That was why the Benson jewel robbery was solved — because Aram Melekian was too much for Mr. Quilter’s temper.

His almost invisible eyebrows soared, and the scalp of his close-cropped head twitched angrily. “Damme!” said Mr. Quilter, and in that mild and archaic oath there was more compressed fury than in paragraphs of uncensored profanity. “So you, sir, are the untrammeled creative artist, and I am a drudging, hampering hack!”

Aram Melekian tilted his hat a trifle more jauntily. “That’s the size of it, brother. And if you hamper this untrammeled opus any more, Metropolis Pictures is going to be sueing its youngest genius for breach of contract.”

Mr. Quilter rose to his full lean height. “I’ve seen them come and go,” he announced; “and there hasn’t been a one of them, sir, who failed to learn something from me. What is so creative about pouring out the full vigor of your young life? The creative task is mine, molding that vigor, shaping it to some end.”

“Go play with your blue pencil,” Melekian suggested. “I’ve got a dream coming on.”

“Because I have never produced anything myself, you young men jeer at me. You never see that your successful screen plays are more my effort than your inspiration.” Mr. Quilter’s thin frame was aquiver.

“Then what do you need us for?”

“What — Damme, sir, what indeed? Ha!” said Mr. Quilter loudly. “I’ll show you. I’ll pick the first man off the street that has life and a story in him. What more do you contribute? And through me he’ll turn out a job that will sell. If I do this, sir, then will you consent to the revisions I’ve asked of you?”

“Go lay an egg,” said Aram Melekian. “And I’ve no doubt you will.”

Mr. Quilter stalked out of the studio with high dreams. He saw the horny-handed son of toil out of whom he had coaxed a masterpiece signing a contract with F. X. He saw a discomfited Armenian genius in the background busily devouring his own words. He saw himself freed of his own sense of frustration, proving at last that his was the significant part of writing.

He felt a bumping shock and the squealing of brakes. The next thing he saw was the asphalt paving.

Mr. Quilter rose to his feet undecided whether to curse the driver for knocking him down or bless him for stopping so miraculously short of danger. The young man in the brown suit was so disarmingly concerned that the latter choice was inevitable.

“I’m awfully sorry,” the young man blurted. “Are you hurt? It’s this bad wing of mine, I guess.” His left arm was in a sling.

“Nothing at all, sir. My fault. I was preoccupied…”

They stood awkwardly for a moment, each striving for a phrase that was not mere politeness. Then they both spoke at once.

“You came out of that studio,” the young man said. “Do you” (his tone was awed) “do you work there?”

And Mr. Quilter had spotted a sheaf of eight and a half by eleven paper protruding from the young man’s pocket. “Are you a writer, sir? Is that a manuscript?”

The young man shuffled and came near blushing. “Naw. I’m not a writer. I’m a policeman. But I’m going to be a writer. This is a story I was trying to tell about what happened to me— But are you a writer? In there?”

Mr. Quilter’s eyes were aglow under their invisible brows. “I, sir,” he announced proudly, “am what makes writers tick. Are you interested?”

He was also, he might have added, what makes detectives tick. But he did not know that yet.

A parody in literature is a humorous imitation, deliberately fashioned, of a serious work. One of the best-known of modern detective novels is “Gaudy Night,” by Dorothy L. Sayers. Here is a clever — a brilliantly clever — parody of “Gaudy Night” by one of the most eminent detective-story writers of our time, E. C. Bentley, author of “Trent’s Last Case” notably, and other distinguished worlds. Readers of “Gaudy Night” will recognize with delight some of the characters and scenes in that boo\. On the other hand, those unfamiliar with the original will still find “Greedy Night” a joy, since Mr. Bentley not only uses Lord Peter Wimsey himself as the detective, but has also contrived what the editors consider the best parody-plot within their ken.

“Yow ow ow,” observed Lord Peter Wimsey, opening his eyes; then, reclosing and feebly knuckling them, “Ow wow. Yah ah ow.”

“Very good, my lord,” his servant said, as he drew the curtains of the bedroom. “It is now twelve o’clock noon, my lord. At what hour would your lordship take breakfast?”

“Zero hour,” Lord Peter snarled. “Take the nasty breakfast away, I don’t want any breakfast today. Oh, Lord! Bunter, why did I drink all that Corton Clos du Roi 1904 on the top of a quart of Archdeacon ale last night? I’m old enough to know better. Anyhow, my inside is.”

“If I may make the suggestion, my lord, it may have been what your lordship had after coming home that is at the root of the trouble.”

Wimsey sat up in bed wild-eyed. “Bunter!” he gasped. “Don’t tell me I had whisky as well.”

“No, my lord. That may possibly have been your lordship’s intention; but I fear that what your lordship actually drank, in a moment of absent-mindedness, was a mixture of furniture-polish and Vichy water. I found the empty bottles on the floor this morning, my lord.”

Wimsey sank back with a moan; then rallied himself and swallowed a little tea from the cup which Bunter had filled.

“I don’t like this tea,” he said peevishly. “I don’t believe this is my specially grown Son-of-Heaven china.”

“It is, my lord; but in some circumstances the flavour of almost anything is apt to be sensibly impaired. May I urge, my lord, that an effort should be made to eat some breakfast? It is considered to be advisable on the morning after an occasion of festivity.”

“Oh, all right.” Wimsey held out his hand for the menu which Bunter produced, like a conjuror, apparently from the air. “Well, I won’t eat avoine secoueur, anyhow. Give it to the cat.”

“The cat has already tried it, my lord, during my momentary absence from the kitchen. The intelligent animal appears to be of your lordship’s opinion. I would recommend a little pâte gonfleur sur canapé, my lord, for the present emergency.”

Wimsey groaned. “I don’t believe I could taste even that,” he said. “Very well, I’ll have a stab at it.”

“Thank you, my lord.” Bunter laid an armful of newspapers on the bed and withdrew. When he returned with the breakfast tray Wimsey was reading with absorbed interest. “Bunter,” he said eagerly, “I see that at Sotheby’s on Monday they’re auctioning a thing I simply must have — the original manuscript of the Chanson de Roland, with marginal notes by Saint Louis. If I find I can’t go myself, I shall want you to pop round and bid for me. That is, of course, if it’s the genuine article. You could make sure of that, I suppose?”

