he didn't answer a single invitation. Would you mind very much stopping by his apartment now? I haven't seen him for months and I don't like to leave anything unpleasant in the past."

He wouldn't go in with her. "I'll sit and answer questions about the auto from passers-by."

The door was opened by a woman in a cleaning cap, and Helen heard the sound of Teddy's piano from the room beyond. The woman seemed reluctant to admit her.

"He said don't interrupt him, but I suppose if you're his cousin— "

Teddy welcomed her, obviously startled and somewhat upset, but in a minute he was himself again.

"I won't marry you," he assured her. "You've had your chance."

"All right," she laughed.

"How are you?" He threw a pillow at her. "You're beautiful! Are you happy with this— this centaur? Does he beat you with his riding crop?" He peered at her closely. "You look a little duller than when I knew you. I used to whip you up to a nervous excitement that bore a resemblance to intelligence."

"I'm happy, Teddy. I hope you are."

"Sure, I'm happy; I'm working. I've got MacDowell on the run and I'm going to have a shebang at Carnegie Hall next September." His eyes became malicious. "What did you think of my girl?"

"Your girl?"

"The girl who opened the door for you."

"Oh, I thought it was a maid." She flushed and was silent.

He laughed. "Hey, Betty!" he called. "You were mistaken for the maid!"

"And that's the fault of my cleaning on Sunday," answered a voice from the next room.

Teddy lowered his voice. "Do you like her?" he demanded.

"Teddy!" She teetered on the arm of the sofa, wondering whether she should leave at once.

"What would you think if I married her?" he asked confidentially.

"Teddy!" She was outraged; it had needed but a glance to place the woman as common. "You're joking. She's older than you.... You wouldn't be such a fool as to throw away your future that way."

He didn't answer.

"Is she musical?" Helen demanded. "Does she help you with your work?"

"She doesn't know a note. Neither did you, but I've got enough music in me for twenty wives."

Visualizing herself as one of them, Helen rose stiffly.

"All I can ask you is to think how your mother would have felt— and those who care for you.... Good-by, Teddy."

He walked out the door with her and down the stairs.

"As a matter of fact, we've been married for two months," he said casually. "She was a waitress in a place where I used to eat."

Helen felt that she should be angry and aloof, but tears of hurt vanity were springing to her eyes.

"And do you love her?"

"I like her; she's a good person and good for me. Love is something else. I loved you, Helen, and that's all dead in me for the present. Maybe it's coming out in my music. Some day I'll probably love other women— or maybe there'll never be anything but you. Good-by, Helen."

The declaration touched her. "I hope you'll be happy, Teddy. Bring your wife to the wedding."

He bowed noncommittally. When she had gone, he returned thoughtfully to his apartment.

"That was the cousin that I was in love with," he said.

"And was it?" Betty's face, Irish and placid, brightened with interest. "She's a pretty thing."

"She wouldn't have been as good for me as a nice peasant like you."

"Always thinking of yourself, Teddy Van Beck."

He laughed. "Sure I am, but you love me, anyhow?"

"That's a big wur-red."

"All right. I'll remember that when you come begging around for a kiss. If my grandfather knew I married a bog trotter, he'd turn over in his grave. Now get out and let me finish my work."

He sat at the piano, a pencil behind his ear. Already his face was resolved, composed, but his eyes grew more intense minute by minute, until there was a glaze in them, behind which they seemed to have joined his ears in counting and hearing. Presently there was no more indication in his face that anything had occurred to disturb the tranquillity of his Sunday morning.

ii

MRS. CASSIUS RUTHVEN and a friend, veils flung back across their hats, sat in their auto on the edge of the field.

"A young woman playing polo in breeches." Mrs. Ruthven sighed. "Amy Van Beck's daughter. I thought when Helen organized the Amazons she'd stop at divided skirts. But her husband apparently has no objections, for there he stands, egging her on. Of course, they always have liked the same things."

"A pair of thoroughbreds, those two," said the other woman complacently, meaning that she admitted them to be her equals. "You'd never look at them and think that anything had gone wrong."

She was referring to Stuart's mistake in the panic of 1907. His father had bequeathed him a precarious situation and Stuart had made an error of judgment. His honor was not questioned and his crowd stood by him loyally, but his usefulness in Wall Street was over and his small fortune was gone.

He stood in a group of men with whom he would presently play, noting things to tell Helen after the game— she wasn't turning with the play soon enough and several times she was unnecessarily ridden off at important moments. Her ponies were sluggish— the penalty for playing with borrowed mounts— but she was, nevertheless, the best player on the field, and in the last minute she made a save that brought applause.

"Good girl! Good girl!"

Stuart had been delegated with the unpleasant duty of chasing the women from the field. They had started an hour late and now a team from New Jersey was waiting to play; he sensed trouble as he cut across to join Helen and walked beside her toward the stables. She was splendid, with her flushed cheeks, her shining, triumphant eyes, her short, excited breath. He temporized for a minute.

"That was good— that last," he said.

"Thanks. It almost broke my arm. Wasn't I pretty good all through?"

"You were the best out there."

"I know it."

He waited while she dismounted and handed the pony to a groom.

"Helen, I believe I've got a job."

"What is it?"

"Don't jump on the idea till you think it over. Gus Myers wants me to manage his racing stables. Eight thousand a year."

Helen considered. "It's a nice salary; and I bet you could make yourself up a nice string from his ponies."

"The principal thing is that I need the money; I'd have as much as you and things would be easier."

"You'd have as much as me," Helen repeated. She almost regretted that he would need no more help from her. "But with Gus Myers, isn't there a string attached? Wouldn't he expect a boost up?"

"He probably would," answered Stuart bluntly, "and if I can help him socially, I will. As a matter of fact, he wants me at a stag dinner tonight."

"All right, then," Helen said absently. Still hesitating to tell her her game was over, Stuart followed her glance toward the field, where a runabout had driven up and parked by the ropes.

"There's your old friend, Teddy," he remarked dryly— "or rather, your new friend, Teddy. He's taking a sudden interest in polo. Perhaps he thinks the horses aren't biting this summer."

"You're not in a very good humor," protested Helen. "You know, if you say the word, I'll never see him again. All I want in the world is for you and I to be together."

"I know," he admitted regretfully. "Selling horses and giving up clubs put a crimp in that. I know the women all fall for Teddy, now he's getting famous, but if he tries to fool around with you I'll break his piano over his head.... Oh, another thing," he began, seeing the men already riding on the field. "About your last chukker—"

As best he could, he put the situation up to her. He was not prepared for the fury that swept over her.

"But it's an outrage! I got up the game and it's been posted on the bulletin board for three days."

"You started an hour late."

"And do you know why?" she demanded. "Because your friend Joe Morgan insisted that Celie ride sidesaddle. He tore her habit off her three times, and she only got here by climbing out the kitchen window."

"I can't do anything about it."

"Why can't you? Weren't you once a governor of this club? How can women ever expect to be any good if they have to quit every time the men want the field? All the men want is for the women to come up to them in the evening and tell them what a beautiful game they played!"

Still raging and blaming Stuart, she crossed the field to Teddy's car. He got out and greeted her with concentrated intensity:

"I've reached the point where I can neither sleep nor eat from thinking of you. What point is that?"

There was something thrilling about him that she had never been conscious of in the old days; perhaps the stories of his philanderings had made him more romantic to her.

"Well, don't think of me as I am now," she said. "My face is getting rougher every day and my muscles lean out of an evening dress like a female impersonator. People are beginning to refer to me as handsome instead of pretty. Besides, I'm in a vile humor. It seems to me women are always just edged out of everything."

Stuart's game was brutal that afternoon. In the first five minutes, he realized that Teddy's runabout was no longer there, and his long slugs began to tally from all angles. Afterward, he bumped home across country at a gallop; his mood was not assuaged by a note handed him by the children's nurse:

DEAR:

Since your friends made it possible for us to play, I wasn't going to sit there just dripping; so I had Teddy bring me home. And since you'll be out to dinner, I'm going into New York with him to the theater. I'll either be out on the theater train or spend the night at mother's.

HELEN.

Stuart went upstairs and changed into his dinner coat. He had no defense against the unfamiliar claws of jealousy that began a slow dissection of his insides. Often Helen had gone to plays or dances with other men, but this was different. He felt toward Teddy the faint contempt of the physical man for the artist, but the last six months had bruised his pride. He perceived the possibility that Helen might be seriously interested in someone else.

He was in a bad humor at Gus Myers' dinner— annoyed with his host for talking so freely about their business arrangement. When at last they rose from the table, he decided that it was no go and called Myers aside.

"Look here. I'm afraid this isn't a good idea, after all."

"Why not?" His host looked at him in alarm. "Are you going back on me? My dear fellow—"

"I think we'd better call it off."

"And why, may I ask? Certainly I have the right to ask why."

Stuart considered. "All right, I'll tell you. When you made that little speech, you mentioned me as if you had somehow bought me, as if I was a sort of employee in your office. Now, in the sporting world that doesn't go; things are more— more democratic. I grew up with all these men here tonight, and they didn't like it any better than I did."

"I see," Mr. Myers reflected carefully— "I see." Suddenly he clapped Stuart on the back. "That is exactly the sort of thing I like to be told; it helps me. From now on I won't mention you as if you were in my— as if we had a business arrangement. Is that all right?"

After all, the salary was eight thousand dollars.

"Very well, then," Stuart agreed. "But you'll have to excuse me tonight. I'm catching a train to the city."

"I'll put an automobile at your disposal."

At ten o'clock he rang the bell of Teddy's apartment on Forty-eighth Street.

"I'm looking for Mr. Van Beck," he said to the woman who answered the door. "I know he's gone to the theater, but I wonder if you can tell me—" Suddenly he guessed who the woman was. "I'm Stuart Oldhorne," he explained. "I married Mr. Van Beck's cousin."

"Oh, come in," said Betty pleasantly. "I know all about who you are."

She was just this side of forty, stoutish and plain of face, but full of a keen, brisk vitality. In the living room they sat down.

"You want to see Teddy?"

"He's with my wife and I want to join them after the theater. I wonder if you know where they went?"

"Oh, so Teddy's with your wife." There was a faint, pleasant brogue in her voice. "Well, now, he didn't say exactly where he'd be tonight."

"Then you don't know?"

"I don't— not for the life of me," she admitted cheerfully. "I'm sorry."

He stood up, and Betty saw the thinly hidden anguish in his face. Suddenly she was really sorry.

"I did hear him say something about the theater," she said ruminatively. "Now sit down and let me think what it was. He goes out so much and a play once a week is enough for me, so that one night mixes up with the others in my head. Didn't your wife say where to meet them?"

"No. I only decided to come in after they'd started. She said she'd catch the theater train back to Long Island or go to her mother's."

"That's it," Betty said triumphantly, striking her hands together like cymbals. "That's what he said when he called up— that he was putting a lady on the theater train for Long Island, and would be home himself right afterward. We've had a child sick and it's driven things from my mind."

"I'm very sorry I bothered you under those conditions."

"It's no bother. Sit down. It's only just after ten."

Feeling easier, Stuart relaxed a little and accepted a cigar.

"No, if I tried to keep up with Teddy, I'd have white hair by now," Betty said. "Of course, I go to his concerts, but often I fall asleep— not that he ever knows it. So long as he doesn't take too much to drink and knows where his home is, I don't bother about where he wanders." As Stuart's face grew serious again, she changed her tone: "All and all, he's a good husband to me and we have a happy life together, without interfering with each other. How would he do working next to the nursery and groaning at every sound? And how would I do going to Mrs. Ruthven's with him, and all of them talking about high society and high art?"

A phrase of Helen's came back to Stuart: "Always together— I like for us to do everything together."

"You have children, haven't you, Mr. Oldhorne?"

"Yes. My boy's almost big enough to sit a horse."

"Ah, yes; you're both great for horses."

"My wife says that as soon as their legs are long enough to reach stirrups, she'll be interested in them again." This didn't sound right to Stuart and he modified it: "I mean she always has been interested in them, but she never let them monopolize her or come between us. We've always believed that marriage ought to be founded on companionship, on having the same interests. I mean, you're musical and you help your husband."

Betty laughed. "I wish Teddy could hear that. I can't read a note or carry a tune."

"No?" He was confused. "I'd somehow got the impression that you were musical."

"You can't see why else he'd have married me?"

"Not at all. On the contrary."

After a few minutes, he said good night, somehow liking her. When he had gone, Betty's expression changed slowly to one of exasperation; she went to the telephone and called her husband's studio:

"There you are, Teddy. Now listen to me carefully. I know your cousin is with you and I want to talk with her.... Now, don't lie. You put her on the phone. Her husband has been here, and if you don't let me talk to her, it might be a serious matter."

She could hear an unintelligible colloquy, and then Helen's voice:

"Hello."

"Good evening, Mrs. Oldhorne. Your husband came here, looking for you and Teddy. I told him I didn't know which play you were at, so you'd better be thinking which one. And I told him Teddy was leaving you at the station in time for the theater train."

"Oh, thank you very much. We— "

"Now, you meet your husband or there's trouble for you, or I'm no judge of men. And— wait a minute. Tell Teddy, if he's going to be up late, that Josie's sleeping light, and he's not to touch the piano when he gets home."

Betty heard Teddy come in at eleven, and she came into the drawing-room smelling of camomile vapor. He greeted her absently; there was a look of suffering in his face and his eyes were bright and far away.

"You call yourself a great musician, Teddy Van Beck," she said, "but it seems to me you're much more interested in women."

"Let me alone, Betty."

"I do let you alone, but when the husbands start coming here, it's another matter."

"This was different, Betty. This goes way back into the past."

"It sounds like the present to me."

"Don't make any mistake about Helen," he said. "She's a good woman."

"Not through any fault of yours, I know."

He sank his head wearily in his hands. "I've tried to forget her. I've avoided her for six years. And then, when I met her a month ago, it all rushed over me. Try and understand, Bet. You're my best friend; you're the only person that ever loved me."

"When you're good I love you," she said.

"Don't worry. It's over. She loves her husband; she just came to New York with me because she's got some spite against him. She follows me a certain distance just like she always has, and then— Anyhow, I'm not going to see her any more. Now go to bed, Bet. I want to play for a while."

He was on his feet when she stopped him.

"You're not to touch the piano tonight."

"Oh, I forgot about Josie," he said remorsefully. "Well, I'll drink a bottle of beer and then I'll come to bed."

He came close and put his arm around her.

"Dear Bet, nothing could ever interfere with us."

"You're a bad boy, Teddy," she said. "I wouldn't ever be so bad to you."

"How do you know, Bet? How do you know what you'd do?"

He smoothed down her plain brown hair, knowing for the thousandth time that she had none of the world's dark magic for him, and that he couldn't live without her for six consecutive hours. "Dear Bet," he whispered. "Dear Bet."

iii

THE OLDHORNES were visiting. In the last four years, since Stuart had terminated his bondage to Gus Myers, they had become visiting people. The children visited Grandmother Van Beck during the winter and attended school in New York. Stuart and Helen visited friends in Asheville, Aiken and Palm Beach, and in the summer usually occupied a small cottage on someone's Long Island estate. "My dear, it's just standing there empty. I wouldn't dream of accepting any rent. You'll be doing us a favor by occupying it."

Usually, they were; they gave out a great deal of themselves in that eternal willingness and enthusiasm which makes a successful guest— it became their profession. Moving through a world that was growing rich with the war in Europe, Stuart had somewhere lost his way. Twice playing brilliant golf in the national amateur, he accepted a job as professional at a club which his father had helped to found. He was restless and unhappy.

This week-end they were visiting a pupil of his. As a consequence of a mixed foursome, the Oldhornes went upstairs to dress for dinner surcharged with the unpleasant accumulation of many unsatisfactory months. In the afternoon, Stuart had played with their hostess and Helen with another man— a situation which Stuart always dreaded, because it forced him into competition with Helen. He had actually tried to miss that putt on the eighteenth— to just miss it. But the ball dropped in the cup. Helen went through the superficial motions of a good loser, but she devoted herself pointedly to her partner for the rest of the afternoon.

Their expressions still counterfeited amusement as they entered their room.

When the door closed, Helen's pleasant expression faded and she walked toward the dressing table as though her own reflection was the only decent company with which to forgather. Stuart watched her, frowning.

"I know why you're in a rotten humor," he said; "though I don't believe you know yourself."

"I'm not in a rotten humor," Helen responded in a clipped voice.

"You are; and I know the real reason— the one you don't know. It's because I holed that putt this afternoon."

She turned slowly, incredulously, from the mirror.

"Oh, so I have a new fault! I've suddenly become, of all things, a poor sport!"

"It's not like you to be a poor sport," he admitted, "but otherwise why all this interest in other men, and why do you look at me as if I'm— well, slightly gamy?"

"I'm not aware of it."

"I am." He was aware, too, that there was always some man in their life now— some man of power and money who paid court to Helen and gave her the sense of solidity which he failed to provide. He had no cause to be jealous of any particular man, but the pressure of many was irritating. It annoyed him that on so slight a grievance, Helen should remind him by her actions that he no longer filled her entire life.

"If Anne can get any satisfaction out of winning, she's welcome to it," said Helen suddenly.

"Isn't that rather petty? She isn't in your class; she won't qualify for the third flight in Boston."

Feeling herself in the wrong, she changed her tone.

"Oh, that isn't it," she broke out. "I just keep wishing you and I could play together like we used to. And now you have to play with dubs, and get their wretched shots out of traps. Especially"— she hesitated— "especially when you're so unnecessarily gallant."

The faint contempt in her voice, the mock jealousy that covered a growing indifference was apparent to him. There had been a time when, if he danced with another woman, Helen's stricken eyes followed him around the room.

"My gallantry is simply a matter of business," he answered. "Lessons have brought in three hundred a month all summer. How could I go to see you play at Boston next week, except that I'm going to coach other women?"

"And you're going to see me win," announced Helen. "Do you know that?"

"Naturally, I want nothing more," Stuart said automatically. But the unnecessary defiance in her voice repelled him, and he suddenly wondered if he really cared whether she won or not.

At the same moment, Helen's mood changed and for a moment she saw the true situation— that she could play in amateur tournaments and Stuart could not, that the new cups in the rack were all hers now, that he had given up the fiercely competitive sportsmanship that had been the breath of life to him in order to provide necessary money.

"Oh, I'm so sorry for you, Stuart!" There were tears in her eyes. "It seems such a shame that you can't do the things you love, and I can. Perhaps I oughtn't to play this summer."

"Nonsense," he said. "You can't sit home and twirl your thumbs."

She caught at this: "You wouldn't want me to. I can't help being good at sports; you taught me nearly all I know. But I wish I could help you."

"Just try to remember I'm your best friend. Sometimes you act as if we were rivals."

She hesitated, annoyed by the truth of his words and unwilling to concede an inch; but a wave of memories rushed over her, and she thought how brave he was in his eked-out, pieced-together life; she came and threw her arms around him.

"Darling, darling, things are going to be better. You'll see."

Helen won the finals in the tournament at Boston the following week. Following around with the crowd, Stuart was very proud of her. He hoped that instead of feeding her egotism, the actual achievement would make things easier between them. He hated the conflict that had grown out of their wanting the same excellences, the same prizes from life.

Afterward he pursued her progress toward the clubhouse, amused and a little jealous of the pack that fawned around her. He reached the club among the last, and a steward accosted him. "Professionals are served in the lower grill, please," the man said.

"That's all right. My name's Oldhorne."

He started to walk by, but the man barred his way.

"Sorry, sir. I realize that Mrs. Oldhorne's playing in the match, but my orders are to direct the professionals to the lower grill, and I understand you are a professional."

"Why, look here—" Stuart began, wildly angry, and stopped. A group of people were listening. "All right; never mind," he said gruffly, and turned away.

The memory of the experience rankled; it was the determining factor that drove him, some weeks later, to a momentous decision. For a long time he had been playing with the idea of joining the Canadian Air Force, for service in France. He knew that his absence would have little practical bearing on the lives of Helen and the children; happening on some friends who were also full of the restlessness of 1915, the matter was suddenly decided. But he had not counted on the effect upon Helen; her reaction was not so much one of grief or alarm, but as if she had been somehow outwitted.

"But you might have told me!" she wailed. "You leave me dangling; you simply take yourself away without any warning."

Once again Helen saw him as the bright and intolerably blinding hero, and her soul winced before him as it had when they first met. He was a warrior; for him, peace was only the interval between wars, and peace was destroying him. Here was the game of games beckoning him— Without throwing over the whole logic of their lives, there was nothing she could say.

"This is my sort of thing," he said confidently, younger with his excitement. "A few more years of this life and I'd go to pieces, take to drink. I've somehow lost your respect, and I've got to have that, even if I'm far away."

She was proud of him again; she talked to everyone of his impending departure. Then, one September afternoon, she came home from the city, full of the old feeling of comradeship and bursting with news, to find him buried in an utter depression.

"Stuart," she cried, "I've got the—" She broke off. "What's the matter, darling? Is something the matter?"

He looked at her dully. "They turned me down," he said.

"What?"

"My left eye." He laughed bitterly. "Where that dub cracked me with the brassie. I'm nearly blind in it."

"Isn't there anything you can do?"

"Nothing."

"Stuart!" She stared at him aghast. "Stuart, and I was going to tell you! I was saving it for a surprise. Elsa Prentice has organized a Red Cross unit to serve with the French, and I joined it because I thought it would be wonderful if we both went. We've been measured for uniforms and bought our outfits, and we're sailing the end of next week."

iv

HELEN WAS a blurred figure among other blurred figures on a boat deck, dark against the threat of submarines. When the ship had slid out into the obscure future, Stuart walked eastward along Fifty-seventh Street. His grief at the severance of many ties was a weight he carried in his body, and he walked slowly, as if adjusting himself to it. To balance this there was a curious sensation of lightness in his mind. For the first time in twelve years he was alone, and the feeling came over him that he was alone for good; knowing Helen and knowing war, he could guess at the experiences she would go through, and he could not form any picture of a renewed life together afterward. He was discarded; she had proved the stronger at last. It seemed very strange and sad that his marriage should have such an ending.

He came to Carnegie Hall, dark after a concert, and his eye caught the name of Theodore Van Beck, large on the posted bills. As he stared at it, a green door opened in the side of the building and a group of people in evening dress came out. Stuart and Teddy were face to face before they recognized each other.

"Hello, there!" Teddy cried cordially. "Did Helen sail?"

"Just now."

"I met her on the street yesterday and she told me. I wanted you both to come to my concert. Well, she's quite a heroine, going off like that.... Have you met my wife?"

Stuart and Betty smiled at each other.

"We've met."

"And I didn't know it," protested Teddy. "Women need watching when they get toward their dotage.... Look here, Stuart; we're having a few people up to the apartment. No heavy music or anything. Just supper and a few débutantes to tell me I was divine. It will do you good to come. I imagine you're missing Helen like the devil."

"I don't think I—"

"Come along. They'll tell you you're divine too."

Realizing that the invitation was inspired by kindliness, Stuart accepted. It was the sort of gathering he had seldom attended, and he was surprised to meet so many people he knew. Teddy played the lion in a manner at once assertive and skeptical. Stuart listened as he enlarged to Mrs. Cassius Ruthven on one of his favorite themes:

"People tried to make marriages coöperative and they've ended by becoming competitive. Impossible situation. Smart men will get to fight shy of ornamental women. A man ought to marry somebody who'll be grateful, like Betty here."

"Now don't talk so much, Theodore Van Beck," Betty interrupted. "Since you're such a fine musician, you'd do well to express yourself with music instead of rash words."

"I don't agree with your husband," said Mrs. Ruthven. "English girls hunt with their men and play politics with them on absolutely equal terms, and it tends to draw them together."

"It does not," insisted Teddy. "That's why English society is the most disorganized in the world. Betty and I are happy because we haven't any qualities in common at all."

His exuberance grated on Stuart, and the success that flowed from him swung his mind back to the failure of his own life. He could not know that his life was not destined to be a failure. He could not read the fine story that three years later would be carved proud above his soldier's grave, or know that his restless body, which never spared itself in sport or danger, was destined to give him one last proud gallop at the end.

"They turned me down," he was saying to Mrs. Ruthven. "I'll have to stick to Squadron A, unless we get drawn in."

"So Helen's gone." Mrs. Ruthven looked at him, reminiscing. "I'll never forget your wedding. You were both so handsome, so ideally suited to each other. Everybody spoke of it."

Stuart remembered; for the moment it seemed that he had little else that it was fun to remember.

"Yes," he agreed, nodding his head thoughtfully, "I suppose we were a handsome pair."

____________

9: "Secret Service"

Arthur Gask

1869-1951

The Chronicle (Adelaide) 27 March 1941

London-born dentist who, in 1920, moved his family to Adelaide in South Australia, where he began writing crime fiction, producing more than 30 novels, most published by Herbert Jenkins in London. He also wrote numerous short stories which were published in Australian newspapers.

IT WAS in the old untroubled days before Dictators walked the earth and the scene was the lounge of a luxurious hotel upon the Cornish Riviera. The hour was after dinner, and a number of the guests had been discussing the case of a well-known public man who mysteriously disappeared from his home a few weeks previously, after it had been found out he had for many years been leading a double life.

"And, of course, there would be a woman in it!" drawled a cynical-looking man about thirty. There's a woman in everything when there's any trouble. They cause it all."

"Nonsense!" snapped an aristocratic blonde who always had a little cluster of admirers round her. "It's you horrid men who make all the trouble. You never leave us poor women alone." She turned to a distinguished looking old man who was regarding them all with an amused smile upon his clever, intellectual face. "Isn't that so, Dr. Smith? We are quite harmless if left to ourselves, aren't we?"

"Quite harmless!" nodded the old doctor emphatically. He fibbed with great gallantry. "I've never yet known a woman do anything wrong." He shook his head. "But about this particular man we've been talking of; a great deal too much fuss is being made about his disappearance, simply because he happens to be well in the public eye. Why, if we only knew it, a hundred and one such mysteries are taking place every day under our very eyes!"

"And I expect you, as a doctor, could tell us some very interesting stories of double lives, if you only would," nodded the blonde.

"Certainly, I could," agreed Dr. Smith readily. His old eyes twinkled. "Only they mightn't be all true. You've heard just now what a dreadful fibber I can be."

The blonde looked pleadingly at him. "But do tell us a story, doctor. There's nearly always something a little bit improper about doctors' stories, and it will give some of us girls a chance to lower our eyes and show off what nice long lashes we've got. Yes, tell us a story, whether it's true or not."

The others joining with her request, the old doctor said at last, "Well, I'll tell you one, and the great merit of it will be that it's quite true. It points out in what mystery we can be living for years and years and yet—be quite unaware of it." He settled himself back comfortably in his chair. "Now it's about a young fellow whom we'll call Jack Robinson. He was the only son of well-to-do parents and had been living the usual life of most young men of his class, good public school, then on to a university, plenty of money for sport, cars, travelling about, and all that. It had been intended he should become a medical man, but he wouldn't settle down to anything and idled about for so long that at last his father got sick of him and all his ways. There was a quarrel and he left the house with only a few pounds in his pocket and with no prospects at all.

"I knew the family well, and about three months later ran up against the boy in the Strand. He looked shabby and down at heel, and there was no doubt things were not going too well with him. He was annoyed with meeting me, and curtly refused the offer of a couple of pounds, getting away as quickly as possible to escape any questioning. I saw no more of him until some months later we chanced to meet again, one evening in the West End. To my astonishment, he was looking quite his old self again, smartly dressed and with all signs of prosperity about him. Standing well over six feet, I thought what a good-looking young fellow he was. I asked what he was doing, but he shook his head and declined to say.

"I suggested our dining together at the 'Rialto'— you know, one of the best and most expensive restaurants in London— and after a little hesitation he agreed, but only on the condition that I came as his guest. I was a little bit disturbed because I knew, as well as he would know, that the dinner and the wine there would cost him at least fifty shillings.

"Into the Rialto we went, and one thing struck me at once. He was most anxious not to be noticed and tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible by humping his shoulders and keeping his head down as we made our way to the table he had selected at the far end of the restaurant. All the meal time, too, when he was taking stock of the other diners, it was his eyes only and not his head which he moved. Yes, for some reason, he was undoubtedly most uneasy.

"Regardless of the price, he ordered a bottle of vintage champagne, with the evident intention of impressing upon me that he had plenty of money. I asked him again how he was making his living, but he only smiled and, upon my saying that at all events I hoped he was doing it honestly, he replied evasively. "Oh, yes, as things go nowadays!" We had a pleasant meal together and then, upon parting, with some hesitation, he asked me as a favor that if I should happen to come across him again, unexpectedly, wherever he was, unless he spoke to me first would I please take no notice and appear not to recognise him. He wouldn't explain any more, but, of course, I promised.

"I didn't see him again for a very long while, but some two years later got news of him through a mutual friend who had happened to come across him in one of those many new garden cities which have sprung up recently just outside the metropolitan area. He was married to a very pretty girl and they were occupying one of the largest and best houses on the estate. They had a good car, kept two maids and were about the most well-to-do among the little community in which they lived.

The old doctor paused here and beamed round upon his audience with twinkling eyes as he asked, "Now, what do you think his occupation was supposed to be?"

"I know," answered the blonde. "He'd become a bookmaker, of course!"

"Certainly not," reproved Dr. Smith indignantly. "His work was much more romantic than that."

"He was a dress-designer," suggested the cynical-looking man, "and and had all the lovely women in London buzzing round him like flies."

"He told fortunes," said a second man, "and the police were after him."

Dr. Smith nodded solemnly. "He was in the Secret Service and told off to watch all the most dangerous spies coming to London. That's what my friend had found out."

"Oh, how thrilling," exclaimed the blonde, "but did everybody know it?"

"Of course, they didn't! Only a very few, just his wife's parents and her relations. He was the mystery man of that little garden city. Later I met his wife and heard all the story of his coming there and the sensation he had made. It was most interesting for, although so well-off, he'd had a lot of difficulty in getting the girl. Her father was a middle-aged clerk, upon a small salary, in a tea broker's in the city and, sensible and well-balanced, he had a great objection to giving his daughter to anyone who was so evasive about his occupation that he would not disclose where he went to work every day.

"I must tell you here that there were lots of boys after Margaret, that was the girl's name, and she had no end of chances of making a good marriage for one in her position. Her parents may have been commonplace and not much to look at, but she herself was a real little beauty and with her lovely profile, perfect features and aristocratic bearing it might easily have been imagined she came of a long line of noble ancestors.

"Well, just when it seemed the young couple would have to elope to get married, the whole difficulty was smoothed out in a most unexpected manner and, all in a few moments, Margaret's father was completely satisfied as to young Jack Robinson's fitness to become his son-in-law.

"It happened, Jack had had tickets given him for a swell flower show in Chelsea, organised by society people in aid of some charity, and he took Margaret and her parents with him. The latter would not have gone or indeed, have allowed him to take Margaret if they had not heard a certain Royal Duke might be coming. Sure enough the old Duke and his Duchess put in an appearance and proceeded to mingle unobtrusively with the other visitors. Then, to the parents' stupendous amazement, His Royal Highness, happening to catch sight of Jack Robinson, gave him a most friendly nod, actually exclaiming, 'Hope you're enjoying yourself, Robinson?' Then apparently taking in that Jack was in the company of a remarkably pretty-looking girl, he added smilingly, 'And I see flowers are not the only beautiful things here this afternoon.'

"Margaret's parents were almost overwhelmed with pride, but Jack appeared to think little of it, just explaining modestly that his work often brought him in contact with most important people.

"Jack and the pretty Margaret were married shortly afterwards and, later, Jack became reconciled to his father, driving down unexpectedly to the latter's place in Hampshire one Sunday afternoon. Margaret had by then grown into a very beautiful woman and had presented her husband with a lovely little boy. Apparently, Jack was in better circumstances than ever, but he declined to give his father any further information as to his occupation except to tell him, exactly as he had told Margaret's parents, that he was in the Secret Service.

"More than ten years passed by and then, quite by accident I found out what he was actually doing. One night I was visiting one of London's most luxurious hotels, we'll call it the 'Great Babel,' and suddenly I came upon Jack in what I thought must be a disguise. He was dressed as the commissionaire of the hotel. I can't say I was very surprised, for if he were in the Secret Service the 'Great Babel' would be a most natural place for him to be watching, frequented as it is by foreigners from all parts of the world. I very seldom dined out, but that night had come as the guest of an old friend. During the course of the meal I made some discreet enquiries of our waiter as to the very handsome commissionaire I had seen at the door when I came in, and learnt to my astonishment that he was there under his own name of Jack Robinson.

" 'How long has he been here?' I asked, and I could have dropped through the floor when I received the reply, 'Oh, I should think it must be getting on for 15 years.' "

The old doctor paused impressively. "So, that was his Secret Service, bowing visitors into the hotel, bowing them out again and calling taxis for them! Gad, but wasn't I amazed!

"I didn't see him again when I went out and supposed, and quite rightly, too, that he must have gone off duty. Still, I wasn't going to let the matter end there and, as a friend of the family, was intending to find out in what other way he was making his money. I was minded to go down to where I knew he was now living, upon the following Sunday, but he forestalled me by calling at my professional rooms in town the very next afternoon. He had seen me in the hotel, right enough, and came to shut my mouth before I had had much opportunity to tell anybody.

"He came into my consulting-room with a grin and frankly told me everything. He had obtained employment at the Great Babel within a few days of my having met him looking so shabby, that first time in the street, to begin with as under porter, but rising to be their head commissioner within a few months. He said he owed his rapid promotion to being able to speak French and German, and a smattering of Italian as well. Not even his wife knew he was there, for he had still kept up the fiction of the Secret Service with her, and the strange thing was that none of the people about his home life seemed to have recognised him.

"But then came his most astounding statement and it will make some of your mouths water. His weekly wage was £3, but he assured me, and produced his bank passbook to prove it, that his tips during that same time often amounted to upwards of £50."

"£50 from tips!" exclaimed the cynical-looking man angrily. "Why it's the salary of a Cabinet Minister!"

"Yes," smiled Dr. Smith, "and most probably more than the manager of the hotel himself earned." He was drawing near the end of his story. "You see only wealthy people would be coming to the Great Babel and Jack Robinson, being of such a good appearance and looking so distinguished, none of them would care to give him a really small tip. Besides, with his knowledge of the continent and the best places where one could spend a lot of money, he was most useful to many visitors, particularly so to Americans.

"Well, for ten more years after he came to see me that afternoon he remained on at the Great Babel, and during all that time managed to keep from his wife and family what his occupation really was. They never found him out. Just think of it! For five and twenty years he lived that double life, giving his children the best surroundings possible. He sent his boys to the best public schools and then on to the university. One qualified brilliantly as a medical man and the other got high into the Indian Civil Service, and they never learnt what their father was. I say 'was,' because he left the Great Babel nearly a couple of years back.

"But why did he leave there if he was doing so well?" asked the good-looking blonde. "Had he got enough money to retire?"

"Partly that," replied Dr. Smith, "and partly for family reasons. One of his daughters, who is as beautiful as her mother was, was making an excellent marriage and, with her moving in such good society circles, it would have been a dreadful thing if the father's occupation had become known. Besides, his own father is quite a wealthy man and, the only child, there was no necessity for him to keep on where he was. So Jack Robinson retired and, having grown a beard, no one would recognise him now." The old man rose to his feet. "Well, goodnight all, and I hope you liked my little story, although, as I say, it has the merit of being strictly true," and, with a smiling bow all round, he left the room.

"Interesting old chap!" remarked a man thoughtfully. He shook his head. "But I'm sure I've seen him before. His face seems familiar, somehow."

The following day some passing motorists, calling in at the hotel for lunch, happened to meet there a man they knew. Looking round at those gathered together for the meal, one of the newcomers remarked: "Ah, I see you got old Sir Michael staying here. He won't remember me, although I was introduced to him some little time ago. I know his son pretty well."

His friend followed the direction he indicated. "But that's a Dr. Smith!" he exclaimed. "He's no Sir Michael Somebody!"

"Oh, isn't he?" laughed the other. "He's Sir Michael Barrow, right enough. He got his baronetcy when he was made Physician to the King. He's an eccentric old chap, and often goes about under an assumed name. He thinks people always want to ask him a lot of questions if they know who he really is."

The friend expressed his astonishment. "Is he married?" he asked.

"He was, but he's been a widower now for many years. His granddaughter was the beautiful Mary Barrow, who's portrait was in the Academy last year. You remember she married young Lord Thurlow."

A suspicion stirred in the other's mind. "Who's her father?" he asked sharply.

"John Barrow, the heir to the baronetcy. He runs a model farm near Haslemere. Used to be something in the Secret Service up to a couple of years ago. Very decent chap!"

His friend gave a low whistle, but made no comment.

___________

10: Tom Silver's Bus

Warwick Deeping

1877-1950

Collected in: The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping, 1930

HIS WIFE was troubled about him, for when, after fifteen years of married life, a man becomes moody and strange and sits and stares at the fire and does not always hear what is said to him, a woman begins to ask herself questions.

The Silvers had no children. They had lived in the same cottage in Paradise Row ever since they had been married, a red brick cottage with a green door and railings, and Tom Silver had always kept the little front garden full of flowers. At the back of Paradise Row ran a branch of the River Bourne, and the strips of ground belonging to the cottages ended in the green of old pollarded willows. The Silvers had in their piece of garden a magnificent old pear tree, all white in the spring, and flaming red and gold in the autumn. Blackbirds loved this tree, and on spring mornings early a cock would usually be singing in it.

But Mary Silver was troubled.

For Tom had always been a man of calculable moods and habits, and for years she had had the feeling that she knew all about him that there was to know, but now she was not so sure.

"Hear the bird, mother?"

This spring he had not called her attention to the blackbird in the pear tree, nor had he boasted gently about the size of the polyanthus flowers in the patch of front garden. She had seen him standing quite still with his foot on the garden fork, staring at the soil, but not as though he saw anything singular in the soil. He stared at the fire in just the same way.

Mary would say to herself: "Now, what's wrong with my Tom?"

For a deep and sure affection united them, and like many childless people they had grown into and through each other. Silver was a driver-mechanic, and had worked for a dozen years at "Green's Garage," in Malton. Old Green thought a lot of him, this silent Tom Silver, blond and fresh-coloured, with blue eyes that were apt to go dreamy, a man who did not like to be talked to when he was at work, and who resented interference. If a sick engine needed a physician, Silver was the man for it. His big, strong, dexterous hands were loving and patient.