“Without difficulty, my lord. I have always taken an interest in the technical study of mediaeval calligraphy. I should be sceptical, though, about those marginal notes, my lord. It has always been understood, your lordship, that His Most Christian Majesty was unable to write. However—”

At this point there came a long-continued ringing at the door-bell of the flat; and after a brief interval Bunter, with all the appearance of acting under protest, showed the Bishop of Glastonbury into the bedroom.

“I say, Peter, there’s the dickens to pay!” exclaimed that prelate. “Topsy’s pretty well off her onion, and Bill Mixer’s in a frightful dither. Have you heard what’s happened? But, of course, you couldn’t. They’ve been trying to get you on the ’phone this morning, but that man of yours kept on saying that he feared his lordship was somewhat closely engaged at the moment. So they rang me up, and asked me to tell you.”

“Well, why not tell me?” Wimsey snapped. Topsy, the Bishop’s favourite sister, was an old friend, and her husband was a man for whom Wimsey had a deep regard that dated from his years at Balliol.

“Dermot’s dead.”

“I say! What a ghastly thing!” Wimsey scrambled out of bed and into a dressing-gown. “What happened to poor old Dermot?”

“That’s just what they don’t know. There was absolutely nothing the matter with him, but he was found dead this morning — apparently uninjured, they say. Foul play is suspected, of course.”

“Of course,” Wimsey agreed, plying his hair-brushes vigorously.

“And Topsy and Bill would like you, if you can, to go down for the week-end—”

“Up,” Wimsey murmured.

“All right, up for the week-end,” said the Bishop a little testily. “And see what you can do to clear the mystery up, or down, or any dashed way you like.”

Wimsey rang the bell, and Bunter instantly appeared. “Oh, look here, Bunter, will you get the German Ambassador on the ’phone for me?” As Bunter busied himself with the instrument by the bedside, Wimsey turned to the Bishop again. “Well, Mike, I will certainly go if they want me. I shall drive there in the Fendlair, so it won’t take long.”

The Bishop repressed a shudder. “Why do you amateur detectives always drive like lunatics?” he asked plaintively. “You all do — except Trent, of course; he never does anything off-colour. Well, they’ll be glad of your help — if you get there in one piece, that is — and I’m grateful to you myself. I must push off now — got to move the second reading of the Disestablishment Bill in the Lords this afternoon, and I haven’t prepared a line of my stuff yet.”

As the Bishop disappeared, Bunter presented the telephone receiver to Wimsey on a salver. “His Excellency is now at the apparatus, my lord.”

“Hullo, is that Bodo?” Wimsey cried. “Yes, Peter speaking. Heil Hitler. I say, old man, I’m frightfully sorry, but I can’t turn up at your squash this evening. I’ve just heard some very bad news… No, Heil Hitler, it’s nobody you know… Yes, Heil Hitler, very serious. I mean, dead, and all that. I’ve got to go and see about it… That’s kind of you, Bodo. You know I value your sympathy. Thanks hunderttausendmal. Well, Heil Hitler, good-bye.”

During the progress of his toilet, Wimsey cancelled by telephone, with all apologies due, several other appointments. A Sunday luncheon of the Food and Wine Society at Tewkesbury, to test the quality — so praised by Falstaff — of the local mustard. A meeting of the Committee of the Anerithmon Gelasma Yacht Club, called for the purpose of blackballing the Duke of Cheshire. A supper for Miss Ruth Draper, who would give, it was hoped, her impersonation of the Nine Muses discussing the character of Aphrodite.

Wimsey then got into communication with the Spoopendyke Professor of Egyptology in the University of Oxford, and accepted in brief but sympathetic terms his invitation to spend the week-end. Professor Mixer was greatly relieved, he said. He feared that Wimsey must have sacrificed other engagements in order to do Topsy and himself this kindness.

Wimsey burdened his soul with the statement that he had been going to spend the next few days in bringing the catalogue of his library up to date; a thing which could be done at any time.

The Professor of Egyptology met Wimsey at the door of his grey old house of Headington stone, nearly facing the main gateway of Janus. He greeted his visitor with subdued cordiality, his left hand clutching his unkempt beard as he talked.

“It’s very good of you to come, Peter,” he said. “Topsy was anxious to have your opinion, and we are very glad to have you with us, anyhow. But whatever you may find out about the cause of death, you can’t bring back poor Dermot. I thought it better you should stay in college, if you don’t mind. This is a house of sorrow, you see; and you would really be more comfortable in Janus. I’ve got you rooms in the Fellows’ Quad — Simpson’s — he is in the Morea just now. You only want to be careful not to disturb the manuscript of his forthcoming book on the pre-Minoan cultures of the Dodecanese. He has a habit of doing all his writing on the backs of old envelopes, and leaving them all over the floor. So perhaps you’d better not use the study — you might prefer not to in any case, because of course it can’t ever be dusted on account of the envelopes — hasn’t been for years.”

“I shall love staying in Janus,” said Wimsey. “It’s a college I was very seldom in when I was up, and the only experience I had of the Fellows’ Quad was when Jinks was Proctor, and I had to go to his rooms there to see him about my chaining a gorilla to the railings of the Martyrs’ Memorial.”

“Ha! H’m! Just so,” said the Professor. “Perhaps you would like to see the body at once. It is still there, lying just as it was found — in the library.”

“Well, naturally,” Wimsey said with impatience. “Where did you think I thought it was? — in the scullery? Yes, I should like to see it now.”

The Professor led the way to the library, a large, light room on the ground floor, walled with crowded shelves, and smelling slightly of mummified cats. Before the central window was a large writing-table covered with piles of papers in orderly array. On the blotter, Wimsey noted with interest, a very modern book lay open with a part of one of its leaves torn away — a detective story which had murdered sleep for countless readers.

The body lay on the carpet beside the table. Wimsey, mastering the emotion that seized him, knelt down and looked closely at the stocky, well-knit figure, still carefully neat in appearance as Dermot always was in life, and in a natural posture, but that the feet were somewhat drawn up. Those keen eyes were closed now, the mouth too was shut, and there was not a trace of expression on the small, aquiline features. No blood was to be seen, and there was, as Wimsey soon ascertained, no sign of any wound on the body.