For the job was his, and a mere money-getting world is slow to realize how much the job is part of the worker's soul. Tom Silver found his secret joy in it, his justification, little strange ecstasies of self-expression. Something clicked to beneath his skilful fingers, or a stammering engine became sweet and alive.

Always he had come back to Mary with a kind of contentment in his eyes.

"Tea ready, mother?"

He had had the air of a man who had completed something, exorcised some little devil of disharmony. The job was good.

But this spring his eyes had changed. They had a sort of sadness, a perplexity. He did not look at the familiar things about the cottage and garden as he had been accustomed to look at them. He was silent, preoccupied.

Mary was troubled. She knew her man, and that Tom did not go off round the corner. She had never known him to get silly about a girl, and to come back to her looking sheepishly and deceitfully cheerful. He did not drink; he was not interested in "horses." He had no worries, save the worries that attach themselves inevitably to the life of a man who works for a weekly wage.

Was it their lack of children?

Now between Mary and Tom there had always been a simple and intimate confidence. They had nothing to conceal from each other. They were simple people uttering simple words, and giving expression to their natural feelings. They had become necessary to each other in a way that is not understood by those whose mating has been solely and transiently of the flesh.

Mary asked her question.

"What's worrying you, Tom?"

He had slipped his feet into his slippers, and was lighting his pipe while she mended the fire. He held the match to the tobacco, and his hand was steady. He neither resented nor shirked her question; he answered it.

"Blessed if I know, mother."

Which was strange, so strange that she stood holding the poker and looking down at him with a puzzled intentness.

"How can that be?"

His blue eyes raised themselves to her dark ones.

"Sounds silly. Yes, I guess it does. But it isn't exactly worry, mother, it's a sort of feeling."

"A sort of feeling?"

"Yes— that's all I can call it."

She stirred the fire, and her face was thoughtful. She was wise as to the ordinary problems of a working woman's life: the rent, the bills, the fear of sickness, a dread of strikes.

"Nothing wrong at the shop?"

"Nothing."

"No one's been hurting your feelings?"

He smiled. He patted her back.

"No; I've no grouse on. It's a decent shop, and I count a bit with the boss. I'm on the job all the time."

She said, gravely and softly:

"I've never known you like this before."

He answered her just as simply:

"Maybe I'm a blooming fool. It's news to me, mother, but I don't get the feel I did from handling tools."

"You're fed up?"

"No; not exactly that. It's as though something funny was working inside me and couldn't get out."

Now this might have seemed a strange confession for a working-man to make, and a woman less wise than Mary Silver might have been sceptical, but Tom was not the sort of man who boiled over like some fussy little kettle. There was something funny and restless inside him, and what exactly— was it? He could not give it a name, and an unnamed thing casts a shadow.

"Is it something you want and haven't got, Tom?"

"I don't know, old girl."

"Is it because I haven't given you children?"

He looked up suddenly at that. He reached out and drew her against him.

"No; nothing that touches you, mother. I know what I've got. It's just a sort of restlessness. Don't you worry."

But Mary did worry, though she worried in secret; for she had a feeling that her man was not happy, and when he was not happy, no blackbird sang for her in the pear tree. But what was the matter with him? He had a good job; he was respected. When anything difficult had to be done at the garage Tom Silver was turned loose upon it. That sort of pride mattered to a man like Tom; and yet, as she watched him, it seemed to her that the pride had gone out of him. He was less taut about the shoulders. A vague listlessness possessed him.

She lay awake at night, worrying. She even wondered whether Tom was ill, and whether this moodiness was a symptom, the first shadow of some insidious, creeping sickness. She lay and listened to his breathing, but Tom slept as he had always slept.

Tom Silver knew one thing, he had lost the joy of his hands. He could not say how or why. The strange inwardness of the change was beyond him—that steel should have become dead metal, and an engine a mere machine. The wrench and the drill and the pliers, the reamer, the hack-saw and the hammer did not leap lovingly into his hands. There were days when he was short of temper. He would curse, and in cursing begin to fume and to fumble. Something was out of gear between Tom Silver and his craft.

Then, one evening, looking at the faces of the pansies in his garden, he remembered.

"Funny little devils! They're alive, just like people."

Yes; he remembered. His discontent had dated from that day when there had been a smash in the London road in front of him, and he had gone to help and had found himself helpless. A woman was screaming. She lay there by the kerb, all bloody. And he had stood and stared. The job had beaten him.

He went into the cottage. His eyes had a strange look. He spoke to Mary, who was putting fresh buttonholes into a shirt.

"I've got it, mother."

"What, my dear?" For there were times when she called him "my dear" like a child.

"It isn't steel; it's flesh."

She waited upon this strange saying.

"A machine's a dead thing. I haven't got the hands for a thing that's alive."

He went on to tell her about the smash in the London road. He had been in charge of a private car for the day, driving two ladies up to town; they were going to a theatre. His blue eyes seemed to be looking at the things he described; his big hands rested on his knees.

"It gave me a sort of shock, mother. I was shaky for the rest of the drive. I think it's been on my mind, made me sort of discontented."

"But it wasn't your job, Tom. You can't blame yourself."

His blue eyes stared.

"Well, that's so. But somehow— I seemed to feel that it was the sort of job I wanted to be able to tackle. It wasn't that I was afraid of it. I didn't just know how to tackle it."

"It's a doctor's job, my dear."

"In a manner of speaking— yes, old girl. When a machine goes wrong, it's been my job to help to put it right. But a body's more than a machine. I'm always seeing that poor lady lying screaming in the road, and me as helpless as one of those rich young boobs who hog it in high-powered cars and can't do more than lift the bonnet flap when something goes wrong."

She nodded her head at him.

"You want to get to know?"

"That's it, mother."

Knowing him as she did Mary was not surprised when little red books appeared in the cottage, and her man sat at night studying them. She consented. Tom had always been a man for teaching himself things. He was thorough— through and through. He would spread out diagrams on the kitchen table, and go to the trouble of making large copies of them in blue and red chalk. He hung these diagrams on the bedroom door, and stood and studied them when he was dressing in the morning.

He was teaching himself the anatomy of the human body as he had taught himself the anatomy of cars. He could have talked to Mary about the brachial and the femoral arteries, and what you might be able to do when a fellow got his throat cut on the jagged glass of a broken windscreen, but he was not a talkative person. Bandages appeared in the cottage, and at night his wife would humour him and pull off her shoe, and allow him to make use of her leg. She would sit and sew and watch his serious, absorbed face, and his deliberate and dexterous fingers.

One day he came back with the strangest of purchases, an awkward looking object in a sack. Using the backyard as an operating theatre he extracted the object from the sack. He explained the affair to Mary.

"I had to drive old Mr. Morriaty over to that sale at Milford. He said to me: 'Tom, I shall be here most of the day. You had better amuse yourself, somehow.' I had a look over the house, and there was this doll shoved away in a job lot. I had a brain wave, mother, and I bought it."

He exhibited his purchase, a battered lay-model such as is used by artists. Its articulated limbs could be set in any position, and to Tom Silver it would serve as a model of the human figure.

"I can work on it, mother; practise putting up fractures."

Tom's dummy was put to live in the tool-shed at the end of the garden, and on summer evenings Tom would get busy on "Cuthbert," as he called the creature. He applied splints and bandages to fractured legs and thighs and arms, and Cuthbert was a model patient. He never struggled or made a fuss.

Mary bore with her man's obsession. She could not see that it was going to have any practical bearing on life, or that Tom would be able to exercise his new craft in the world of reality. But he was absorbed in it; it seemed to have cured his restlessness. He had ceased to sit and stare.

Now, Malton was a rapidly growing town. It had shed its village smock. Houses were springing up everywhere, and new building estates eating into the green fields and causing the death of old trees. Motor cars multiplied. And Malton and its responsible citizens began to visualize the expanding needs of the community.

Malton had its cottage hospital and its local fire brigade, its district nurses, and its various clubs, but its hospital was proving itself inadequate. Also, Malton had taken to itself a bright and brisk new doctor, "Young Smith," as Malton called him. Young Smith was a very live person, and a very capable surgeon. He began to be felt in the place.

One morning Mr. Green came down to the workshop where Tom was fitting new pistons in an engine.

"Heard the news, Tom?"

Tom had heard some news.

"The town's to have a motor-ambulance, and they have asked me to run it."

Tom straightened his long back. His eyes had grown dreamy.

"Going to do it, sir?"

"Well, yes; but it isn't the job for any ordinary chap. Dr. Smith's been talking to me. Naturally the man who drives the ambulance has got to know how to handle a case."

Tom nodded.

"Obviously. It's not an amateur job. I could take it on."

Old Green stared at him.

"You may be a damned fine mechanic, Tom, but what do you know about first aid?"

"I've been studying. I guess I'm as good as any St. John's Ambulance man, any day. I'm not gassing."

Mr. Green knew that Tom Silver did not gas, but his curiosity was piqued.

"You've been studying? What for?"

Tom wiped his hands on a wad of cotton waste.

"Just felt I had to, that's all. I've seen one bad smash, and it got me cold. No more use than a bloody kid. After that I felt I'd learn something in case I saw another."

Mr. Green— who was a shrewd old John Bull of a man, and who knew just what a fellow like Silver was worth— grunted and looked thoughtful.

"Well, you'd better go up and see Dr. Smith. He's one of those thorough chaps. He doesn't take things on tick."

Tom knocked off work a little earlier than usual, and when Mary heard him coming in the back door she glanced at the clock and wondered why her man was half an hour before his time, but when she saw Tom's face she knew that something had happened, and something that he found good. Also, she allowed him the pleasure of giving her a surprise, because if a man has no one to whom he can say: "Well, what do you think of that!" life is no better than an old clothes shop.

He assumed a casualness.

"Can you put on tea, mother?"

"The kettle's just on the boil."

"Then I'll have a little shaving-water."

She allowed him his mystery. But what was the great occasion which demanded that Tom should shave himself a second time in one day? In any other man she would have postulated woman. She heard him rummaging about upstairs, and when he came down to her he was wearing a clean collar and shirt and his dark blue Sunday suit. His eyes had a deep, challenging smile.

She looked him over.

"Well, what's on, my lad?"

"Going up to see Dr. Smith."

"That's the new doctor. Is he wanting a chauffeur?"

"No; it's like this, mother. The town's getting a motor-ambulance. Our people are going to run it. I told the boss I was for the job."

"Whole time?"

"No; part time job. But Dr. Smith's hot stuff. Naturally they don't want a chap on the car who can't handle a case."

Mary poured out his tea.

"I'm glad, Tom," she said. "I know it's what you've been hankering after. I'm glad."

So Tom Silver went up to see Dr. Smith, who was a brisk, stout fellow with the cut of a naval man, and Dr. Smith looked at Silver and liked him. He liked him very well.

Dr. Smith had a bright eye and a mischievous tongue. As a student he had been a slogging boxer, and even now he liked to give a man a punch and see how he reacted.

He questioned Tom.

"Look here, supposing you found a chap in the road with his throat cut, broken glass, and bleeding like hell, what would you do?"

Tom stood like a man on parade.

"Put my fingers to the wound, sir, and try to get hold of the bleeding point."

"You would. And supposing you found a fellow lying beside the road, after an accident, what would you do first?"

"Look at him, sir."

"Look at him?"

"See if I could spot anything before messing him about."

Dr. Smith laughed.

"Who taught you that?"

"Well, when an engine has chucked up, sir; you have a look round before getting out a spanner. Besides, I'm not raw to the job."

Dr. Smith's glance said: "You'll do. You'll do damned well."

And Tom Silver went back to his wife and sat by the fire with her and looked happy.

Tom Silver was very proud of the new ambulance. It had a cream-coloured body, black wings, and a red cross on the side panels, and he cherished it as a man cherishes his first car. But more so, for this ambulance symbolized to Silver his passion to serve; and, in serving, to express that something in himself which makes man imagine God. This was no mere handling of cold steel, but a task into which compassion entered, and in helping the sick and the injured the soul of Tom Silver was satisfied.

There were other men who did not understand this. They said: "Old Tom's got a nerve. No sort of bloody mess seems to put the wind up him. He's a hard nut."

But Tom Silver was anything but hard; he was gentle. His urge to help was so strong that he did not flinch or hesitate. And as his confidence grew his pride in his job grew with it. He knew that he could help those who were helpless.

One winter morning, when the wet pavements had been iced by a sudden frost, someone slipped and broke a leg. It happened just outside the post-office, and at an hour when all the doctors were out on their rounds. Tom was sent for, and with a police constable to help him he set the broken leg, and carried the patient off in the ambulance.

Dr. Smith, intercepted somewhere on his round by a telephone message, drove down to the hospital, and seeing Silver afterwards, asked him a question.

"Was that your job, Tom?"

"Yes, sir."

"Couldn't have done it better myself."

Silver went pink under his brown skin, and that flush remained with him all the morning. He carried the warmth of it back to Mary at the dinner hour, and it helped to add savour to Irish stew.

"That sort of thing makes a job seem worth while, mother."

And Mary knew that her man was finding life good.

Meanwhile Malton grew and flourished amazingly; and its citizens, confronted with the inadequacy of a ten-bed cottage hospital, decided that Malton must step into the line of progress. Dr. Smith blew hither and thither like a stout breeze. Money was promised, fêtes organized, beds endowed. And so it came about that a new hospital was planned and put into being, and Tom Silver watched it grow. He had given his guinea; but he felt that there was more of him than twenty-one shillings in that handsome, red brick building.

It was to be so, for it had been decided by the committee that the new hospital should have a motor-ambulance, and a driver permanently attached to it, and Tom Silver was offered the post.

Old Green was inclined to growl about it. He did not want to part with his prize mechanic. He tackled Tom.

"I'll make it worth your while to stay on."

Tom looked embarrassed.

"It's very good of you, sir, but I've got to go. It isn't that I'm not well satisfied here."

"You'll be dropping good money, and the chance of a share. I'll give you a day to think it over."

Tom went home and put it to his wife.

"I shall be dropping fifteen bob a week, mother."

"Well, drop them, my dear."

He crossed over to where she was sitting and kissed her.

"You always were a great little woman. My heart's in the job."

Two more years passed, and Tom Silver was very much a person. He had a local reputation. Other men said: "There goes old Tom in his bloody old bus." But it was said kindly, for Tom and his sanguinary vehicle were realities in the life of Malton and the neighbourhood. He was something of an autocrat: no one else was allowed to touch his ambulance; the blankets had to be just so, and the stretchers spotless. When Tom had to collect a case from a cottage he was addressed as "Mr. Silver," and there is no doubt that Tom was considered to be as much a public institution as the local police inspector, or the clerk to the Urban District Council.

Well-to-do cases sometimes offered Tom Silver tips. He accepted tips; he passed them on to Mary, so that there should be less chance of her missing those fifteen shillings.

One foggy day in November, about two o clock in the afternoon, the ambulance was rung for. The hospital porter who took the message, dashed out to warn Tom.

Station bus had a smash on Tipsy Hill.—Urgent.

Tom knew those station buses, clattering, ramshackle, go-as-you-please crates of glass and tin that careered up and down to and from Malton station. Often he had cursed those buses and their drivers, but the strangest thing of all was that he did not remember that Mary was going over to Telford market to shop, and that she had taken one of those buses to the station. He just forgot, or his job and its urgency left a blind spot in his mind. He had his ambulance out and on the road in less than a minute after the porter had warned him.

He got to the place before the doctors. In the fog he saw a row of fir trees, and one of those tin-pot buses with its silly wheels in the air half in and half out of a clump of furze, and round it a little group of people. He sprang down; he elbowed through.

"Anybody hurt?"

Someone stared him in the face. And then he heard a voice, a little, moaning voice: "I want my Tom. Will someone fetch my Tom."

Silver saw her lying there on the grass; two men were kneeling, and one of them was fumbling with a handkerchief. The handkerchief was all red, so were the man's hands, and he had the flurried, helpless air of a fellow who was frightened.

"She's bleeding like— I can't— Where are the doctors?"

Silver was down on his knees. He had edged the other man aside.

"It's all right, mother; I'm here."

But within him there was terror, such fear as he had never known. He remembered afterwards that his hands had felt paralysed until the warm blood had touched them, and they had seemed to become alive. They were him: the man, Tom Silver. Afterwards, his lower lip showed red where he had bitten it.

The doctor came. It was Smith.

"What, Tom? Good lord, man! It's—"

Silver's teeth showed in a kind of smile.

"All right, sir; I've got my fingers in it. Artery—broken glass."

"Good. Can you hang on?"

"What do you think."

"Right, you stick to it while we lift."

THAT NIGHT Tom Silver was sitting in front of the fire in the hospital porter's room. He had been home once to the cottage in Paradise Row to fetch some things for his wife, and to feed the cat, but he had not wanted to stay there. The cottage was too empty and strange. So he sat and waited and wondered; and the hospital seemed a silent place, and this silence was like a door that presently would open.

It did open. A face looked in— the waggish, kindly, mischievous face of Dr. Smith.

"All right, Tom. She'll do."

That was all. He closed the door, and Tom sat and stared at the fire. He thought: "Seems strange somehow how things happen. Just as though they were meant to happen. Maybe God means 'em to happen."

___________

11: Amos Kilbright: His Adscititious Experiences

Frank R. Stockton

1834-1902

America April 1888

[This story is told by Mr. Richard Colesworthy, an attorney-at-law, in a large town in one of our Eastern States. The fact that Mr. Colesworthy is a practical man, and but little given, outside of his profession, to speculative theorizing, adds a weight to his statements which they might not otherwise possess.—F.R.S]

IN THE PRACTICE of my profession I am in the habit of meeting with all sorts and conditions of men, women, and even children. But I do not know that I ever encountered anyone who excited in me a greater interest than the man about whom I am going to tell you.

I was busily engaged one morning in my office, which is on the ground floor of my dwelling and opens upon the street, when, after a preliminary knock, a young man entered and asked leave to speak with me. He was tall and well made, plainly but decently dressed, and with a fresh, healthy color on his smoothly shaven face. There was something in his air, a sort of respectful awkwardness, which was not without a suggestion of good breeding, and in his countenance there was an annoyed or troubled expression which did not sit well upon it. I asked him to take a chair, and as he did so the thought came to me that I should like to be of service to him. Of course I desire to aid and benefit all my clients, but there are some persons whose appearance excites in one an instinctive sympathy, and toward whom there arise at first sight sentiments of kindliness. The man had said almost nothing; it was simply his manner that had impressed me. I mention these points because generally I do not take an interest in persons until I know a good deal about them.

"What can I do for you?" I asked.

The man did not immediately answer, but began searching for something in one of the pockets of his coat. The little awkwardness which I had first noticed, now became more apparent. He appeared to be looking for his pockets rather than for what might be in one of them. He was conscious of his ungainliness and reddened a little as he fumbled on the inside and outside of his coat.

"I pray you pardon me," he said, "but I will bring before you instantly the matter of my business."

And so saying, he got his hand into a breast pocket and drew out a little packet. There was a certain intonation of his voice which, at first made me think that he was not an American, but in that intonation there was really nothing foreign. He was certainly a stranger, he might be from the backwoods, and both his manner and speech appeared odd to me; but soon I had no doubt about his being my countryman. In fact, there was something in his general appearance which seemed to me to be distinctively American.

"I came to you, sir," he said, "to ask if you would have the goodness to purchase one or more of these tickets?" And he held out to me a card entitling one person to admission to a séance to be given by a party of spiritualists in one of the public buildings of the town.

A feeling of anger arose within me. I was chagrined to think that I had begun to interest myself in a person who merely came to interrupt me in my business by trying to sell me tickets to a spiritualistic exhibition. My instant impulse was to turn from the man and let him see that I was offended by his intrusion, but my reason told me that he had done nothing that called for resentment. If I had expected something more important from him, that was my affair. He had not pretended to have any other business than that which brought him.

And, besides, he offered me something which in fact I wanted. I am a member of a society for psychical research, which, about a year before, had been organized in our town. It is composed almost exclusively of persons who are desirous of honestly investigating the facts, as well as theories, connected with the spiritual phenomena, not only of our own day, but of all ages. We had heard of the spiritualistic exhibitions which were to be given in our town, and I, with a number of my fellow-members, had determined to attend them. If there was anything real or tangible in the performances of these people we wanted to know it. Considering all this, it would be foolish for me to be angry with a man who had brought me the very tickets I intended to buy, and, instead of turning away from him, I took out my pocket-book.

"I will take one ticket for each of the three séances," I said. And I placed the money on the table.

I should have been glad to buy two sets of tickets; one for my wife; but I knew this would be useless. She did not belong to our society, and took no interest in its investigations.

"These things are all tricks and nonsense," she said. "I don't want to know anything about them. And if they were true, I most certainly would not want to know anything about them."

So I contented myself with the tickets for my own use, and as the man slowly selected them from his little package, I asked him if he had sold many of them.

"These you now buy are the first of which I have made disposal," he answered. "For two days I have endeavored to sell them, but to no purpose. There are many people to whom I cannot bring myself to speak upon the matter, and those I have asked care not for these things. I would not have come to you, but having twice passed your open window, I liked your face and took courage."

I smiled. So this man had been studying me before I began to study him; and this discovery revived in me the desire that he had come on some more interesting business than that of selling tickets; a thing he did so badly as to make me wonder why he had undertaken it.

"I imagine," said I, "that this sort of business is out of your line."

He looked at me a moment, and then with earnestness exclaimed: "Entirely! utterly! absolutely! I am altogether unfitted for this calling, and it is an injustice to those who send me out for me to longer continue in it. Some other person might sell their tickets; I cannot. And yet," he said, with a sigh, "what is there that I may do?"

The idea that that strong, well-grown man should have any difficulty in finding something to do surprised me. If he chose to go out and labor with his hands— and surely no man who was willing to wander about selling tickets should object to that— there would be no difficulty in his obtaining a livelihood in our town.

"If you want regular employment," I said, "I think you can easily find it."

"I want it," he answered, his face clouded by a troubled expression, "but I cannot take it."

"Cannot take it!" I exclaimed.

"No," he said, "I am not my own master. I am as much a slave as any negro hereabouts!"

I was rather surprised at this meaningless allusion, but contented myself with asking him what he meant by not being his own master.

He looked on the floor and then he looked at me, with a steady, earnest gaze. "I should like well to tell you my story," he said. "I have been ordered not to tell it, but I have resolved that when I should meet a man to whom I should be moved to speak I would speak."

Now, I felt a very natural emotion of pride. My perception of objects of interest was a quick and a correct one. "Speak on," I said, "I shall be very glad to hear what you have to say."

He looked toward the open door. I arose and closed it. When I had resumed my seat he drew his chair closer to me, leaned toward me, and said:

"In the first place you should know that I am a materialized spirit."

I sat up, hard pressed against the back of my chair.

"Nay, start not," he said, "I am now as truly flesh and blood as you are; but a short three weeks ago I was a spirit in the realms of endless space. I know," he continued, "that my history is a sore thing to inflict upon any man, and there are few to whom I would have broached it, but I will make it brief. Three weeks ago these spiritualists held privately in this town what they call a séance, and at that time I was impelled, by a power I understood not, to appear among them. After I had come it was supposed that a mistake had been made, and that I was not the spirit wanted. In the temporary confusion occasioned by this supposition, and while the attention of the exhibitors was otherwise occupied, I was left exposed to the influence of the materializing agencies for a much longer time than had been intended; so long, indeed, that instead of remaining in the misty, indistinct form in which spirits are presented by these men to their patrons, I became as thoroughly embodied, as full of physical life and energy, and as complete a mortal man as I was when I disappeared from this earth, one hundred and two years ago."

"One hundred and two years!" I mechanically ejaculated. There was upon me the impulse to get up and go where I could breathe the outer air; to find my wife and talk to her about marketing or some household affair, to get away from this being— human or whatever he was— but this was impossible. That interest which dawned upon me when I first perceived my visitor now held me as if it had been a spell.

"Yes," he said, "I deceased in 1785, being then in my thirtieth year. I was a citizen of Bixbury, on the Massachusetts coast, but I am not unconnected with this place. Old Mr. Scott, of your town, is my grandson."

I am obliged to chronicle the fact that my present part in this conversation consisted entirely of ejaculations. "Old Mr. Scott your grandson!" I said.

"Yes," he replied; "my daughter, who was but two years old when I left her, married Lemuel Scott, of Bixbury, who moved to this town soon after old Mr. Scott was born. It was, indeed, on account of this good old man that I became materialized. He was present at the private séance of which I have spoken, and being asked if he would like to see a person from the other world, he replied that he should be pleased to behold his grandfather. When the necessary influences were set to work I appeared. The spiritualists, who, without much thought, had conceived the idea that the grandfather of old Mr. Scott ought, in the ordinary nature of things, to be a very venerable personage, were disappointed when they saw me, and concluded I was one who, by some mistake, had been wrongfully summoned. They, therefore, set me aside, as it were, and occupied themselves with other matters. Old Mr. Scott went away unsatisfied, and strengthened in his disbelief in the powers of the spiritualists, while I, as I have before said, was left unnoticed under the power of the materializing force, until I was made corporeal as I am now. When the spiritualists discovered what had happened they were much disturbed, and immediately set about to dematerialize me, for it is not their purpose or desire to cause departed spirits to again become inhabitants of this world. But all their efforts were of no avail. I remained as much a man as anyone of themselves. They found me in full health and vigor, for I had never had a day's sickness in my life, having come to my death by drowning while foolishly swimming too far from land in a strong ebb tide, and my body, being carried out to sea, was never recovered. Being thus put to their wit's end, they determined to keep the matter privy, and to make the best of it, and the first necessity was to provide me with clothing, for on my second entrance into this world I was as totally without apparel as when I first came into it. They gave me these garments of the ordinary fashion of the day, but to which I find myself much unaccustomed, and enjoined upon me to keep silent in regard to what had happened; fearing, as I was made aware by some unguarded words, that their efforts to dematerialize me might bring them into trouble."

My professional instincts now came to the front. "That would be murder," I said, "and nothing less."

"So I myself told them," he continued, "for I had come to the determination that I would choose to finish out the life I had broken off so suddenly. But they paid little heed to my words and continued their experiments. But, as I have told you, their efforts were without avail, and they have ceased to make further trial of dematerialization. As, of course, it would be impossible to keep a full-grown man for any considerable length of time secluded and unseen, they judged it wise to permit me to appear as an ordinary human being; and having no other use to which they could put me, they set me to selling tickets for them, and in this business I have fared so badly that I shall restore to them these that are left, and counsel them to seek another agent, I being of detriment to them rather than profit. What may then happen I do not know, for, as I told you, I am not my own master."

"I do not understand you," I said. "If you have been, in this unparalleled manner, restored to your physical existence, surely you are free to do as you please. What these spiritualists have done for you was done by accident. They intended you no benefit, and they have no claim upon you."

"That is true," he said, with a sigh, "but they have a hold upon me. It was but yesterday that they informed me that, although, so far, they had failed to restore me to what they call my normal spiritual existence, they had every reason to believe that they soon would be able to do so. A psychic scientist of Germany has discovered a process of dematerialization, and they have sent to him for his formula. This, in a short time, they expect to receive, and they assure me that they will not hesitate to put it in force if I should cause them trouble. Now, sir," he continued, and as he spoke there was a moisture about his eyes, "I am very fond of life. I have been restored to that mortality from which I was suddenly snatched by the cruel sea, and I do not wish to lose it again until I have lived out my natural term of years. My family is one of long life, and I feel that I have a right to fifty more years of existence, and this strong desire for the natural remainder of my life is that which gives these men their power over me. I was never a coward, but I cannot but fear those who may at any moment cause this form, these limbs, my physical state and life, to vanish like a candle-flame blown out."

My sympathies were now strongly aroused in behalf of the subject of these most extraordinary conditions. "That which you fear must not be allowed," I said. "No man has the right to take away the life of another, no matter what plan or method he may use. I will see the spiritualists, and make it plain to them that what they threaten they cannot be allowed to do."

The man arose. "Sir," he said, "I feel that I have truly found a friend. Whatever may happen to me, I shall never forget your kindness to a very stranger." He held out his hand, and I stood up by him and took it. It was as much a flesh and blood hand as my own.

"What is your name?" I asked. "You have not yet told me that."

"I am Amos Kilbright, of Bixbury," he answered.

"You have not revisited your native place?" I said.

"No," he replied, "I much desire to do so, but I have no money for a journey, even on foot, and I doubt me much if those men would suffer me to go to Bixbury."

"And have you spoken to your grandson, old Mr. Scott?" I said. "It is but right that you should make yourself known to him."

"So have I thought," he answered, "and I have felt an earnest drawing toward my daughter's child. I have seen him thrice, but have not had the heart to speak to him and declare myself the progenitor of that mother whose memory I know he cherishes."

"You shall make yourself known to him," I said. "I will prepare the way."

He shook me again by the hand and took his leave without a word. He was deeply affected.

I reseated myself by my table, one thought after another rushing through my mind. Had ever man heard a story such as this! What were all the experiences of the members of the Society for Psychical Research, their stories of apparitions, their instances of occult influences, their best authenticated incidents of supernaturalism compared to this experience of mine! Should I hasten and tell it all to my wife? I hesitated. If what I had heard should not be true—and this, my first doubt or suspicion impressed upon me how impossible to me had been doubt or suspicion during the presence of my visitor—it would be wrong to uselessly excite her mind. On the other hand, if I had heard nothing but the truth, what would happen should she sympathize as deeply with Amos Kilbright as I did, and then should that worthy man suddenly become dematerialized, perhaps before her very eyes? No, I would not tell her— at least not yet. But I must see the spiritualists. And that afternoon I went to them.

The leader and principal worker of the men who were about to give a series of spiritual manifestations in our town was Mr. Corbridge, a man of middle-age with a large head and earnest visage. When I spoke to him of Amos Kilbright he was very much annoyed.

"So he has been talking to you," he said, "and after all the warnings I gave him! Well, he does that sort of thing at his own risk!"

"We all do things at our own risk," I said, "and he has as much right to choose his line of conduct as anybody else."

"No, he hasn't," said Mr. Corbridge, "he belongs to us, and it is for us to choose his line of conduct for him."

"That is nonsense," said I. "You have no more right over him than I have."

"Now then," said Mr. Corbridge, his eyes beginning to sparkle, "I may as well talk plainly to you. My associates and myself have considered this matter very carefully. At first we thought that if this fellow should tell his story we would simply pooh-pooh the whole of it, and let people think he was a little touched in his mind, which would be so natural a conclusion that everybody might be expected to come to it. But as we have determined to dematerialize him, his disappearance would bring suspicion upon us, and we might get into trouble if he should be considered a mere commonplace person. So we decided to speak out plainly, say what we had done, and what we were going to do, and thus put ourselves at the head of the spirit operators of the world. But we are not yet ready to do anything or to make our announcements, and if he had held his tongue we might have given him a pretty long string."

"And do you mean," I said, "that you and your associates positively intend to dematerialize Mr. Kilbright?"

"Certainly," he answered.

"Then, I declare such an act would be inhuman; a horrible crime."

"No," said Mr. Corbridge, "it would be neither. In the first place he isn't human. It is by accident that he is what he is. But it was our affair entirely, and it was a most wonderfully fortunate thing for us that it happened. At first it frightened us a little, but we have got used to it now, and we see the great opportunities that this entirely unparalleled case will give us. As he is, he is of no earthly good to anybody. You can't take a man out of the last century and expect him to get on in any sort of business at the present day. He is too old-fashioned. He doesn't know how we do things in the year eighteen eighty-seven. We put this subject to work selling tickets just to keep him occupied; but he can't even do that. But, as a spirit who can be materialized or dematerialized whenever we please, he will be of the greatest value to us. When a spirit has been brought out as strongly as he has been it will be the easiest thing in the world to do it again. Every time you bring one out the less trouble it is to make it appear the next time you want it; and in this case the conditions are so favorable that it will be absolute business suicide in us if we allow ourselves to lose the chance of working it. So you see, sir, that we have marked out our course, and I assure you that we intend to stick to it."

"And I assure you," said I, rising to go, "that I shall make it my business to interfere with your wicked machinations."

Mr. Corbridge laughed. "You'll find," he said, "that we have turned this thing over pretty carefully, and we are ready for whatever the courts may do. If we are charged with making away with anybody, we can, if we like, make him appear, alive and well, before judge and jury. And then what will there be to say against us? Besides, we are quite sure that no laws can be found against bringing beings from the other world, or sending them back into it, provided it can be proved by the subject's admission, or in any other manner, that he really died once in a natural way. You cannot be tried for causing a man's death a second time."

I was not prepared to make any answer on this point, but I went away with a firm resolution to protect Amos Kilbright in the full enjoyment of his reassumed physical existence, if the power of law, or any other power, could do it.

The next morning Mr. Corbridge called on me at my office. "I shall be very sorry," he said, "if any of my remarks of yesterday should cause unpleasant feelings between us. We are desirous of being on good terms with everybody, especially with members of the Society for Psychical Research. You ought to work with us."

"We do not work with you," I replied, "nor ever shall. Our object is to search earnestly and honestly into the subject of spiritual manifestation, and not to make money out of unfortunate subjects of experiment."

"You misunderstand us," said he, "but I am not going to argue the question. I wish to be on good terms with you and to act fairly and plainly all around. We find that we cannot make use of the dematerialization process as soon as we expected, for the German scientist who controls it has declined to send us his formula, but has consented to come over and work it on this subject himself. His engagements will not allow him to visit this country immediately, but he is very enthusiastic about it, and he is bound to come before long. Now, as you seem to be interested in this ex-Kilbright, we will make you an offer. We will give him into your charge until we want him. He is of no use to us, as he can't tell us anything about spiritual matters, his present memory beginning just where it broke off when he sank in the ocean in seventeen eighty-five, but he might be very useful to a man who was inclined to study up old-time manners and customs. And so, if it suits you, we will make him over to you, agreeing to give you three days' notice before we take any measures to dematerialize him. We are not afraid of your getting away with him, for our power over him will be all the same, no matter where he is."

"I will have no man made over to me," said I, "and Mr. Kilbright being his own master, can do with himself what he pleases; but, as I said before, I shall protect him, and do everything in my power to thwart your schemes against him. And you must remember he will have other friends besides me. He has relatives in this town."

"None but old Mr. Scott, at least so far as I know," said Corbridge, "and he need not expect any help from him, for that ancient personage is a most arrant disbeliever in spiritualism."

And with this remark he took his leave.

That very afternoon came to me Amos Kilbright, his face shining with pleasure. He greeted me warmly, and thanked me for having so kindly offered to give him employment by which he might live and feel under obligations to no man.

I had promised nothing of the kind, and my mind was filled with abhorrence of such men as Corbridge, who would not only send a person into the other world simply to gratify a scientific curiosity or for purposes of profit, but would rehabilitate a departed spirit with all his lost needs and appetites, and then foist him upon a comparative stranger for care and sustenance. Such conduct was not only mean, but criminal in its nature, and if there was no law against it, one ought to be made.

Kilbright then proceeded to tell me how happy he had been when Corbridge informed him that his dematerialization had been indefinitely postponed, and that I had consented to take him into my service. "It is now plain to me," he said, "that they have no power to do this thing and cannot obtain it from others. This discardment of me proves that they have abandoned their hopes."

It was evident that Corbridge had said nothing of the expected coming of the German scientist, and I would not be cruel enough to speak of it myself. Besides, I intended to have said scientist arrested and put under bonds as soon as he set foot on our shores.

"I do not feel," continued Kilbright, "that I am beginning a new life, but that I am taking up my old one at the point where I left it off."

"You cannot do that," I said. "Things have changed very much, and you will have to adapt yourself to those changes. In many ways you must begin again."

"I know that," he said, "and with respect to much that I see about me, I am but a child. But as I am truly a man, I shall begin to do a man's work, and what I know not of the things that are about me, that will I learn as quickly as may be. It is my purpose, sir, to labor with you in any manner which you may deem fit, and in which I may be found serviceable until I have gained sufficient money to travel to Bixbury, and there endeavor to establish myself in some worthy employment. I had at that place a small estate, but of that I shall take no heed. Without doubt it has gone, rightly, to my heirs, and even if I could deprive them of it I would not."

"Have you living heirs besides your grandson here?" I asked.

"That I know not," he said; "but if there be such I greatly long to see them."

"And how about old Mr. Scott?" said I. "When shall we go to him and tell him who you are?"

"I greatly desire that that may be done soon," answered Kilbright, "but first I wish to establish myself in some means of livelihood, so that he may not think that I come to him for maintenance."

Of course it was not possible for me to turn this man away and tell him I had nothing for him to do, and therefore I must devise employment for him. I found that he wrote a fair hand, a little stiff and labored, but legible and neat, and as I had a good deal of copying to do I decided to set him to work upon this. I procured board and lodging for him in a house near by, and a very happy being was Amos Kilbright.

As for me I felt that I was doing my duty, and a good work. But the responsibility was heavy, and my road was not at all clear before me. My principal source of anxiety was in regard to my wife. Should I tell her the truth about my new copyist, or not? In the course of a night I resolved this question and determined to tell her everything. When the man was merely Mr. Corbridge's subject the case was different; but to have daily in my office a clerk who had been drowned one hundred and two years before, and not tell Mrs. Colesworthy of it would be an injustice to her.

When I first made known to her the facts of the case my wife declared that she believed "Psychics" had turned my brain; but when I offered to show her the very man who had been materialized, she consented to go down and look at him. I informed Kilbright that my wife knew his story, and we three had a long and very interesting conversation. After an hour's talk, during which my wife asked a great many questions which I should never have thought of, we went upstairs and left Kilbright to his work.

"His story is a most wonderful one," said Mrs. Colesworthy, "but I don't believe he is a materialized spirit, because the thing is impossible. Still it will not do to make any mistakes, and we must try all we can to help him in case he was drowned when he says he was, and that German comes over to end his mortal career a second time. Science is getting to be such a wicked thing that I am sure if he crosses the ocean on purpose to dematerialize Mr. Kilbright, he will try to do it in some way or other, whether the poor man was ever a spirit before or not. One thing, however, is certain, I want to be present when old Mr. Scott is told that that young man is his grandfather."

Mr. Kilbright worked very assiduously, and soon proved himself of considerable use to me. When he had lived in Bixbury he had been a surveyor and a farmer, and now when he finished his copying duties for the day, or when I had no work of that kind ready for him, it delighted him much to go into my garden and rake and hoe among the flowers and vegetables. I frequently walked with him about the town, showing and explaining to him the great changes that had taken place since the former times in which he had lived. But he was not impressed by these things as I expected him to be.