Dermot had been in perfect health and excellent spirits up to the time of his death, Professor Mixer said. He himself had been the last to see him alive — at about half-past nine o’clock that morning, when they had exchanged a few words in this same room before the Professor went out to Blackwell’s in quest of a book. Shortly after that his wife, passing the door of the library, had heard Dermot swearing violently within, but she had thought nothing of that.

“You remember, Peter,” the Professor said, “how rough his language often was. He picked up the habit during his time in the mercantile marine, and he seemed quite unable to break himself of it. Topsy, you know, rather admired it really, and I never paid any attention to it; but it cost us the services of an excellent cook, a strict Wesleyan, and sometimes I felt rather uncomfortable about it when I was seeing pupils here.”

“Do you think he could have taught them anything?” Wimsey asked.

“I fear so — yes. I mean, I hope so,” said the Professor with a melancholy shake of the head. “Only last week Lord Torquilstone brought me an essay, and as soon as he entered the room Dermot called out — well, I cannot bring myself to repeat what he said. It was as essentially meaningless as it was deplorably coarse, and Torquilstone was quite taken aback. Then there was another time, when the Vice-Chancellor came to tea with us. We were in the drawing-room upstairs, but I am afraid that he distinctly heard Dermot, who was in this room, blaspheming in the most dreadful terms. In fact, Hoggarty must have heard, because he dropped a piece of muffin into his tea, and then remarked upon the lovely weather that we were having — which was not the case, for it was pouring with rain and very cold for the time of year. I fear I shall be getting quite a bad name in the Hebdomadal Council.”

“And was that — I mean what Topsy heard — the last evidence of his being alive?”

“Yes. It is painful,” the Professor said, “to think that those were in all probability his last words; for I came in about half an hour later, and found him as you see.”

Dinner with Professor Mixer and his wife that evening was not a cheerful affair. Topsy, pale and red-eyed, strangled a sob from time to time, and made hardly a pretence of eating. Her husband, too, could do no more than peck feebly at a half-raw cutlet, while his talk (about the funerary customs which grew up under the Kyksos dynasty) had little of its customary sparkle.

Wimsey, on the other hand, urged on by some impulse which he could neither understand nor control, ate enough of the repulsive meal for all three, while yet he shuddered to think of the probable consequences. He sketched in fancy a lyrical dialogue between himself and his digestion.

At length he took himself away, and retired to his sitting-room in college to think over all that he had learned from the Professor before dinner-time, and from his interrogation of Topsy and the servants. The case baffled him.

He sat at his window on the first floor, looking out, in the gathering gloom, upon the velvet lawn and the stately background of fifteenth-century architecture, pierced just opposite his place of observation by a broad, low-pointed archway through which a section of the Front Quad could be faintly discerned. The Aquinas Club, he had been told, were holding their annual dinner that night, by invitation of the Fellows, in the Senior Common Room, and for some time past their proceedings, which were fully choral, had claimed his attention. He heard the tremendous burden of “On Ilkley Moor Baat ’At,” the stirring swing of “Auprès de la Blonde,” the complex cadences of “Green Grow the Rashes Oh!” the noble organ-music of “Slattery’s Mounted Foot,” the crashing staccato of “Still His Whiskers Grew,” the solemn keening of “The Typist’s Farewell.” Once there were indications that a Rhodes Scholar was trying, with as little success as usually waits on his countrymen’s efforts in that direction, to remember the words of his own national anthem.

Then there fell a hush; and it was not until half an hour later that Wimsey’s wrestling with his problem was disturbed by new sounds of academic liveliness in the Front Quad. He gazed expectantly towards the great archway, and presently a slight, pyjamaed figure fled across the darksome frame of vision, pursued by a loose group of obscurer shapes, dimly seen to be white-shirted, and quite plainly heard to yell. Wimsey sighed. The luxurious, self-conscious melancholy of those no longer ridiculously young, but having — with any luck — half a lifetime still before them, possessed him. Elbows on sill, chin in hands, he gazed into the now untenanted gloom, recalling lost binges of old years.

A little later the moon peered out from her curtains of cloud, and Wimsey, finding that his mood demanded some further recapturing of the spirit of a college by night, descended into the Quad and set out on a voyage of discovery. In the wall to his left hand an opening that looked like the doorway to a staircase of rooms, such as he had just quitted, turned out to be the archway of a vaulted passage leading into a tiny square of stone, whose small grated windows and peaked turret recalled one of Dore’s visions of the Paris of Rabelais. From this another entry led to another Quad, of normal size, and thence again he passed to one yet larger, which he could recognize by the battlements on the farther wall as Pateshull Quad.

As Wimsey stood at gaze, imagining what study, what talk, or possibly what chemin-de-fer, might be in progress behind the few windows that still showed lights within, a young man emerged from one of the staircase entries. He was white-shirted, his hair was somewhat disordered, and he carried under one arm an enormous book. This he took to the centre of the gravelled space, then placed it carefully on the ground, and sat upon it. Soon his wandering eye caught sight of Wimsey in the moonlight, and the two inspected one another in silence for some moments. Then the keen instinct of youth told the sitter that the figure before him, slender though it was, must be that of someone of thirty at least, and with instant deference to age and infirmity he rose and waved a hand towards the obese volume on the gravel.

“Won’t you sit down, sir?” he said. “Not enough room for two, I’m afraid, even on Liddell and Scott.”

“Thanks, I’d rather not,” Wimsey said. “I’m staying in your Fellows’ Quad, and I just came out for a stroll before turning in. You have been at the Aquinas dinner, perhaps?”

“Yes,” said the young man. “It was rather progressive, as a dinner — sort of thing makes you feel a trifle listless afterwards — so, if you’re sure you won’t—” He subsided upon his lexicon, then went on: “Young Warlock got it up his nose rather, you see, and went to sleep on the sofa, so we carried him to his rooms and put him to bed. Then the little devil woke up suddenly and got loose, and we had to chase him all over the college before we could get him bedded down again. Now I’m just sitting here for rest and meditation. D’you ever meditate?”

“Oh, often,” said Wimsey. “What were you thinking of meditating upon this time?”

“Housman’s edition of Manilius,” the young man answered, abstractedly removing his collar and tie. “Wonderful chap — Housman, I mean; Manilius was rather a blister. The way Housman pastes the other commentators in the slats does your heart good. I was just concentrating on the way he kicks the stuffing out of Elias Stöber — lovely!”

“Well, I won’t interrupt you,” Wimsey said. “I’m thinking something over myself, as a matter of fact.”

“All right, go to it,” the young man said amiably; then, lifting up his voice in an agreeable baritone, “I never envy a-a-anyone when I’m thinking… thinking… thinking… I say,” he added, “who are you? I’m Mitchell, named Bryan Farrant by my innocent parents; so of course I’m never called anything but B.F.”

“Hard luck! My name’s Wimsey.”

“Not Lord Peter?”

“Yes.”

“Sinful Solomon!” exclaimed the young man. “Here, you simply must confer distinction on my lexicon. I’ll have the cover you sat on framed.”

“No, really,” Wimsey laughed, “I must go. But do you and your friends really read the chronicles of my misspent life, then?”

“I should say we do read them!” cried Mr. Mitchell. “We eat them!”

“How jolly for you — I mean for me — that is to say, for her… oh well, you know what I mean,” Wimsey said distractedly.

“I suppose I do, if you say so,” said Mr. Mitchell without conviction. “You know the lyric there is about you?

“No, I hadn’t heard it,” Wimsey said. “It’s nice to be sublime, anyhow. Well, here I go. Good night.”

“Sweet dreams!” said Mr. Mitchell.

The familiar theme of the man-hunter and his quarry, always a fascinating subject for detective fiction, is here given a refreshingly sympathetic treatment. For a story that originally appeared twenty years ago, “The Obscure Move” is an astonishingly up-to-date study, conceived and executed with understanding and humor.

His friends have never understood why Morgan, one of the best of private detectives, gave up the excitements of the trail for the stupid dignity of office management. Morgan, naturally, didn’t care to talk about it at first. Time is a good carpenter, however, and Morgan feels now that he may safely stand on the record. Here it is:

To begin with, Morgan was an odd one. If you had questioned him about the deductive method he would have laughed good-naturedly. It is equally certain that the mention of psychological analysis would have sent him to the dictionary for a clue. Common-sense and a sense of humour were his own stock in trade. His specialty was the smooth crook who keeps the money of the carelessly avaricious in circulation. Consequently he wore expensive clothing himself. He smoked large, fragrant cigars of Havana. When on the road — which was nine tenths of the time in those days — he frequented only the most luxurious hotels. Furthermore, he was fast acquiring an appearance of rotund prosperity quite out of key with the best-loved traditions of the stealthy profession. Still, as has been said, he was one of the most successful in that business.

Therefore, when the Duncan Investment Company closed its doors it was not surprising that the victims should have carried their resentment from the formal optimism of police headquarters to Morgan’s agency.

Duncan, they explained, had fled with large sums which he had persuaded them to invest through a trifling lure of from fifty to a hundred per cent. They were law-abiding citizens none the less, and they felt it their duty to society to see that Duncan, who had taken so much, should also receive what was judicially owing to him.

Morgan lighted a fresh perfecto.

“Rest easy,” he told his clients. “I’ll place Mr. Duncan in an iron cage where you can poke your fingers at him all you like.”

After the sheep had flocked out, he gazed about his comfortable office, filled his pockets with cigars, locked his cellarette, and set forth on his adventures.

Morgan took the customary precautions in case the confidence man had his heart set on Canada or a trip abroad. But Duncan was too wary to thrust his head in the lion’s jaw through any such first-offense methods. Instead he revealed the attributes of an eel, squirming, dodging, and once or twice nearly slipping across the Mexican border. The stout, good-natured detective, however, seemed to possess a special intuition. Time and again he made Duncan turn on his tracks. Then a very natural thing happened. When the chase got too hot, Duncan, who had been born and raised in Florida, sought ground which would be far more familiar to him than to his pursuer. Yet Morgan, entering Florida, was reminiscent of nothing so much as a fat, grinning cat, approaching the holeless corner into which he has driven his mouse.

When the police channels had run dry, the detective called on that peculiar intuition of his and bothered the lumber, turpentine, and phosphate men until he had located the fugitive in a timber camp far in the wilderness. Morgan was justly proud. Few men, if they had studied Duncan’s record, would have dreamed of looking for him in the vicinity of manual labour.

Morgan’s work had chiefly lain in comfort-furnished cities, but, by rail, by boat, by springless wagon, he bravely followed the trail. One crisp morning he reached his destination — a group of tiny, unpainted cabins clustered about a sawmill and a commissary.

With a look of high achievement lighting his face, Morgan shook the camp superintendent’s hand.

“Peary and Amundsen and Doctor Cook have nothing on me,” he said. “Just remind me to jot down my latitude and longitude so people’ll believe I’ve really been here.”

The superintendent stared.

“And it’s inhabited!” Morgan went on with awe in his voice. “I’ll write a book, and maybe get decorated by the Swiss — or the Swedes, is it? Well, I made my dash on your word.”

“How come you to suspect he was here?” the superintendent asked.

Morgan’s voice fell.

“Perhaps a fortune teller saw it in the cards.”

He laughed.

“What you laughing at?” the superintendent asked suspiciously.

“The idea of Beau Duncan’s living here! Which may be his stylish bungalow?”

“His quarters, you mean? The shanty yonder with the busted window light.”

“And some of the best hotels have stopped paying dividends since he left town. The lobster palaces are all in heliotrope for him. Where’s old Beau Brummel Duncan now? At the golf club or leading a black-face cotillion?”

“Naw,” the superintendent said. “I allow he’s doing an honest day’s work on the skidder. That’s about three miles from here.”

“The president of your company told me you were a deputy sheriff.” The superintendent proudly displayed his badge.

“Maybe it puts us in the same criminal class with Duncan,” Morgan said, “but we’re paid to work. Let’s make a bluff, anyway.”

The superintendent led two raw-boned little horses from the corral. He considered Morgan’s portly person with a thoughtful eye, then brought a soap box from the commissariat. Morgan mounted to the soap box and thence to the saddle. He settled himself gingerly.

“Don’t you worry if you ever run out of razors,” he advised. “You might take a chance on Dobbin’s backbone. I’ve tried every means of locomotion on this case except aviating, and if Dobbin gallops it will be that or coming in two. I think animals are fond of you. Use your influence. Don’t let this one overdo himself on my account.”