"It seems to me," he said, "as though I were in a foreign country, and I look upon what lies about me as if everything had always been as I see it. This town is so different from anything I have ever known that I cannot imagine it has changed from a condition which was once familiar to me. At Bixbury, however, I think the case will be otherwise. If there are changes there I shall notice them. In a little place like that, however, I have hopes that the changes will not be great."

He was very conservative, and I could see that in many cases he thought the old ways of doing things much better than the new ones. He was, however, a polite and sensible man, and knew better than to make criticisms to one who had befriended him; but in some cases he could not conceal his disapprobation. He had seen a train of cars before I met him, and I was not able to induce him to approach again a railroad track. Whatever other feelings he may have had at first sight of a train in motion were entirely swallowed up in his abhorrence of this mode of travelling.

"We must not be in a hurry," said my wife when we talked of these matters. "When he gets more accustomed to these things he will be more surprised at them."

There were some changes, however, which truly did astonish him, and these were the alterations— in his opinion entirely uncalled for and unwarrantable— which had been made in the spelling of the words of our language since he had gone to school. No steam-engine, no application of electricity, none of the modern inventions which I showed him, caused him the emotions of amazement which were occasioned by the information that in this country "honor" was now spelled without a u.

During this time Mr. Kilbright's interest in his grandson seemed to be on the increase. He would frequently walk past the house of that old gentleman merely for the purpose of looking at him as he sat by the open window reading his newspaper or quietly smoking his evening pipe on a bench in his side yard. When he had been with me about ten days he said: "I now feel that I must go and make myself known to my grandson. I am earning my own subsistence; and, however he may look upon me, he need not fear that I am come to be a burden upon him. You will not wonder, sir, that I long to meet with this son of the little baby girl I left behind me."

I did not wonder, and my wife and I agreed to go with him that very evening to old Mr. Scott's house. The old gentleman received us very cordially in his little parlor.

"You are a stranger in this town, sir," he said to Kilbright. "I did not exactly catch your name— Kilbright?" he said, when it had been repeated to him, "that is one of my family names, but it is long since I have heard of anyone bearing it. My mother was a Kilbright, but she had no brothers, and no uncles of the name. My grandfather was the last of our branch of the Kilbrights. His name was Amos, and he was a Bixbury man. From what part of the country do you come, sir?"

"My name is Amos, and I was born in Bixbury."

Old Mr. Scott sat up very straight in his chair. "Young man, that seems to me impossible!" he exclaimed. "How could there be any Kilbrights in Bixbury and I not know of it?" Then taking a pair of big silver spectacles from his pocket he put them on and attentively surveyed his visitor, whose countenance during this scrutiny was filled with emotion.

Presently the old gentleman took off his spectacles and, rising from his chair, went into another room. Quickly returning, he brought with him a small oil-painting in a narrow, old-fashioned frame. He stood it up on a table in a position where a good light from the lamp fell upon it. It was the portrait of a young man with a fresh, healthy face, dressed in an old-style high-collared coat, with a wide cravat coming up under his chin, and a bit of ruffle sticking out from his shirt-bosom. My wife and I gazed at it with awe.

"That," said old Mr. Scott, "is the picture of my grandfather, Amos Kilbright, taken at twenty-five. He was drowned at sea some years afterward, but exactly how I do not know. My mother did not remember him at all. And I must say," he continued, putting on his spectacles again, "that there is something of a family likeness between you, sir, and that picture. If it wasn't for the continental clothes in the painting there would be a good deal of resemblance— yes, a very great deal."

"It is my portrait," said Mr. Kilbright, his voice trembling as he spoke. "It was painted by Tatlow Munson in the winter of seventeen eighty, in payment for my surveying a large tract of land north of the town, he having no money to otherwise compensate me. He wrote his name in ink upon the back of the canvas."

Old Mr. Scott took up the picture and turned it around. And there we all saw plainly written upon the time-stained back, "Tatlow Munson, 1780."

Old Mr. Scott laid the picture upon the table, took off his spectacles, and with wide-open eyes gazed first at Mr. Kilbright and then at us.

The sight of the picture had finished the conversion of my wife. "Oh, Mr. Scott," she cried, leaning so far forward in her chair that it seemed as if she were about to go down on her knees before the old man, "this gentleman is your grandfather! Yes, he is, indeed! Oh, don't discard him, for it was you who were the cause of his being here. Don't you remember when you went to the spiritualist meeting, and asked to see the spirit of your grandfather? That spirit came, but you didn't know it. The people who materialized him were surprised when they saw this young man, and they thought he couldn't be your grandfather, and so they didn't say anything about it; and they left him right in the middle of whatever they use, and he kept on materializing without their thinking of him until he became just what you see him now. And if he now wore old-fashioned clothes with a queue, he would be the exact image of that portrait of him which you have, only a little bit older looking and fuller in the face. But the spiritualists made him cut off his long hair, because they said that wouldn't do in these days, and dressed him in those common clothes just like any other person. And oh, dear Mr. Scott, you must see for yourself that he is truly your grandfather!"

Old Mr. Scott made no answer, but still sat with wide-open eyes gazing from one to the other of us. As I looked at that aged, white-haired man and thought of his mother, who must have died ever so long ago, being the daughter of the young man who sat opposite to him, it was indeed difficult to believe that these things could be so.

"Mr. Scott," exclaimed my wife, "will you not speak to him? Will you not give him your hand? Will you not acknowledge him as your grandfather, whose picture you have always had near you, and which, when a little boy, I expect your dear mother has often told you to look up to and try to be like? And if you have grown old, and he has not, on account of differences in circumstances, why should that make any difference in your feelings, dear Mr. Scott? Oh, why don't you let him take you to his heart? I don't see how you can help it," she said, with a sob, "and you his little daughter's only child!"

Old Mr. Scott rose to his feet. He pulled down the sleeves of his coat, and gave an adjusting shake to its collar and lapels. Then he turned to my wife and said: "Madam, let us two dance a Virginia reel while your husband and that other one take the poker and tongs and beat out the music on the shovel. We might as well be durned fools one way as another, and all go to the lunatic asylum together."

Now arose Mr. Kilbright to his feet, and stood up very tall. "Grandson Lemuel," he said, "I leave not your house in anger. I see well that too heavy a task has been laid upon your declining years when you are asked to believe that which you have heard to-day. But I wish you to know that I am here to ask nothing of you save that you will give me your hand. I earnestly crave that I may again touch one of my own flesh and blood."

Old Mr. Scott picked up the portrait and looked at it. Then he laid it down and looked at Mr. Kilbright. "Young man," said he, "can you stand there and put your hand upon your heart, and say to me that you are truly Amos Kilbright, my mother's father, who was drowned in the last century, and who was brought back and turned into a live man by those spiritualists; and that you are willing to come here and let yourself be vouched for by Mr. and Mrs. Colesworthy, who belong to some sort of society of that kind and ought to know about such things?"

I was on the point of remarking that the Society for Psychical Research had nothing to do with spiritualism except to investigate it, but my wife saw my intention and checked me.

Mr. Kilbright put his hand upon his heart and bowed. "What you have heard is true," he said. "On my honor, I swear it."

"Then, grandfather," said old Mr. Scott, "here is my hand. It doesn't do to doubt things in these days. I didn't believe in the telephone when they first told me of it, but when I had a talk with Squire Braddon through a wire, and heard his new boots creak as he came up to see who it was wanted him, and he in his own house a good two miles away, I gave in. 'Fetch on your wonders,' says I, 'I am ready.' And I don't suppose I ought to be any more dumfounded at seeing my grandfather than at any of the other wonders. I'm getting too old now to try to find out the whys and the wherefores of the new things that turn up every day. I must just take them as they come. And so if you, grandfather Kilbright, and our good friends, Mr. and Mrs. Colesworthy, will come into the back room we'll have a cup of tea, and a talk over old times. To be sure, there will be some gaps which none of us will be able to get over, but we must do the best we can."

After this Mr. Kilbright and his grandson saw a good deal of each other, and the old gentleman always treated his mother's father with the respectful deference which was due to such a relative.

"There are times," he once said to me, "when this grandfather business looks to me about as big and tough as anything that any human being was ever called on to swallow. But then I consider that you and Mrs. Colesworthy have looked into these matters, and I haven't, and that knowin' nothin' I ought to say nothin'; and if it ever happens to look particularly tough, I just call to mind the telephone and Squire Braddon's creaking boots, and that settles it."

Mr. Kilbright became more and more useful to me, particularly after he had disciplined his mind to the new style of spelling. And when he had been with me about a month I insisted that he should take a holiday and visit Bixbury, for I knew that to do this was the great desire of his heart. He could easily reach his native place by rail, but believing that he would rather not go at all than travel on a train, I procured a saddle-horse for him, and when I had given him full directions as to the roads, he set out.

In four days he returned. "How did you find Bixbury?" I asked of him.

"There is no longer such a place," he answered, sadly. "I found a town of that name, but it is not the Bixbury in which I was born. That has utterly disappeared."

And, after this, he never again alluded to his native place.

The high character and many admirable qualities of this man daily increased the affectionate regard and esteem in which he was held by my wife and myself; and feeling that we could do nothing better for him than to endeavor to make him forget the things of the past, and take a lively and earnest interest in those of the present, we set ourselves to work upon this task. In a great degree our efforts were successful, and we soon perceived that Mr. Kilbright cared more and more for what he saw about him. It was, indeed, natural that he should do this, for he was still a young man, and able to adapt himself to changes in his surroundings.

As I have said, he gradually did so adapt himself, and in the course of the autumn this adaptation took a form which at first amused Mrs. Colesworthy and myself, and afterward enlisted our hearty sympathy. He became attached to Miss Budworth, the librarian of our town library. He frequently went there for books, and as she was a very intelligent young woman, and very willing to aid him in his selections, it was not strange that he should become interested in her. Very often he would remain at the library until it closed in the evening, when he would walk to her home with her, discoursing upon literary and historical subjects.

My wife and I discussed this situation very thoroughly. Lilian Budworth was a good girl, a sensible one, and a very good-looking one. Her family was highly respectable and her years well proportioned to those of Mr. Kilbright. There seemed to be, therefore, no reason why this intimacy should not be encouraged. But yet we talked over the matter night after night.

"You see," said my wife, "it all seems plain and simple enough; but, on the other hand, it isn't. In the first place, she does not know that he has had a wife, or what old Mr. Scott is to him. He has promised us that he will never say anything to anybody about having lived in the last century without first consulting us; and old Mr. Scott has said over and over again that he doesn't intend to speak of it; and the spiritualists have left town long ago; so, of course, she knows nothing about it. But, if things go on, she must be told, and what will happen then, I would like to know!"

"I am very sorry, indeed, that I cannot tell you," I answered.

"It would be a queer case, anyway," Mrs. Colesworthy continued. "Mr. Kilbright has had a wife, but he never was a widower. Now, having been married, and never having been a widower, it would seem as if he ought not to marry again. But his first wife is dead now, there can be no doubt about that."

It was not long before there was no further need for suppositions in regard to this matter, for Mr. Kilbright came to us and announced that he had determined to offer himself in marriage to Miss Budworth.

"I think it is meet and proper," he said, "that I should wed and take that position at the head of a family which a right-minded and respectable man of my age should fill. I reasoned thus when for the first time I took upon me this pleasing duty, and these reasons have now the self-same weight as then. I have been studying the surveying methods of the present day, and I believe I could re-establish myself in my former profession. Thus could I maintain a wife, if, happily, I get her."

"Get her!" exclaimed Mrs. Colesworthy, "of course you will get her! She can't help accepting you."

"I should feel the more hope, madam," said Mr. Kilbright, "were it not requisite that she be informed of all that has happened to me. And all this must she know before I require her to make answer to me."

"I must admit," I said, "that I am afraid you are going to have a tough job."

"I don't believe it!" warmly exclaimed my wife. "Lilian Budworth is a girl of good, solid sense, and when she knows just exactly what has happened, it is my opinion she will not object a bit."

"Madam," said Mr. Kilbright, "you greatly embolden me, and I shall speak to Miss Budworth this very day."

Notwithstanding my wife's confidence in Miss Lilian's good sense, she was as much surprised as I when, the next morning, Mr. Kilbright informed us that he had been accepted. As it was yet an hour before the library would open, she hurried around to Miss Budworth's home to know all about it.

The young lady was found, pale, but very happy. "When he left me last night," she said, "my mind was in a strange hubbub. He had told me that he loved me, and had asked me to marry him, and my heart would not let me say anything but 'yes;' and yet, after he had gone, his wondrous story came up before me as it had not come when he told it, having just told something else. I did not sleep all night, thinking of it. I have read and pondered a great deal upon these subjects, but have never been able to make up my mind whether or not to put faith in the strange spiritual manifestations of which we are told. So I determined, a good while ago, not to consider the matter at all. I could do nothing with it, and it would be better that I should let it alone. To this same determination I came early this morning in the case of Mr. Kilbright. None of us know what we may once have been, nor what we may become. All we know is what we are. Mr. Kilbright may be mistaken as to what he was, but I know what he is. And to that man I give myself as I am. I am perfectly satisfied with the present."

Mrs. Colesworthy enfolded her in an approbatory embrace, and hurried home to tell me about it. "There now!" she exclaimed, "didn't I say that Lilian Budworth was a girl of good, sound common-sense?"

"That is what you said," I answered, "but I must admit that I was afraid her common-sense would interfere with her acceptance of his story. We had outside evidence in regard to it, but she had only his simple statement."

"Which is quite enough, when a woman truly loves," said Mrs. Colesworthy.

When old Mr. Scott was informed what had happened, he put down his newspaper, took off his spectacles, and smiled a strange, wide smile. "I have been reading," he said, "about a little machine, or box, that you can talk into and then cork up and send by mail across the ocean to anybody you know there. And then he can uncork it, and out will come all you have said in your very words and voice, with the sniffles and sneezes that might have got in accidental. So that if one of the Old Testament Egyptians that they've been diggin' up lately had had one of these boxes with him it might have been uncorked and people could have heard in his own voice just who he was and what was his personal opinion of Moses and his brother Aaron. Now, when an old man like me has just come to know of a thing of this kind, it isn't for him to have a word to say when he is told that Lilian Budworth is to be his step-grandmother; he must take it in along with the other wonders."

As to Mr. Kilbright and his lady-love they troubled themselves about no wonders. Life was very real to them, and very delightful; and they were happy. Despite her resolutions to give no consideration whatever to her lover's previous existence, Miss Budworth did consider it a good deal, and talked and thought about it, and at last came to understand and appreciate the fact as thoroughly as did Mrs. Colesworthy and myself; and she learned much more of Mr. Kilbright's former life than his modesty had allowed him to tell us. And some of these things she related with much pride. He had been a soldier during the Revolution, having enlisted, at the age of twenty-three, under General Sullivan, when his forces lay near Newport. He afterward followed that commander in his Indian campaigns in Western New York, and served during the rest of the war. It was when the army was in winter quarters in 1780 that Tatlow Munson painted his portrait in payment of an old debt. Miss Budworth's glowing rendition of Mr. Kilbright's allusions to some of the revolutionary incidents in which he had had a part, made us proud to shake hands with a man who had fought for our liberties and helped to give us the independence which we now enjoy.

Mr. Kilbright's business prospects soon began to look promising. As was quite natural, his ideas upon some subjects were a little antiquated. But, although many of the changes and improvements he saw about him met with no favor in his eyes, he had sense enough to take advantage of certain modern progressive ideas, especially such as related to his profession of surveying. My introduction of him as a friend from Bixbury helped him much in respect to patronage, and having devoted all his spare time during the autumn and winter to study and the formation of business connections, he secured enough profitable employment for the coming season to justify him in taking to himself a wife; and his marriage with Miss Budworth was appointed for the middle of April.

It was about the end of March when I received a letter from Mr. Corbridge, the spiritualist manager, in which he informed me that Dr. Hildstein, the German scientist, of whom he had previously spoken to me, had set sail for America and would probably arrive in about ten days. "As soon as possible after his arrival," wrote Mr. Corbridge, "we shall resume possession of the subject of whom you have been kind enough to take charge during the time when we had no need of him. He will then be dematerialized in order that we may cause him to manifest himself in our séances whenever it may be desirable; but never, I may say, in the complete and perfect physical condition to which he was unintentionally materialized the first time. I promised you that I would give you at least three days' notice of our intention to resume work on this subject, and I have now been much better than my word. I have written very plainly of our intentions, because we wish you to understand exactly what we are going to do; and should we succeed in our proposed experiment, which we certainly expect to do, we shall, probably, make public our whole action in the affair, for this course would most greatly benefit both ourselves and our cause. It will not be necessary for you to inform the subject of our intention, for our power over him will be as great at one time and at one place as at another; and as his co-operation is not in any way needful, you will see for yourself that it will be pleasanter for him not to concern himself with what we are about to do."

When I had read this letter, I sat for half an hour with it open in my hands. It came upon me like a shower of iced water. I had supposed that the spiritualists had utterly abandoned their endeavors to dematerialize Mr. Kilbright. Therefore, the news of the revival of these criminal intentions greatly shocked me. To be sure, the coming scientist might have no such power as he pretended to possess, but this supposition did not comfort me. If the man had not already had success in that sort of thing it is not likely that he would come over here to attempt it now.

When I had sufficiently quieted my mental agitation I wrote instantly to Mr. Corbridge, and in my letter I assumed a very confident tone. I told him that Mr. Kilbright's circumstances had so changed that the intended action of the spiritualists in regard to him was now rendered impossible. He had become an active member of society, had gone into business, and would be married in April. The mere statement of these facts would, I felt quite certain— so I wrote— cause the spiritualists to instantly relinquish all idea of carrying out their previous intention in regard to this most estimable man. If, however, any inhuman craving for scientific investigation should cause them to persist in their cruel and criminal designs, the utmost power of the law should be invoked against them. "To take away human life," I wrote, "in a case like this is murder, no matter how it is done, and should you take away Mr. Kilbright's life, or even attempt it, you shall be indicted and punished for this cold-blooded and premeditated crime."

Before I had read this letter, I found it absolutely necessary for my peace of mind that I should make my wife acquainted with the threatened danger, and confer with her as to what it would be well to do. Of course, Mrs. Colesworthy was greatly shocked when I read her Corbridge's letter, but she recovered courage sooner than I had done.

"It's all stuff and nonsense," she said. "The man is just as much alive as you and I are, and I don't believe any human power can turn him into a spirit. They might kill him, but then he would be a dead man and not a spiritual mist or vapor. I don't believe they even intend to try to do anything of the kind. They merely wish you to hand him over to them so they can make him work for them for little or no pay. They think, and with good reason, too, that by this time you have taught him how to get along at the present day, and that he may now be of some use to them."

I showed her the letter I had written, and she highly approved of it. "If I were you," she said, "I would send that letter, and then I would not do another thing. Take my word for it, you will never hear from those people again."

We resolved, of course, that we would say nothing to Mr. Kilbright or Lilian about this matter, for it was unwise to needlessly trouble their minds; but we could not help talking about it a great deal ourselves. In spite of the reassuring arguments which we continually thought of, or spoke of to each other, we were troubled, anxious, and apprehensive.

"If we could only get them safely married," said Mrs. Colesworthy, "I should feel at ease. Certainly those people would not do anything to him then."

"I don't believe they can do anything to him at all," I answered. "But how a marriage is going to protect him I cannot imagine."

"Of course, you can't explain such things," said my wife, "but I do wish they were married and settled."

Not long after this she came to me with a supposition. "Supposing," she said, "that those people find it impossible to dematerialize him, they might do something which would be a great deal worse."

"What could that possibly be?" I asked.

"They might materialize his first wife," said she, "and could anything be more dreadful than that? I suppose that woman lived to a good old age, and to bring her forward now would be a height of cruelty of which I believe those people to be fully capable."

"My dear," I exclaimed, "don't bring up any harrowing possibilities which no one but yourself is likely to think of."

"I wish I could be sure of that," she said. "I have heard, but I don't know how true it is, that spirits cannot be called up and materialized unless somebody wants them, and I don't suppose there is anybody who wants the first Mrs. Kilbright. But these men might so work on Mr. Kilbright's mind as to make him think that he ought to want her."

I groaned. "Dear me!" I said. "I suppose if they did that they would also bring up old Mr. Scott's mother, and then we should have a united family."

"And a very funny one it would be," said my wife, smiling, notwithstanding her fears, "for now I remember that old Mr. Scott told me that his grandmother died before she was sixty, but that his mother lived to be seventy-five. Now, he is eighty, if he is a day, so there would be a regular gradation of ages in the family, only it would run backward instead of in the usual way. But, thinking it over, I don't believe the spiritualists will permanently bring up any more of that family. If they did, they would have to support them, for they could not ask old Mr. Scott to do it, who hasn't money enough to satisfy his descendants, and ought not to be expected to support his ancestors."

My letter must have had a good deal of effect upon Mr. Corbridge, for in less than a week after it was written he came into my office. He informed me that he and his associates were about to give a series of séances in our town, but that he had come on before the others in order to talk to me. "I am extremely sorry," he said, "to hear of this proposed marriage. We want to do what is right and fair, and we have no desire that any act of ours shall create a widow."

"Then," I exclaimed, "you relinquish your design against Mr. Kilbright?"

"Not at all," said he. "We shall carry out our plan before our subject marries. If you choose to hurry up matters and have the wedding take place before we are ready to proceed with our dematerializing process, we shall be very sorry, but the blame must rest on you. You should have had consideration enough for all parties to prevent any such complication as an engagement to marry. As to what you said in your letter in regard to invoking the law against us, I attach no weight whatever to that threat."

"You will find you have made a great mistake," said I, angrily, "when I have brought the law to bear upon you, which now I shall not delay to do."

"You will merely bring ridicule upon yourself," he said, "if you assert that the man you wish to protect is Amos Kilbright. We can prove by records, still to be seen in Bixbury, that said person died in seventeen eighty-five. On the other hand, if you choose to assert that he is, or was, anybody else, how are you going to prove it? All that you can say is that the person you refer to came from, you knew not where, and has gone, you know not where. If you declare that at one time he was a materialized spirit, you know very well how such a statement as that would be received in a court of law. It will be much wiser to let it be supposed that the person who has lately been seen about this town has run off to Canada, than to make any sort of legal inquiry into the matter. If said person were really a man we could have nothing to do with his disappearance, while if he were a materialized spirit the law would have nothing to do with him."

I arose and paced the floor. There was entirely too much force in this man's arguments, but, although I could not immediately answer him, his cool determination to persevere in his iniquitous designs so angered me that I declared that he should be punished if I had to do it myself.

"Then you admit," he said, with a smile, "that the law cannot do it. The situation," he continued, "is very plain to us. Although the law can take no cognizance of our action, the case will be very different with all believers in spiritualism, and those who are interested in us. The news that we have done this thing will spread through the spiritualistic circles of the world."

"Has your German arrived?" I asked, abruptly.

"Not yet," answered Corbridge, "but we expect him in a few days. He will come directly to this town, because we wish to give him an opportunity of observing the subject in his present form before beginning the dematerializing process."

"What refinement of cruelty!" I exclaimed.

"Oh, of course, the doctor will not make himself known," said Corbridge. "He will merely wish to take a good look at the subject, and see for himself how perfect his materialization has been. Then he will know just what work is before him."

And, so saying, Mr. Corbridge went away, leaving me too angry to speak, if, indeed, I could have thought of anything which it would have been worth my while to say.

When Mrs. Colesworthy heard what Corbridge had said, she turned white. "They must be married instantly!" she exclaimed. "I knew that was the only way."

It was all very well to talk of an immediate marriage, but it was not so easy to bring it about. It was yet a week before the day fixed for the wedding, and the happy lovers were busy with their preparations, never dreaming of the danger which hung over them. What reason could we give for hastening the marriage rites? At one time we thought it might be wise to explain to them fully the state of the case, but from this course we were deterred for fear of the terrible effect that the news might have on Lilian. Should she hear of the design of Dr. Hildstein, she would never again have a moment's peace, married or unmarried. Once I advised that the two be dissuaded from marrying, at least for a year. In that time we could see if these people really had any power over Mr. Kilbright.

"That will not do at all," said Mrs. Colesworthy. "It will be very long to postpone their happiness; and besides, if that German gets hold of Mr. Kilbright while he is still unmarried, he will snap him up, or rather, blow him out in no time."

"I thought we had persuaded ourselves," I said, sadly, "that no one could have any real power of dematerialization."

"So we had," said she, "but that sort of persuasion does not always last."

The result was that we did nothing but hope for the best. But we could not blame ourselves, for, really, there was nothing else to do. I had given up all idea of endeavoring to put Mr. Corbridge and his associates under legal restriction, because if they had power to do the evil we feared, they could do it in one place as well as another, and no court could determine when, how, or by whom Mr. Kilbright had been dematerialized.

The day before the wedding-day the German doctor arrived in our town; and, having heard this, I went immediately to the hotel where Mr. Corbridge and his party were staying. The spiritualistic manager was not glad to see me, and frankly said so.

"I had hoped," he remarked, "that you had concluded to keep out of this thing. It is no concern of yours; you can be of no possible good to anybody; and the wisest thing you can do will be to drop it."

I assured him that I had no intention of dropping it, and that I should do everything in my power to protect Mr. Kilbright.

"Then, again," continued Corbridge, "there is really no need of giving yourself all this worry. Dr. Hildstein may succeed, and he may not. We have failed, and so may he. He has seen the subject, and has come to a very philosophical and sensible conclusion in regard to him. He will not believe, merely on our assertion, that the man is a materialized spirit. He will proceed with his experiments, and if they fail he will consider that the man is a man, and was never anything else. If they succeed, then he will be quite satisfied that he had a perfect right to dematerialize what we had materialized."

"Then you really believe," I said, "that there is a chance that he may fail?"

"Of course there is," said Corbridge. "I do not know his methods, and there may be nothing in them."

I had no doubt that this change of tone in Corbridge was intended to produce in me a feeling of security, that they might thus rid themselves of me. But, though I saw through his purpose, the man's words encouraged me. Of course there must be a good deal of doubt about the German's powers; and, after all, there might be no cause whatever for our anxieties.

"Now, sir," said Corbridge, as I left, "if I were you I would trouble myself no more about this matter. If Dr. Hildstein fails, you will still have your man to do your copying, or your surveying, or anything you like. If he succeeds, we are all in the same condition we were a year ago. 'That subject did not exist at that time; he does not exist at this time;' that will be all we shall have to say about it."

"You forget," I said, severely, "the wife he may leave behind him."

"I have nothing to say about that," said Corbridge, rather sharply. "It is a reprehensible business, and I have nothing to do with it."

I went away without seeing the German doctor, but as I heard he spoke no English, and as I did not know German, an interview with him would have been of no avail.

Neither Mrs. Colesworthy nor myself slept that night; we were so filled with anxious fears. But when the day broke, bright and clear, and I had hurried round to Mr. Kilbright's lodgings, and had found him as full of life and vigor as I had ever seen him, we were greatly comforted, and ate our breakfasts with fair appetites.

"If it had been a dark and lowering day," said my wife, "I don't believe I could have swallowed a mouthful."

The marriage was to take place at noon, and the happy pair were to start by the first afternoon train for the sea-shore, where they were to spend a week. Mr. Kilbright hated locomotives and railroads almost as much as ever, but he had told me some time before that he intended to conquer this prejudice, if such a thing were possible.

"Being one of you, I must do as you do," he had said.

The wedding was to be a very simple one. Miss Budworth was to go from her mother's house to the church, where Mr. Kilbright was to meet her. We insisted that he should dress at our house, where he would find better accommodations than at his lodgings; and we assigned him our best guest-room, where he repaired in very good season, to array himself in his wedding suit.

It was not quite eleven o'clock when I went upstairs to see if I could be of any use to Mr. Kilbright in regard to the conclusion of his toilette. I knocked at the door, but received no answer. Waiting a few moments, I opened it and entered. On the floor, in front of a tall dressing-glass, was a suit of clothes. Not only did I see the black broadcloth suit—not laid out at length, but all in a compact heap—but I saw the shoes and stockings, the collar and cravat; everything. Near by lay a whisk broom.

The truth was plain. While giving the last touches to his wedding attire, all that was Amos Kilbright had utterly disappeared!

I stood where I had stopped, just inside the door, trembling, scarcely breathing, so stunned by the terrible sight of those clothes that I could not move, nor scarcely think. If I had seen his dead body there I should have been shocked, but to see nothing! It was awful to such an extent that my mind could not deal with it!

Presently I heard a step, and slightly turning, saw my wife close by me. She had passed the open door, and seeing me standing as if stricken into a statue, had entered.

It did not need that I should speak to her. Pale as a sheet she stood beside me, her hand tightly grasping my arm, and with her lips pallid with horror, she formed the words: "They have done it!"

In a few moments she pulled me gently back, and said, in quick, low tones, as if we had been in presence of the dead: "In less than an hour she will be at the church. We must not stay here."

With this she turned and stepped quickly from the room. I followed, closing the door behind me.

Swiftly moving, and without a word, my wife put on her hat and left the house. Mechanically I followed. I could speak no word of comfort to that poor girl, at this moment the happiest of expectant brides. I knew that I had not the power to even attempt to explain to her the nature of the dreadful calamity that had fallen upon her. But I could not let my wife go alone. She, indeed, must speak to Lilian, but there were other members of the family; I might do something.

To my great surprise, Mrs. Colesworthy did not turn into the street which led to the Budworths' house, but went straight on. I thought at first she was going to the church to countermand the wedding preparations. But before I could put a question to her she had gone around a corner, and was hurrying up the steps of the principal hotel in our town.

"Is Dr. Hildstein in?" she asked of the first person she met.

The man, gazing astonished at her pallid face, replied that he was, and immediately conducted us to a little parlor on the first floor, the door of which stood partly open. Without knocking, Mrs. Colesworthy hastily entered, I closely following. A middle-aged man suddenly arose from a small table at which he was sitting, and turning quickly toward us, made an abrupt exclamation in German.

As I have said, I do not understand German, but Mrs. Colesworthy knows the language well, and, stepping up to the man, she said (she afterward told me the meaning of the words that passed between them): "Are you Dr. Hildstein?"

"I am," he said, his face agitated by emotion, and his eyes sparkling, "but I can see no one, speak to no one! I go out this moment to observe the result of an important experiment!"

My wife motioned to me to close the door. "You need not go," she said, "I can tell you that your experiment has succeeded. You have dematerialized Mr. Kilbright. In one hour he was to be married to a noble, loving woman; and now all that remains where he stood is a pile of clothes!"

"Do you tell me that?" exclaimed the doctor, wildly seizing his hat.

"Stop!" cried Mrs. Colesworthy, her face glowing with excitement, her eyes flashing, and her right arm extended. "Stir not one step! Do you know what you have done?"

"I have done what I had a right to do!" exclaimed the doctor, almost in a shout. "If he is gone he was nothing but a spirit. Tell me where—"

"I will tell you this!" exclaimed my wife. "He was a great deal more than a spirit. He was a man engaged to be married at twelve o'clock this day. You may think there is no law that will sweep down on you, but I tell you there is; and before the clock strikes twelve you shall know it. Do you imagine you have come upon a people who will endure the presence of an ogre? a wretch, who reduces to nothing a fellow human being, and calls it an experiment? When we tell what you have done— my husband cannot speak German, but he is a leader in this town, and he supports me in all I say— when we have told what you have done there will be no need of courts, or judges, or lawyers for you. Like a wild beast you will be hunted down; you will be trampled under foot; you will be torn to pieces! Fire, the sword, the hangman's noose, clubs, and crowbars will not be enough to satisfy the vengeance of an outraged people upon a cold-blooded wretch who came to this country solely for the purpose of perpetrating a crime more awful than anything that was ever known before! Did you ever hear of lynching? I see by your face you know what that means. You are in the midst of a people who, in ten short minutes, will be shrieking for your blood!"

The man's face changed, and he looked anxiously at me. I did not know what my wife had been saying, but I had seen by her manner that she had been threatening him, and I shook my uplifted fist.

"Now heed what I say," cried Mrs. Colesworthy, "if you do not wish to perish at the hands of an infuriated mob; to die a thousand deaths before your vile spirit leaves this world, knowing that, besides the torments you feel, and those which are to come, you will be in the power of men who will bring you back in a half-finished form to make sport at their meetings whenever they feel like it—"

Drops of perspiration stood on the doctor's face. "Stop that!" he cried, throwing up his arm. "I cannot stand that! I did not know the subject had such friends!"

"Nothing shall be stopped!" exclaimed my wife, "and everything shall happen unless you immediately sit down at that table, or wherever you do those things, and rematerialize Mr. Kilbright, just as you found him, and into the very clothes that were left lying upon the floor!"

The doctor stepped forward— his face was now pale— and addressed himself very deferentially to my wife, totally ignoring me. "If you will retire," he said, "I will try; I swear to you that I will try."

"There is not a minute to be lost," said Mrs. Colesworthy, "not one second. And, if as much as a finger-nail is missing, remember what I have told you!"

And with this we quickly left the room.

As we went down the steps of the hotel Mrs. Colesworthy looked at her watch. "It is twenty-five minutes to twelve," she said. "We must get home as fast as we can."

We hurried along, sometimes almost running. When we reached our house, Mrs. Colesworthy motioned to me to go upstairs. She had no breath left with which to speak. I ran up, and stood for a moment at the closed door of our guest-room. With my hand on the knob, I was unable to open it. I heard a step on the stairs behind me, and I opened the door.

There stood Mr. Kilbright in his wedding clothes, with the whisk-broom in his hand.

He turned at the sound of my entrance.

"Do you know," cried the cheery voice of my wife, from just outside the door, "that we have barely fifteen minutes in which to get to the church?"

"Can that be?" cried Mr. Kilbright. "The time has flown without my knowing it. We must truly make haste!"

"Indeed we must," said Mrs. Colesworthy, and as she stepped back from the door, she whispered in my ear: "Not a look, not a tremble to let him know!"

In less than thirty seconds we were on our way to the church, in the carriage which had been ordered for the purpose.

On the church porch we found old Mr. Scott. He was dressed in his best clothes, and greeted us cordially. "In good time," he said. "I am glad to see that. It promises well." And then, looking around to see that no one was within hearing, he came nearer to us. "If I were you," he continued, "I wouldn't say nothin' to folks in general about relationships, for there are people, and very good people, too, whose minds haven't got on far enough to make 'em able to understand telephones and the other new kinds of wonders."

We acknowledged the force of his remarks, and all went into the church.

Three days after the departure of Mr. and Mrs. Kilbright on their wedding tour, my wife received a letter from Dr. Hildstein, written by himself from New York, but addressed in the handwriting of Mr. Corbridge.

"I return," he wrote, "to Germany, perfectly happy in having succeeded in my experiments; but nevermore, esteemed lady, will I dematerialize a subject who has remained long enough in this world to make friends, and I am the only man who can do this thing."

This letter greatly satisfied us. "It shows that he has some heart, after all," said Mrs. Colesworthy, "but as to that man Corbridge, I believe he would have kept poor Mr. Kilbright dancing backward and forward between this world and the other as long as a dollar could be made out of him. But there is only one way in which he can do us any harm now, and that is by materializing the first Mrs. Kilbright; but, knowing us, as he now does, I don't believe he will ever try that."

"No," said I, "I don't believe he ever will."

Should you ever meet with Mr. Amos Kilbright, you need not hesitate to entrust him with any surveying you may have on hand. Mr. Corbridge cannot dematerialize him, the German scientist will not, and there is no one else in the world who would even think of such a thing. Therefore, you need feel no fear that he may suddenly vanish from your sight, leaving nothing behind him but his clothes and the contents of his pockets; unless, indeed, he should again be so foolish as to go to swim in the ocean at a point where there is a strong ebb tide.

_______________

12: Dematerialization

(A travesty on Stockton's "Amos Kilbright.")

C. Mason

fl 1900-1918

The Black Cat Oct 1900

I can discover nothing about this parody writer except two published short works, this one in 1900 and another in 1918. Stockton's 1888 tale was so popular that this "travesty" appeared just 2 years later.

A FAIR young thing, with tender blue eyes, entered Woodworth's office and calmly seated herself. A glance at her portfolio impelled him to seek refuge in the cool brick vault of his neighbor across the passage, Barker, who called himself a ba.Qker, but the lady barred the way.

"No," he said desperately, without waiting to be interrogated, "I don't want to subscribe for a History of the War, nor Lives of the Candidates, nor Picturesque Anything."

"But, honored sir," replied the mild, simple and rather simpering young person, "I do not ask you to subscribe for anything, unless, indeed, you would honor me by taking a ticket—"

"Ticket nothing!'' again interrupted Woodworth. "I've no leisure for amusements. My time is all taken up with my profession— and science."

"Ah, that is what drew me hither!" beamed the beautiful girl. "I perceived by your sign that you were a lawyer, and I have heard that you are a member— a prominent one— of the Psychical Research Society. In one or both capacities I think you can do me an inestimable service."

Woodworth, touched at two vulnerable points, unbent.

"You see, kind sir," she continued, "that I am a materialized spirit. My manager, Mr. Shockton, who is stopping at the hotel— here is his card— called me forth from the spirit world by mistake for Martha Washington, with whom I was contemporaneous."

Woodworth had noticed the antique style and courtly bearing of his lovely visitor.

"He delayed so long in endeavoring to correct his error," she went on, "that, instead of remaining in the misty, indistinct form in which spirits are preferably presented, I became as thoroughly substantial as when I was before on earth, one hundred and thirty years ago."

"Upon my word, young lady— or venerable dame—" the lawyer corrected with halting courtesy, "this is a very extra ordinary statement. Do you know that you render yourself liable to prosecution for obtaining money under false pretences when you attempt to sell tickets on such a tale as that?"

She smiled trustingly. "No, sir, I did not know that. Indeed, I am only beginning to learn the strange things of your wonderful century-but I like them very much. Though my familiarity with the distaff and spindle, the needle and quill pen will no longer afford me a livelihood, I have an ardent longing to learn the sewing machine or the typewriter— and become a New Woman. I am most anxious to resume the life prematurely cut short in 1770, in my eighteenth year, when I died from what was erroneously diagnosed as a quinsy. I have reason to believe that, had I been properly treated for diphtheria with an antitoxin serum, I would have lived to a good old age."

"What is there to prevent you from doing so now?" asked Woodworth, touched and interested immeasurably by his singular client.