Proceeding cautiously, they followed the lumber tramway until they came to an open space where a donkey engine was noisily loading logs on a string of flat cars. At first Morgan thought the workers about the engine were all negroes, but finally he realized that, except for dirt and grime, one of them was white.

“According to the description that ought to be my affinity,” he said.

They dismounted and left the horses loose, as they had shown no exceptional aggressiveness, to crop the wiry grass. Morgan followed the superintendent in a wide and casual circle toward the donkey engine. The superintendent, as though he were showing off the activities of the clearing to an interested stranger, frequently stopped to point with broad gestures in one direction or another.

“Better cut that stuff,” Morgan warned. “Remember, Duncan isn’t any stage crook. He has real brains.”

Duncan, in fact, had already turned from his work. He leaned on his log hook, staring at the detective. Then he carefully placed the hook on a flat car, thrust his hands in his pockets, and loafed in the direction of the horses. Morgan and the superintendent quickened their pace. Evidently that was sufficient proof for Duncan, for, with a yell, he threw pretence aside, vaulted a log, and broke into a run.

Morgan started heavily after him, but Duncan was younger, slenderer, and much better conditioned. By the time Morgan had reached his horse and had clambered to the saddle in apparent defiance of the laws of gravity, Duncan was already well away on a sandy track which entered the woods at a right angle to the tramway.

When duty beckoned no chances were too great for Morgan. He set his teeth as he urged his horse to a gallop. Swaying from side to side or bobbing up and down with surprised little grunts, he clutched impulsively at the animal’s mane and went in pursuit.

The track wound into the virgin forest. Almost immediately the landscape seemed to conspire lawlessly for the protection of the fugitive. The trees thickened. A dense underbrush sprang up. A growth of saplings cluttered the soil between the trunks. Morgan’s horse was a self-centred brute. In worming his quick way among the saplings, he allowed only for his emaciated body. Consequently, the detective had to look out for his own too-solid person. What with lifting one fat leg or the other to escape bruises and fractures against the eager saplings, and what with ducking beneath overhanging branches to avoid being brushed from the saddle, he must have presented the appearance of a grotesque jumping-jack answering to eccentric strings.

Duncan clearly received this impression, for the last Morgan saw of him the other was going through a black, shallow stream, his hand upraised in a mocking and undignified farewell. And the last Morgan heard of him was laughter — unrestrained, joyous, insulting.

But Morgan plodded ahead, hoping that the hummock would soon give way to open forest land where he might wear the fugitive down. The underbrush, however, closed more riotously about him. There were many stagnant pools which obscured and finally obliterated Duncan’s trail. Morgan brought his horse to a halt. He half fell from his saddle. He looked about him, for once at a loss.

Yellow slash pine, towering with forbidding indifference in all directions, spread their green-plumed tops in a roof so thick that the sun could force its way through only at long intervals. Scrub palmettos, like huge caterpillars, squirmed along the ground and thrust green tentacles upward from their ends. Here and there one reared its body higher than horse and man. Stunted maple and gum fought for life in the perpetual twilight, and in the wettest places thick-boled cypresses raised their ghastly frames, strung with moss that had the appearance of matted hair. The ground was soggy underfoot, and the air was hot, damp, and full of decay.

Morgan whistled.

“This,” he mused, “is somewhat more of a place than that panorama of hades I paid ten cents to see in Coney Island last summer. Besides, it’s several stations farther from Times Square.”

He took off his hat, drew an immaculate linen handkerchief from his pocket, and mopped his heated brow. There was no virtue in stubbornness now. Duncan had undoubtedly given him the slip for the present. His best scheme was to return to the lumber camp, where he could arrange to watch the outlets of the forest.

He mounted with considerable difficulty and some strategy, then turned his horse’s head. But the many stagnant pools had confused his own trail as thoroughly as they had Duncan’s. When the sun set he made a wry face and acknowledged he was lost.

The prospect of spending the night in the swamp was very annoying to one of Morgan’s habits. Since his lungs were perfectly sound he had never interested himself in all this talk about outdoor sleeping, but he was ready to back at odds the fact that it couldn’t be done either comfortably or beneficially here. The ground was too wet for one thing, and, for another, it was probably friendly to snakes. He had a wholesome respect for snakes. Yet he was certain his raw-boned horse couldn’t support him all night. He had already examined him several times to see if his back was sagging.

He tumbled to the ground again, tied the horse to a sapling, and walked to a fallen log. After he had thoroughly searched the neighbourhood for reptiles, he sat down and munched some of the sweet chocolate he always carried for emergencies. Then he lighted a red-banded Havana. His heart sank at the recollection that his pocket carried only two more of those luxuries. Ah, well, they would last until the next morning, when he would certainly be back at the camp.

While he smoked, the drowsy wood life of the warm day melted into a new note as the melancholy creatures of night awoke. Morgan shivered. He had never cared for the country. The only birds whose music he understood fluttered along Broadway or in and out of the Tombs.

He sprang upright at a rustling in the grass behind the log. Snakes, he was sure! He lamented his lack of experience with country jobs, but he remembered reading somewhere that hunters build fires as a protection against such rural denizens as lions and tigers. It might work with snakes. He gathered a pile of sticks and started a meagre blaze. Afterward he lay down, but rest was not easy in the swamp. An owl declaimed its dismal periods nearby; a whippoorwill called disconsolately; a high-pitched, vibrant outcry brought him erect, every nerve alert, his hand on his revolver; some heavy body crashed past; always he imagined furtive rustlings in the grass about him. A case had once taken him to the opera. He had slept through “Gotterdammerung,” but that was a soporific compared with this.

It began to rain. He saw his fire diminish and die. He fancied the rustlings were closer, and he had no idea what hunters did when their fires went out. He lifted his feet. He hugged his knees. In this unprofessional attitude he spent the remainder of the night without sleep.

When the gray dawn came he looked in vain for his horse. The broken bridle dangled eloquently from the sapling.

Chilled to the bone and wet, Morgan set out, determined to make Duncan pay in some way for this night just past. He imagined the confidence man, at the end of a multiplicity of adventures, completely at his mercy — even on his knees, begging for mercy. What he wouldn’t say to Duncan then! Or, if Duncan resisted, what he wouldn’t do to Duncan! These pleasant thoughts served to pass the time, but they brought him no nearer the edge of the swamp. When night fell his weariness overcame his fear of snakes and he slept.

By rare good luck he shot a wild turkey the next morning and managed to broil it over a smouldering fire. Near the fire he stayed all day, for it still rained and he felt rheumatic.

Another night came, and another day of rain. He lost track of time. The feeling that he had spent most of his life in the swamp depressed him. As a matter of fact, it was the fifth day when the storm finally ceased.

Morgan, sitting in the warm, bland sunlight, took stock of himself. The prosperous, well-dressed detective who had entered the swamp had become a mass of discomforts to which rags clung. He was undecided as to whether the rheumatism or his lack of tobacco hurt the more. He had only two cartridges left, and from past experience he knew they might not bring him a single morsel. It behooved him to get on his feet and escape from this hole, rheumatism or no rheumatism.

With the sun shining he could be reasonably sure he was keeping to a straight fine. But the swamp was evidently interminable. His lack of success pricked his anger against Duncan. He swore aloud.

“Let me get my hands on that slick article who let me in for this! Just let me see him! Just let me get within striking distance!”

It was about this time that he turned pale and leaned weakly against a tree. He had heard a man shout.

As he opened his lips he wondered if the rain, the cold, the long disuse had affected his voice. Would it respond to his will at this vital moment? It was more than a shout. It was a roar that left his throat. And from somewhere a voice answered, triumphantly, hysterically.

Almost immediately Morgan saw a man running toward him, splashing through pools, waving his arms, crying out incoherently. Morgan straightened and began running, too, in the direction of this figure so like a scarecrow. It was a human being. It meant companionship, conversation, a touch of the world again. Heaven knew he needed all that!

Then Morgan saw that it was Duncan. At the same moment Duncan saw that it was Morgan.

Duncan sprang behind a tree. He thrust his arms out in frantic gestures. Morgan drew his revolver. He walked steadily forward.

“Duncan, my dear, it’s struck twelve. Come on out now and take your medicine.”

“Gently! Gently!” Duncan called. “I give you fair warning!”

Morgan walked faster.

“Fire away. I’ll take my chances.”

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Duncan said. “I haven’t a gun. Do you think I would harm a hair of your head if I had? I have a better weapon than that. Come any closer and I’ll run like the devil.”

Morgan stopped. Vengeance was in his heart, but he permitted himself a glimpse at the reverse of the picture.

“Duncan! For God’s sake, don’t do that!”

“Then you’ll listen to reason.”

Morgan smiled again.

“It’s a bluff, Duncan. Maybe you can run like Bryan, but you haven’t the nerve.”

“Be reasonable or you’ll see,” Duncan threatened. “I’m a human being. So are you, I take it.”

Morgan’s smile broadened.

“Don’t be foolish with other people’s money and bet on it.”

Duncan pulled at the torn fringe of his short sleeves. He shifted his feet.

“Suppose I surrendered?” he asked. “Where would you find a policeman or a patrol wagon? Could you get me out of here?”

“I can’t seem to find a taxi for myself,” Morgan replied. “But I’ll land you in the cooler yet.”

“If we live,” Duncan said, “and nothing happens, and all goes well, and deus volens.”

“Don’t swear in a foreign tongue,” Morgan answered.

“Let’s confer on the main problem,” Duncan proposed. “If you don’t agree I’ll run and leave you alone. I don’t believe you’re very good company for yourself just now.”

“As far as that’s concerned,” Morgan grinned, “if I were you I’d hate myself by this time.”

“So I do, and I want a truce,” Duncan blurted out.

Morgan sighed.

“All right,” he agreed. “I’ll mark this place, and when we’re through you can go play Indian again.”

Duncan stepped out. His hair was heavy and tangled. The thick black growth on his face made his eyes seem very large, white, and hungry.

“If I had had you along,” Morgan said, “I needn’t have been afraid of the snakes.”

Duncan came straight to him and put his hand on his shoulder.

“You don’t know how good it is to see you, Morgan. I’ve been denied even the companionship of my horse. He got bogged.”

Morgan’s voice was a little husky as he asked:

“Say, you don’t happen to have a cigar hidden away on your clothes?”

“No, but I retain the essentials.”

He produced a large sack of cheap flake tobacco and a package of cigarette papers.

“I never smoked those puff rolls,” Morgan said disappointedly. “I couldn’t roll one of them if it would get me out of this swamp.”

“Permit me to roll it for you,” Duncan offered.

And he did it, deftly and lovingly, and passed it to the detective. Then he rolled one for himself, and they sat on a log, shoulders touching, while they smoked contentedly.

“So you’re Bob Morgan!” Duncan said. “The famous Morgan! I must confess your present state isn’t up to your reputation. You might at least have brought a few necessities in with you.”

Morgan glanced at the soiled, tattered figure.

“Beau,” he said, “believe me, you’re not up to it. If you come any more of that easy money talk on me I’ll scream for help.”

They both spoke in soft, silky, wondering voices, as though admiring the unaccustomed sounds; and at Morgan’s words they burst into high-pitched laughter that was so terrifying in their ears it ceased immediately.

“Glad to meet you, Duncan,” Morgan said gruffly. “But I don’t want to tap any wires or buy any green goods. Let that be understood.”

Duncan shook his head.

“Morgan,” he announced, “there is something radically wrong with us.”

“Better patent that discovery.”

Duncan shook his head again.

“No,” he continued. “We’re not living up to tradition.”

“I’m scarcely living at all,” Morgan said.

“For a detective and a fugitive,” Duncan declared, “we show extraordinary good sense. Romantically speaking, we should be at each other’s throats.”

“Cut it, and prepare me another whiff of joy.”

But Duncan good-humouredly refused to manufacture any more cigarettes until Morgan had consented to some working arrangement.

The decision to join forces until they had found a way out of the swamp, if the thing could be done, was a matter of a moment. That the chase should recommence once they were out was also agreed to at once. They divided only on the start the detective should give the criminal. Morgan offered half an hour, and Duncan demanded half a day. Morgan wanted to smoke. Duncan was hungry. Morgan produced from his pocket a few small bones to which tiny shreds of meat still clung, and these he kept prominently in view while the other carelessly dangled the paper and the tobacco bag in his fingers. They began to compromise.

By the time they had settled on an hour and a half the sun was down. They made camp. Duncan proved himself more adept than Morgan at building fires. When he had a pile of brushwood blazing he went in search of certain edible roots on which he had largely subsisted for the last few days. He brought some of these back and shared them with the detective.