"Because my master— for so I must call him— Mr. Shockton, who brought me from the other world, is determined to send me back. I fear that, from mercenary motives, he means to dematerialize me at his very next seance."

Woodworth hurriedly thought of all known legal processes, but neither habeas corpus, ne exeat, nor any other writ with which he was familiar seemed a remedy against the peculiar form of extradition proposed by Shockton.

Putting on his hat, he exclaimed: "You sit right there while I interview this tyrant, Miss beg your pardon?"

"Amy Alright was my name before," she answered sweetly.

Finding the spiritual manager in his improvised office at the hotel, the lawyer addressed him by name, saying:

"I warn you to desist from your persecution of my client, Miss Amy Alright. She is perfectly satisfied with 'this mundane sphere,' as the reporters call it, and intends to remain here. I shall take steps to enjoin you from making her the subject of further experiment."

"Take a ticket," was Shockton's cordial response, thrusting out a card. "One dollar, please; 7.30 this evening. We are going to dematerialize the chit this very night, and if it doesn't come off, call me all the liars you like. Next!"

"One moment, Mr. Shockton," said Woodworth severely. "I understand you to say that you intend to dematerialize, which I suppose means to disembody— to cause to disappear—"

"Into thin air— evaporate— vamose!" answered the medium, in a business-like tone.

"Cause to disappear a person now living? That, my dear sir, is murder!"

"Wrong!" replied Shockton. "Who is this girl? where does she hail from? She has been dead one hundred and thirty years. Can' t kill a person twice, you know. What good is she, anyhow? She's way behind the times— can't even sell a ticket to her own dematerialization."

"Then you are determined to dematerialize the lady again?" demanded Woodworth, somewhat demoralized.

"Sure; come and see for yourself. Take a ticket, and one for your wife."

"I shall certainly come— with the police. You insist on making this preposterous experiment?"

"Fact. But tell you what I'll do. You may take the young woman -lock her up-do anything you like with her, and I'll bet you a cool hundred I'll dematerialize her all the same."

Woodworth clutched at this proposition— he began to see a way out.

THE PSYCHICAL Research Society was hastily summoned in special session, and Amy Alright was introduced to President Barker and the members. Her frankness and timidity convinced the most sceptical among them that she, at least, was innocent of collusion with the medium. She appeared terribly to dread the threats of Shockton.

"Oh, gentlemen," she pleaded, "put me under ground; put me in some strong place, where it will be impossible to get at me. I am so tired of being a spirit. Don't let me be dematerialized again!"

Provided with a lunch from the hotel, wrapped in napkins, she was smuggled into Barker's Bank— it was dignified by that name in the village— and locked into its roomy old brick vault, and a committee signed an affidavit to that effect.

Then all the Psychical people attended Shockton's seance. It was very long and very mysterious. For two hours the audience— they could not be called spectators— sat in darkness, listening to soft music and waiting for Amy Alright to appear.

At last there came a gentle tapping.

"Ah, ha!" exclaimed Shockton, "she comes! Who goes there ?"

"The spirit of Mistress Amy Alright, who died of the quinsy in 1770."

"Are you in the flesh, or in the spirit?"

"A spirit, alas! Oh, woe is me!"

"There you are, gentlemen!" said Shockton, switching on the light. "Now produce your Amy, if you can."

The audience, led by the Psychical Research committee, trooped back to Barker's Bank.

Heavens! The man had won his bet Amy had dematerialized after all.

So had the contents of the bank!

The only material evidences remaining of the guileless girl and her work were the crumbs of her luncheon, the napkins in which it had been wrapped, and a hotel table knife— snapped short off— which had served as a screwdriver. The big, old-style locks, with their screws, lay on the floor.

"O Blavatsky!" groaned Barker, "what idiots we have been!"

__________

13: The Cataleptic

Ernest Favenc

1845-1908

Evening News (Sydney) 4 Jan 1896

'WHAT'S the name that they call it when a man goes stiff and dead-like, and can't move or speak? Dog— something, isn't it?' asked Jim.

'Catalepsy, I suppose you mean.'

'Ah! I knew it was something either about a dog or a cat. Well, we had a fellow out west who used to go that way— or, at least, he did once on that station. It gave us all a turn, I can tell you, when, we woke up one morning and found him in his bunk as dead as a doornail, to all appearance. It was blazing hot weather, so there was nothing to do but bury him as soon as possible. Some of the fellows started to knock up a coffin, and two of us dig a grave in the softest patch we could find.

Now, there was a fellow on the place putting in time as store and book keeper. He had been pretty fast in his day, and gone to the dogs. He had been brought up as a doctor, but had never passed, for he did something disgraceful, and had to clear out; so he got lower and lower, until at last the boss, who knew something about his people, took him on to the station, to knock about there for a year or two, and see if he would steady down a bit.

Young Pills had looked at Lanty— that was the name of the man — and pronounced him a corpse; but when we had the grave dug and the coffin made, and everything ready including a prayer-book, Pills went and had. another look at Lanty, and he said, "I don't believe this man's dead at all; he's in a cataleptic (yes, I remember now, that's the word) trance." He called the boss over, and he pointed out a lot of things that should have happened if Lanty had been a real corpse, but as they hadn't happened it showed he was only a sham corpse.

' "Why couldn't you have found this out before?" said the boss. "Here we've got a grave and a coffin steady for nothing; I've a good mind to utilise them on you."

'Pills said at wasn't his fault, as no one could tell at first, and perhaps the man might die after all.

' "And, how long1 before be comes to, or dies?"

' "You must have somebody always with him, and at the first sign of life he must be helped to sit up, and, if possible, got to swallow something. When he, begins to smell you can bury him."

'So one of us sat by Lanty all that day, and we had some weak brandy and water ready for him against his waking up.

'When night came on we put a young galoot of a stringybarker on to take the first watch— a real myall, who'd never seen a town bigger than Dustburra in his life. He was to call on of us at once if anything happened, and he did with a vengeance.

'Seems this youngster got nervous like when we all went to sleep and, left him all alone with a dead man, as he supposed, for he knew nothing about cataleptic trances, and after a bit he got looking at the brandy and water, and wondering if it would give him a little Dutch courage. The man was dead, and would never want it. He took hold of the pannikin, and was about to drink it, when a deep sigh startled him. He looked round. Lanty was sitting up in his bunk, looking at him, with a ghastly smile.

' "That's mine," he said, indicating the brandy and water. Next moment that young greenhider was racing down the paddock, yelling "Fire! Blacks! Murder! Help!" and all manner of things.

'We woke up with a start, and without troubling about the young fool, who fell over a stump and lay there until daylight, we turned to and fixed Lanty up, and some of us went to put the coffin out of sight and filled the  grave up, for fear it should hurt his feelings. He had a good quiet sleep for the rest of the night, and in the morning he told us of his experiences.

'He said that even though he was lying there without being able to stir, he knew all that was passing; that it was something worse than awful when we were going to bury him, and that, as for Pills, he would never forget his stoping his premature burial.

'Lanty got round soon enough, and Pills warned him that if he went on to a strange station he must tell them that he was liable to these seizures, or he would be whipped underground before he knew, where he was.

'In the course of time Lanty shifted to the next station as boundary rider, where, of course, they knew all about him. He said goodbye to Pills before he left, and almost cried as he remarked, 'I shall send, for you if anything goes wrong again.  Then he went away sobbing.

'Some time after that we were mustering, and Pills came with us for a bit of a change. We were camped about fifteen  miles from the station that Lanty was boundary-riding  on, and just towards one morning we were awakened by a great shout of "Help!"

'We all sat up and listened. I remember the scene well, for the morning star was shining like a moon in the grey dawn to the east.

'Suddenly Pills cried out, "Did you hear  that?" We listened, but heard nothing but the horse-bells. "There it is again," he cried, "Don't you hear it?  He's crying out, 'They are going to bury me alive. Come quick!'  It is Lanty calling. Come, Jim, to the horses."

'Now, I will say this of those ne'er-do-well chaps, that when there is any trouble on, and a little bit of daredevil work to do, they are all there.

'Pills collared the first horse he came to and I took another, and we jumped on them bare-backed, and he was for racing off like that. I said,  "No, we shall make more haste in reality by going up for our saddles." So we went back to camp, saddled up, and then the race began. Fortunately, it was a splendid road— all level country, and only two gates. How Pills did go it! The sun was only just over the trees when we were in sight of the station.

'Now, luckily I remembered where two men who had died on the station at different times had been buried, and I guessed that they would naturally bury Lanty in the same place, so I told Pills to follow me and made straight for there instead  of going to the station. Lucky we did. The grave was dug, the men were there, and just taking the coffin out of the cart.

' "Stop!  Stop!" yelled Pills, galloping up and jumping off his horse. "The man's not dead!"

' "How do you know?" said the super.

' "I must see him first.  Take the lid off."  One of the men put the blade of his shovel in the frail coffin, and up came the lid. There lay poor Lanty, sure enough, and he had all his clothes on including an old coat that he always used to wear on account of the handiness of all the pockets.

' "Now, didn't you say that if he began to smell we could bury him, when he got into this state?" asked the super.

' "I did," returned Pills

' "Well, smell him then."

'There was no doubt about it, a very strong odour of decomposition came from the open coffin.

Pills knelt down and put his hand on Lanty's forehead.

' "Feel that," he said to the super. "Does that feel like a dead man?"

'The super felt Lanty's forehead,  and seemed puzzled.  "It does not,"  he said.

' "Lift him out of the coffin."  We did so.

' "Take his coat off, Jim," said Pills to me, as he held the body up in a sitting position.

'I did so, and stepped aside to lay it out on the dray. Then I dropped to it all.

' "When did you fellows kill?" I asked.

' "Four days ago," said the super. "But what has that to do with it?"

' "Everything. If you chaps had taken his coat off you would have found out where the smell came from. He had some old dog baits in his pocket, and I turned them out on the tail of the dray."

'Well, to wind up. Lanty got right again, and says that he knew everything that went on, and he felt that his only chance was Pills, so he yelled out for him. Strange to say, Pills pulled himself up with a jerk. He finished his studies, passed his examination, and has now a first-rate practice in Sydney; and Lanty, who is frightened to leave him, is his coachman.'

'Jim, you seem to have an intimate acquaintance with all kinds of spooks. Did you ever come across the ghost of a barbed-wire fence or a galvanised iron bucket?'

'Can't say in one act. But I'll overhaul my memory on the subject.'

__________________

14: The Rats in the Walls

H. P. Lovecraft

1890-1937

Weird Tales, March 1924

In anthology: Switch on The Light, 1931

ON 16 July 1923, I moved into Exham Priory after the last workman had finished his labors. The restoration had been a stupendous task, for little had remained of the deserted pile but a shell-like ruin; yet because it had been the seat of my ancestors, I let no expense deter me. The place had not been inhabited since the reign of James the First, when a tragedy of intensely hideous, though largely unexplained, nature had struck down the master, five of his children, and several servants; and driven forth under a cloud of suspicion and terror the third son, my lineal progenitor and the only survivor of the abhorred line.

With this sole heir denounced as a murderer, the estate had reverted to the crown, nor had the accused man made any attempt to exculpate himself or regain his property. Shaken by some horror greater than that of conscience or the law, and expressing only a frantic wish to exclude the ancient edifice from his sight and memory, Walter de la Poer, eleventh Baron Exham, fled to Virginia and there founded the family which by the next century had become known as Delapore.

Exham Priory had remained untenanted, though later allotted to the estates of the Norrys family and much studied because of its peculiarly composite architecture; an architecture involving Gothic towers resting on a Saxon or Romanesque substructure, whose foundation in turn was of a still earlier order or blend of orders— Roman, and even Druidic or native Cymric, if legends speak truly. This foundation was a very singular thing, being merged on one side with the solid limestone of the precipice from whose brink the priory overlooked a desolate valley three miles west of the village of Anchester.

Architects and antiquarians loved to examine this strange relic of forgotten centuries, but the country folk hated it. They had hated it hundreds of years before, when my ancestors lived there, and they hated it now, with the moss and mould of abandonment on it. I had not been a day in Anchester before I knew I came of an accursed house. And this week workmen have blown up Exham Priory, and are busy obliterating the traces of its foundations. The bare statistics of my ancestry I had always known, together with the fact that my first American forbear had come to the colonies under a strange cloud. Of details, however, I had been kept wholly ignorant through the policy of reticence always maintained by the Delapores. Unlike our planter neighbors, we seldom boasted of crusading ancestors or other medieval and Renaissance heroes; nor was any kind of tradition handed down except what may have been recorded in the sealed envelope left before the Civil War by every squire to his eldest son for posthumous opening. The glories we cherished were those achieved since the migration; the glories of a proud and honorable, if somewhat reserved and unsocial Virginia line.

During the war our fortunes were extinguished and our whole existence changed by the burning of Carfax, our home on the banks of the James. My grandfather, advanced in years, had perished in that incendiary outrage, and with him the envelope that had bound us all to the past. I can recall that fire today as I saw it then at the age of seven, with the federal soldiers shouting, the women screaming, and the negroes howling and praying. My father was in the army, defending Richmond, and after many formalities my mother and I were passed through the lines to join him.

When the war ended we all moved north, whence my mother had come; and I grew to manhood, middle age, and ultimate wealth as a stolid Yankee. Neither my father nor I ever knew what our hereditary envelope had contained, and as I merged into the grayness of Massachusetts business life I lost all interest in the mysteries which evidently lurked far back in my family tree. Had I suspected their nature, how gladly I would have left Exham Priory to its moss, bats and cobwebs!

My father died in 1904, but without any message to leave to me, or to my only child, Alfred, a motherless boy of ten. It was this boy who reversed the order of family information, for although I could give him only jesting conjectures about the past, he wrote me of some very interesting ancestral legends when the late war took him to England in 1917 as an aviation officer. Apparently the Delapores had a colorful and perhaps sinister history, for a friend of my son's, Capt. Edward Norrys of the Royal Flying Corps, dwelt near the family seat at Anchester and related some peasant superstitions which few novelists could equal for wildness and incredibility. Norrys himself, of course, did not take them so seriously; but they amused my son and made good material for his letters to me. It was this legendry which definitely turned my attention to my transatlantic heritage, and made me resolve to purchase and restore the family seat which Norrys showed to Alfred in its picturesque desertion, and offered to get for him at a surprisingly reasonable figure, since his own uncle was the present owner.

I bought Exham Priory in 1918, but was almost immediately distracted from my plans of restoration by the return of my son as a maimed invalid. During the two years that he lived I thought of nothing but his care, having even placed my business under the direction of partners.

In 1921, as I found myself bereaved and aimless, a retired manufacturer no longer young, I resolved to divert my remaining years with my new possession. Visiting Anchester in December, I was entertained by Capt. Norrys, a plump, amiable young man who had thought much of my son, and secured his assistance in gathering plans and anecdotes to guide in the coming restoration. Exham Priory itself I saw without emotion, a jumble of tottering medieval ruins covered with lichens and honeycombed with rooks' nests, perched perilously upon a precipice, and denuded of floors or other interior features save the stone walls of the separate towers.

As I gradually recovered the image of the edifice as it had been when my ancestors left it over three centuries before, I began to hire workmen for the reconstruction. In every case I was forced to go outside the immediate locality, for the Anchester villagers had an almost unbelievable fear and hatred of the place. The sentiment was so great that it was sometimes communicated to the outside laborers, causing numerous desertions; whilst its scope appeared to include both the priory and its ancient family.

My son had told me that he was somewhat avoided during his visits because he was a de la Poer, and I now found myself subtly ostracized for a like reason until I convinced the peasants how little I knew of my heritage. Even then they sullenly disliked me, so that I had to collect most of the village traditions through the mediation of Norrys. What the people could not forgive, perhaps, was that I had come to restore a symbol so abhorrent to them; for, rationally or not, they viewed Exham Priory as nothing less than a haunt of fiends and werewolves.

Piecing together the tales which Norrys collected for me, and supplementing them with the accounts of several savants who had studied the ruins, I deduced that Exham Priory stood on the site of a prehistoric temple; a Druidical or ante-Druidical thing which must have been contemporary with Stonehenge. That indescribable rites had been celebrated there, few doubted, and there were unpleasant tales of the transference of these rites into the Cybele worship which the Romans had introduced.

Inscriptions still visible in the sub-cellar bore such unmistakable letters as 'DIV · OPS · MAGNA MAT ·', sign of the Magna Mater whose dark worship was once vainly forbidden to Roman citizens. Anchester had been the camp of the third Augustan legion, as many remains attest, and it was said that the temple of Cybele was splendid and thronged with worshipers who performed nameless ceremonies at the bidding of a Phrygian priest. Tales added that the fall of the old religion did not end the orgies at the temple, but that the priests lived on in the new faith without real change. Likewise was it said that the rites did not vanish with the Roman power, and that certain among the Saxons added to what remained of the temple, and gave it the essential outline it subsequently preserved, making it the center of a cult feared through half the heptarchy. About 1000 A.D. the place is mentioned in a chronicle as being a substantial stone priory housing a strange and powerful monastic order and surrounded by extensive gardens which needed no walls to exclude a frightened populace. It was never destroyed by the Danes, though after the Norman Conquest it must have declined tremendously, since there was no impediment when Henry the Third granted the site to my ancestor, Gilbert de la Poer, First Baron Exham, in 1261.

Of my family before this date there is no evil report, but something strange must have happened then. In one chronicle there is a reference to a de la Poer as "cursed of God in 1307", whilst village legendry had nothing but evil and frantic fear to tell of the castle that went up on the foundations of the old temple and priory. The fireside tales were of the most grisly description, all the ghastlier because of their frightened reticence and cloudy evasiveness. They represented my ancestors as a race of hereditary daemons beside whom Gilles de Retz and the Marquis de Sade would seem the veriest tyros, and hinted whisperingly at their responsibility for the occasional disappearances of villagers through several generations.

The worst characters, apparently, were the barons and their direct heirs; at least, most was whispered about these. If of healthier inclinations, it was said, an heir would early and mysteriously die to make way for another more typical scion. There seemed to be an inner cult in the family, presided over by the head of the house, and sometimes closed except to a few members. Temperament rather than ancestry was evidently the basis of this cult, for it was entered by several who married into the family. Lady Margaret Trevor from Cornwall, wife of Godfrey, the second son of the fifth baron, became a favorite bane of children all over the countryside, and the daemon heroine of a particularly horrible old ballad not yet extinct near the Welsh border. Preserved in balladry, too, though not illustrating the same point, is the hideous tale of Lady Mary de la Poer, who shortly after her marriage to the Earl of Shrewsfield was killed by him and his mother, both of the slayers being absolved and blessed by the priest to whom they confessed what they dared not repeat to the world.

These myths and ballads, typical as they were of crude superstition, repelled me greatly. Their persistence, and their application to so long a line of my ancestors, were especially annoying; whilst the imputations of monstrous habits proved unpleasantly reminiscent of the one known scandal of my immediate forebears— the case of my cousin, young Randolph Delapore of Carfax who went among the negroes and became a voodoo priest after he returned from the Mexican War.

I was much less disturbed by the vaguer tales of wails and howlings in the barren, windswept valley beneath the limestone cliff; of the graveyard stenches after the spring rains; of the floundering, squealing white thing on which Sir John Clave's horse had trod one night in a lonely field; and of the servant who had gone mad at what he saw in the priory in the full light of day. These things were hackneyed spectral lore, and I was at that time a pronounced sceptic. The accounts of vanished peasants were less to be dismissed, though not especially significant in view of medieval custom. Prying curiosity meant death, and more than one severed head had been publicly shown on the bastions— now effaced— around Exham Priory.

A few of the tales were exceedingly picturesque, and made me wish I had learnt more of the comparative mythology in my youth. There was, for instance, the belief that a legion of bat-winged devils kept witches' sabbath each night at the priory— a legion whose sustenance might explain the disproportionate abundance of coarse vegetables harvested in the vast gardens. And, most vivid of all, there was the dramatic epic of the rats— the scampering army of obscene vermin which had burst forth from the castle three months after the tragedy that doomed it to desertion— the lean, filthy, ravenous army which had swept all before it and devoured fowl, cats, dogs, hogs, sheep, and even two hapless human beings before its fury was spent. Around that unforgettable rodent army a whole separate cycle of myths revolves, for it scattered among the village homes and brought curses and horrors in its train.

Such was the lore that assailed me as I pushed to completion, with an elderly obstinacy, the work of restoring my ancestral home. It must not be imagined for a moment that these tales formed my principal psychological environment. On the other hand, I was constantly praised and encouraged by Capt. Norrys and the antiquarians who surrounded and aided me. When the task was done, over two years after its commencement, I viewed the great rooms, wainscoted walls, vaulted ceilings, mullioned windows, and broad staircases with a pride which fully compensated for the prodigious expense of the restoration.

Every attribute of the Middle Ages was cunningly reproduced and the new parts blended perfectly with the original walls and foundations. The seat of my fathers was complete, and I looked forward to redeeming at last the local fame of the line which ended in me. I could reside here permanently, and prove that a de la Poer (for I had adopted again the original spelling of the name) need not be a fiend. My comfort was perhaps augmented by the fact that, although Exham Priory was medievally fitted, its interior was in truth wholly new and free from old vermin and old ghosts alike.

As I have said, I moved in on 16 July 1923. My household consisted of seven servants and nine cats, of which latter species I am particularly fond. My eldest cat, "Nigger-Man", was seven years old and had come with me from my home in Bolton, Massachusetts; the others I had accumulated whilst living with Capt. Norrys' family during the restoration of the priory.

For five days our routine proceeded with the utmost placidity, my time being spent mostly in the codification of old family data. I had now obtained some very circumstantial accounts of the final tragedy and flight of Walter de la Poer, which I conceived to be the probable contents of the hereditary paper lost in the fire at Carfax. It appeared that my ancestor was accused with much reason of having killed all the other members of his household, except four servant confederates, in their sleep, about two weeks after a shocking discovery which changed his whole demeanor, but which, except by implication, he disclosed to no one save perhaps the servants who assisted him and afterwards fled beyond reach.

This deliberate slaughter, which included a father, three brothers, and two sisters, was largely condoned by the villagers, and so slackly treated by the law that its perpetrator escaped honored, unharmed, and undisguised to Virginia; the general whispered sentiment being that he had purged the land of an immemorial curse. What discovery had prompted an act so terrible, I could scarcely even conjecture. Walter de la Poer must have known for years the sinister tales about his family, so that this material could have given him no fresh impulse. Had he, then, witnessed some appalling ancient rite, or stumbled upon some frightful and revealing symbol in the priory or its vicinity? He was reputed to have been a shy, gentle youth in England. In Virginia he seemed not so much hard or bitter as harassed and apprehensive. He was spoken of in the diary of another gentleman adventurer, Francis Harley of Bellview, as a man of unexampled justice, honor, and delicacy.

On 22 July occurred the first incident which, though lightly dismissed at the time, takes on a preternatural significance in relation to later events. It was so simple as to be almost negligible, and could not possibly have been noticed under the circumstances; for it must be recalled that since I was in a building practically fresh and new except for the walls, and surrounded by a well-balanced staff of servitors, apprehension would have been absurd despite the locality.

What I afterward remembered is merely this— that my old black cat, whose moods I know so well, was undoubtedly alert and anxious to an extent wholly out of keeping with his natural character. He roved from room to room, restless and disturbed, and sniffed constantly about the walls which formed part of the Gothic structure. I realize how trite this sounds— like the inevitable dog in the ghost story, which always growls before his master sees the sheeted figure— yet I cannot consistently suppress it.

The following day a servant complained of restlessness among all the cats in the house. He came to me in my study, a lofty west room on the second storey, with groined arches, black oak paneling, and a triple Gothic window overlooking the limestone cliff and desolate valley; and even as he spoke I saw the jetty form of Nigger-Man creeping along the west wall and scratching at the new panels which overlaid the ancient stone.

I told the man that there must be a singular odor or emanation from the old stonework, imperceptible to human senses, but affecting the delicate organs of cats even through the new woodwork. This I truly believed, and when the fellow suggested the presence of mice or rats, I mentioned that there had been no rats there for three hundred years, and that even the field mice of the surrounding country could hardly be found in these high walls, where they had never been known to stray. That afternoon I called on Capt. Norrys, and he assured me that it would be quite incredible for field mice to infest the priory in such a sudden and unprecedented fashion.

That night, dispensing as usual with a valet, I retired in the west tower chamber which I had chosen as my own, reached from the study by a stone staircase and short gallery— the former partly ancient, the latter entirely restored. This room was circular, very high, and without wainscoting, being hung with arras which I had myself chosen in London.

Seeing that Nigger-Man was with me, I shut the heavy Gothic door and retired by the light of the electric bulbs which so cleverly counterfeited candles, finally switching off the light and sinking on the carved and canopied four-poster, with the venerable cat in his accustomed place across my feet. I did not draw the curtains, but gazed out at the narrow window which I faced. There was a suspicion of aurora in the sky, and the delicate traceries of the window were pleasantly silhouetted.

At some time I must have fallen quietly asleep, for I recall a distinct sense of leaving strange dreams, when the cat started violently from his placid position. I saw him in the faint auroral glow, head strained forward, fore feet on my ankles, and hind feet stretched behind. He was looking intensely at a point on the wall somewhat west of the window, a point which to my eye had nothing to mark it, but toward which all my attention was now directed.

And as I watched, I knew that Nigger-Man was not vainly excited. Whether the arras actually moved I cannot say. I think it did, very slightly. But what I can swear to is that behind it I heard a low, distinct scurrying as of rats or mice. In a moment the cat had jumped bodily on the screening tapestry, bringing the affected section to the floor with his weight, and exposing a damp, ancient wall of stone; patched here and there by the restorers, and devoid of any trace of rodent prowlers.

Nigger-Man raced up and down the floor by this part of the wall, clawing the fallen arras and seemingly trying at times to insert a paw between the wall and the oaken floor. He found nothing, and after a time returned wearily to his place across my feet. I had not moved, but I did not sleep again that night.

In the morning I questioned all the servants, and found that none of them had noticed anything unusual, save that the cook remembered the actions of a cat which had rested on her windowsill. This cat had howled at some unknown hour of the night, awaking the cook in time for her to see him dart purposefully out of the open door down the stairs. I drowsed away the noontime, and in the afternoon called again on Capt. Norrys, who became exceedingly interested in what I told him. The odd incidents— so slight yet so curious— appealed to his sense of the picturesque and elicited from him a number of reminiscences of local ghostly lore. We were genuinely perplexed at the presence of rats, and Norrys lent me some traps and Paris green, which I had the servants place in strategic localities when I returned.

I retired early, being very sleepy, but was harassed by dreams of the most horrible sort. I seemed to be looking down from an immense height upon a twilit grotto, knee-deep with filth, where a white-bearded daemon swineherd drove about with his staff a flock of fungous, flabby beasts whose appearance filled me with unutterable loathing. Then, as the swineherd paused and nodded over his task, a mighty swarm of rats rained down on the stinking abyss and fell to devouring beasts and man alike.

From this terrific vision I was abruptly awakened by the motions of Nigger-Man, who had been sleeping as usual across my feet. This time I did not have to question the source of his snarls and hisses, and of the fear which made him sink his claws into my ankle, unconscious of their effect; for on every side of the chamber the walls were alive with nauseous sound— the verminous slithering of ravenous, gigantic rats. There was now no aurora to show the state of the arras— the fallen section of which had been replaced— but I was not too frightened to switch on the light.

As the bulbs leapt into radiance I saw a hideous shaking all over the tapestry, causing the somewhat peculiar designs to execute a singular dance of death. This motion disappeared almost at once, and the sound with it. Springing out of bed, I poked at the arras with the long handle of a warming-pan that rested near, and lifted one section to see what lay beneath. There was nothing but the patched stone wall, and even the cat had lost his tense realization of abnormal presences. When I examined the circular trap that had been placed in the room, I found all of the openings sprung, though no trace remained of what had been caught and had escaped.

Further sleep was out of the question, so lighting a candle, I opened the door and went out in the gallery towards the stairs to my study, Nigger-Man following at my heels. Before we had reached the stone steps, however, the cat darted ahead of me and vanished down the ancient flight. As I descended the stairs myself, I became suddenly aware of sounds in the great room below; sounds of a nature which could not be mistaken.

The oak-paneled walls were alive with rats, scampering and milling whilst Nigger-Man was racing about with the fury of a baffled hunter. Reaching the bottom, I switched on the light, which did not this time cause the noise to subside. The rats continued their riot, stampeding with such force and distinctness that I could finally assign to their motions a definite direction. These creatures, in numbers apparently inexhaustible, were engaged in one stupendous migration from inconceivable heights to some depth conceivably or inconceivably below.

I now heard steps in the corridor, and in another moment two servants pushed open the massive door. They were searching the house for some unknown source of disturbance which had thrown all the cats into a snarling panic and caused them to plunge precipitately down several flights of stairs and squat, yowling, before the closed door to the sub-cellar. I asked them if they had heard the rats, but they replied in the negative. And when I turned to call their attention to the sounds in the panels, I realized that the noise had ceased.

With the two men, I went down to the door of the sub-cellar, but found the cats already dispersed. Later I resolved to explore the crypt below, but for the present I merely made a round of the traps. All were sprung, yet all were tenantless. Satisfying myself that no one had heard the rats save the felines and me, I sat in my study till morning, thinking profoundly and recalling every scrap of legend I had unearthed concerning the building I inhabited. I slept some in the forenoon, leaning back in the one comfortable library chair which my medieval plan of furnishing could not banish. Later I telephoned to Capt. Norrys, who came over and helped me explore the sub-cellar.

Absolutely nothing untoward was found, although we could not repress a thrill at the knowledge that this vault was built by Roman hands. Every low arch and massive pillar was Roman— not the debased Romanesque of the bungling Saxons, but the severe and harmonious classicism of the age of the Caesars; indeed, the walls abounded with inscriptions familiar to the antiquarians who had repeatedly explored the place— things like "P · GETAE · PROP · TEMP · DONA"  and  "L · PRAEG · VS · PONTIFI · ATYS ·"

The reference to Atys made me shiver, for I had read Catullus and knew something of the hideous rites of the Eastern god, whose worship was so mixed with that of Cybele. Norrys and I, by the light of lanterns, tried to interpret the odd and nearly effaced designs on certain irregularly rectangular blocks of stone generally held to be altars, but could make nothing of them. We remembered that one pattern, a sort of rayed sun, was held by students to imply a non-Roman origin suggesting that these altars had merely been adopted by the Roman priests from some older and perhaps aboriginal temple on the same site. On one of these blocks were some brown stains which made me wonder. The largest, in the center of the room, had certain features on the upper surface which indicated its connection with fire— probably burnt offerings.

Such were the sights in that crypt before whose door the cats howled, and where Norrys and I now determined to pass the night. Couches were brought down by the servants, who were told not to mind any nocturnal actions of the cats, and Nigger-Man was admitted as much for help as for companionship. We decided to keep the great oak door— a modern replica with slits for ventilation— tightly closed; and, with this attended to, we retired with lanterns still burning to await whatever might occur.

The vault was very deep in the foundations of the priory, and undoubtedly far down on the face of the beetling limestone cliff overlooking the waste valley. That it had been the goal of the scuffling and unexplainable rats I could not doubt, though why, I could not tell. As we lay there expectantly, I found my vigil occasionally mixed with half-formed dreams from which the uneasy motions of the cat across my feet would rouse me.

These dreams were not wholesome, but horribly like the one I had had the night before. I saw again the twilit grotto, and the swineherd with his unmentionable fungous beasts wallowing in filth, and as I looked at these things they seemed nearer and more distinct— so distinct that I could almost observe their features. Then I did observe the flabby features of one of them— and awakened with such a scream that Nigger-Man started up, whilst Capt. Norrys, who had not slept, laughed considerably. Norrys might have laughed more— or perhaps less— had he known what it was that made me scream. But I did not remember myself till later. Ultimate horror often paralyzes memory in a merciful way.

Norrys waked me when the phenomena began. Out of the same frightful dream I was called by his gentle shaking and his urging to listen to the cats. Indeed, there was much to listen to, for beyond the closed door at the head of the stone steps was a veritable nightmare of feline yelling and clawing, whilst Nigger- Man, unmindful of his kindred outside, was running excitedly round the bare stone walls, in which I heard the same babel of scurrying rats that had troubled me the night before.

An acute terror now rose within me, for here were anomalies which nothing normal could well explain. These rats, if not the creatures of a madness which I shared with the cats alone, must be burrowing and sliding in Roman walls I had thought to be solid limestone blocks... unless perhaps the action of water through more than seventeen centuries had eaten winding tunnels which rodent bodies had worn clear and ample... But even so, the spectral horror was no less; for if these were living vermin why did not Norrys hear their disgusting commotion? Why did he urge me to watch Nigger-Man and listen to the cats outside, and why did he guess wildly and vaguely at what could have aroused them?

By the time I had managed to tell him, as rationally as I could, what I thought I was hearing, my ears gave me the last fading impression of scurrying; which had retreated still downward, far underneath this deepest of sub-cellars till it seemed as if the whole cliff below were riddled with questing rats. Norrys was not as skeptical as I had anticipated, but instead seemed profoundly moved. He motioned to me to notice that the cats at the door had ceased their clamor, as if giving up the rats for lost; whilst Nigger-Man had a burst of renewed restlessness, and was clawing frantically around the bottom of the large stone altar in the center of the room, which was nearer Norrys' couch than mine.

My fear of the unknown was at this point very great. Something astounding had occurred, and I saw that Capt. Norrys, a younger, stouter, and presumably more naturally materialistic man, was affected fully as much as myself—  perhaps because of his lifelong and intimate familiarity with local legend. We could for the moment do nothing but watch the old black cat as he pawed with decreasing fervor at the base of the altar, occasionally looking up and mewing to me in that persuasive manner which he used when he wished me to perform some favor for him.

Norrys now took a lantern close to the altar and examined the place where Nigger-Man was pawing; silently kneeling and scraping away the lichens of the centuries which joined the massive pre- Roman block to the tessellated floor. He did not find anything, and was about to abandon his efforts when I noticed a trivial circumstance which made me shudder, even though it implied nothing more than I had already imagined.

I told him of it, and we both looked at its almost imperceptible manifestation with the fixedness of fascinated discovery and acknowledgment. It was only this— that the flame of the lantern set down near the altar was slightly but certainly flickering from a draught of air which it had not before received, and which came indubitably from the crevice between floor and altar where Norrys was scraping away the lichens.

We spent the rest of the night in the brilliantly-lighted study, nervously discussing what we should do next. The discovery that some vault deeper than the deepest known masonry of the Romans underlay this accursed pile, some vault unsuspected by the curious antiquarians of three centuries, would have been sufficient to excite us without any background of the sinister. As it was, the fascination became two-fold; and we paused in doubt whether to abandon our search and quit the priory forever in superstitious caution, or to gratify our sense of adventure and brave whatever horrors might await us in the unknown depths.

By morning we had compromised, and decided to go to London to gather a group of archaeologists and scientific men fit to cope with the mystery. It should be mentioned that before leaving the sub-cellar we had vainly tried to move the central altar which we now recognized as the gate to a new pit of nameless fear. What secret would open the gate, wiser men than we would have to find.

During many days in London Capt. Norrys and I presented our facts, conjectures, and legendary anecdotes to five eminent authorities, all men who could be trusted to respect any family disclosures which future explorations might develop. We found most of them little disposed to scoff but, instead, intensely interested and sincerely sympathetic. It is hardly necessary to name them all, but I may say that they included Sir William Brinton, whose excavations in the Troad excited most of the world in their day. As we all took the train for Anchester I felt myself poised on the brink of frightful revelations, a sensation symbolized by the air of mourning among the many Americans at the unexpected death of the President on the other side of the world.

On the evening of 7 August we reached Exham Priory, where the servants assured me that nothing unusual had occurred. The cats, even old Nigger-Man, had been perfectly placid, and not a trap in the house had been sprung. We were to begin exploring on the following clay, awaiting which I assigned well-appointed rooms to all my guests.

I myself retired in my own tower chamber, with Nigger-Man across my feet. Sleep came quickly, but hideous dreams assailed me. There was a vision of a Roman feast like that of Trimalchio, with a horror in a covered platter. Then came that damnable, recurrent thing about the swineherd and his filthy drove in the twilit grotto. Yet when I awoke it was full daylight, with normal sounds in the house below. The rats, living or spectral, had not troubled me; and Nigger-Man was still quietly asleep. On going down, I found that the same tranquillity had prevailed elsewhere; a condition which one of the assembled servants— a fellow named Thornton, devoted to the psychic— rather absurdly laid to the fact that I had now been shown the thing which certain forces had wished to show me.

All was now ready, and at 11 a.m. our entire group of seven men, bearing powerful electric searchlights and implements of excavation, went down to the sub-cellar and bolted the door behind us. Nigger-Man was with us, for the investigators found no occasion to despise his excitability, and were indeed anxious that he be present in case of obscure rodent manifestations. We noted the Roman inscriptions and unknown altar designs only briefly, for three of the savants had already seen them, and all knew their characteristics. Prime attention was paid to the momentous central altar, and within an hour Sir William Brinton had caused it to tilt backward, balanced by some unknown species of counterweight.

There now lay revealed such a horror as would have overwhelmed us had we not been prepared. Through a nearly square opening in the tiled floor, sprawling on a flight of stone steps so prodigiously worn that it was little more than an inclined plane at the center, was a ghastly array of human or semi-human bones. Those which retained their collocation as skeletons showed attitudes of panic fear, and over all were the marks of rodent gnawing. The skulls denoted nothing short of utter idiocy, cretinism, or primitive semi-apedom.

Above the hellishly littered steps arched a descending passage seemingly chiseled from the solid rock, and conducting a current of air. This current was not a sudden and noxious rush as from a closed vault, but a cool breeze with something of freshness in it. We did not pause long, but shiveringly began to clear a passage down the steps. It was then that Sir William, examining the hewn walls, made the odd observation that the passage, according to the direction of the strokes, must have been chiseled from beneath.

I must be very deliberate now, and choose my words. After ploughing down a few steps amidst the gnawed bones we saw that there was light ahead; not any mystic phosphorescence, but a filtered daylight which could not come except from unknown fissures in the cliff that over-looked the waste valley. That such fissures had escaped notice from outside was hardly remarkable, for not only is the valley wholly uninhabited, but the cliff is so high and beetling that only an aeronaut could study its face in detail. A few steps more, and our breaths were literally snatched from us by what we saw; so literally that Thornton, the psychic investigator, actually fainted in the arms of the dazed men who stood behind him. Norrys, his plump face utterly white and flabby, simply cried out inarticulately; whilst I think that what I did was to gasp or hiss, and cover my eyes.