The gobbling of wild turkeys awoke them at dawn, and they crept to a clump of palmettos at the foot of a dead cypress. As the sky lightened behind the gibbet-like branches, a row of birds appeared in silhouette. Morgan rested his arm against a palmetto trunk, aimed, and brought one of the birds down.

Duncan patted him on the back.

“You would have made a fortune conducting a shooting gallery, Morgan.”

“Yeh. And if I live to tell about that shot up north, I’ll feel like a liar and everybody’ll know I’m one.”

The turkey solved the food problem for the present, and, as long as the sun shone, they knew their chances for speedy escape were good. But the clouds turned black again in the afternoon, and a dismal downpour commenced.

“Doesn’t it do anything but rain in this hole?” Morgan grieved.

“We are below the snow line,” Duncan explained. “I suggest camping here before we start walking in circles.”

They made a fire and by the last daylight gathered a heap of wood.

Duncan regretted their lack of a pack of cards to pass the time. This gave Morgan a thought.

“You don’t happen by any crazy chance to play chess, Duncan?”

“I know something more than the moves.”

“Three cheers,” Morgan cried.

He felt in his pocket and brought forth a small pocket chess board.

“When I’m traveling alone I often irritate myself working problems on this. I was using it on the train only a thousand years or so ago.”

They moved closer to the fire, tossed for sides, arranged the markers, and in a few minutes their minds were far away from the swamp and their plight. They were well matched. Morgan, who had the white pieces, opened with a brilliant, puzzling attack on the king’s side; but Duncan, with confidence and forethought, combined his forces in a flawless defense. As they recognized each other’s ability they took more time for their moves. Morgan would lean forward, pursing his lips, studious lines showing on his forehead, while Duncan, eyes intent on the board, would roll a couple of cigarettes, pass one to his opponent, reach out his hand to the fire, and offer a burning brand for a light. It was very exciting. Perhaps they saw in the game a symbol of their relations — detective against criminal, and both most excellent players. It was very late when Morgan unmasked his rooks and trapped Duncan’s knight on the king’s line.

Duncan leaned back.

“You play a strong game, Morgan.”

The detective was pleased by his victory.

“You’re pretty good practice for me, Beau,” he conceded. “But you ought to have left that pawn of mine alone. It was a gold brick. Oh! Excuse me for talking shop. Hello! It’s still raining.”

The storm ceased the next day for only a few minutes. They did not travel far, because Morgan complained of what he called his growing pains.

That night they played chess again. Duncan won.

“A game apiece,” Morgan said. “To-morrow night’ll be the rubber. Waterloo won’t be jack stones to what I’ll do to you.”

But Morgan was in no condition to walk the next day. He lay by the smouldering fire, inclined to complain.

“Another twenty-four hours and you’ll be all right,” Duncan said cheerily.

“I’ll never be all right again,” Morgan lamented.

Duncan dried enough sticks and moss at the fire to make a crude bed. He lifted Morgan from the wet ground, then prepared a soup of turkey bones and roots in the detective’s drinking cup. Morgan drank it with relish, but his ailments occupied his mind to the exclusion of chess. So Duncan sat at his side, watching the fire and trying to keep up his spirits.

The last clouds sailed away in the morning. The cold, wet weather was routed. But Morgan’s vocabulary was not sufficiently large to let him walk far at a time. After several attempts he gave up and lay down, groaning.

“Poor old Morgan,” Duncan said, leaning sympathetically over him.

“Go to the corner and send in an ambulance call,” Morgan answered with a grimace. “Then bid me farewell before it begins to pour again. If you hang around for me we’ll both die of water on the brain.”

Duncan patted his shoulder.

“For Heaven’s sake, don’t get delirious — Bob.”

For some time Morgan frowned at the fire.

“Beau,” he said at last, “I mean it. I haven’t got the build for a millstone. Besides, I can’t be under obligations. I can’t let pleasure interfere with business. If you get out do me just two favours. Send a posse in for me and wire the office to get another man after you as quick as lightning.”

“My position is very simple,” Duncan answered. “I wouldn’t leave you if you offered me title to all the real estate in this swamp.”

Morgan grinned.

“Since you’re talking shop, Beau, you may be a Southern cavalier and me a Yankee born, but I never took fifty per cent, and I see ten suckers in my business any day where you see one.”

“No use trying to get me mad, Bobbie. I’m too selfish to leave you and face this cheerless world alone.”

“Well, just remember, Beau, I’ll get you. As sure as the whole world’s gone to grass and water, I’ll get you.”

“I admire ambition,” Duncan said. “I regret that I can not encourage it. But the problem need not trouble us at present. Let me make you comfortable, then I’ll roll you another cigarette.”

He carried Morgan to a sunny spot, and gave his limbs a thorough, hard massage. Afterward the detective struggled up and began to walk in a crouching position. Duncan cut a stout stick for him. He took his arm and helped him all he could.

“You’re sure full of sand, Bob,” he said.

Without answering, Morgan walked on. Now and then he would pause, but always, after a few minutes’ rest, he would start forward again. By and by his figure crouched less and his steps grew longer.

He was exhausted when they made camp, but the worst of his pains had left him, and it was he who proposed after supper that they play the rubber game.

“I’m an awful object to think about,” he explained. “Men have gone nutty over less. I’ve got to get my mind off myself. Besides, I’d like to know who’s the better man. If I hadn’t lost sight of one thing last time there wouldn’t have been anything to it.”

The game was slow. Each was determined to win, so each took as long as he pleased for his moves. Morgan, when he could scarcely keep his eyes open, suggested that they postpone the finish until the next evening.

“I guess I’m trained a little fine,” he said. “I don’t want to make a slip.”

“It looks like a draw to me,” Duncan answered.

“It looked as though I’d get out of this swamp the day I came in, but did I? Study the board. I can see more than one way to slip over a knock-out.”

Duncan laughed.

“I’m afraid you’ll never win this game.”

“I’ve got to and I will,” Morgan said. “I’ll bet you three pine trees and a case of swamp water — magnums!”

He folded the board, returned it to his pocket, lay down, and was fast asleep in a twinkling.