The man behind me— the only one of the party older than I— croaked the hackneyed "My God!" in the most cracked voice I ever heard. Of seven cultivated men, only Sir William Brinton retained his composure, a thing the more to his credit because he led the party and must have seen the sight first.

It was a twilit grotto of enormous height, stretching away farther than any eye could see; a subterraneous world of limitless mystery and horrible suggestion. There were buildings and other architectural remains— in one terrified glance I saw a weird pattern of tumuli, a savage circle of monoliths, a low-domed Roman ruin, a sprawling Saxon pile, and an early English edifice of wood— but all these were dwarfed by the ghoulish spectacle presented by the general surface of the ground. For yards about the steps extended an insane tangle of human bones, or bones at least as human as those on the steps. Like a foamy sea they stretched, some fallen apart, but others wholly or partly articulated as skeletons; these latter invariably in postures of daemoniac frenzy, either fighting off some menace or clutching other forms with cannibal intent.

When Dr Trask, the anthropologist, stopped to classify the skulls, he found a degraded mixture which utterly baffled him. They were mostly lower than the Piltdown man in the scale of evolution, but in every case definitely human. Many were of higher grade, and a very few were the skulls of supremely and sensitively developed types. All the bones were gnawed, mostly by rats, but somewhat by others of the half-human drove. Mixed with them were many tiny hones of rats— fallen members of the lethal army which closed the ancient epic.

I wonder that any man among us lived and kept his sanity through that hideous day of discovery. Not Hoffman nor Huysmans could conceive a scene more wildly incredible, more frenetically repellent, or more Gothically grotesque than the twilit grotto through which we seven staggered; each stumbling on revelation after revelation, and trying to keep for the nonce from thinking of the events which must have taken place there three hundred, or a thousand, or two thousand or ten thousand years ago. It was the antechamber of hell, and poor Thornton fainted again when Trask told him that some of the skeleton things must have descended as quadrupeds through the last twenty or more generations.

Horror piled on horror as we began to interpret the architectural remains. The quadruped things— with their occasional recruits from the biped class— had been kept in stone pens, out of which they must have broken in their last delirium of hunger or rat-fear. There had been great herds of them, evidently fattened on the coarse vegetables whose remains could be found as a sort of poisonous ensilage at the bottom of the huge stone bins older than Rome. I knew now why my ancestors had had such excessive gardens — would to heaven I could forget! The purpose of the herds I did not have to ask.

Sir William, standing with his searchlight in the Roman ruin, translated aloud the most shocking ritual I have ever known; and told of the diet of the antediluvian cult which the priests of Cybele found and mingled with their own. Norrys, used as he was to the trenches, could not walk straight when he came out of the English building. It was a butcher shop and kitchen— he had expected that— but it was too much to see familiar English implements in such a place, and to read familiar English graffiti there, some as recent as 1610. I could not go in that building— that building whose daemon activities were stopped only by the dagger of my ancestor Walter de la Poer.

What I did venture to enter was the low Saxon building whose oaken door had fallen, and there I found a terrible row of ten stone cells with rusty bars. Three had tenants, all skeletons of high grade, and on the bony forefinger of one I found a seal ring with my own coat-of-arms. Sir William found a vault with far older cells below the Roman chapel, but these cells were empty. Below them was a low crypt with cases of formally arranged bones, some of them bearing terrible parallel inscriptions carved in Latin, Greek, and the tongue of Phyrgia.

Meanwhile, Dr Trask had opened one of the prehistoric tumuli, and brought to light skulls which were slightly more human than a gorilla's, and which bore indescribably ideographic carvings. Through all this horror my cat stalked unperturbed. Once I saw him monstrously perched atop a mountain of bones, and wondered at the secrets that might lie behind his yellow eyes.

Having grasped to some slight degree the frightful revelations of this twilit area— an area so hideously foreshadowed by my recurrent dream — we turned to that apparently boundless depth of midnight cavern where no ray of light from the cliff could penetrate. We shall never know what sightless Stygian worlds yawn beyond the little distance we went, for it was decided that such secrets are not good for mankind. But there was plenty to engross us close at hand, for we had not gone far before the searchlights showed that accursed infinity of pits in which the rats had feasted, and whose sudden lack of replenishment had driven the ravenous rodent army first to turn on the living herds of starving things, and then to burst forth from the priory in that historic orgy of devastation which the peasants will never forget.

God! those carrion black pits of sawed, picked bones and opened skulls! Those nightmare chasms choked with the pithecanthropoid, Celtic, Roman, and English bones of countless unhallowed centuries! Some of them were full, and none can say how deep they had once been. Others were still bottomless to our searchlights, and peopled by unnamable fancies. What, I thought, of the hapless rats that stumbled into such traps amidst the blackness of their quests in this grisly Tartarus?

Once my foot slipped near a horribly yawning brink, and I had a moment of ecstatic fear. I must have been musing a long time, for I could not see any of the party but plump Capt. Norrys. Then there came a sound from that inky, boundless, farther distance that I thought I knew; and I saw my old black cat dart past me like a winged Egyptian god, straight into the illimitable gulf of the unknown. But I was not far behind, for there was no doubt after another second. It was the eldritch scurrying of those fiend-born rats, always questing for new horrors, and determined to lead me on even unto those grinning caverns of earth's center where Nyarlathotep, the mad faceless god, howls blindly in the darkness to the piping of two amorphous idiot flute-players.

My searchlight expired, but still I ran. I heard voices, and yowls, and echoes, but above all there gently rose that impious, insidious scurrying; gently rising, rising, as a stiff bloated corpse gently rises above an oily river that flows under the endless onyx bridges to a black, putrid sea.

Something bumped into me— something soft and plump. It must have been the rats; the viscous, gelatinous, ravenous army that feast on the dead and the living... Why shouldn't rats eat a de la Poer as a de la Poer eats forbidden things?... The war ate my boy, damn them all... and the Yanks ate Carfax with flames and burnt Grandsire Delapore and the secret... No, no, I tell you, I am not that daemon swineherd in the twilit grotto! It was not Edward Norrys' fat face on that flabby fungous thing! Who says I am a de la Poer? He lived, but my boy died!... Shall a Norrys hold the land of a de la Poer?... It's voodoo, I tell you... that spotted snake... Curse you, Thornton, I'll teach you to faint at what my family do!... 'Sblood, thou stinkard, I'll learn ye how to gust... wolde ye swynke me thilke wys?... Magna Mater! Magna Mater!... Atys... Dia ad aghaidh's ad aodaun... agus bas dunarch ort! Dhonas's dholas ort, agus leat-sa!... Ungl unl... rrlh... chchch...

This is what they say I said when they found me in the blackness after three hours; found me crouching in the blackness over the plump, half-eaten body of Capt. Norrys, with my own cat leaping and tearing at my throat. Now they have blown up Exham Priory, taken my Nigger-Man away from me, and shut me into this barred room at Hanwell * with fearful whispers about my heredity and experience. Thornton is in the next room, but they prevent me from talking to him. They are trying, too, to suppress most of the facts concerning the priory. When I speak of poor Norrys they accuse me of this hideous thing, but they must know that I did not do it. They must know it was the rats; the slithering scurrying rats whose scampering will never let me sleep; the daemon rats that race behind the padding in this room and beckon me down to greater horrors than I have ever known; the rats they can never hear; the rats, the rats in the walls.

____

* Once a 19th century asylum for the pauper insane, Hanwell Asylum in West London  later became St Bernard Hospital and is today a modern psychiatric hospital under the National Health Service. Several movies and TV series in the 1960s used the grounds or vacant words as location: eg TV series Porridge, and The Professionals, and movie Batman, 1968, with Jack Nicholson as the Joker. (TW)

___________

15: The Deposition

Luigi Capuana

1839-1915

In: Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, 1907 (Ed. Julian Hawthorne)

Translator unknown

Italian author, journalist and university professor, born in Sicily to a wealthy family.

"I KNOW NOTHING at all about it, your honor!"

"Nothing at all? How can that be? It all happened within fifty yards of your shop."

" 'Nothing at all,' I said... in an off-hand way; but really, next to nothing. I am a barber, your honor, and Heaven be praised! I have custom enough to keep me busy from morning till night. There are three of us in the shop, and what with shaving and combing and hair-cutting, not one of the three has the time to stop and scratch his head, and I least of all. Many of my customers are so kind as to prefer my services to those of my two young men; perhaps because I amuse them with my little jokes. And, what with lathering and shaving this face and that, and combing the hair on so many heads—how does your honor expect me to pay attention to other people's affairs? And the morning that I read about it in the paper, why, I stood there with my mouth wide open, and I said, 'Well, that was the way it was bound to end!'"

"Why did you say, 'That was the way it was bound to end'?"

"Why—because it had ended that way! You see—on the instant, I called to mind the ugly face of the husband. Every time I saw him pass up or down the street—one of those impressions that no one can account for—I used to think, 'That fellow has the face of a convict!' But of course that proves nothing. There are plenty who have the bad luck to be uglier than mortal sin, but very worthy people all the same. But in this case I didn't think that I was mistaken."

"But you were friends. He used to come very often and sit down at the entrance to your barber shop."

"Very often? Only once in a while, your honor! 'By your leave, neighbor,' he would say. He always called me 'neighbor'; that was his name for everyone. And I would say, 'Why, certainly.' The chair stood there, empty. Your honor understands that I could hardly be so uncivil as to say to him, 'No, you can't sit down.' A barber shop is a public place, like a café or a beer saloon. At all events, one may sit down without paying for it, and no need to have a shave or hair-cut, either! 'By your leave, neighbor,' and there he would sit, in silence, smoking and scowling, with his eyes half shut. He would loaf there for half an hour, an hour, sometimes longer. He annoyed me, I don't deny it, from the very start. There was a good deal of talk."

"What sort of talk?"

"A good deal of talk. Your honor knows, better than I, how evil-minded people are. I make it a practice not to believe a syllable of what I am told about anyone, good or evil; that is the way to keep out of trouble."

"Come, come, what sort of talk? Keep to the point."

"What sort of talk? Why, one day they would say this, and the next day they would say that, and by harping on it long enough, they made themselves believe that the wife— Well, your honor knows that a pretty wife is a chastisement of God. And after all, there are some things that you can't help seeing unless you won't see!"

"Then it was he, the husband—"

"I know nothing about it, your honor, nothing at all! But it is quite true that every time he came and sat down by my doorway or inside the shop, I used to say to myself, 'If that man can't see, he certainly must be blind! and if he won't see, he certainly must be— Your honor knows what I mean. There was certainly no getting out of that— out of that— Perhaps your honor can help me to the right word?"

"Dilemma?"

"Dilemma, yes, your honor. And Biasi, the notary, who comes to me to be shaved, uses another word that just fits the case, begging your honor's pardon."

"Then, according to you, this Don Nicasio—"

"Oh, I won't put my finger in the pie! Let him answer for himself. Everyone has a conscience of his own; and Jesus Christ has said, 'Judge not, lest ye be judged.' Well, one morning— or was it in the evening? I don't exactly remember— yes, now it comes back to me that it was in the morning— I saw him pass by, scowling and with his head bent down; I was in my doorway, sharpening a razor. Out of curiosity I gave him a passing word as well as a nod, adding a gesture that was as good as a question. He came up to me, looked me straight in the face, and answered: 'Haven't I told you that, sooner or later, I should do something crazy? And I shall, neighbor, yes, I shall! They are dragging me by the hair!' 'Let me cut it off, then!' I answered jokingly, to make him forget himself."

"So, he had told you before, had he? How did he happen to tell you before?"

"Oh, your honor knows how words slip out of the mouth at certain moments. Who pays attention to them? For my part, I have too many other things in my head—"

"Come, come— what had he been talking about, when he told you before?"

"Great heavens, give me time to think, your honor! What had he been talking about? Why, about his wife, of course. Who knows? Some one must have put a flea in his ear. It needs only half a word to ruin a poor devil's peace of mind. And that is how a man lets such words slip out of his mouth as 'Sooner or later I shall do something crazy!' That is all. I know nothing else about it, your honor!"

"And the only answer you made him was a joke?"

"I could not say to him, 'Go ahead and do it,' could I? As it was he went off, shaking his head. And what idea he kept brooding over, after that, who knows? One can't see inside of another man's brain. But sometimes, when I heard him freeing his mind—"

"Then he used to free his mind to you?"

"Why, yes, to me, and maybe to others besides. You see, one bears things and bears things and bears things; and at last, rather than burst with them, one frees one's mind to the first man who comes along."

"But you were not the first man who came along. You used to call at his house—"

"Only as a barber, your honor! Only when Don Nicasio used to send for me. And very often I would get there too late, though I tried my best."

"And very likely you sometimes went there when you knew that he was not at home?"

"On purpose, your honor? No, never!"

"And when you found his wife alone, you allowed yourself—"

"Calumnies, your honor! Who dares say such a thing? Does she say so? It may be that once or twice a few words escaped me in jest. You know how it is— when I found myself face to face with a pretty woman— you know how it is— if only not to cut a foolish figure!"

"But it was very far from a joke! You ended by threatening her!"

"What calumnies! Threaten her? What for? A woman of her stamp doesn't need to be threatened! I would never have stooped so low! I am no schoolboy!"

"Passion leads men into all sorts of folly."

"That woman is capable of anything! She would slander our Lord himself to His face! Passion? I? At my age? I am well on in the forties, your honor, and many a gray hair besides. Many a folly I committed in my youth, like everyone else. But now— Besides, with a woman like that! I was no blind man, even if Don Nicasio was. I knew that that young fellow— poor fool, he paid dearly for her— I knew that he had turned her head. That's the way with some women— they go their own gait, they're off with one and on with another, and then they end by becoming the slave of some scalawag who robs and abuses them! He used to beat her, your honor, many and many a time, your honor! And I, for the sake of the poor husband, whom I pitied—Yes, that is why she says that I threatened her. She says so, because I was foolish enough to go and give her a talking to, the day that Don Nicasio said to me, 'I shall do something crazy!' She knew what I meant, at least she pretended that she did."

"No; this was what you said—"

"Yes, your honor, I remember now exactly what I said. 'I'll spoil your sport,' I told her, 'if it sends me to the galleys!' but I was speaking in the name of the husband. In the heat of the moment one falls into a part—"

"The husband knew nothing of all this."

"Was I to boast to him of what I had done? A friend either gives his services or else he doesn't. That is how I understand it."

"Why were you so much concerned about it? ".

"I ought not to have been, your honor. I have too soft a heart."

"Your threats became troublesome. And not threats alone, but promise after promise! And gifts besides, a ring and a pair of earrings—"

"That is true. I won't deny it. I found them in my pocket, quite by chance. They belonged to my wife. It was an extravagance, but I did it, to keep poor Don Nicasio from doing something crazy. If I could only win my point, I told myself, if I could only get that young fellow out of the way, then it would be time enough to say to Don Nicasio, 'My friend, give me back my ring and my earrings!' He would not have needed to be told twice. He is an honorable man, Don Nicasio!"

"But when she answered you, 'Keep them yourself, I don't want them!' you began to beg her, almost in tears—"

"Ah, your honor! since you must be told— I don't know how I managed to control myself— I had so completely put myself in the place of the husband! I could have strangled her with my own hands! I could have done that very same crazy thing that Don Nicasio thought of doing!"

"Yet you were very prudent, that is evident. You said to yourself: 'If not for me, then not for him!' The lover, I mean, not Don Nicasio. And you began to work upon the husband, who, up to that time, had let things slide, either because he did not believe, or else because he preferred to bear the lesser evil—"

"It may be that some chance word escaped me. There are times when a man of honor loses his head— but beyond that, nothing, your honor. Don Nicasio himself will bear me witness."

"But Don Nicasio says—"

"He, too? Has he failed me? Has he turned against me? A fine way to show his gratitude!"

"He has nothing to be grateful for. Don't excite yourself! Sit down again. You began by protesting that you knew nothing at all about it. And yet you knew so many things. You must know quite a number more. Don't excite yourself."

"You want to drag me over a precipice, your honor! I begin to understand!"

"Men who are blinded by passion walk over precipices on their own feet."

"But— then your honor imagines that I, myself—"

"I imagine nothing. It is evident that you were the instigator, and something more than the instigator, too."

"Calumny, calumny, your honor!"

"That same evening you were seen talking with the husband until quite late."

"I was trying to persuade him not to. I said to him, 'Let things alone! Since it is your misfortune to have it so, what difference does it make whether he is the one, or somebody else?' And he kept repeating, 'Somebody else, yes, but not that rotten beast!' His very words, your honor."

"You stood at the corner of the adjoining street, lying in wait."

"Who saw me there? Who saw us, your honor?"

"You were seen. Come, make up your mind to tell all you know. It will be better for you. The woman testifies, 'There were two of them,' but in the dark she could not recognize the other one."

"Just because I wanted to do a kind act! This is what I have brought on myself by trying to do a kind act!"

"You stood at the street corner—"

"It was like this, your honor. I had gone with him as far as that. But when I saw that it was no use to try to stop him— it was striking eleven— the streets were deserted— I started to leave him indignantly, without a parting word—"

"Well, what next? Do I need tongs to drag the words out of your mouth?"

"What next? Why, your honor knows how it is at night, under the lamplight. You see and then you don't see— that's the way it is. I turned around— Don Nicasio had plunged through the doorway of his home— just by the entrance to the little lane. A cry!— then nothing more!"

"You ran forward? That was quite natural."

"I hesitated on the threshold—the hallway was so dark."

"You couldn't have done that. The woman would have recognized you by the light of the street lamp."

"The lamp is some distance off."

"You went in one after the other. Which of you shut the door? Because the door was shut immediately."

"In the confusion of the moment— two men struggling together—I could hear them gasping— I wanted to call for help— then a fall! And then I felt myself seized by the arm: 'Run, neighbor, run! This is no business of yours!' It didn't sound like the voice of a human being. And that was how— that was how I happened to be there, a helpless witness. I think that Don Nicasio meant to kill his wife, too; but the wretched woman escaped. She ran and shut herself up in her room. That is— I read so afterwards, in the papers. The husband would have been wiser to have killed her first. Evil weeds had better be torn up by the roots. What are you having that man write, your honor?"

"Nothing at all, as you call it. Just your deposition. The clerk will read it to you now, and you will sign it."

"Can any harm come to me from it? I am innocent! I have only said what you wanted to make me say. You have tangled me up in a fine net, like a little fresh-water fish!"

"Wait a moment. And this is the most important thing of all. How did it happen that the mortal wounds on the dead man's body were made with a razor?"

"Oh, the treachery of Don Nicasio! My God! My God! Yes, your honor. Two days before— no one can think of everything, no one can foresee everything— he came to the shop and said to me, 'Neighbor, lend me a razor; I have a corn that is troubling me.' He was so matter-of-fact about it that I did not hesitate for an instant. I even warned him, 'Be careful! you can't joke with corns! A little blood, and you may start a cancer!' 'Don't borrow trouble, neighbor,' he answered."

"But the razor could not be found. You must have brought it away."

"I? Who would remember a little thing like that? I was more dead than alive, your honor. Where are you trying to lead me, with your questions? I tell you, I am innocent!"

"Do not deny so obstinately. A frank confession will help you far more than to protest your innocence. The facts speak clearly enough. It is well known how passion maddens the heart and the brain. A man in that state is no longer himself."

"That is the truth, your honor! That wretched woman bewitched me! She is sending me to the galleys! The more she said 'No, no, no!' the more I felt myself going mad, from head to foot, as if she were pouring fire over me, with her 'No, no, no!' But now— I do not want another man to suffer in my place. Yes, I was the one, I was the one who killed him! I was bewitched, your honor! I am willing to go to the galleys. But I am coming back here, if I have the good luck to live through my term. Oh, the justice of this world! To think that she goes scot free, the real and only cause of all the harm! But I will see that she gets justice, that I solemnly swear— with these two hands of mine, your honor! In prison I shall think of nothing else. And if I come back and find her alive— grown old and ugly, it makes no difference— she will have to pay for it, she will have to make good! Ah, 'no, no, no!' But I will say, 'Yes, yes, yes!' And I will drain her last drop of blood, if I have to end my days in the galleys. And the sooner, the better!"

____________

16: The Shot

R. S. Warren Bell

1871-1921

The Grand Magazine May 1913

British novelist, journalist, magazine editor, and short story writer

AT first I found it very pleasant when Sigismund Trenham used to leave his girl at my rooms with request that I would "look after her" while he went down to his newspaper office to complete this or that bit of work and get his orders for the following day. Trenham was supposed to write up the latest "thing" in a sparkling way for the Moon, a new evening paper that was experiencing some difficulty in keeping its head above water. In addition, he had to be always on the skirmish round for sensations. So, what with carrying out the exacting duties of a modern newspaper man, and being engaged to a lively and original girl like Carmen Millard, Trenham was kept pretty busy.

He used to bring Carmen to my rooms in Plum Court, Temple, I say, and, so to speak, dump her down in my sitting-room much as one dumps a Gladstone bag down in the cloaktoom of a station, the only difference being that the article consigned to my keeping was much better-looking than a Gladstone bag, and that I didn't charge him twopence and give him a ticket.

At first Carmen was rather annoyed at being left with me for two or three hours, but after a time she got used to it.

"So jolly having a pal I can leave Carmen with," Trenham used to say. "You see, she's frightfully bored at home, and so comes up to town and looks me up as often as possible; but it's a bit awkward at times, and so it's nice and handy having you so close to Fleet Street."

He didn't seem to consider me in the least. That was his way. One reason why he got on as a newspaper man was that he always took it for granted that everybody would do what he wanted them to do without demur. The way he made use of people would have astonished you.

So, of course, I had to make the best of it. After a time Miss Millard and I got into the habit of counting on Sigismund being away for a few hours, and accordingly formed plans to fill out the time. Sometimes we would go out to lunch or tea; I would show her round the Temple and tell her of its romance; I would trot her up Chancery Lane to the Record Office, and show her Domesday Book (wonderful what a few people trouble to inspect the priceless parchments housed at the Record Office), and so forth.

But the time came when I found these visits hardly so pleasant as at first. For Carmen was one of those companionable, understanding soit of girls that men always like. I found myself talking to her as freely as I would talk to Trenham; and she, after a time, when excited or interested, and desirous of attracting my attention to something, would seize my arm in a sisterly way that was very nice, but which in due course, you will understand, began to tax my sense of loyalty to Trenham.

It began to seem to me that these long caretakerships had better come to an end. Still, how could I put it to him? The situation, you will admit, was a difficult one.

Well, well. One day we decided not to go out. It was a damp and dismal day. We would have tea at home and be comfortable. Carmen, after she had put a button on my waistcoat, would make some buttered toast. I went out into my little kitchen and put the kettle on. Coming back, I sat down on the sofa and watched Carmen sewing. I watched her and she watched the button. But, after a time, as she was looking towards me and laughing at some remark I had made, she uttered a little cry. The needle had missed the button and run into her finger, just under the nail. A drop of blood welled out. Immediately I was all concern. What man wouldn't have been! I got a clean handkerchief from my bedroom— which opened into the sitting-room— tore a strip of linen off it, and tenderly wrapped it round the wound, Carmen, of course, protesting it was nothing.

I pride myself that I tied it up as well as a hospital nurse could have done it, And she evidently appreciated this fact, for as I put the finishing touch to it she said, very gently: "How nice and kind you are!" and kissed me.

And at that moment a shot rang out.

Some people would have attributed the sound to one of the motors waiting in King's Bench Walk for the lordly "silks," who could well afford them out of their fat fees; but I had not been in Venezuela, where revolutions are the popular diversion, for two years without learning to recognise the report of a revolver. It did not sound very far away, and yet in that hive of thickwalled buildings it was impossible to say exactly from what direction it had come.

I laughed, for her kiss was fresh upon my face.

"I am well rewarded," I said. Then, finding her finger very interesting, I purposely put on another Iength of linen, so as to make quite sure that the bandage held tight. I took my time over it, and it was as I was at last relinquishing her hand that a knock thundered upon my front door— what in the Temple we call the " inner oak."

'Excuse me," J said, and hurried out. And at the front door stood one of the burly Temple policemen.

"Yes?" I said.

"Excuse me, sir— I heard a shot."

"So did I," I replied. "What was it?"

"Can't place it, sir—" He paused, looking rather uncomfortable— "but seeing smoke coming out of your window, sir ?

"Smoke! My window!"

"Pouring out, sir "

At that I looked towards my little kitchen. And to be sure it was full of smoke— steam, that is— and the steam was pouring out of the window, as steam does, you know.

I laughed.

"It's from my kettle," I said.

He peered into the kitchen. "So it is, sir." But he still hesitated. "You see, sir, hearing the shot and seeing the smoke—steam, that is—and having had three suicides here in the last two months—"

"Eh!" exclaimed a voice on the stairs. " Suicide! Where?"

And Sigismund Trenham appeared— the newspaper man in him all agog for news.

ii

THE POLICEMAN glanced at Trenham in a rather uncertain manner.

"It's all right," I said. '' This gentleman is a friend of mine."

"I was telling the gentleman, sir," proceeded the constable, addressing Trenham the while he indicated me with his broad thumb, "that having had several suicides here of late, the sound of a shot made me spry at once."

"Shot!" Trenham repeated, his eyes gleaming.

"A revolver shot, sir," said the policeman, "and no mistaking of it."'

Trenham gave me a glance which plainly said: "Don't let him know I'm a newspaper man, or he'll dry up."

"Well, constable," I said, "it will be as well to go into the matter and clear it up. I fancy the shot proceeded from some room in Pump Court. Better get another man to help you and make inquiries at every set of chambers."

"I'll do that, sir."

"And," as my glance wandered over his broad shoulder towards Trenham, "if you find out what it was, I shall be interested to hear."

"I'll let you know, sir, be sure."

And he strode heavily down the stairs,

When he had gone, Trenham clapped me on the shoulder.

"This'll be a bit of 'exclusive' for the Moon, old boy! 'Mysterious Shot in the Temple'— what?"

"It ought to supply your ready imagination with at least a column," I said dryly. "Well, we'll have tea. By the time we've finished, the Bobby will possibly be back with some news." I led the way up the hall. "Carmen is, you will regret to hear, an invalid."

"Eh!" he exclaimed.

For the moment he had entirely forgotten that his fiancée was in my rooms. This did not suggest, to me, any lack of affection on his part ; but in Sigismund Trenham the journalist always took precedence of the lover.

"Stabbed herself under the nail," I said with a laugh,

Trenham burst into the sittingtoom full of solicitude.

"Carmen, dear, are you much hurt?"

"It's only a prick,'' she replied, a trifle coldly, as it seemed to me.

"Roger"— he turned to me with a scowl— what did you want to scare a man for?"

"By mixing with you pressmen I have grown accustomed to making mountains out of molehills," I said with a grin, and wiited away in the direction of the kitchen, leaving Trenham to kiss the finger and make it well.

I do not think any kissing took place during my absence. When I entered with the tea, Trenham was mooning round the bookshelves and Carmen had her nose deep in an illustrated paper.

I suppose it was disloyal of me, but I cannot say that I was upset by their respective attitudes. Rather, I was gayer and chattier than usual at tea, which, after all, was as well, for neither Sigismund nor Carmen spoke a word save with a palpable effort.

The arrival of the policeman was a positive relief,

"Inquired at every set of chambers, sir," he said; "but there's nothing wrong. And another man's been round the neighbouring courts."

The Temple becomes an uninhabited place as the shades of evening deepen.

"Do you mean to say," I asked in a tone of some surprise, " that you found somebody in every set of chambers?"

"Either a clerk or a laundress, sir."

("Laundress " is the term applied in the Temple to female servants, possibly, as the famous Serjeant Ballantine once remarked, because they never wash.)

"Yes, I called at every set, sir, except the empty ones, of course. There's a set under you been empty for ten years, Not much good calling there!"

And he smiled, his glance wandering meanwhile towards the sideboard.

The offering of beer and other stimulants to policemen, postmen, van-men, piano-movers, and the like is to be deprecated, as a glass of beer or whisky cannot but make them the less clear-headed in the carrying out of their duties, and often has the effect of getting them into trouble. However, this Bobby had been up and down many dusty stairs, and had done a lot of talking. And there are times when the exception is better than the rule. I knew this constable to be a steady fellow, and I knew that just now he was feeling particularly dry in the throat. And, furthermore, I knew that Sigismund Trenham was listening to everything the man had to say with greedy ears. After all, other people's dying constituted a good part of Sigismund's living, for he was always put on to do the "write-up" of a tragedy.

"Glass of beer, constable?" I suggested.

"Thank you, sir."

"Come in and sit down for a moment," I added.

We had been talking in the doorway. He removed his helmet and came in, sitting down on the edge of a chair near the sitting-room door.

"Our friend has been investigating the shot," I said to Carmen, by way of apology. "You won't mind my giving him a glass of beer, I hope?"

"Oh, dear, no!" cried Carmen. ' Y'm sure he must be very thirsty."

I poured him out a glass of dinner ale.

"Best respects, gentlemen— and to the lady," he said in a typical Our Harmonic Club manner. Then he opened his mouth and, without drawing breath, emptied the glass at a gulp, Carmen watching him with a sort of horrified fascination.

"The set of chambers underneath has been closed for ten years, did I hear you say?" asked Sigismund the Scribe, wheeling round from the bookcase as the constable placed his empty glass on the table.

The man in blue swept the back of his hand daintily across his beard.

"Yes, sir, ten years— all of them."

"Why are they not let?"

"They are let, sir. They're let to a gentleman who hasn't been near them for ten years. But the rent's always been paid, so there's no cause for the Treasurer of the Inn to trouble."

"What is the name of the tenant underneath?" asked Trenham.

"It's painted on the door, sir," said the constable, as he rose and ptepared to resume his duties. " 'Mr. Archibald Abbot.' "

"Of course— I've noticed it," said Trenham. "By George! What a mystery! Empty for ten years!"

"There ain't much mystery about it, sir," said the constable with an indulgent smile. "' The gentleman's a Consul or something in a foreign part, and he kept the chambers on because he had a lot of old furniture and pictures and what not, and didn't know where else to leave 'em. Before he went away, I've been told, sir, he had a new patent lock put on the door, what would resist any amount of 'picking.' There's no way of approach to the windows except by way of a ladder, and nothing will open that outer door except crowbars or a charge of gunpowder, and so the gentleman's things are pretty safe, sir."

The constable smiled again as he noticed the expression of excitement and keen interest on Sigismund Trenham's face.

"No, sir. There ain't no mystery. If you think the shot came from there you can write it off the books. There's nobody in there to fire a shot, except rats."

And with a heavy bow to Carmen, and another to ourselves, the worthy fellow donned his helmet and went off to work again.

"There's a story in this, Roger," said Trenham. (A piece of news that works out to any length is called a "story" in press circles.) "Someone fired a shot, that's evident."

"But no one will admit having done so."

"Whoever fired it wasn't going to tell Bigboots, you bet."

"But people who fire shots don't quietly open the door to policemen making inquiries about them."

"What do they do, then?"

"Pretend they're not in— if they're alive."

"Well, anyhow, it'll make a jolly good half-column," cried Trenham. "I'll duck round to the office now and do it. You don't mind putting up with old Roger for a bit longer, do you, dear?" he added, tuming to Carmen.

"I certainly mind," said Carmen, rising from her chair with dignity. "I think I have to 'put up' with 'old Roger' a great deal too much," she added, more than a touch of extra colour in her face.

'But, my darling—" protested Trenham.

"I sometimes wonder whether I am really your darling," cut in Carmen quietly. "Your real darling  appears to be that common old Moon. At least, you always put it before me!"

"But work must come first," urged Sigismund.

He made a mistake in saying that. Of course work must come first, but an engaged girl doesn't always find a statement to that effect entirely palatable. A man has to be very careful indeed when he is engaged to a girl like Carmen. You can only be sure you've "got" her when the wedding-ring is on her finger and the priest's blessing has been finally pronounced upon it.

"I must write something about this shot," pleaded Trenham. " Won't you wait?"

"No, thanks," said Carmen. She held out her hand to me, her eyes resting on my tie-pin. "Good-bye, Mr. Scudamore."

Trenham followed her down the hall, apologising, protesting. All no good. She went, the door closing sharply upon her. He came back looking rueful.

"Wouldn't even let me see her into a 'bus! What creatures they are!" he mused. But almost with the words his thoughts were back with the shot. "Yes, I'm sure I can make something of it ! I'll set everybody in London wondering who fired that shot!"

And he flew out. As for me, I subsided on to the' sofa and lit my pipe. And in every ring of smoke I saw the face of Carmen.

iii

I SUPPOSE it really is a good thing to get up early. Somebody once sent me a book called "The Early Bird," explaining how much good it does you to get up early. The author mentions an old clergyman whose light was to be seen burning in his study at four in the morning. So is mine. But the difference between this old clergyman and myself is that he was just starting the day, while I am just finishing it. The author doesn't mention that this uncomfortable old gentleman probably had a good two hours' snooze in the.afternoon, besides dropping off to sleep at other odd times. I never do that. The worst of the man who rises at six is that after dinner or supper, when the room is cosy, the fire going well, and I am getting very interested in a conversation about religion or ghosts, he is yawning his head off, while I am as wakeful as a lark at sunrise.

I am prepared to admit that I am in the wrong. Still, midnight hath its charms.

Anyhow, being a bachelor, and at liberty to keep what hours I chose, I was still in bed at eleven o'clock on the day following that of the "shot," when my laundress rapped upon my bedroom door and, poking her begrimed countenance into the room, informed me that a lady had called and wished to see me.

Lady! My thoughts, of course, flew to Carmen, who, in town for a morning's shopping, had probably been told by Sigismund to wait at my rooms for him. I could see her face as she received these instructions over the 'phone. My laundress, never having been in my chambers when Sigismund Trenham had left Carmen with me, was, of course, unfamiliar with Miss Millard's personality.

"All right," I said; "please show the lady in,"

Wearing an expression which plainly said that she didn't approve of lady visitors, even with the honest sunlight coming through the windows, my laundress closed the door and retired.

Freshening myself up with a cold sponge, I slipped on some clothes, slung a cricket sash round my neck, buttoned my old rowing-coat over that, smoothed my wet hair with a few rapid passes of my brushes, and emerged from my room—to find it wasn't Carmen after all.

Instead, standing by one of the windows, gazing down on the barristers' clerks hurrying to and fro over the ancient flagstones of the courtyard below, was a young lady dressed in black. She was beautifully tailored, and as one can appraise a woman's circumstances by her clothes far more correctly than one can a man's by his (for men can obtain credit more easily than women), I gauged her circumstances as comfortable. Besides, she wore some good jewellery, while everything about her— her hat, shoes, gloves, umbrella— had all cost "siller," And she was a girl who, as the phrase is, paid for dressing, as she was almost stately of figure and decidedly handsome.

She tumed towards me with perfect self-possession.

"I am so sorry to have disturbed you." She showed the tips of her white teeth in a flashing smile that had a touch of irony in it; for, as I have told you, it was nearly high noon. ' But I was rather anxious —and it occurred to me you might be able to help me."

"Pray sit down," I said.

She sat down, resting one shapely elbow on the table. Her glance wandered to the simple "cloth" my laundress had laid for my breakfast. She didn't really seem anxious about anything; rather slightly amused by her novel surroundings.

"I will tell you what it is," she commenced again, "My name is Abbot—"

"Abbot!" I repeated involuntarily.

"Yes. I am the niece of Mr. Archibald Abbot, who lives on the landing below."

"Oh, yes."

"As perhaps you know, Mr. Abbot has been abroad for many years."

"Ten, I believe."

"Yes. But he was expected back in England this week."

"Indeed!"

"He arrived on Monday, but this is Wednesday, and not a word have we had from him since he landed."

"Oh, you heard from him directly he landed?"

"Yes. He wired his safe arrival at Plymouth."

"And not a word since?"

"Not a word. You may think I am showing a good deal of concern about what seems a trivial matter, but the fact is he had written me en voyage— his letter coming overland by Brindisi— asking me to call and see him at his rooms here to-day at eleven o'clock."

"And you did?"

"I did. But could obtain no answer to my knock. I knocked quite a long time, thinking he might have overslept himself. But it had no effect. The clerk in the chambers underneath could not tell me anything about Mr. Abbot, so I thought I would come up and ask you whether you could, for I am really quite worried about it."

With which words she dropped her hands into her lap and leaned back in her chair with a smile which plainly indicated that she was sure that the race of Knights Templars, whose swords once leapt so swiftly from their sheaths in defence of the weak and helpless, was not entirely extinct.

But in spite of her words there was not a shadow of worry on her face. On the contrary, she appeared distinctly amused by the adventure.

It required no very extraordinary perspicacity on my part to schedule her as a "country cousin." To begin with, she was so very smart— and new. A country cousin coming up to town to welcome a long-absent uncle would be very smart. We take our old clothes down to the country, but our country cousins bring their best up to us. Then, had she been a Londoner, she would surely have met the train which brought her uncle from Plymouth. At a hazard I "placed" her at Chichester or Canterbury, and I put her down as one of the "cathedral set."

"I will try myself," I said. '' He may, as you suggest, have overslept himself."

And going down to the next landing, I hammered on the massive "outer oak" of Mr. Abbot's chambers. It had no letter-slit to peep through, for the excellent reason that it had been built in the far-off days when there was no delivery of letters. I pummelled the door hard, but obtained no response.

And then, as I went upstairs again, a curious sensation crept over my scalp. What if— what if— that shot had something to do with the stony silence lying beyond that massive portal!

My step slackened. Could it be that this fascinating country belle had travelled to town merely to go shuddering and trembling home again ?

The thought was appalling, and I paused irresolutely, and as I did so a cheery voice rang out startlingly half a flight lower down.

"Hullo, Roger! I've got it in the first edition. Reads off fine!"

It was Sigismund, and he held up a white flimsy newspaper. It was the early edition of the Moon.

I took it from him and glanced at the report.

A SHOT IN THE TEMPLE

MYSTERIOUS OCCURRENCE

POLICE INQUIRIES

—A Moon "Exclusive."

That was Trenham's job— to ferret out novelties in news before any other paper got them. The Moon was building up a reputation for "exclusives."

"Ah! You've made quite a lot of it!"

"It reads like the opening to a romance," he said with simple modesty, " Well— we'll not talk of it for a few moments."

He stared at me.

"Why, I've come round specially to talk about it. What's the matter?"

"I have a visitor."

"What odds?"

I lowered my voice.

"She is the niece of the old boy there— Abbot."

"Well?"

"She was to see him to-day. He's back from abroad. But she can't get an answer."

"Gone out. Forgot the appointment."

"Possibly, But— it seems queer."

Trenham looked thoughtful. Then in his spasmodic way he seized my arm.

"You don't think, Roger—"

"I say, we must be careful. Come along in—but not a word about the shot!"

And I crammed the newspaper into my pocket as he followed me into my chambers and I closed the door.

iv

I EXPLAINED to Miss Abbot that Sigismund was a friend of mine, and had heard with sympathy of her plight. While she was enlarging on that plight to Trenham I insinuated myself into my bedroom to complete my toilet. I felt at a disadvantage, for while Sigismund, always particular about his appearance (pressmen are improving in this respect), looked as if he had sprung out of a band-box at his tailor's shop, I looked— well, I looked just-out-of-bedish. Which, as I think my gentle readers will admit, is not a very nice look to look, especially when one is entertaining a lady.

When, from their frequent peals of laughter, I judged they were getting on very well together, I did not feel jealous. On the contrary, it pleased me to hear the young things happy. For is not youth the time of laughter and love? If you say that, in view of what eventuated, it was a callous and thoughtless act on my part to leave Sigismund, an engaged man, so long closeted with a fascinating girl like Lucie Abbot, all I can reply is that that is wy business.

One must think of something while one is shaving, and it occurred to me that Sigismund Trenham was just the sort of man to appeal to a country cousin. He was so dashing and smart, so up-to-date. Though not what I should describe as an intellectual or brainy man, he had that top-dressing of cleverness which appeals to girls from cathedral cities. Some people might say that Sigismund's wit was of a thin and obvious order, but it, at any rate, had the effect of keeping Lucie Abbot constantly amused. Sigismund loved to talk, and apparently Lucie loved to listen. One reason why I didn't hurry over my toilet was perhaps because I liked Trenham to have an appreciative listener. I had noticed that Carmen was a little critical in her attitude towards his obiter dicta, while somehow or other she had a peculiar way of accepting everything I myself said as either profoundly true or profoundly humorous, according to my vein.

Men wishing to marry happily should note that the girls they are likely to be happiest with are those who regard them enthusiastically and unreservedly as the cleverest men the world ever saw; and this rule applies impartially to sandwich men and Secretaries of State. Men are like little children in wanting to be loved, and it is the nagging, penetrating criticism of the disillusioned wife who was never really in love that drives the heart-starved husband to go off with somebody clse or blow his brains out,

I found my thoughts suddenly turning to the silent chambers below. Sigismund had come up full of his investigations into the "shot," and by now he had probably forgotten all about the shot in the excitement of investigating the attractive depths of Miss Abbot's dark eyes. I stepped out, groomed and, as far as I could manage it, presentable.

Their gay chat and laughter ceased on the instant, (Though, had they known it, they needn't have minded me.) "Well," I said, "I think, Miss Abbot, that for the moment you had better leave this matter to my friend and myself. We will do our best to discover whether your uncle has arrived back in town—"

"We'll do everything we can!" cried Sigismund, rather unnecessarily, But she smiled very sweetly upon him, while she merely turned a calm and polite face to me as I added:

"You may rely on us to do everything in our power to allay your anxiety, You are staying in town, I suppose? You have friends in town we can communicate with, should you be going back to the country?"

She shook her head a little pensively.

"I have no friends or relatives in town— or, indeed, anywhere— except Uncle Archie. You see, when Uncle Archie went off to his consulate in Mid-Nigeria he consigned me to the keeping of an old friend of his, the Dean of Carchester. I went to school, of course, and spent my holidays at the Deanery. But," she added slowly, "the Dean, whom I loved, died last autumn, and since then I have been with his widow. We do not," she added, not without difficulty— for it must have occurred to her that she was talking to two entire strangers— "get on very well together. So when Uncle Archie wrote ard told me he was coming home, aud that we would make our home together in future, you can imagine how overjoyed I was."

She rose from her chair.

"I fancy I understand your position," I said. "Well, we will do everything we can for you, be assured,"

"You are very good," she said, and drew a card from her satchel. "I am staying at the Twentieth Century Club— the ladies' residential club, you know. We are all quite 'on our own' there, and although the few girls I have spoken to are very nice and friendly, I feel dreadfully lonely. So you will understand how glad I shall be to see Uncle Archie. Oh! how I long to see him!" she went on vehemently,  "And when once I have met him I will never leave him again as long as he lives!"

At this Sigismund, who had been standing with his back to the fire, withdrew his heel from the fender with a rather sudden movement. I opened the sitting-room door.

"I will get you a cab."

"No, please." She put a detaining hand on my arm. "I will walk up the Lane and take a 'bus."

"You know your way about here, then?"

"Of course! I often came here with Uncle Archie when I was a little girl. I remember every bit of the way."

"You will at any rate allow one of us to see you to your 'bus?" said Sigismund.

"You are very kind," she smiled, submitting at once. Which was exactly what he liked.

I opened the front door, and they went down the stairs together as happy as a pair of ducklings going to look for worms.

"Trenham has a way of using the plural in a very singular way," I thought as I repaired to the kitchen in search of sustenance for my inner man.

"NICE little bit of goods," said Trenham casually as he came swinging in, "Beauty in distress— what?" He laughed awkwardly. "I say, got anything to eat? I'm frightfully peckish."

Mrs. Grassworthy, my laundress, had left me a couple of chops and about a pint of indifferent coffee. The chops were in inverse ratio to my size, which is considerable; but Trenham did not hesitate to accept one of them.

"Well, now, about Uncle Archie!" he said as he rose from the table. "You don't really think,' he added, as he strolled towards the window, "that the old boy has gone and done anything silly?"

"I have an idea," I replied calmly, "that the shot we heard was connected in some way with Mr. Archibald Abbot."

He wheeled round quickly.

"Do you really think so?"

"It has become almost a conviction with me. I think we ought to get hold of the Temple people, tell them what we know, and put it to them that the door should be forced open."

"In that case every paper in London would soon get wind of it!"

"I daresay they would."

"But I intend the Moon to have first dish-up of the mystery— if there is a mystery."

"I was forgetting the Moon. Well, what do you propose to do?"

"Can't we investigate by ourselves ?"'

"Don't see how we can."

Sigismund strolled back to the window.

"I'd crowbar the thing open myself for two pins. But that won't do. We ought to be able to get in somehow." He stood gazing out of the window, lost in thought. Presently he said: ' Roger, come here! See those chaps ?"— pointing to a couple of painters on the other side of the court. "Why not get them to run their ladder up to the windows of Abbot's place and take a squint in?"

"For the simple reason that the blinds are drawn down."

I lit a pipe, took up the paper, and settled myself for a brief read, Sigismund remaining at the window. In about five minutes' time he wheeled round on me again with one of his sudden movements.

"I have it! I have it! It's a bit daring, but it's worth trying!"

"What is?"

He moved towards the door.

"What's the time exactly?"

"Twenty past twelve."

"Then they'll be going to dinner in forty minutes' time."

"Who will?"

"The painters."

"What then?"

"Why, they'll leave their old ladders and paint-pots, and we'll commandeer them."

"What on earth for?"

"My good Roger, you were meant to dream through life. Who on earth notices whether painters go to dinner or work through the dinnerhour? Does anyone ever look twice at a painter? I'll get a couple of painters' aprons— I know where I can get them— and then we'll understudy them, and get a squint into the old boy's place somehow! Easy as pie!"

And he rushed out, leaving me, as you may imagine, struck dumb by the audacity of his plan, but at the same time realising its entire feasibility.

v

WHO, AFTER ALL, does take any particular notice of a painter? A uniform is always a disguise, and a painter wears a sort of uniform. It is a linen dressing-gown, gathered in stylishly at the waist.

A man employed on an everyday job can practically go anywhere and do anything. Once, when Queen Victoria was reigning, a man called at Buckingham Palace, and said he had come to wind up the clocks. As it was usual for a man to make periodical visits to wind up the clocks, he was politely shown in and allowed to go where he liked. Had the Queen's crown been there he would probably have stolen it. As it was, he stole the best clock he could find.

When Sigismund Trenham came back he brought with him two painters' aprons. They were of a soiled white colour, and liberally daubed with paint. The only person they wouldn't have deceived would have been a painter. He explained that he had hired them from a famous costumier. They had been used in a music-hall sketch called "Wet Paint."

"Look here!'' I said. 'I see you have brought two of these smock frocks, or whatever they are. Is it your idea that I'm going to wear one?"

"Of course," said Sigismund, and went to the window humming. I have told you that he took it for granted that everybody was willing to help him. Clearly he was wasting time doing press work. He was the sort of man adapted by nature for adding chunks of the globe to the British Empire. His way was the simple way of Captain Cook or Francis Drake. No scheming, no parleying, no bargaining. Land, stick a Union Jack on the nearest promontory, and there you were!

Though by nature a territory annexer, Sigismund Trenham was at present, however, earning a hard wage by providing "exclusives" for the Moon.

"They're stopping!" he suddenly exclaimed. "It wants five minutes to one, but the good old British workman takes five minutes to leave off work and another five to begin."

He began to put on one of the smocks.

"Buck up, Roger!" he said. "Got an old cap to lend me?"

I had a couple of golf caps somewhere, and routed them out. As there seemed no help for it, I got into my smock, though a little gingerly. Then from the windows we watched the painters deposit their pots and brushes at the foot of their respective ladders, and go off to their dinner,

"We won't hurry," said Sigismund. "Plenty of time. Let them get well away."

So we waited another five minutes.

"Now we will deploy into the court," said Trenham, "and do what the British workman has never yet been known to do— work during his dinner-hour."

Two floors down we found the clerk of the barrister who had chambers under Mr. Abbot just leaving for lunch. As I was wellknown to him, I stooped down to examine my boot; Sigismund put a bold front on the matter.

"Say, guv'nor, that Mr, Harchibald Habbot at ome? We thought we'd let 'im know we was goin' to paint the outside of 'is windows."

"Expected home, it seems," replied the clerk, probably recollecting Miss Lucie Abbot's visit, " but not arrived yet."

"Thanks, guv'nor."

Emerging into the court, I met a man face to face whom I knew well. But he passed me without the least sign of recognition.

"Sharp's the word," muttered Trenham. "One ladder will do. I'll go up, and you put your foot on the bottom rung and watch the paiutpot."

In a trice we had a ladder across the court, while I carried a paint-pot. Leaning it against the wall, Sigismound ran lightly up. A policeman strolled into the court, glanced at us, yawned, and lumbered away. Barristers and their clerks. were hurrying out to lunch. Not a soul paid us the slightest attention. Nevertheless, I felt as uncomfortable as it was possible for a man to feel. What if the foreman of the painters were to appear on a tour of inspection?

Evidently Sigismund felt that what was to be done were best done quickly. The window he was peering through had no blind; it was the kitchen window. His face remained glued to the grimy glass for a few moments ; then, after a rapid glance round the court, he drew a knife from his pocket and forced back the latch. Another scouting glance, and he had pushed up the lower sash. Then, seizing his opportunity when the court was absolutely empty, he slipped into the kitchen.

I must confess that my heart was beating with uncomfortable rapidity. This was rank trespass; nay, housebreaking! In my agitation I stooped down and stirred the paint in the pot.

And while I was thus engaged I heard slow footsteps approaching me, Still stirring, I glanced past my legs— and saw a pair of uniformed ones. They were a porter's legs.

Hot! The perspiration was pouring out of me. What if—

"Knocking off for dinner in a moment?" he asked.

"Aye, pretty soon now," I answered gruffly.

"Put the pot up on the first floor," he said warningly. "Lot of funny people come through 'ere, and they'll sneak near anything."

"Right you are," I said, and he wandered on.

When he was clear of the court I heard a "H-s-s-s!" from above. It was Sigismund.

"I've opened the door," he said. "Come up by the stairs."

I found him awaiting me at the door. He was rather white, I thought. Even a Moon man, it would appear, knew what it was to have nerves.

"Come on!" And he closed the door. And as he did so, from a room whose door was not six paces away proceeded a groan.

An exclamation escaped Sigismund, and he made a clutch at my paint-bedaubed sleeve, As for me, my scalp felt as if an electric brush were being passed over it— for in our heart of hearts neither of us had expected to find anybody in these chambers. When we compared notes after, we found that we had both formed the conclusion that Mr. Abbot had gone to an hotel, and in the joy of finding himself in old England again was having a little jaunt round town, his niece being momentarily overlooked.

Trenham glanced at me and nodded.

"It is."

"I'll fetch the police and a doctor," I suggested, my hand on the latch. He brushed it down.

"No fear. Not in this rig." He walked up the hall and put his hand on the handle of the door. I followed. Then he opened the door, and I, my blood freezing, looked over his shoulder.

And then I didn't know whether to laugh, swear, or what. It was a bedroom. In the middle of the room sat an old, stoutish gentleman. His hair was awry, his tie in disorder; a look of wonderment held his features. And close by him lay a revolver.

"Hello, you fellow!" he said to Trenham, "get me a drink of water."

Glad to do anything, I dashed for it. Snatching a dirty cup off the kitchen shelf, I turned on the water tap. With a slow hiss and gurgle, as if annoyed at being disturbed, a thin stream of brick-coloured fluid at length issued from the tap. Then I recollected that the water hadn't been turned on for ten years. Half-an-hour wouldn't be too long to let this stuff run.

"All right!" called Trenham. "I've found some brandy."

I went back, to find Sigismund on his knees by the old gentleman's side, applying a brandy flask to his lips.

"Thanks!" And Mr, Archibald Abbot heaved a deep sigh. "That's better. Give me a hand." And he rose heavily to his feet.

I fully expected to see him topple over again, but, though evidently dizzy, he held his ground. And that his mind was clearing with uncomfortable rapidity was evident also from his sudden demand of:

"And what are you two chaps doing here?"

Trenham hesitated ; then said:

"Painting, sir."

"And who the devil," inquired Mr. Archibald Abbot, dropping on to the end of the bed and clutching the rail, "told you to paint my chambers?"

"The windows, sir," explained Sigismund.

"The outside of the windows? Then what are you doing inside? Eh?" He rose, purple in the face, gobbling like a turkey. "Eh? What are you doing inside? Eh? What d'you mean by it?"

He was an immense old man, and seemed to tower above us on account of his bulk.

"Eh? What right have you here? Damme, I'll have you locked up."

His eyes goggled large, his blue lips opened and closed like a fish's.

"Eh? What d'you mean by it ? What d'you mean by intruding in my chambers? Speak!" And he pointed a fat, threatening forefinger at Trenham.

"Because we thought you'd shot yourself," replied Sigismund abruptly, his own forefinger declining in the direction of the revolver.

The large, yellow-white eyes followed his finger.

"Good— good— good God!"

It was not an oath. It was memory coming back with a rush. It was the overwhelming suddenness of recollecting what had slipped his mind that caused the exclamation to drop sharply from the lips of a strong, fierce, masterful old man accustomed to act with decision and talk with freedom.

He fell back on to the edge of the bed.

"I remember! I got back from Mid-Nigeria on Monday and came straight here. I carried my bag up myself, which was foolish— but no porter was about. I unlocked the outer door, and came in, put down my bag, and gave the outer door a pull... It shut. I opened my bedroom door, and as I did so I felt a sudden dizziness come over me... No wonder! The place was infernally close.... Not a window or door opened for ten years.... I opened my bag and hunted for my brandy flask... I have had more than one seizure, and the doctor has told me to be— careful." He paused, panting. "Groping for the flask, I came to the revolver, and at that moment everything turned black. But I just had the presence of mind to remember I was alone— that no one knew I was back— and as I fell I fired the revolver?

"The shot!" I exclaimed.

Another gulp or two of brandy and Mr. Abbot was himself again, and declaring that he was deucedly hungry. But we did not tell him how long he had been there. That would have meant disclosing our identities, and we were chary about giving him another surprise. For he imagined he had just fired the shot!

Sigismund nipped out and put the ladder and paint-pots back where we had found them. Then, taking the risk of going just as he was, he cut off to the nearest telephone-box and rang up Lucie Abbot at her club and told her the circumstances. He came back looking pensive to find me fingering a sovereign and lighting a jolly good cigar that the old boy had given me in his overflowing gratitude.

Lucie, of course, told him how we really came to find him, and we reckoned the exact moment of our unmasking by the elephantine roar of laughter that suddenly shook the floor of my chambers.

When another five minutes had elapsed there came a light rat-tat on my door. Trenham flew to open it. Lucie Abbot stood there.

"Uncle Archie," she said, dimpling and turning all sorts of colours, "would now like to know you properly. "You're to come out to lunch, if you please! And, Mr. Trenham, please— you will not write a word about it, will you?" (For Sigismund had packed a lot into his short chat over the phone.)

"Of course I shan't!" said Trenham at once. And anybody who has met the modern newspaperman on the hunt for "copy" will understand what very strong influences must have been working in Sigismund Trenham to make him forgo such an "exclusive" as this had proved to be!

It must have been these very strong influences that enabled him to tell me— as we walked back from one of the very best lunches we had ever eaten— calmly, quite calmly, that Miss Millard had broken off their engagement by post that morning. Such strong influences were working in Sigismund Trenham that he didn't seem to mind a bit, and I subsequently learned from Carmen that she didn't either.

So there you are, don't you know, (And here we are.)

____________

17: The Mystery of Pinkham's Diamond Stud

John Kendrick Bangs

1862-1922

Harper's Bazar  April 1 1899

Collected in: The Dreamers: A Club, 1899

"IT IS THE LITTLE THINGS that tell in detective work, my dear Watson," said Sherlock Holmes as we sat over our walnuts and coffee one bitter winter night shortly before his unfortunate departure to Switzerland, whence he never returned.

"I suppose that is so," said I, pulling away upon the very excellent stogie which mine host had provided— one made in Pittsburg in 1885, and purchased by Holmes, whose fine taste in tobacco had induced him to lay a thousand of these down in his cigar-cellar for three years, and then keep them in a refrigerator, overlaid with a cloth soaked in Château Yquem wine for ten. The result may be better imagined than described. Suffice it to say that my head did not recover for three days, and the ash had to be cut off the stogie with a knife. "I suppose so, my dear Holmes," I repeated, taking my knife and cutting three inches of the stogie off and casting it aside, furtively, lest he should think I did not appreciate the excellence of the tobacco, "but it is not given to all of us to see the little things. Is it, now?"

"Yes," he said, rising and picking up the rejected portion of the stogie. "We all see everything that goes on, but we don't all know it. We all hear everything that goes on, but we are not conscious of the fact. For instance, at this present moment there is somewhere in this world a man being set upon by assassins and yelling lustily for help. Now his yells create a certain atmospheric disturbance. Sound is merely vibration, and, once set going, these vibrations will run on and on and on in ripples into the infinite— that is, they will never stop, and sooner or later these vibrations must reach our ears. We may not know it when they do, but they will do so none the less. If the man is in the next room, we will hear the yells almost simultaneously— not quite, but almost—with their utterance. If the man is in Timbuctoo, the vibrations may not reach us for a little time, according to the speed with which they travel. So with sight. Sight seems limited, but in reality it is not. Vox populi, vox Dei. If vox, why not oculus? It is a simple proposition, then, that the eye of the people being the eye of God, the eye of God being all-seeing, therefore the eye of the people is all-seeing— Q. E. D."

I gasped, and Holmes, cracking a walnut, gazed into the fire for a moment.

"It all comes down, then," I said, "to the question, who are the people?"

Holmes smiled grimly. "All men," he replied, shortly; "and when I say all men, I mean all creatures who can reason."

"Does that include women?" I asked.

"Certainly," he said. "Indubitably. The fact that women don't reason does not prove that they can't. I can go up in a balloon if I wish to, but I don't. I can read an American newspaper comic supplement, but I don't. So it is with women. Women can reason, and therefore they have a right to be included in the classification whether they do or don't."

"Quite so," was all I could think of to say at the moment. The extraordinary logic of the man staggered me, and I again began to believe that the famous mathematician who said that if Sherlock Holmes attempted to prove that five apples plus three peaches made four pears, he would not venture to dispute his conclusions, was wise. (This was the famous Professor Zoggenhoffer, of the Leipsic School of Moral Philosophy and Stenography.—Ed.)

"Now you agree, my dear Watson," he said, "that I have proved that we see everything?"

"Well—" I began.

"Whether we are conscious of it or not?" he added, lighting the gas-log, for the cold was becoming intense.

"From that point of view, I suppose so— yes," I replied, desperately.

"Well, then, this being granted, consciousness is all that is needed to make us fully informed on any point."

"No," I said, with some positiveness. "The American people are very conscious, but I can't say that generally they are well-informed."

I had an idea this would knock him out, as the Bostonians say, but counted without my host. He merely laughed.

"The American is only self-conscious. Therefore he is well-informed only as to self," he said.

"You've proved your point, Sherlock," I said. "Go on. What else have you proved?"

"That it is the little things that tell," he replied. "Which all men would realize in a moment if they could see the little things— and when I say 'if they could see,' I of course mean if they could be conscious of them."

"Very true," said I.

"And I have the gift of consciousness," he added.

I thought he had, and I said so. "But," I added, "give me a concrete example." It had been some weeks since I had listened to any of his detective stories, and I was athirst for another.

He rose up and walked over to his pigeon-holes, each labelled with a letter, in alphabetical sequence.

"I have only to refer to any of these to do so," he said. "Choose your letter."

"Really, Holmes," said I, "I don't need to do that. I'll believe all you say. In fact, I'll write it up and sign my name to any statement you choose to make."

"Choose your letter, Watson," he retorted. "You and I are on terms that make flattery impossible. Is it F, J, P, Q, or Z?"

He fixed his eye penetratingly upon me. It seemed for the moment as if I were hypnotized, and as his gaze fairly stabbed me with its intensity, through my mind there ran the suggestion "Choose J, choose J, choose J." To choose J became an obsession. To relieve my mind, I turned my eye from his and looked at the fire. Each flame took on the form of the letter J. I left my chair and walked to the window and looked out. The lamp-posts were twisted into the shape of the letter J. I returned, sat down, gulped down my brandy-and-soda, and looked up at the portraits of Holmes's ancestors on the wall. They were all J's. But I was resolved never to yield, and I gasped out, desperately,

"Z!"

"Thanks," he said, calmly. "Z be it. I thought you would. Reflex hypnotism, my dear Watson, is my forte. If I wish a man to choose Q, B takes hold upon him. If I wish him to choose K, A fills his mind. Have you ever observed how the mind of man repels a suggestion and flees to something else, merely that it may demonstrate its independence of another mind? Now I have been suggesting J to you, and you have chosen Z—"

"You misunderstood me," I cried, desperately. "I did not say Z; I said P."

"Quite so," said he, with an inward chuckle. "P was the letter I wished you to choose. If you had insisted upon Z, I should really have been embarrassed. See!" he added. He removed the green-ended box that rested in the pigeon-hole marked Z, and, opening it, disclosed an emptiness.

"I've never had a Z case. But P," he observed, quietly, "is another thing altogether."

Here he took out the box marked P from the pigeon-hole, and, opening it, removed the contents— a single paper which was carefully endorsed, in his own handwriting, "The Mystery of Pinkham's Diamond Stud."

"You could not have selected a better case, Watson," he said, as he unfolded the paper and scanned it closely. "One would almost think you had some prevision of the fact."

"I am not aware," said I, "that you ever told the story of Pinkham's diamond stud. Who was Pinkham, and what kind of a diamond stud was it— first-water or Rhine?"

"Pinkham," Holmes rejoined, "was an American millionaire, living during business hours at Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, where he had to wear a brilliant stud to light him on his way through the streets, which are so dark and sooty that an ordinary search-light would not suffice. In his leisure hours, however, he lived at the Hotel Walledup-Hysteria, in New York, where he likewise had to wear the same diamond stud to keep him from being a marked man. Have you ever visited New York, Watson?"

"No," said I.

"Well, when you do, spend a little of your time at the Walledup-Hysteria. It is a hotel with a population larger than that of most cities, with streets running to and from all points of the compass; where men and women eat under conditions that Lucullus knew nothing of; where there is a carpeted boulevard on which walk all sorts and conditions of men; where one pays one's bill to the dulcet strains of a string orchestra that woo him into a blissful forgetfulness of its size; and where, by pressing a button in the wall, you may summon a grand opera, or a porter who on request will lend you enough money to enable you and your family to live the balance of your days in comfort. In America men have been known to toil for years to amass a fortune for the one cherished object of spending a week in this Olympian spot, and then to be content to return to their toil and begin life anew, rich only in the memory of its luxuries. It was here that I spent my time when, some years ago, I went to the United States to solve the now famous Piano Case. You will remember how sneak thieves stole a grand piano from the residence of one of New York's first families, while the family was dining in the adjoining room. While in the city, and indeed at the very hotel in which I stopped, and which I have described, Pinkham's diamond stud disappeared, and, hearing that I was a guest at the Walledup-Hysteria, the owner appealed to me to recover it for him. I immediately took the case in hand. Drastic questioning of Pinkham showed that beyond all question he had lost the stud in his own apartment. He had gone down to dinner, leaving it on the centre-table, following the usual course of most millionaires, to whom diamonds are of no particular importance. Pinkham wanted this one only because of its associations. Its value, $80,000, was a mere bagatelle in his eyes.

"Now of course, if he positively left it on the table, it must have been taken by some one who had entered the room. Investigation proved that the maid, a valet, a fellow-millionaire from Chicago, and Pinkham's children had been the only ones to do this. The maid and the valet were above suspicion. Their fees from guests were large enough to place them beyond the reach of temptation. I questioned them closely, and they convinced me at once of their innocence by conducting me through the apartments of other guests wherein tiaras of diamonds and necklaces of pearls— ropes in very truth— rubies, turquoise, and emerald ornaments of priceless value, were scattered about in reckless profusion.

" 'D' yez t'ink oi'd waste me toime on an eighty-t'ousand-dollar shtood, wid all dhis in soight and moine for the thrubble uv swipin' ut?" said the French maid.

"I acquitted her at once, and the valet similarly proved his innocence, only with less of an accent, for he was supposed to be English, and not French, as was the maid, although they both came from Dublin. This narrowed the suspects down to Mr. Jedediah Wattles, of Chicago, and the children. Naturally I turned my attention to Wattles. A six-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl could hardly be suspected of stealing a diamond stud. So drawing on Pinkham for five thousand dollars to pay expenses, I hired a room in a tenement-house in Rivington Street— a squalid place it was— disguised myself with an oily, black, burglarious mustache, and dressed like a comic-paper gambler. Then I wrote a note to Wattles, asking him to call, saying that I could tell him something to his advantage. He came, and I greeted him like a pal. 'Wattles,' said I, 'you've been working this game for a long time, and I know all about you. You are an ornament to the profession, but we diamond-thieves have got to combine. Understand?' 'No, I don't' said he. 'Well, I'll tell you,' said I. 'You're a man of good appearance, and I ain't, but I know where the diamonds are. If we work together, there's millions in it. I'll spot the diamonds, and you lift 'em, eh? You can do it,' I added, as he began to get mad. 'The ease with which you got away with old Pinky's stud, that I've been trying to pull for myself for years, shows me that.'

"I was not allowed to go further. Wattles's indignation was great enough to prove that it was not he who had done the deed, and after he had thrashed me out of my disguise, I pulled myself together and said, 'Mr. Wattles, I am convinced that you are innocent.' As soon as he recognized me and realized my object in sending for him, he forgave me, and, I must say, treated me with great consideration.

"But my last clew was gone. The maid, the valet, and Wattles were proved innocent. The children alone remained, but I could not suspect them. Nevertheless, on my way back to the hotel I bought some rock-candy, and, after reporting to Pinkham, I asked casually after the children

" 'They're pretty well,' said Pinkham. 'Billie's complaining a little, and the doctor fears appendicitis, but Polly's all right. I guess Billie's all right too. The seventeen-course dinners they serve in the children's dining-room here aren't calculated to agree with Billie's digestion, I reckon.'

" 'I'd like to see 'em,' said I. 'I'm very fond of children.'

"Pinkham immediately called the youngsters in from the nursery. 'Guess what I've got,' I said, opening the package of rock-candy. 'Gee!' cried Billie, as it caught his eye. 'Gimme some!' 'Who gets first piece?' said I. 'Me!' cried both. 'Anybody ever had any before?' I asked. 'He has,' said Polly, pointing to Billie. The boy immediately flushed up. 'Ain't, neither!' he retorted. 'Yes you did, too,' said Polly. 'You swallered that piece pop left on the centre-table the other night!' 'Well, anyhow, it was only a little piece,' said Billie. 'An' it tasted like glass,' he added. Handing the candy to Polly, I picked Billie up and carried him to his father.

" 'Mr. Pinkham,' said I, handing the boy over, 'here is your diamond. It has not been stolen; it has merely been swallowed.' 'What?' he cried. And I explained. The stud mystery was explained. Mr. Pinkham's boy had eaten it."

Holmes paused.

"Well, I don't see how that proves your point," said I. "You said that it was the little things that told—"

"So it was," said Holmes. "If Polly hadn't told—"

"Enough," I cried; "it's on me, old man. We will go down to Willis's and have some Russian caviare and a bottle of Burgundy."

Holmes put on his hat and we went out together. It is to get the money to pay Willis's bill that I have written this story of "The Mystery of Pinkham's Diamond Stud."

____________

18: The Cave

Beatrice Grimshaw

1871-1953

The Blue Book Magazine August 1932

OVER Rafferty's Luck— misnamed— the wind seemed always blowing. Perhaps it did not really blow as much as I imagined. Perhaps, for the first time in my life, I merely had leisure to observe such things, and to be impressed by them.

To see how the long grasses shivered, showing the footmarks of the wind, it strode over them like Peter striding on the sea; as it suddenly failed and sank— like Peter— leaving behind it a flurry of stirred leaflets that made you think of flaws on water.… How, in the tide of the grass, always rising higher against the few doomed buildings, there streamed and wavered, like wonderful seaweeds, long strands of bishop-purple bougainvillea, and allamanda, all gold— wreckage of the creepers that used to climb over the roof and wall. How a loose door, in office, or bungalow, would suddenly give itself to the wind, and shut with a thunderous noise, making one think, for a distracted moment, that somebody had returned.…

Nobody did. It had not been anticipated that anyone would, when the owners of the bankrupt mine had hired me to stay there. I was to hold the place by doing a little work, while they went afield looking for capital— which they hardly expected to get. There was just enough chance of it, however, to make it worth their while to send me to the island, and leave me there at a negligible salary, with six-months' stores, and the freedom of the whole place, on which there was not so much as a native or a dog. Only myself and the deserted shaft and the rotting bungalow, and the wind that blew continually, complainingly, through the grasses and through the fallen creepers, wine-coloured and gold.

There were these, and something else. There was a shadow on the island: the loom of a strange and eerie story but half-told.

Rafferty's Luck had not failed from the usual causes— not altogether, that is. It had gone through the common history of little, remote mines; supposed at first to be very rich in copper, it had turned out to be a mere pocket, with a problematical vein behind it, that might or might not be worth developing when found.

It had been worked by the partners— there were three— in turns. The island was far out of the track of ships; it had been visited accidentally, by a shipwrecked crew. Three of these had found the copper, and kept silence; and later on, two had gone up to work it.

They had worked it, won enough ore for a good show, and waited confidently for the returning boat. But— when it came, it found only one man. The other had killed himself. Without any reason, he had cut his throat.

The third man took his place, and arranged, as before, that a passing schooner should call. It called within a few days, and found one man. The other, without any reason, had leaped over a precipice, and died.

Upon this, the third went away, and stayed so long that the mine— which was on British territory, and under mining laws— had nearly been forfeited. At the last moment the men now interested in it got me to go and hold the place, while the third partner went to London for capital.

They were candid enough— they told me that the island was under a shadow; and when I asked just what they meant, they said: "Exactly that. Rafferty and Wilder" (the two who had died) "both said something about shadows."

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing that anybody could understand. Rafferty had cut almost through his windpipe, and Wilder's face was smashed in by the fall. As like as not," went on the third partner,— France was his name,— "as like as not, drink had something to do with it; they were neither of them sober men."

"But you are— and you didn't come to any sort of grief?"

"I am— and I didn't."

"Yet you don't feel like staying. You only had a few days of it."

"Haven't I told you I must go and scare up some cash? Are you on, or not?"

"I am on," I said.

"Good. A man with an M.C. and a D.C.M. like you—"

"Hang the M.C. and the D.C.M. I'm going because I'm broke, and because I want to know what it's like to be really alone. As for your shadows, they won't make me jump over cliffs. I take one spot after sundown, never more."

"Good," said France again. He looked at me as if it was in his mind to say something more, but whatever the thing was, he kept it back.… "About the journey," he continued.…

Six weeks later I was left at Cave Island by a whaleboat— the last step in a decline that began with an ocean liner, continued through inter-island schooners and trading ketches, and ended in the last ketch's boat, sent off to ferry me through a network of reefs too dangerous for any sizable ship.

"If there is payable ore here," I thought, "small wonder it's been overlooked; God-forsaken and Satan-protected the place is, and out of the way of the world!" And I began to wonder, as the whaleboat stemmed green shallows, making for the hummocky deserted bay that stretched beyond, whether I had done well. I am from Clare; I have seen the dread sea-walls of Moher, and felt, on their high crowns, the "send" of that unknown evil that men of Ireland, for the confounding of strangers, chose to personify as the frightful Phooka. "This too is an evil place," I thought, and on that account, I said a small prayer. Now mind you, it was well done, as you shall afterwards know.

Then we beached, and began unloading my gear; and I was too busy with that, and with carrying most of it up to the bungalow, before dark should fall, to think of anything else. By and by the boat was back at the ship's side, a long way out, and the ship had made sail, and when I looked at her, in the last of the light, and saw her fading away like a ghost that has given its message, and goes back to its tomb, I knew that I was indeed alone— pressed down and running over, I had my wish!

After a day or two, I began to wonder what all the trouble was about, if indeed there had ever been any trouble except drink and the consequences of it. Cave Island was a windy spot, as I have said; not very large or long, only a mile or two at biggest, it was swept by all the winds that blow across the immense, lonely spaces of the central Pacific world, where almost no land is. In the mornings and at nights it was cool; during the day nothing but the wind saved it from most torrid heat. It was a barren place, and full of stones, some of them black and spongy and as big as houses. There was coarse grass, that never seemed to be still, almost as if things unseen ran under it, and kept it moving even in a calm. There were a few flowers that Rafferty had planted in his time, and there was the iron bungalow, and a storing shed, and a shaft with bucket and windlass dangling over, and tools abandoned by the side. For the rest, there was the sun wheeling over the island, at night the myriad unpitying stars, and always sea and sea. So lonely it was, that you could hear yourself breathe; out of the wind, you could listen to your heart beating. When you got up in the morning you took the burden of yourself upon your shoulders, and carried it, growing heavier and heavier, all day; even at night, it was with you in your dreams. Yet I liked this, as one likes all strong, violent experience. Solitude is violent; it is delicious, it is hateful; and as surely as a snake unwatched can strike, so it can maim or kill.…

What do you know, you who think that solitude is a locked room in a city, or a garden with the neighbours shut away?

A week or so went past. Every day I went to the workings, did a job with pick and shovel; wrote in my diary what I had done, and for the rest, was free. I liked to be free. Not since the war— and certainly not in it— had I been my own man; if I was not filling one of the blind-alley jobs that confront the untrained, hardly educated man of near forty, I was harder at work than ever, hunting another.

But if I was free, I was not at ease. I could see, after the first few days, that there was not much in the mine— worse, that there was never likely to be. I had worked copper before, and I judged that the worst of it was better than the best of this, once the surface show had been removed. In fact, it was nothing but a pocket. And how was a mere pocket going to give me a brick bungalow with an arched veranda, in Bondi or Coogee, and a garden behind it and a little touring-car, and a tobacconist's business somewhere near the surf beaches, to keep all going; and in the garden, behind the windowpanes of the bungalow, in a long chair on the veranda, at the wheel of the car, or swimming brown and bonny through the surf— always there, in my heart and in my life, the girl of my hopeless dreams.

No, I had not told France all the truth. He is a good fellow, but one does not give him confidences. Being broke was nothing new to me; being alone, the spice of it, the strangeness, I could have done without. But Rafferty's Luck offered the one and only chance I had of making my dream come true, and I would have taken it if it had led halfway to hell.

Instead, it seemed to lead to nothing.

I was so disappointed, so sore against France— whom I now perceived to be engaged in the familiar trick of unloading a hopeless venture upon a public too far away to understand— that I set my teeth, and resolved to hunt the island from coast to coast— to comb it through for a better show, and if found, to take that show myself. I don't know that this was moral; I only know I was prepared to do it.

By this time, I had forgotten all about the "shadow," and the suicides. Men who have roughed it, who own little, are not particularly shocked at suicide, or sudden death of any kind. You must have much to lose before you shudder at the passing breath of the storm that has swept another from his hold on life, and that will one day sweep you too.

So I did not think about Rafferty, or about Wilder— until the day when I found the cave; and after that it all began.

I had been prospecting over the summit of the island, without much success. On this day, I went down to the beach, and began patiently to circle the whole place, resolving, literally, to leave no stone unturned in the search for something better than Rafferty's Luck. It takes longer to walk all around an island than you'd think, even if the island is no more than a mile or two across. I spent all day upon the job, eating a biscuit for dinner, and drinking, once or twice, from the little streams that ran out of the crevices. If any of them had tasted ill I should have been glad; but they were all fresh as milk, no tinge of metal in them.

Toward sunset I came upon something that I hadn't noticed before— a cave. It was at the foot of an immense wall of rock; you could not have seen it from above, and the only way of reaching it was the way by which I had come, a painful climb along the narrow glacis of stones on the windward side. The beach and the anchorage were of course on the lee side. Ships wouldn't, for their lives, come up to windward; I was therefore almost sure that nobody, save myself, had seen or visited the cave.

That pleased me— you know how it is. I was glad that I had brought my torch with me— a costly big five-cell, like a searchlight, that She had sent me when I sailed; she hadn't sixpence to rub against sixpence, but she would have given her head away— and so would I; that was why we both were poor, and likely to remain so.…

I had a good look at the cave. It was very high; seventy or eighty feet at least. It was not quite so wide, but it seemed to run a good way back. The cold stream of wind that came out of it had a curious smell; I could not describe it to myself, otherwise than by saying that the smell seemed very old. I stood in the archway, in that stream of slightly tainted wind, examining the rocks about the mouth of the cave. There was not much daylight left now, but I could see, plainly enough, that here was small hope of a better find. I kept the torch in my hand as I went on into the interior of the cave; time enough, I thought, to turn it on when I had to; there were no spare batteries on the island.

By and by I began to go backwards; that is, I went on a little way, and then turned to look at the ground I had passed, lit up by the stream of light from the entrance. Coral, old and crumbling underfoot; limestone; a vein of conglomerate. Nowhere any sign of what I sought. It was getting darker; the cave, arching high above me, seemed to veer a little to one side, and the long slip of blue daylight was almost gone. Now, with half-a-dozen steps, I lost it altogether; I stood in complete darkness, with the cool wind streaming about me, and that strange, aged smell, now decidedly stronger.

"Time for the light," I thought. Something made me swallow in my throat, made me press my foremost foot tight to the ground, because it seemed, oddly enough, to have developed a will of its own; it wanted to move back, and the backward foot wanted to swing on its toe and turn round.…I will swear I was not afraid— but somehow my feet were.

I snapped on the light, and swung it ahead. It showed a narrow range of rock wall on each side, a block of velvet darkness ahead, and in the midst of the darkness, low down, two circles of shining bluish green. Eyes— but what eyes! They were the size of dinner-plates! They did not move, they only looked; and I was entirely sure that they saw me. If they had been high up, I do not think I should have minded them— much. But they were, as I have said, low down, and that was somehow horrible. Lurking. Treacherous.…

I had shot crocodiles by night, discovering them exactly as I had discovered this unnamed monster, by the shine of their eyes in torchlight. But I had had a sporting-rifle to do it with, and knew what I was shooting at. Now I was totally unarmed; the futile shotgun I had brought with me for stray pot-hunting, was up at the bungalow. I had not the vaguest idea what this creature might be, but I knew what was the only thing to do under the circumstances, and I did it: I ran away.

Nothing stirred. Nothing followed me. When I reached the outer arch of the cave, all glorious with sea and sunset, there was not a sound anywhere but the lifting crash and send of the waves upon the broken beach. I stood for a moment looking at the magnificent sky that paled and darkened while one could quickly have counted a hundred. "I shall have to come back," was my thought, "with a charge of dynamite, and a bit of fuse. Shotgun just as much use as a pea-shooter." I told myself these things, but now that I was out of the cave, I could not for the life of me believe in what I had seen. "It wasn't the sort of smell it ought to have been," I said aloud weakly, and kicked the stones about aimlessly with my foot. Something rolled. I looked at it, and it was a skull.

"Peter Riordan," I said, "this is not your lucky day." And I picked up the skull. There were bones with it, all loose and lying about. "I can make a guess what happened to Mr. Bones!" I said, peering through swiftly falling twilight at the skull. It was like a shock of cold water to see that it was old beyond computing— almost fossilized, dark and mossy with the passage of incalculable time. As for the bones, they crackled like pie-crust when I put my foot on them. I could see where they had fallen out of the rock; they must have lain there buried, for a long time.

"I don't understand," I thought. "Things don't fit together. This is a hell of an island." It seemed good to me to climb the cliff as fast as I could, making for the solid walls of the bungalow, and leaving behind me in the inhospitable twilight those queer bones now unburied, and the cave, and the immense green eyes that did not move.

The bungalow was a good way off; in order to reach it, I had to cross the empty rolling downs on the top of the island, with their long grass that never was still, and their heaps of hummocks of black stone. By this time it was so late that I could only see the stones as lumps of indefinite darkness. Some of them were big even by daylight; by night they looked immense. They were queerly shaped, too; once, when I paused to get breath (for I can assure you I was going hard) I noticed that the biggest one in sight looked exactly like the rounded hind-quarters of an elephant, only no elephant ever was so big.

I leaned against a boulder, and mopped my face. There was a rather warm wind blowing; it brought with it the sort of scents that one expects by night— the dark-green smell of grass wet with dew, the curious singeing odour of baked stones gradually giving out their heat, little sharp smells of rat and iguana, out hunting. And something else.…

"Peter Riordan," I said, "you quit imagining things that aren't there. Rafferty did, and Wilder did." And I propped myself against the stone, and took out a cigarette.

It was never lighted. Just as I was feeling in my matchbox, I looked at the giant boulder again, and as I hope for heaven, I saw it walk away. That is, it did not walk— it hobbled, lurching against the sky.

For obvious reasons I didn't light the cigarette, but I put it into my mouth, and chewed it; that was better than nothing. "We aren't going to be stampeded," I said (but noiselessly, you may believe). "We are going to see this through." And, being as wise as I was brave— perhaps a little wiser— I got inside a sort of pill-box of loose stones, and peered out through the openings. By this time it was as dark as the inside of a cow; you could only see stars and stars, and the ink-black blots made against them by one thing and another. And the great black thing that wasn't a boulder, and wasn't an elephant, went lurching and lumbering, smashing through Orion, wiping Scorpio off the sky, putting out the Pointers where the Cross was waiting to come up; it seemed to swing all over the universe.

"It's chasing something," I thought.

It was. One could see it tack and turn with incredible swiftness, swinging behind it something that might have been legs and might have been a tail. Clearly, it was hunting, like the rats and the iguanas, and now I could see— or thought I could see— the thing it hunted: Something very small, compared with the enormous bulk of the beast; something that dodged in and out of the stones, running for its life. A little, upright thing with a round head, that scuttled madly, squeaked as it ran.

Or had I fancied the squeak? The whole amazing drama was so silent that I could not be sure. It seemed to me that if there had been a cry, a queer thin cry, I had heard it inside my head, not outside. I can't explain more clearly, but there are those who will understand. At any rate, I was sure the thing had cried, and that it had cause. The end was approaching.

There was another frantic doubling, another swing around of the immense hobbling beast, and then the little creature simply was not— and the enormous shadow had swept to the edge of the cliff and over, and was gone.

I felt my forehead wet. My breath was coming as quickly as if it had been I who had squeaked and doubled there, out among the night-black grasses and the stones.… The shadow! They who died had seen shadows.

"But," I found myself saying argumentatively, to the silent stars, "I am real, and that wasn't. It's like things in a dream, when you know the railway engine can't run over you, because it isn't really there."

Something obscuredly answered: "Rafferty is dead, and Wilder is dead. Death is real."

I got out of the pill-box. "I shall say the multiplication table all the way home," I told myself. And I did. But when I had got home to the bungalow, I said something else— I said a prayer. "Perhaps they didn't," I thought. Then I went in, and cooked my supper. It was quite a good supper, and I slept very well.

Next morning nothing seemed more impossible than the things that, I was assured, had not happened last night. All the same, I decided to go and have another look at the cave, with plenty of dynamite, and the shotgun, for what that might be worth. I could not forget that Beth, who would give her head away— and who had given her heart— was waiting for that brick house, and that little car, and those Sunday mornings on the surf beaches. And I was resolved that she should not miss them.

It was now about ten days since I landed, and I began, for the first time, to count the days that remained. France would have to reach London, find a simpleton who would finance his venture (I knew he'd do it— he could have squeezed money out of a concrete pillar), return to Australia, and make his way to the island. Six weeks; three weeks; six weeks; three or four weeks. Nineteen in all. And I had put one week and a half behind me. There remained seventeen and a half. Four months and a half. A hundred and twenty-two days, if I succeeded in keeping my senses. If I did not, it was a hundred and twenty-two minus X.

I could see the X in front of me; a black, threatening thing, big as a garage door. But I defied it. "You won't get me," I said. "I'm bound for Bondi and the brick bungalow." And, whistling "Barnacle Bill" to keep my spirits up, I began to cut lead piping into slugs. "Ought to have brought a rifle," I thought, "but never mind; I can do something with these, and a bit of dynamite and a fuse."

It took me about fifteen minutes to cut up the slugs. When I raised my eyes from the table on which I was working, I saw, through the window of the cottage, a steamer— a small trading-boat with a black and white funnel. She was out in the roadstead, and she was just preparing to let go anchor.

I let off a shout; you should hear a Clare man do it!

"X, I've got you," I cried. "Dead as a doornail— stabbed with your own beastly minus!" And I sent the lead pipe flying across the floor. I just had to make a noise.

In the roadstead, the little steamer was making a terrible row with her roaring anchor-chains, and a whaleboat was rapidly being lowered. Within ten minutes, France and I were shaking hands.

"Never went to London at all," he told me at the top of his voice. "Got the whole lump of expenses right in Sydney, from two or three splendid chaps who were staying at my hotel. Loads of money. Country fellows."

"They would be," I thought, remembering France's local reputation.

"Brought the machinery up with me. Brought a geologist. Get a start, get a nice report, go down again and float the company."

"Leaving me in charge?"

"That's right."

"It isn't— not by a mile! France," I said, looking him straight in the eyes,— he had candid, jolly blue eyes, the little beggar, and he had a smile under his toothbrush moustache that would have wiled cash out of a New York customs-officer,— "France, I don't like this affair of yours any too well, and I'd prefer to be out of it." For I knew, now, that the little car and the Sundays in the surf would have to come by some other road.

"Got the wind up?" he asked, cocking his hat on one side of his head, and looking at me impertinently.

"I don't know about that," I said,— and indeed I did not know; it was a puzzling matter— "but I do know that there isn't enough payable copper here to sheet a yacht."

"Oh, you're no expert," he said easily. "Let me introduce Mr. Rattray Smith, our geologist. Mr. Peter Riordan."

"Why not a mining engineer?" I asked curtly, glancing with some distaste at the academic-looking youth who had followed France out of the boat.

"Came too high," explained France with a charming smile. "Smith knows copper when he sees it."

"I reckon he knows which side his bread is buttered on," I commented, without troubling to lower my voice over-much. I simply could not stand that geologist; he was such a half-baked looking creature, fairly smelling of chalk and blackboards.

"Quite," was France's answer. "And he's got all sorts of degrees; look lovely on a prospectus."

"Maybe," was all I answered. I heard afterwards that Smith's degrees were more showy than practical, from our point of view— B.Sc., F.G.S., and something else that I forget; palaeontology was his special game, and he knew next to nothing about metals. France had got him cheap because he had been ill, and needed a change. France, it appeared, meant to make full use of Mr. Rattray Smith's shining degrees in the forthcoming prospectus; meantime, as he somewhat coarsely put it to me, he intended to "stuff the blighter up for all he was worth."

"You go and take him for a walk," he said to me now. "Show him the workings, and help him with his notes. I've got to see the machinery ashore."

I didn't want to see that machinery land; I knew only too well what it would be— old, tired stuff that had been dumped on half-a-dozen wharves, for the deluding of share-holders, in many places; stuff never meant to be used, only to be charged at four times its value in expense accounts.…I took Smith to the workings; showed him the ore, lowered him down the shaft, displayed the various tunnels. I said not a word. He could delude himself if he liked; I meant to have no hand in it.

Perhaps he was not such a fool as he looked; perhaps, I cynically told myself, he was more knave than fool. At all events, he said very little, and took only a few notes. I began to like him better, in spite of his horn-rimmed glasses and his academic bleat.

"Look here," I said, as we were returning to the house. "I've been all over the damned island, and I'll eat any payable stuff you find."

"All over?" he said, cocking one currant-coloured eye at me through his glasses.

I began to think he might not be such a fool as he looked. Clearly he had sensed a certain reserve that lay behind my speech.

"Well," I said, not caring enough about him to mince words, "there's a warren of caves down on the wind'ard side of the island and I tried to investigate the biggest one the other day."

"What did you find? Any indications?" he squeaked.

"Couldn't tell you. I was stopped by a beast. Nightmare beast, with eyes as big as plates. Hadn't a gun with me, but I meant to have a go at it later on."

"But that's— but that's most—" he began to stammer eagerly.

France, who had gone to the house for a drink, looked out of the window, and interrupted me.

"What's this about beasts, and why are you making slugs for your silly old shotgun?" he demanded.

I told him.

"You've got 'em too," was his only comment.

This, for some reason or other, made me desperate.

"That's not the whole of it," I said. "Last night I saw a thing as big as six elephants chasing a little thing in the dark."

"You would," he said. "Have a hair of the dog that bit you, and take some bromide when you're going to bed."

"Look here— will you come down to the cave yourself?" I pleaded.

"With all that machinery to land, and the ship bound to clear before sun-down? Not much."

"Very well. Will you come for a walk on the top of the island after dark?"

"Oh, yes," he said, casually. "Never saw anything when I was here for a fortnight, and don't expect to now. But I'll come."

"Was it moonlight when you were here?" I shouted after him as he started for the beach.

"What's that to— Yes, I reckon it was."

Rattray Smith began deliberately: "The influence of light on all these phenomena—"

"What d'ye mean?" I asked. "Are you a spiritualist? Surely you couldn't be."

"In the excellent company of Sir William Crookes and Sir Oliver Lodge, I certainly could," he answered. "I suppose you think that the modern man of science is necessarily sceptic, like his— his—"

"I think he believes either a darn' sight too little, or a devilish sight too much, if you ask me," I said. "But wait till tonight."

We waited. And after dark, we all went up to the top of the island and posted ourselves in the "pill-box." There was an enormous sky of stars above us; all round us the faintly smelling, feebly rustling grasses, and standing up among them, big as cottages and railway cars, were the silhouetted shapes of gigantic rocks.

I had thought we might have hours to wait, and after all might see nothing; but I was wrong. We had not been in the pill-box ten minutes, before a whole mass of stars before us went suddenly black. It was just over the biggest of the cottage-sized rocks, and I had a nasty idea that the rock itself— or what we had thought to be rock— was part of the rising mass.

Have you ever seen an innocent stick turn into a serpent, a log in a river show sudden crocodile-eyes and swim away?

If you have, then you will know how I felt.

Up went the monster, half across the sky; and now it began to lurch and hirple with that strange movement I had noted before, covering immense areas of ground with every lurch. I heard Rattray Smith draw in his breath with a sort of whistling noise.

"I don't think it'll touch us," I whispered, with my lips on his ear. "Keep quiet."

"Man," he said. "Oh, man!" and seemed to choke.

France kept quite still.

I smelled the queer smell of it, not the sort of smell it should have been; strangely old and non-pungent. I saw a small shadow, round-headed, come out of nowhere and scuttle away. I saw the great shadow hunting it. Smith saw too; for some extraordinary reason, he was crying, in broken, half-suppressed sobs.

"I don't reckon it can—" I began, in a cautious whisper. He interrupted.

"Man," he said, "You— you— don't know. I've seen discarnate spirits; I've seen— I— No matter. This is beyond everything one ever— Woop!"

They were out of the pill-box, like rats breaking cover, and I after them, going I didn't know where. I had seen what they had— and even though I didn't believe it, I ran. The big shadow had turned toward us, suddenly rearing itself up, up, until it stood a hundred feet high among the stars. It leaned a little forward, like something listening; it was semi-erect, and in its enormous forepaws it held a small dark thing that kicked and then was still.

"I— I—" stuttered Rattray Smith as we ran. "Discarnate dinosaur— spirits if they get angry— Where's the house?"

"Wrong way," I panted, seizing his elbow. I had caught a pale grey glimmer in front of us, and realized we were heading for the sea. We stopped and looked back. Something immense rocked heavily against the stars, coming up with appalling swiftness. I saw that it was between us and the bungalow. Not that that mattered; by its size, it could have cracked the bungalow like a nut— and that it meant, for sport or for spite, to drive us over the cliff. I knew— I don't know how— that it was powerless to treat us as it had treated the little black ghost of prehistoric man, in that strange reproduction of an age-old drama, but that it was an evil thing, and would harm us all it could. And I knew too, in the same swift enlightening moment, why one man of the two who died had fallen over the cliff, and why another had slain himself. The last had not been able to endure this terrible rending of the veil.…

"Smith," I panted, "stand your ground; you'll break your neck. It can't harm us. It's only the fear."

"Discarnate spirits—" he babbled. I did not heed him. I was busy doing what the soldier did for Joan of Arc, in her evil moment— making a Cross of two sticks, with a stem of grass twisted round them. I held it in my hand, and I said— no matter what. Those who know will know.

By ever so little, the giant shadow missed us, lurched forward and with one toppling leap, went down the cliff.

"Come on," I shouted to Smith and France, though I could not see the latter. "I've got my torch and a plug of dynamite; we'll see the whole thing through."

"What are you going to do?" squeaked Rattray Smith.

"Put out those eyes in the cave," I shouted. I was exhilarated, above myself— as one used to be in the war. I scrambled down the cliff in the transparent dark, feeling my way; slightly surprised, but not much, to hear Smith coming after, I found the cave.

We stood for a minute gaining breath, and looking about us. There was nothing to be seen anywhere; nothing to be heard but the steady slapping of waves on the beach.

"I'm with you," declared Smith squeakily. "As a palaeontologist—"

"A which?" I said. "Don't trip over those bones, and don't stop to pick them up now!"— for he was stooping down and fumbling. I added, without quite knowing what I meant, "The dinosaur's ghost didn't have eyes." But he seemed to know; he said: "That makes it all the more— " I did not hear the rest; we were too busy picking our way.

Round the corner, we stopped. The eyes were there. Low down, unmoving, unwinking in the ray of the torch as I threw it on. Big as plates; blue-green, glittering—

"Hold the torch while I fix this," I whispered. Smith took it; his hand was unsteady, but I could not blame him for that. I bit off my fuse as short as I dared; lit it, and tossed the plug.…

There was a boom that almost cracked our ear-drums; immediately after, stones and dirt came smashing down in such quantity that we found ourselves staggering wildly, bruised and cut, beneath a hundred blows.

"Are you hurt?" I called to Smith.

"Bring your damned torch here," was his only reply.

I came forward, and found him on hands and knees in the midst of an amazing raffle of half-fossilized bones; some of them were as big as the masts of a ship, though partly smashed by the explosion. Almost falling loose from the cliff above our heads was the most astounding skull I had ever dreamed of, a thing far bigger than an elephant's, with huge eye-sockets set well forward, and the tusky jaws of a tiger. Behind the eye-sockets, as I waved the torch, shone a mass of something vivid, greenish blue.

"Oh, God," cried Smith— who didn't believe in God,— "you've broken up the finest dinosaur skeleton in the world!"

I was too busy to trouble about him. I had climbed a little way up, and was scraping at the mass of iridescent, green-blue crystals in which the skull was set; which, through uncounted ages, had sifted down through various openings, filling the huge orbits of the eyes, so that they gleamed in the light as if alive.

"I'd break up my grandmother's skeleton," I told him joyously, "if it was bedded in copper pyrites. We've found the paying stuff at last!" It was not the dark roof of the cave that I saw, as I said that, not the glittering pyrites, or the amazing great bones, or the scrambling, complaining figure of Smith, on the floor of the cave. It was St. Mary's in Sydney, on a summer morning, with a white figure coming up the aisle "on her father's arm"— to me!

Rattray Smith, I understand, has written a great deal for different scientific magazines about the curious happenings on Cave Island. In one, he told the story of the great skeleton; how it was found, and where, and how put together again. He doesn't say what he got for it, but I believe that was something to write home about; good dinosaurs come high, with or without incredible ghost stories attached. The spiritualistic magazines simply ate up his account of the prehistoric ghost and its sinister activities. Especially did they seem to like his conclusions about the skeleton acting as a sort of medium, or jumping-off point, for the apparition. He may have been right or wrong there; at all events, it is certain that after the removal of the bones, no one engaged in working the mines ever saw or heard anything remarkable.

France? We found him in the bungalow, drunk, and under a bed. He says, and maintains, that we were all in the same condition. A man must save his face.

______________

19: The Coffin Merchant

Richard Middleton

1882-1911

Collected in: The Ghost Ship, Unwin, 1912

LONDON on a November Sunday inspired Eustace Reynolds with a melancholy too insistent to be ignored and too causeless to be enjoyed. The grey sky overhead between the house-tops, the cold wind round every street-corner, the sad faces of the men and women on the pavements, combined to create an atmosphere of ineloquent misery. Eustace was sensitive to impressions, and in spite of a half-conscious effort to remain a dispassionate spectator of the world's melancholy, he felt the chill of the aimless day creeping over his spirit. Why was there no sun, no warmth, no laughter on the earth? What had become of all the children who keep laughter like a mask on the faces of disillusioned men? The wind blew down Southampton Street, and chilled Eustace to a shiver that passed away in a shudder of disgust at the sombre colour of life. A windy Sunday in London before the lamps are lit, tempts a man to believe in the nobility of work.

At the corner by Charing Cross Telegraph Office a man thrust a handbill under his eyes, but he shook his head impatiently. The blueness of the fingers that offered him the paper was alone sufficient to make him disinclined to remove his hands from his pockets even for an instant. But, the man would not be dismissed so lightly.

"Excuse me, sir," he said, following him, "you have not looked to see what my bills are."

"Whatever they are I do not want them."

"That's where you are wrong, sir," the man said earnestly. "You will never find life interesting if you do not lie in wait for the unexpected. As a matter of fact, I believe that my bill contains exactly what you do want."

Eustace looked at the man with quick curiosity. His clothes were ragged, and the visible parts of his flesh were blue with cold, but his eyes were bright with intelligence and his speech was that of an educated man. It seemed to Eustace that he was being regarded with a keen expectancy, as though his decision I on the trivial point was of real importance.

"I don't know what you are driving at," he said, "but if it will give you any pleasure I will take one of your bills; though if you argue with all your clients as you have with me, it must take you a long time to get rid of them."

"I only offer them to suitable persons," the man said, folding up one of the handbills while he spoke, "and I'm sure you will not regret taking it," and he slipped the paper into Eustace's hand and walked rapidly away.

Eustace looked after him curiously for a moment, and then opened the paper in his hand. When his eyes comprehended its significance, he gave a low whistle of astonishment. "You will soon be warning a coffin!" it read. "At 606, Gray's Inn Road, your order will be attended to with civility and despatch. Call and see us!!"

Eustace swung round quickly to look for the man, but he was out of sight. The wind was growing colder, and the lamps were beginning to shine out in the greying streets. Eustace crumpled the paper into his overcoat pocket, and turned homewards.

"How silly!" he said to himself, in conscious amusement. The sound of his footsteps on the pavement rang like an echo to his laugh.

EUSTACE was impressionable but not temperamentally morbid, and he was troubled a little by the fact that the gruesomely bizarre handbill continued to recur to his mind. The thing was so manifestly absurd, he told himself with conviction, that it was not worth a second thought, but this did not prevent him from thinking of it again and again. What manner of undertaker could hope to obtain business by giving away foolish handbills in the street? Really, the whole thing had the air of a brainless practical joke, yet his intellectual fairness forced him to admit that as far as the man who had given him the bill was concerned, brainlessness was out of the question, and joking improbable. There had been depths in those little bright eyes which his glance had not been able to sound, and the man's manner in making him accept the handbill had given the whole transaction a kind of ludicrous significance.

"You will soon be wanting a coffin—!"

Eustace found himself turning the words over and over in his mind. If he had had any near relations he might have construed the thing as an elaborate threat, but he was practically alone in the world, and it seemed to him that he was not likely to want a coffin for anyone but himself.

"Oh damn the thing!" he said impatiently, as he opened the door of his flat, "it isn't worth worrying about. I mustn't let the whim of some mad tradesman get on my nerves. I've got no one to bury, anyhow."

Nevertheless the thing lingered with him all the evening, and when his neighbour the doctor came in for a chat at ten o'clock, Eustace was glad to show him the strange handbill. The doctor, who had experienced the queer magics that are practised to this day on the West Coast of Africa, and who, therefore, had no nerves, was delighted with so striking an example of British commercial enterprise.

"Though, mind you," he added gravely, smoothing the crumpled paper on his knee, "this sort of thing might do a lot of harm if it fell into the hands of a nervous subject. I should be inclined to punch the head of the ass who perpetrated it. Have you turned that address up in the Post Office Directory?"

Eustace shook his head, and rose and fetched the fat red book which makes London an English city. Together they found the Gray's Inn Road, and ran their eyes down to No. 606.

" 'Harding, G. J., Coffin Merchant and Undertaker.' Not much information there," muttered the doctor.

"Coffin merchant's a bit unusual, isn't it?" queried Eustace.

"I suppose he manufactures coffins wholesale for the trade. Still, I didn't know they called themselves that. Anyhow, it seems, as though that handbill is a genuine piece of downright foolishness. The idiot ought to be stopped advertising in that way."

"I'll go and see him myself tomorrow," said Eustace bluntly.

"Well, he's given you an invitation," said the doctor, "so it's only polite of you to go. I'll drop in here in the evening to hear what he's like. I expect that you'll find him as mad as a hatter."

"Something like that," said Eustace, "or he wouldn't give handbills to people like me. I have no one to bury except myself."

"No," said the doctor in the hall, "I suppose you haven't. Don't let him measure you for a coffin, Reynolds!"

Eustace laughed.

"We never know," he said sententiously.

NEXT DAY was one of those gorgeous blue days of which November gives but few, and Eustace was glad to run out to Wimbledon for a game of golf, or rather for two. It was therefore dusk before he made his way to the Gray's Inn Road in search of the unexpected. His attitude towards his errand despite the doctor's laughter and the prosaic entry in the directory, was a little confused. He could not help reflecting that after all the doctor had not seen the man with the little wise eyes, nor could he forget that Mr. G. J. Harding's description of himself as a coffin merchant, to say the least of it, approached the unusual. Yet he felt that it would be intolerable to chop the whole business without finding out what it all meant. On the whole he would have preferred not to have discovered the riddle at all; but having found it, he could not rest without an answer.

No. 606, Gray's Inn Road, was not like an ordinary undertaker's shop. The window was heavily draped with black cloth, but was otherwise unadorned. There were no letters from grateful mourners, no little model coffins, no photographs of marble memorials. Even more surprising was the absence of any name over the shop-door, so that the uninformed stranger could not possibly tell what trade was carried on within, or who was responsible for the management of the business. This uncommercial modesty did not tend to remove Eustace's doubts as to the sanity of Mr. G. J. Harding; but he opened the shop-door which started a large bell swinging noisily, and stepped over the threshold. The shop was hardly more expressive inside than out. A broad counter ran across it, cutting it in two, and in the partial gloom overhead a naked gas-burner whistled a noisy song. Beyond this the shop contained no furniture whatever, and no stock-in-trade except a few planks leaning against the wall in one corner. There was a large ink-stand on the counter. Eustace waited patiently for a minute or two, and then as no one came he began stamping on the floor with his foot. This proved efficacious, for soon he heard the sound of footsteps ascending wooden stairs, the door behind the counter opened and a man came into the shop.

He was dressed quite neatly now, and his hands were no longer blue with cold, but Eustace knew at once that it was the man who had given him the handbill. Nevertheless he looked at Eustace without a sign of recognition.

"What can I do for you, sir?" he asked pleasantly.

Eustace laid the handbill down on the counter.

"I want to know about this," he said. "It strikes me as being in pretty bad taste, and if a nervous person got hold of it, it might be dangerous."

"You think so, sir? Yet our representative," he lingered affectionately on the words, "our representative told you, I believe, that the handbill was only distributed to suitable cases."

"That's where you are wrong," said Eustace sharply, "for I have no one to bury."

"Except yourself," said the coffin merchant suavely.

Eustace looked at him keenly. "I don't see—" he began. But the coffin merchant interrupted him.

"You must know, sir," he said, "that this is no ordinary undertaker's business. We possess information that enables us to defy competition in our special class of trade."

"Information!"

"Well, if you prefer it, you may say intuitions. If our representative handed you that advertisement, it was because he knew you would need it."

"Excuse me," said Eustace, "you appear to be sane, but your words do not convey to me any reasonable significance. You gave me that foolish advertisement yourself, and now you say that you did so because you knew I would need it. I ask you why?"

The coffin merchant shrugged his shoulders. "Ours is a sentimental trade," he said, "I do not know why dead men want coffins, but they do. For my part I would wish to be cremated."

"Dead men?"

"Ah, I was coming to that. You see Mr.—?"

"Reynolds."

"Thank you, my name is Harding— G. J. Harding. You see, Mr. Reynolds, our intuitions are of a very special character, and if we say that you will need a coffin, it is probable that you will need one."

"You mean to say that I—"

"Precisely. In twenty-four hours or less, Mr. Reynolds, you will need our services."

The revelation of the coffin merchant's insanity came to Eustace with a certain relief. For the first time in the interview he had a sense of the dark empty shop and the whistling gas-jet over his head.

"Why, it sounds like a threat, Mr. Harding!" he said gaily.

The coffin merchant looked at him oddly, and produced a printed form from his pocket. "If you would fill this up," he said.

Eustace picked it up off the counter and laughed aloud. It was an order for a hundred-guinea funeral.

"I don't know what your game is," he said, "but this has gone on long enough."

"Perhaps it has, Mr. Reynolds," said the coffin merchant, and he leant across the counter and looked Eustace straight in the face.

For a moment Eustace was amused; then he was suddenly afraid. "I think it's time I—" he began slowly, and then he was silent, his whole will intent on fighting the eyes of the coffin merchant. The song of the gas-jet waned to a point in his ears, and then rose steadily till it was like the beating of the world's heart. The eyes of the coffin merchant grew larger and larger, till they blended in one great circle of fire. Then Eustace picked a pen off the counter and filled in the form.

"Thank you very much, Mr. Reynolds," said the coffin merchant, shaking hands with him politely. "I can promise you every civility and despatch. Good-day, sir."

Outside on the pavement Eustace stood for a while trying to recall exactly what had happened. There was a slight scratch on his hand, and when he automatically touched it with his lips, it made them burn. The lit lamps in the Gray's Inn Road seemed to him a little unsteady, and the passers-by showed a disposition to blunder into him.

"Queer business," he said to himself dimly; "I'd better have a cab."

He reached home in a dream.

IT WAS NEARLY ten o'clock before the doctor remembered his promise, and went upstairs to Eustace's flat. The outer door was half-open so that he thought he was expected, and he switched on the light in the little hall, and shut the door behind him with the simplicity of habit. But when he swung round from the door he gave a cry of astonishment. Eustace was lying asleep in a chair before him with his face flushed and drooping on his shoulder, and his breath hissing noisily through his parted lips. The doctor looked at him quizzically, "If I did not know you, my young friend," he remarked, "I should say that you were as drunk as a lord."

And he went up to Eustace and shook him by the shoulder; but Eustace did not wake.

"Queer!" the doctor muttered, sniffing at Eustace's lips; "he hasn't been drinking."

__________________

20: In the Boat of the Sarah Bligh

John Arthur Barry

1851-1911

Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney) 23 June 1900

"A FINE LOT OF BOATS we carry," I remarked to the bo'sun of the R.M.S. Olympia, one fine Sunday morning, just as "drill" was over.

"Ay, ay," replied the bo'sun with a gesture of disgust; "the boats is right enough for them as likes 'em, but for my part I wouldn't care a pennorth o' snuff if she hadn't a boat to her name. Enough o' deep water boatin' I've 'ad to last me my time! An' if the 'Lympia was a-sinkin' this blessed minute, them as wanted the boats could 'ave 'em, for all I cared."

"Bo'sun," I replied insinuatingly, "after that heavy drill business I should think it's about a fair thing to freshen the nip. And I see the 2d saloon bar is open. What d'you think?"

"Ay, ay, sir," he grinned, smacking his lips anticipatingly, the there boat drill does take a lot out of us. So, if you're agreeable—"

Gently, whilst the old Jamaica was still in circulation, I led back the talk to the boats; and then, sitting on the lee-side of the dispensary that bright Sunday forenoon, whilst for'ard the deck officers flirted with the lady passengers, and aft a few pallid engineers sported their Sunday uniforms amongst the fair one's of the second saloon, the bo'sun told me this story:

"YOU KNOW," he began, "that most o' my time's been spent in wind jammers, and it's only lately that I've took to steam. Thirty-five years I have been under canvas, and an awful fool to stop as long at it as I done. Then I was nothin' better nor a slave, at the beck an' call o' all hands. Now, in comparison, I've got the life of a gentleman. No, I wouldn't go back to canvas again for twenty pounds a month. Well, it's some ten years or so now since I sailed out o' London in a big lump of a wooden barque— one o' Bligh's 'peasoupers' as we used to call 'em, from the dirty yaller color they was painted. We was bound to the Mauritius for sugar. It was my third trip as bo'sun; and, take her all round, and spite o' the skipper's havin' brought his wife with him, she was about the cumfablest lime-juicer as ever I was in. The wife was a fine lump of a woman, pretty young, too, compared with the Old Man, as was quite grey and bald. However that might be, she seemed fond enough of him, and we did hear as how she was the widow of another skipper left destitute by her husband being lost at sea, and that but for the Old Man she would have had to go on the parish. But, you know, yarns of the sort will get about amongst men afloat just the same as they does ashore. Anyhow, she was a good woman, and always used her word with the skipper to make things as easy as possible for the men. Many's the tot o' grog and bit o' cabin stuff she used to send into me and Chips and Sails in the deckhouse where we berthed.

"The old Sarah Bligh, like all the rest of her tribe, wasn't a clipper by no means; but, so long as he's fairly done by, there's no sailorman what doesn't like a good slow ship and a good pay-day better than a flash flyer, that most of her time's no better'n a 'arf-tide rock, a doin' of her thirteen an' fourteen. You bet, it ain't Jack that blows about what his ship can do— leastways, not till he gets out of her! More days, more dollars is his motter, when there's full and plenty, and watch and watch a-goin'.

"Well, we jogged along through the trades all right enough. Then after calling at Capetown, where we had a bit of cargo to put out, we bore away for Port Louis. Then, one night, standing on the main hatch, watching a bright star that looked as it rose like the white light of a steamer, I suddenly seen a blue curl o' something rise up between me and it in the clear blueness of the night. At first I only rubbed my eyes, thinkin', p'raps, as it were a sort o' scum come acrost 'em, But it didn't go away, seemed, in fact, to get thicker. So I walks for'ard till I gets to the big ventilator just before the foremast. The star was clear then, and, turning back, I puts the fault on my eyes. Then I gives another look, and, hang me, if there it wasn't again, just a blue, thin haze, curling up into the starshine plain'r ever. We was braced sharp up on the starboard tack. It was almost a dead calm, courses hauled up and head sails down; but just then a faint puff came from the nor'ard, and I saw the streak of blue waver and bend to'rds me, and next minute I sniffed smoke, and dropped to the business in a jiffy. Runnin' for'ard again, I shins up the topsail sheets and on to the ventilator— it was a great big stack, as tall as a Thames penny steamer's— and hops off it again like a bird, so hot it was, and the smoke curling thicker'n ever out from under the hood of it. The ship was on fire. How it happened, o' course, was only, as it mostly is in them cases, a matter o' guessment. But, probably, it was through some of those cursed lumpers in Table Bay a-smokin' among the cargo. But, however it was done, it was done thorough. Been a-smoulderin' I reckon ever since we left there. Anyhow, when we took the forehatches off smoke and red tongues o' flame come dartin' up, so as it give us all we knew to get 'em on again.

"Well, we did everything we could think of—cut holes in the deck and had the hose along, and pumped and pumped the water into her till she got deep as a sand barge. But, lor, it seemed as ye might so well ha' sprinkled a volcaner with a waterin' pot. Fore an' aft the fire spread, until saloon and deck-houses was like ovens, and that thick with smoke as would stifle you to put your head in them.

"And through it all the old skipper, aye, and his wife, too, worked like niggers— him carryin' buckets and her bringin' us tucker and drink along the hot, smokin' decks, as each minute we'd expec' to see cave in.

"But it was all to no good ; and when the Old Man sees that it warn't. and that the Sarah was past savin', he calls us off, and sets us to gettin' the boats out.

"Unfornitly he'd left it just a little too late, so that, although we got 'em into the water all right, we'd time to put mighty little into 'em afore we has to jump for our lives. 'Jump,' did I say?" exclaimed the bo'sun reflectively, stroking the grizzled stubble on his chin. " 'Crawled,' it should ha' been, considerin' that the smoke was by now that thick you couldn't see your hand afore your face. From royal truck to deck the Sarah was just a mass o' thick black smoke, that got into our eyes and down our throats, and nigh suffocated us afore we managed to shove clear of her in the three, boats. We left her at eight bells in the afternoon watch, and then she looked just one solid heap o' smoke. Ten minutes more, and all o' a suddent, she busted out in flames, as shot up and set the sails and riggin' afire; then the masts went all ways at oncest, and presen'ly the hull itself sunk in a roarin', bubblin', fizzle o' steam leavin' us a-starin' at each other there on the wide and lovely ocean, a thousand miles from Port Louis, and about four hundred from the nearest land, which was Cape St. Mary, at the southern end o' Maddygascar. But there's the lunch bugle, sir," broke off the bo'sun, " and the rest of this long-winded yarn will keep till some other time."

"Never mind my lunch, bo'sun," I replied, "I'm getting interested; and I fancy the marrow of the story's yet to come. Let's pay our respects to the steward once more. It's dry work all this talking, and you've got another hour before your dinner."

Re-seating ourselves, and lighting our pipes— in the Line to which the Olympic belongs the bos'un sleeps in all night, and is on deck throughout the day— my friend continued:

"In my boat was the skipper and his wife, four A.Bs., an ordinary seaman, and precious little else. You see, sir, the general run o' merchant vessels keeps their boats more for show than use— fixtures, as takes a mighty deal o' shiftin'. And the Sarah's wasn't no exception, all fastened down with gripes and covered up with canvas; on the skids, too, the three of 'em, so that if the weather hadn't been fine not a single one would we have had a show of puttin' over the side. As it was, we were lucky— if luck you could call it— to have got away at all. But we had no sails or mast, only three oars, and no rudder. A keg of stinkin' water that had never been changed since we left London was lashed aft, and somebody had thrown in a few pieces of salt beef and pork out of the harness casks; there was also a small keg of bread, and in the skpper's pockets were a few tins of sardines. Nor, as we soon discovered, were the others much better off. Indeed, none had mast or sail, and the gig was without rowlocks. A pretty little planie, wasn't it, for any time o' the year in the Ingian Ocean? No wonder the Old Man was flabbergated, and didn't seem to know which way to turn or what to do! Says he, at last, as we all lies alongside each other, says he, 'Well, lads, it's a bad job; but we shouldn't be far out o' the track o' steamers from Durban to Mauiltius; and I don't think we can do better than pull away about due north and keep a good lookout.'

"Cold comfort this, as you may well believe," continued the bo'sun, with a faraway look in his keen grey eyes, as if mentally recalling the picture, "And that the Old Man felt it to be so you could see by his face, as he sat there with one arm round his wife, who, though pale as death, never let a whimper or a tear out of her.

"By Jinkies!" he exclaimed, suddenly and emphatically, "she were what the story books calls a 'era-wine, if ever there was one in this world. Well—" continued the bo'sun, "we pulled to the nor'ard for the beat part of the night; but there was no heart in us, tired and hungry, and weak with fighting the fire for the past three days. And when tolards mornin' the wind and sea rose, we just gave up and tumbled in a heap in the bottom o' the boat and went to sleep, clean worn out.

"Next day it fell calm, and hot as blazes. The water in the keg was fair thick and slimy, but we wouldn't have minded that so much could we only ha' got enough of it. A quarter of a sardine tin full all round, however, was what the skipper whacked out; and it seamed to regularly sizzle on our tongued. The sardines we all allowed was to be kept for the missis. But she wouldn't hear of no such thing, and said if we didn't go whack and whack she'd not touch a bite herself. So we had half o' one o' them potty mis'able fish each on a knob o' biscuit. This feast was topped up by a few drops of the oil in the missis's thimble to each of us. By jinkies, sir, arter that r'yal repast we felt as if we could ha' eaten a raw pig apiece! As for the salt horse and pork, we had sense enough then to know that to touch it was nearly the same as sudden death.

"I forgot to tell you that durin' the night we'd lost sight o' the other boats. Nor we never see 'em again. Nor, so far as I ever heard, did anyone else.

"Of course there was no shelter from the blazin' sun as beat down on us, eatin' into our brains all day long ; and after that first night there was no talk of pullin', so we just hysted one o' the oars where the mast should ha' been, and tied the missis's shawl to the top of it for a signal.

About the fourth day, I should think it was, we come to the end of our tucker and water. I remember the skipper's wife served out the last bite and sup all around, and then she knee's down and prays that we might be soon delivered out of our misery. And, presently, some took their own way out of it. A couple o' the chaps, Swedes or some other sort o' Dutchmen, had been gnawing on the salt meat and washing it down with the salter sea, when suddenly one croaks out, 'Oh, Yesu Crist!' and overboard be goes, followed in a brace of shakes by his mate. They sank like stones.

"Then the young ordinary seaman starts bablin's an' ravin' about his mother and his sisters; and he crawls into the stern-sheets and catches hold o' the missis's hand, meanin' to say goodbye, and she, weak as she is, puts her arms around his neck and begs and prays of him to wait. But he's too strong for her, and seein' as she can't stop him, she just kisses him, and over he goes. All this time I'm lying right for'ard, too weak to move hand or foot, and the other two chaps is lying under the 'midship thwarts without a stir in 'em. As for the Old Man, he's sitting aft there, mutterin' to himself, with his head on his breast.

"Well," continued the bosun, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, and taking a generous bite off a lump of twist, "I don't remember anythin' else till I wake up, as it were, to find the boat tossin' about like a cork in a heavy sea. It had been raining, too, for I was soaked, and there was water in the bottom of her. At my feet lay the skipper's wife, aft squatted, the Old Man with his head against the rail. The other two had gone. Sittin' up, I drew the woman's head in to my knees and felt her heart. But it was quite still. She was stiff and cold, too, and must ha' been dead some time; but her face was calm and peaceful, and did me good to look at it. As for the skipper, I could see that he was gone by the way his head went nid-noddin' with every lurch the boat gave. And I reckoned that, bein' in good company where I was, I couldn't do better than join 'em. So, takin' a big drink o' water, I just lay down again alongside the dead woman.

"But it wasn't to be, not just then, anyhow," concluded the bo'sun, after a long pause, "for when I came to again I was in Durban Hospital, where I'd been brought three weeks afore by a coastin' steamer that had sighted the boat, and whose people was near givin' me a passidge to Davy Jones with the other two, when some feller, seein' as I 'peared sort o' fresh; thought o' putting a lookin' glass to my mouth to see if I breathed. So that's the yarn, sir. And now you know why, sooner than take the risk o' goin' through such a bit again in a open boat. I'd put my hands over my eyes like a monkey does, and go straight down. There's the mess boy signallin' for dinner, so I'll just go and interview the 'Lympia's good roast beef and potatoes, and plum duff, and soft bread and butter, and think, as I often does, of them days in the boat as made a old man o' me afore my time."

And the bo'sun moved away aft, a stout, brown-faced man, with almost white hair, though still in his prime, leaving me to regard the great liner's boats with a new interest in the light of the terrible experience I had just been listening to.

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21: "Page 189"

Stacy Aumonier

1877-1928

Cassell’s Magazine of Fiction, August 1920

THERE IS ONE THEME over which the philosopher never tires of wagging his finger at us. It is that of the illusory character of riches. And there is, perhaps, no field in which his propaganda has been less fruitful of results. One does not argue with him, of course. No one argues with a philosopher; one treats him like a child. One may say that philosophy is and always has been one of the least potent factors in shaping human actions. Passion, greed, prejudice, heredity, love— even the daily press— have all done more.

And so again and again the philosopher and his father, and his grandfather, right back to the days of Diogenes, have enlarged upon the fact that wealth cannot buy any of the things that matter; that riches do not make for happiness; that high thinking and low living is the better programme; that the rich man cannot pass through the eye of a needle. And we say: "Yes, father. You're quite right." And directly his back is turned, we immediately begin to think how best to collect the filthy impedimenta to true happiness. We are willing to take our chance about the needle. Perhaps we shall be the one in ten thousand who gets through. Anyway, it will be a pleasant journey. We are in good company. Smith, Jones, and Pierpont Morgan are all on the same road. If they negotiate the eye, why shouldn't we?

It is an undoubted fact that a vast percentage of the inhabitants of this earth, living in poverty, are in a condition of constant anxiety; are held together, are sustained through years and years of drab existences, by the vague hope that somehow, somewhere, by some means of which they see no tangible evidence, they will acquire— wealth. It is their constant dream; their obsession. If they knew for certain that there was no possibility of their ever becoming rich, they could not go on.

Old Tobias Tollery was not one of these unfortunate creatures. He was enormously wealthy and he despised wealth. Possibly because he had made his money himself, and for fifty years of his life had been a comparatively poor man. Now a wealthy man who despises wealth is, in the opinion of all right-minded people— a crank. And there is no gainsaying the fact that Old Tollery was a crank in every way. He looked like a crank. He dressed like a crank. He talked like a crank. He was a crank.

At the age of seventy-three he lived alone in a large house in the Cromwell Road, attended by two old servants. He spent most of his time in a laboratory which he had built on the top floor. He wore— anything comfortable which happened to be lying about. Flannel trousers and a tweed coat and a scarf; never a collar or a tie. He shuffled along at a great pace in his felt slippers, as though his body was trying to catch up with his large, bald head, which was always occupied with some urgent matter connected with test-tubes, and cylinders, and microscopes. He had innumerable relatives, who had discovered him in his old age, and who were always calling upon him, and to whom he was extremely rude. The sycophantic manner in which they accepted his rebuffs may have been one of the causes of his somewhat cynical regard for wealth. An old bachelor, seventy-three years of age, rather asthmatic, no particular ties or responsibilities— to whom was he going to leave all his money?

He had, however, one and— from the relatives' point of view— dangerous friend, old Simon Occleve. Simon Occleve was his lawyer; a man of similar age and disposition to Tobias himself. He was, indeed, his only friend; the only person in whose society Tobias expressed any pleasure. They dined together twice a week; sometimes lunched together at an imposing club in St. James's Street, and on occasions Tobias would go down to Simon's house at Haslemere and spend a few days. Tobias would assuredly leave Simon part of his fortune unless, happily, the lawyer should die first.

It may be advisable at this point to enumerate the old gentleman's relatives. They consisted, roughly speaking, of two families— the Tollerys and the Bowers. All his immediate family were dead; but he had a married niece, Laura, married to a stationer in West Kensington, whose name was Valentine Bower, and they had living with them two middle-aged, unmarried daughters, Ethel and Clara Bower.

He also had a married nephew, the Reverend Guy Tollery, whose living was at Highgate, and whose wife— a keen-featured, domineering person— rejoiced in the name of Lettice. They, in their turn, had a profligate son, Harold, who had married a barmaid named Annie, a pretty, common, warm-hearted little thing, of whom he was quite unworthy. Harold and Annie Tollery had a small boy of six, named Richard.

These were the sum total of the old gentleman's relatives.

The financial status of the two families was somewhat similar. They had enough, but not sufficient. They suffered from a kind of financial unrest, owing to the unexpected propinquity of this rich uncle. Otherwise, they seemed to have plenty of money to pay their rent, buy good food and clothes, take reasonably long holidays, and get postage stamps (the postage stamps being principally required for the purpose of sending tactful appeals to Uncle Tobias). These appeals were always wrapped up in most plausible covers— church funds, extension of shop premises, education, etc. The old man always said: "Rubbish and nonsense! Fiddlesticks!" But he invariably paid.

The only one he had ceased to help was Harold, who was a notorious gambler, and had been caught out on two occasions telling Uncle Tobias a lie. But before dismissing him, he had delivered himself of a little homily. He had said:

"It's no good your coming to me again. I shan't help you. Go and educate yourself. You are not trying. My whole life has been spent on educating myself, and I'm still doing it. I ran away to sea at fifteen— the best education in the world. I settled in South Africa and observed. That is what education is— applied observation. I studied mining and chemistry. I went to South America, Mexico, and then the States. It was in the States I made my money— eventually and quite unexpectedly...you know— the Tollery Tripod, an electric portable cooker. A ridiculous invention. I take no pride in it. It was just an accident during the course of my education. Go away and observe, and perhaps you'll learn not to be a fool."

One night Tobias and Simon Occleve were dining alone in the large house in Cromwell Road. Their dinner consisted of a lemon sole, a cutlet, and a very ancient cheese. Tobias drank barley-water, and Simon had a little weak whisky and water. When the meal was finished, Tobias lighted a long, thin cigar. He never offered them to his friend, because he knew he preferred a pipe. He waited till the old woman had cleared the things away, then, making himself thoroughly comfortable in the easy chair by the fire and observing that Simon was in a similar happy position opposite, he picked up the black cat from the rug and put it on his knee. He stroked the cat gravely with his long, knobbly fingers, until the purr of contentment attuned itself to the gentle harmony of the hour. Then he said:

"Simon, I am anxious to put myself under a further obligation to you."

"Come, come," smiled Simon; "I don't realize any past obligations, Tobias. I am a professional man— a lawyer— one of these 'thieving lawyers,' you know. I always charge you for whatever I may have the good fortune to be able to do for you."

Tobias pursed up his lips.

"Rubbish and nonsense! Your charges to me, I know, are nominal. But the obligations I am under do not principally concern professional matters."

"Well, what can I do?"

"I want you to find me an acid test."

"A chemical experiment?"

"Almost. Let us call it a psycho-physiological experiment."

"You excite me profoundly, Tobias."

"These people!" Tobias left off stroking the cat and waved his arm impatiently in the direction of the door. "I am tired of it. Something has got to happen. Those two women, Laura, you know (Mrs. Bower), and that clergyman's wife (Lettice)— they were here again this afternoon. It is 'Uncle Tobs!' and 'dear Uncle Tobs, won't you come to our Christmas party?' I'm not a hard man, Simon, although I've led a hard life. Even at my age I am loath to shut out all affection. I realize that my blood relations have a certain call on me. Only the holding of wealth makes one suspicious. I suspect everyone, and yet how do I know? Some of them may have a real affection for me. Since my return I have disbursed among my relatives some four thousand pounds; Harold alone relieved me of five hundred before I had been in the country a year. But my suspicions, founded upon close observation, are that the matter which interests them most deeply is the question of my demise. As you know, Simon, I have made no will. In the event of my death, the money will be divided by your meticulous care between all these people."

"I have always wanted you to make a will, Tobias."

"I know. I know. And I have always put it off. I am now coming to the opinion that I can put it off no longer."

"I think you're right, Tobias. Have you formed any general or individual feelings with regard to your relatives?"

Old Tollery put the cat down and looked meditatively at the fire.

"I cannot abide that clergyman; but Lettice, although objectionable in many ways, I feel to be an honest woman. It is deplorable to have a profligate son. At the same time, I am sorry for Harold's wife— one of the pleasantest and least offensive of them all— and the boy might be a nice boy, if he had the chance of proper education. As for the Bowers, Valentine is a greedy nonentity, Laura is kind in a way, but embittered by a long life with a feeble partner. I sometimes think Ethel is a nice woman. I'm not sure that she has not a real affection for me, or if not, it is most cleverly simulated. I find her more companionable than the gloomy Clara, though Clara, curiously enough, is the only one who has never deliberately begged from me. I am wondering about Clara. I'm not quite certain..."

Simon took a spill and relighted his pipe.

"It is not for me to influence you in any way...Of course, there are institutions, hospitals. You have a pretty considerable fortune, Tobias."

"Yes. I think I shall leave the bulk of my savings to Scientific Research, but I will reserve a sum— say twenty thousand pounds— for my relatives."

Then he leant forward and added:

"Of course, old friend, if you would be happier with—"

But Simon immediately patted the other's knee vigorously.

"I appreciate what you are going to suggest thoroughly. But no, no, no. I am an old man, Tobias. It is very doubtful whether I shall survive you. In any case, I have more than enough for my needs to the end of my days. I should be happier if you willed the money elsewhere. Nevertheless, it is very kind, very kind and thoughtful."

"Well, it must be like that then."

"But this is all quite simple. What do you mean by the acid test, Tobias?"

"What I want to ask you to do is to find some way by which I can test the affection and friendship of my relatives. Give them all an equal chance. The one who proves him or herself the loyalest to me shall inherit— nay, shall have at once— the sum of twenty thousand pounds."

Simon looked down into the bowl of his pipe; then he smiled and answered:

"Well, I am your lawyer. I must obey instructions. But you must give me time."

"There is no hurry. In any case I do not mean to die for some months— not till I have completed a little experiment I am making concerning the extraction of nitrogen from the air."

Simon spent three weeks thinking out his scheme, then he came to Tobias and said:

"I think, old friend, it would be better for me to reveal my plan to you by instalments. In the first place, it will be necessary for me to relieve you of all your money."

"I expected that."

"Naturally. The most obvious plan, but a good ground work."

"Is it necessary to actually do so?"

"Not at all. They will accept my word."

That same week every member of the Bowers and the Tollerys received an identical letter.

Dear Sir or Madam,

Owing to the sudden liquidation of a large company in which he held important interests and the financial crisis arising therefrom, I am instructed by my client, Mr. Tobias Tollery, to warn you that he will require the return of the sum of ——  advanced to you as a loan by him on —— . My client will be glad if you will return the same without interest, or in lieu, as great a part of it as you are capable by Saturday week next, the 4th prox.

Yours faithfully,

Simon Occleve.

The effect of this letter was electrical. At ten o'clock the next morning the old gentleman was disturbed at his breakfast by the appearance of Lettice Tollery and Harold.

"What does this mean, Uncle?" screamed Lettice.

"It doesn't mean you're losing your money, does it? It isn't serious, is it?"

"You see what my lawyer says. I leave everything to him."

"Is he to be trusted?"

"Yes, he is!"

"But all your money is surely not in this company."

"Practically."

"It's madness! I can't believe it. Let us call in another lawyer."

"Why add the expense?"

"What's the name of the company, Uncle?" asked Harold.

Before the old man had had time to formulate an answer the door flew open, and Mrs. Bower and Ethel burst into the room. Ethel threw her arms round his neck.

"Oh, Uncle Tobs, tell us it isn't true!" she exclaimed.

"What does it amount to, dear?" breathlessly asked Mrs. Bower.

"It's no good your all pestering me," snapped the old man. "I can tell you nothing. What Simon Occleve says— stands."

"But I haven't got five hundred and sixty pounds to return," said Mrs. Bower.

"And I haven't got two hundred to my name," said Mrs. Tollery.

"And I haven't got a bean in the world," said Harold, and he picked up his hat and walked out.

The storm raged for ten days. It was very trying for Tobias. It interfered with his experiment.

They swept backwards and forwards between the Cromwell Road and Simon Occleve's office in the Temple. The old lawyer was terse and uncommunicative. No, Mr. Tollery was not ruined. But he was badly hit. It all depended upon certain delicate financial operations during the next few weeks. In the meantime all available capital was necessary. The difficulty might right itself if Mr. Tollery's debtors would fulfil their obligations. He could tell them nothing more.

The dreaded Saturday, the 4th prox., arrived. The two old gentlemen dined alone at the end of the day.

"I am quite surprised that our request has met with the response it has," said Tobias, when they had reached the nicotine stage. "Clara has surprised me most. She has sent forty pounds and a formal note of regret that it is not more. Lettice has sent fifteen pounds and a letter of vituperative aggression. No one else has sent money. The Reverend Guy has written a long letter forgiving me my past sins and hoping I may yet find grace in the eyes of God. He promises to send something later on. Valentine, a long whine of excuses. Ethel, gush and regrets. Mrs. Bower, more excuses, and a kind of veiled threat. Harold, nothing at all. His wife, nothing at all. Now, what is the next move, Mr. Lawyer?"

"We must be thorough. We must clean you of every penny."

"The furniture?"

"My 'bailiffs' will arrive next week to take possession!"

"I don't like doing this, Simon. It seems mean."

"I am giving you the acid test."

"Very well."

The "bailiff" arrived on the same day that every member of the family received a letter, this time from Tobias:

Dear —— ,

I have very serious news for us all. I regret to say that Mr. Simon Occleve, whom I have always trusted and looked upon as my greatest friend, has absconded. I am completely bankrupt. Another firm of lawyers is winding up my accounts.

Yours, etc.,

T. T.

Within the hour Mrs. Bower appeared with her husband, Valentine, and Ethel, and they were quickly joined by Lettice, who came alone. Tobias was busy in his laboratory, and thither they all pushed their way, and there was a great scene. It reached its climax when they learned that the two gentlemen in the hall were bailiffs. Even the furniture was lost. There was nothing to sell at all.

"And you sit here," shouted Lettice, "messing about with those stinking chemicals!"

"You've treated us disgracefully," echoed Mrs. Bower.

"What are you going to do, Uncle?" asked Ethel. "You'll have to go to a workhouse."

"I told you all the time that that lawyer was a common thief. You could see it in his face." This was Lettice.

"You should never trust lawyers," piped Valentine.

"I could see he was dishonest. Are the police on his track? We shall demand to know all the details." The thin face of Mrs. Bower was thrust forward, and she shook her curls at him threateningly.

"You'll mind your own business," snapped Tobias, who was beginning to feel uncomfortable and angry. But the mask was off. There was no need for any further politeness.

"I shan't trouble to tell you what I think of you, you old fraud!" added Mrs. Bower.

"If you had been a little more informing and friendly to your relations you wouldn't have got into all this mess. You might, for instance, have consulted the Reverend Guy. He's not an adventurer, and he's not wealthy, but he has sound practical sense. He would have looked after your affairs with pleasure."

The old man surveyed Lettice through his thick glasses and remarked:

"Yes. I expect he would. Harold too, perhaps?"

"Harold has never robbed anybody."

Just as they were all going Tobias had a surprise. Valentine shuffled uncomfortably on the fringe of the crowd. The party had reached the door, when the little stationer returned and furtively thrust out his hand.

"Well, I'm damned sorry," he said in his reedy voice, twirling his thin grey moustache with the other hand. "It's damned hard lines." Then he slunk away to the protection of his wife's skirts.

Simon wished to be thorough, but, like a good organizer, he always had an eye to economy. The next day several men appeared. The halls and staircase were gutted of furniture and carpets, which were placed carefully inside various rooms. Then the doors were locked and the shutters were put up. When the family next called Tobias was apparently living in the laboratory, where an iron bedstead had been put in. He was to remain in possession of the house till quarter day, when he was going to Fulham Workhouse. He was also to be allowed to retain his laboratory equipment to that date. The old woman who waited on him had kindly consented to remain also. The house appeared to be empty and utterly desolate. The metamorphosis was complete. Tobias had everything he wanted in the laboratory, but it cannot be said that he was happy. The thing assumed larger dimensions than he had bargained for. It disturbed horrid emotions. "Damn Simon," he thought "It's positively cruel."

He experienced sudden waves of pity for these unfortunate relatives which interfered with his work. The more contemptible and pitiable they were, the more sorry he was for them. What a terrible thing is this money-lust! They were not really in need. They could all, indeed— possibly with the exception of Harold— have paid him back. But they were mad to get his wealth. And in each one it produced an individual eruption. It made them give themselves away. It made him ashamed to enjoy the secret vision of so many naked souls. It was like eavesdropping, uncannily unfair. But he had placed himself in the hands of Simon, and he could not go back. During the weeks that followed he learnt all there was to learn about his blood relations.

Mrs. Bower and Mrs. Tollery called every day for a week, as though they could not credit the disaster. Mrs. Bower continued her abuse and threats to the end of that time; then she vanished, and he never saw her again. Lettice called twice more, and was almost as vindictive, but in the end she said:

"Oh, well, if you want anything you must let us know. I don't say we'll do it, but you can let us know."

Ethel did not come at all, but one day Clara appeared. She was surly and diffident. She neither criticized nor pitied him, but as she went she put down another five pounds and said:

"I know I owe you more. That's the best? can do."

Valentine did not call, but he wrote a letter marked "private," and said again that he was damned sorry and that it was a damned shame. Of Harold, of course, there was no sign; but one day his wife called with the little boy, Richard, who was five years old.

The mother looked worn and worried. She was losing her good looks and her quick, little, birdlike movements. Her eyes were ringed with dark circles. The boy, however, was a fresh-complexioned, jolly little fellow. He put out his arms and kissed "Uncle Tobs" soundly and mustily on the cheek. And Tobias thrilled surprisingly. It was many years since he had been kissed by a child. A pleasant boy...If only he could be educated— escape from the demoralizing influence of his father. Tobias moved uneasily in his chair. He was under a compact with Simon. He must be entirely impartial with all the relatives. They must all have an equal chance. Above all, he must be reserved, abrupt, and rather taciturn.

"Are you reely ruined, Uncle Tobs?" said Annie Tollery. "It's an awful thing. I know Harold treated you bad. What can we do? I hoped he might get another chance. It's the horses, you know, and the cards. He can't let it alone. He's not reely bad, Uncle, not vicious like, except sometimes when they make him drink. It's terrible for us, Uncle."

She pleaded as though she, too, could not credit the disaster. Things must right themselves. Tobias said nothing, but once he patted the little boy on the head. Then he turned away to his bottles and powders.

"I must be getting on with my work," he grunted.

Annie sniffed and blew her nose. As she was going out she put a paper-bag down on the table and said:

"Here's just a little something. I made it myself."

When they had gone he opened the parcel and found it contained a pork pie! And Uncle Tobs turned it over and stared at it. His lips trembled a little, and he replaced it on the table.

"It's very queer," he mumbled.

That evening he dined again with Simon, and their dinner consisted of turbot, pork-pie and salad. He did not tell Simon where the pork-pie came from, but the lawyer gave it as his opinion that it was excellent. Over the fire he said:

"It is rather fortunate that just at this time I have opened a new office in Brick Court. Quite an inaccessible spot to the uninitiated. Of course, my old offices are still going, and it is also a little fortunate that the style of my firm is still 'Messrs. Mulberry & Platt,' for, as you may imagine, we have had many visitors. It has been necessary to let my head clerk, Peters, into the secret. He reports that practically all your relatives have called. Peters is very mysterious and secretive. He is enjoying himself. 'Yes, he says, 'our Mr. Occleve is away just now. I can't tell you more. Have you any demand or complaint against him?' And, of course, they haven't. It's no business of theirs. Peters is quite masterful. He tells them nothing, but gives an appearance of nervous agitation. He asks them endless questions. He is very sympathetic. When they go away they realize that they have done all the talking. They have learnt nothing, but their feelings have been soothed by a kind of vague insinuation that 'our Mr. Occieve really must have absconded. It will all come out in due course. In the meantime, if you have any definite charges to make, etc.'"

"I am beginning to wish the whole thing was over."

"My dear Tobias, of course you are; and I am willing to end it at any time. But I should be glad of, at any rate, one more week of general discomfort. I want to disillusion you of the idea that people are wholly good or wholly bad. It is very unlikely that in the end you will feel that any one of your relatives stands out from the rest. You may want to divide the money equally, or shall we say equitably, according to the various ways they have treated you."

"I am certainly learning a lot."

During that last week Lawyer Occleve put three more tests to these good people, and they were all a repetition. They consisted of a letter from Tobias to each member of the family. He said he was unwell and obliged to keep his bed. He specified three nights, Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday. He had not the means to invite them to dinner, but would they come in afterwards and read a scientific book to him for a couple of hours? It was November and the nights were cold, and dark, and wet.

In reply to this the Reverend Guy sent him a tract called, "Am I walking in my Master's footsteps?" Valentine wrote and said he would have come, but he was no reader; at the same time, he thought it was a damned shame. No one else answered. On the Tuesday, much to his surprise, Lettice appeared. She was in a very bad temper, and she had last her umbrella on the bus coming along. She bullied him, but read a few chapters of a book on Crystals. She read so badly that Tobias was rude to her at the end of half an hour. She rounded on him for having dragged her all that way for nothing. She said she had had a headache and must go. Tobias was relieved when she went. He noted that she had read as far as page sixty-three. On Thursday no one came at all, but Ethel sent a postcard to say she had meant to come on Tuesday, but vas prevented at the last minute. She couldn't possibly manage either of the other two nights. She hoped he was going on all right, and that things might right themselves. On the last night of the tests the two old gentlemen dined together again. It was considered so remote a possibility that anyone would come that they decided to sit upstairs in the laboratory. Tobias would wear his dressing-gown, and if anyone should come, he would slip into bed, whilst Simon would hide behind the curtain which concealed the sink and lavatory at the end of the room.

The night was very dark and the wind was moaning round the skylight, but the two old friends were in good spirits. Tobias lighted his cigar and Simon his pipe, and they discussed cheerfully the better times to come.

"I am very grateful to you, Simon," said Tobias. "I certainly know how I stand, but I am very relieved that it is all over."

"Yes, yes. Well, we will make plans. We'll soon get you straight again. And while the change is being effected you must come down to Haslemere with me. But come, you were just going to tell me of this new idea of yours with regard to the fourth dimension."

Tobias's eye lighted up. He peered above the ash of his cigar and cleared his throat.

"The idea came to me on reflecting over this discovery of Professor Einstein with regard to the curvature of light. One presupposes that the stellar system— damn!"

"What's the matter, Tobias?"

"Didn't you hear? It was the bell."

"Oh!"

Simon walked stealthily to the door and opened it. The wind seemed to have found its way into the great corridors and passages. He heard the heavy laborious tread of old Mrs. Turner coming slowly up the stone staircase from the basement. She carried a lantern, for the house was in complete darkness, the electric light being presumably cut off. Tobias switched off the light in the laboratory and lighted a paraffin lamp.

"Thank God!" he murmured. "This is the last test. If it's Lettice, I shall simply be rude again."

"No, no, you must be fair," said Simon. "Remember she got as far as page sixty-three."

Tobias got into bed, but Simon hovered by the door. He heard the old woman go wheezing across the hall and slip back the chain on the front door. He listened intently and then drew back into the room.

"It's a man," he said. "I couldn't see whom."

He walked quietly across the room and took up his position behind the curtain. Tobias again muttered "Damn!" and settled down to the posture of the invalid. He was in a very bad mood. He had been rubbed of a cigar in its most intriguing phase, and of the development of an interesting theory at its very birth. They could follow the slow progress of Mrs. Turner, in the van of her late visitor, from floor to floor. Her steps resounded on the bare boards, but the man they could not hear at all. On the landings she stopped to get her breath, and her pulmonary disturbances carried above the wind. The journey seemed interminable. At last she fumbled against the latch of the door.

"A gentleman to see you, sir."

Simon peered through the crack of the curtain, and Tobias turned his weary head in her direction.

In the doorway stood— Harold!

"He's shaved off his moustache," was the first thought which flashed through the mind of Tobias.

There was something phantom-like, unconvincing, about the figure of Harold. He appeared almost to hesitate whether to advance or to bolt from the room again. He looked sideways at Mrs. Turner and did not speak until she had closed the door. Then he walked gingerly up to the bed and said: "Hallo, Uncle."

The visit was so unexpected, and the appearance so surprising, that the old gentleman had no difficulty in simulating the dazed outlook of the invalid. He put out his hand without speaking.

Harold took it and laughed nervously.

"I've come, you see," he stuttered at length, and glanced from the invalid to the dim recesses of the laboratory. He seemed to be listening to the retreating footsteps of Mrs. Turner.

"Sit down," said Tobias, and he pointed to a chair by the lamp.

"Bit lonely here, ain't you, Uncle? All alone in the house, eh? Except for the old—" he jerked his thumb in the direction of the door.

"What's his game?" thought Tobias, and he began to idly speculate upon the young man's motives and character. His thin, rather clever, dissolute face appeared in blotches of irregular colour. His eyes were unnaturally bright. He was red round the temples, but his lips and chin were white. He appeared to be shivering, although the room was warm.

On the table, by the lamp, was an old and heavy volume on Crystals. Tobias pointed a long finger at it and remarked:

"There's the book."

Harold appeared startled, as though he did not understand. He muttered:

"Eh?...the book?"

"Yes, you have come to read to me, haven't you?"

He stared at the book as though mesmerized by its ancient pattern. He touched it with his fingers and turned it over. Then he sniggered again.

"Eh? Oh, yes, of course."

"Sit down then and begin at page one."

Harold obeyed. He thrust the book as near under the lamp as possible and found the place. Then he coughed and looked round at Tobias.

"Go on. Begin at the first paragraph."

He stared at the page fora long time, as though he was not seeing it. Then hesitatingly he began to read. Curiously enough, after the first few paragraphs, he read quite well. His voice was thin and without resonance, but he spoke distinctly and as though the words had meaning. Now and then he would stop and glance furtively round the room. He did not look at Tobias. The wind was still moaning against the skylight; otherwise the room seemed unnaturally silent and remote. At the end of a chapter he sat feverishly rubbing his chin and temple, like an animal heated in the chase. Then he plunged into the book again as though it held some secret charm against a sinister menace. Tobias made no comment; he lay there listening and watching. The night grew late and still Harold read on. Doubtless by this time the old woman would have gone to her bed in the basement. She was rather deaf...very feeble. A long way off could occasionally be heard the hoot of a motor-horn. The room was getting cold. Harold stumbled on, beginning to read huskily. Suddenly he turned over a page and gave a cry...

He started up and stared hard at Tobias. The old man was observing him intently.

"What is this? What is the meaning of this, Uncle?"

In his hand he held a thin, half-sheet of notepaper on which was written the word "Stop" Beneath this sheet of paper was a Bank of England note for one thousand pounds. Across his face there swept a mingled expression of amazement, fear, greed, and a kind of desperate resolve. What his immediate action would have been is open to conjecture, for he was subjected to a further startling shock. He seemed to hear a movement behind him and turning, he beheld the trim figure of Lawyer Occleve, standing by the curtain and idly toying with a long, steel straight-edge.

"Perhaps you will allow me to explain on behalf of my client."

The acid tones of the lawyer's voice seemed to bite the air. He pointed at the chair and continued:

"You may sit down. There is nothing to be alarmed about. The money is yours. My client, as you know, is what is known as a crank. In one of his eccentric moods he set his relatives this little test. When he is old, penniless, and ill, of no use to any of them, whoever has sufficient charity of heart to turn out on a cold night and come and read an uninteresting book to him so far as page 189 shall have a thousand pounds. This is only one of many little tests which, in his fanciful way, he has conceived."

Harold stood up.

"But I don't get the thousand pounds? Not for that? Not just for doing that!"

"Yes, the money is yours."

And suddenly the young man behaved in a most peculiar way. He flung the note from him, and burying his face in his hands, he burst into sobs.

"No, no, no...I can't. You don't know. I'm bad, but— my God! no!"

"My client is not so poverty-stricken as circumstances may appear."

"I know all that."

He looked at Tobias and fell on his knees by the bed.

"Do you know why I came to-night?" he said hoarsely.

"Why?"

"I came to rob you."

He spoke rapidly, as though the relief of confession might be thwarted by some further development.

"I've signed on for an oil ship leaving Tilbury at eight in the morning for South America. I was desperate. Do you remember, Uncle, telling me about education? Applied observation, you called it. Well, I've done a bit of applied observation over this game. I knew there was something on. I've been watching. I followed one of these 'bailiffs' to an office in Brick Court, and I watched that, and one day I saw Mr. Occleve come out and get into a car, in which was Mr. Peters. I was outside here one morning at six o'clock. I saw the men gutting the halls and staircases, but I never saw no furniture vans come to take the things away. So I reasoned they were still here, and the house was full of valuables, and there was some game on. I didn't know what it was. But it looked like some plan to let the whole family in. Whatever happened, I knew I stood to get nothing. If there was a will I shouldn't be in it. My only chance was to find a will and destroy it; then I should be in the share-out. I came to-night to— see if I could find a will. If I couldn't, I was going to take anything I could find and clear out. I was going to take it, mind you. I wasn't going to be scrupulous how. There was only the old woman...I never saw you come in, Mr. Occleve."

"No? Well, since you are making an honest confession, I will tell you that I have an entry from the mews at the back through the basement. And might I ask what you were prepared to do if any of the other relatives called?"

"Yes. I got Annie to write to them all to say that she was coming. And, as a matter of fact, she was. She wanted to come. Then at the last minute I sent her a telegram to say that her mother was sick at Hendon. I knew that would fetch her off."

"Then your wife didn't know you were coming here?"

"No."

"Does she know you're going away?"

"No."

"Well, how will she manage?"

"She'll be glad. She'll manage somehow like the others. I've never been no use to her."

Suddenly he turned to Tobias and said eagerly:

"Uncle, if you can spare it— send her this thousand quid. I don't want it. I've always been a gambler, and ready to take my chance. Perhaps, in a way, it would make up a bit for the way I've mucked things. She's been a good girl and little Dick..."

Tobias coughed and spoke for the first time.

"Very well. Give me an address. I can write to you."

"My name's Thomas Carter. I suppose 'Poste restante, Buenos Ayres,' would find me. You're not going to give me in charge, then, Uncle?"

"No. I've nothing to charge you with except— stupidity. When you get to South America, try and apply your observation to more worthy ends. Your wife shall be provided for. Good night!"

And the little old man got out of bed and lighted a cigar.

Harold stumbled forward and held out his hand.

"Good-bye, Uncle, and God bless—"

Tobias gave the hand a little jerky pressure and muttered:

"All right, all right. If you are in difficulties, call on my agent in the Plaza Gonzalo in Buenos Ayres. He may have word from me. Switch on the electric light in the hall as you go out, and pull the door to. Good-bye."

The two old gentlemen sat facing each other. They heard the footsteps of Harold hurrying down the stairs, the click of the electric light switch, and the bang of the front door. Then Tobias stood up and walked slowly across the room.

"It is late, Simon; but I think a little night-cap, eh?"

"I am of opinion that it would be appropriate, and well deserved."

They each compounded their own mixture. Tobias took three short sips; then he said:

"With regard to the theory of the curvature of light, my opinion is..."

IF YOU HAD ACCESS to the secret archives locked in one of Lawyer Occleve's safes, you might come across a very remarkable document. It is the will of Mr. Tobias Tullery. It would astound you with its lucidity. You would be in a quandary to know whether to praise more highly the fine craftsmanship of its construction or the broad-minded liberality of its intention. Various institutions working for the betterment of mankind are not only generously endowed, but are given an invaluable lead in the wide interpretation of their activities. Towards the end, under the head of "family bequests," the phraseology appears to belong to another mood, as though a lawyer had worded the earlier portions, but had left this purely domestic section to the will-maker himself. It runs as follows:

To my relatives I bequeath such sums as appear to be merited by their behaviour to me when I endured a period of great distress. To those of them who returned me a portion of the money I lent them, I bequeath it a hundredfold. That is to say, to Clara Bower, who returned me forty-five pounds, I bequeath four thousand five hundred. To Lettice, Mrs. Guy Tollery, who returned fifteen pounds, I bequeath fifteen hundred pounds. To Valentine Bower, because he said he was "damned sorry," I leave five hundred pounds. To the Reverend Guy Tollery I leave a dressing-case and a new set of false teeth, as a memento of me. To Mrs. Valentine Bower and her daughter Ethel, I leave two hundred pounds each, for no reason other than that I am a fool. To Annie, wife of Harold Bower, because she one day brought me a pork pie when she thought I was hungry, and who would have read to me quite disinterestedly only that her husband prevented her, I leave the residue of my estate to be held in trust for her son Richard, for whom I have formed a real affection.

Such is represented the family bequests of Tobias Tollery, no mention being made of what he had done for them in life, or of a Quixotic act of generosity he afterwards performed for a man who would have murdered him.

Whether all these liberal benefices will ever be distributed as ordained is still an open question, for old Tobias is still alive, and he hasn't yet completed his experiment with regard to the question of extracting nitrogen from the air.

__________

Table of Contents

1: Stripper Sal / Evan Slyter

2: Modern Melodrama / Hubert Crackanthorpe

3: Will You Walk Into My Parlour? / Ian Hay

4: The Pigeons of Wong Foo / J. Allan Dunn

5: Dark Laughter / J. Allan Dunn

6: The Crime Master / J. Allan Dunn

7: The Stepping Stone / Alice C. Tomholt

8: What a Handsome Pair! / F. Scott Fitzgerald

9: "Secret Service" / Arthur Gask

10: Tom Silver's Bus / Warwick Deeping

11: Amos Kilbright / Frank R. Stockton

12: Dematerialization / C. Mason

13: The Cataleptic / Ernest Favenc

14: The Rats in the Walls / H. P. Lovecraft

15: The Deposition / Luigi Capuana

16: The Shot / R. S. Warren Bell

17: The Mystery of Pinkham's Diamond Stud / John Kendrick Bangs

18: The Cave / Beatrice Grimshaw

19: The Coffin Merchant / Richard Middleton

20: In the Boat of the Sarah Bligh / John Arthur Barry

21: "Page 189" / Stacy Aumonier