They were off by the time the sun had slipped its first long shadows through the swamp. Morgan was convalescent. He walked steadily onward, resting one hand on Duncan’s shoulder. They talked of the unfinished game which had assumed colossal proportions in their dwarfed minds. But that rubber was destined never to be finished. It was a little after noon when Morgan said in a hushed voice:

“Beau, wait a minute.”

“What’s the matter?” Duncan whispered as he stopped.

“This darned swamp’s thinning.”

“It had occurred to me,” Duncan agreed. “I was afraid to speak of it.”

“Look at those palmetto clumps,” Morgan went on excitedly. “They’re not as high or as thick. There isn’t as much water. Beau, old boy, I believe we’re going to get out!”

“There’s certainly higher ground ahead,” Duncan answered. “Come on, Bobbie.”

“Beau! Think of the food and the cigars!”

“Oh, you won’t have any taste for decent tobacco,” Duncan said carelessly.

Morgan made a wry face and rubbed his knee.

“And this rich food isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Rich food for the idle rich!”

They struggled through the last of the underbrush and stepped into the open pine forest. There was hard soil or sand beneath their feet. About them the sun laid warm, caressing fingers of light. Insects droned, and birds sang joyously. Before long they came to trees scarred by turpentiners, and later to a wood road.

They paused and stood awkwardly for a few minutes without words. The road — narrow, twisting, and overgrown — screamed of civilization, of populous cities, and of marts noisy with commerce.

“We’ve discovered America,” Morgan said.

“Yes,” replied Duncan. In a moment he added: “I believe you agreed to give me an hour and a half. Therefore, I will resume my travels.”

Morgan looked at him with an air of childish wonder.

“So I did,” he answered dreamily — “an hour and a half!”

He pulled his wits together.

“Cross my heart, I’ll stay where I am for an hour and a half after I lose sight of you.”

“Quite satisfactory,” Duncan said.

“Before you go,” Morgan began uncomfortably, “I’d like to hand you a few words of thanks on this auspicious occasion.”

“There’s no question of thanks,” Duncan protested politely. “Undoubtedly we were mutually helpful.”

Morgan extended his hand.

“Beau, good-bye.”

He essayed a little humour.

“That is — so long. It won’t be many days before we meet again. I am looking forward to it.”

Duncan took the detective’s hand.

“This is an eternal farewell. In some ways I regret it. Good-bye, Bob. You’re sure you can navigate until you come to a house?”

“Sure. I’ll steer into the first drydock I see and have them light a fire under me.”

Their hands dropped. Duncan hesitated. Finally he put his fingers in his pocket, pulled out tobacco and paper, and rolled a cigarette. He handed it to Morgan, who mechanically placed it between his lips. Duncan divided the tobacco. He gave a part of it with several papers to Morgan. Then he turned and strode off through the woods.

Morgan sat down. He watched the tall, gaunt figure about which ragged clothing flapped until it was out of sight. Very soon he became restless. He took the paper and tobacco and tried to make a cigarette, but his fingers were clumsy. The flakes spilled, and the thin, slippery paper tore. As his desire to smoke even this distasteful makeshift increased, the picture of Duncan’s deft manipulation came into his fancy and lingered.

He opened the chess board to study the unfinished game. His line of attack was perfectly clear in his mind now. As move by move its beauties unfolded he chuckled quietly. Duncan was helpless. Suddenly his chuckling ceased. There was one obscure move that Duncan might have offered in reply. It would have spoiled the entire combination. Yet it was the advancing of a pawn on the extreme flank, and its immediate significance appeared of minor importance.

“Duncan wasn’t wise to it,” he told himself.

And after a moment:

“Could Duncan have been hep?”

He puzzled over the board for a long time. He arose and paced back and forth.

“He might have forced a draw with that move,” he mused, “or even a winning attack. I’ve got to know what he would have done. I’ll ask him when I nab him.”

He took out his watch. Duncan had been gone two hours.

Morgan didn’t follow the route Duncan had taken. The memory of his lonely wanderings kept him in the road which brought him before dark to a turpentine camp. He accepted the foreman’s hospitality for the night.

He set out early the next morning with the foreman’s horse and buggy which he was to send back from the nearest railroad station, five hours away. The road was long and monotonous, but he sat at his ease, smoking bad cigars which he had bought at the camp, and singing snatches of popular songs in praise of his release from muscular effort.

His thoughts of Duncan centred about the uncompleted game of chess. While he was confident that Duncan’s capture was only a matter of time, he refused to bother his head with definite plans until he reached the railroad. These few hours, this long journey, were a vacation from mental and physical labour — an excursion in contentment.

The appearance of the country had not altered when the shriek of a locomotive whistle warned him his ride was nearly ended. He touched the whip to his horse for the first time and was soon on the right of way. He saw the glittering lines of steel, a rough section house, and a water tank; but in front of him the woods were as thick as those he had just left. He pulled up, thoroughly puzzled, for he had expected to find a station at this crossing.

Suddenly his curiosity died. His indolent figure stiffened. His hand went to his coat pocket where the revolver with its single remaining cartridge lay. A filthy man in rags was trying to conceal himself behind one of the insufficient tank supports.

Morgan stepped from the buggy, levelling his revolver.

“Duncan,” he said, “I warned you it was ‘so long.’ ”

“It’s Morgan, of all the world,” Duncan answered, but his smile was sickly. “If that train had only stopped I’d have missed this pleasant reunion.”

“You ought to be grateful. Nice people are waiting to weep on your neck up North. Come on out and let’s hurry home.”

“Not so fast, Morgan. I can easily get away from you. But I confess to a strong desire to finish that game. Suppose for that purpose we arrange another truce.”

“We’ll finish it on the train,” Morgan answered with a grin. “I’ve got you beaten so many ways I blush to think of it.”

“Have you?” Duncan asked slily. “How about that pawn? I win!”

Morgan’s mouth opened. His revolver arm dropped.

“You never saw that—”

Duncan sprang from behind his post, and bounded across the right of way for the woods.

Morgan raised his arm again.

“Stop or I’ll shoot!”

But Duncan ran the faster. The muzzle of Morgan’s revolver was pointed at the fugitive’s back. He had brought down wild turkeys. The result was certain.

Then his arm swayed gently to one side. The movement seemed almost involuntary. He pulled the trigger. He sped his last cartridge into the heart of an innocent pine tree.

He thrust the gun in his pocket and started in pursuit. When he reached the edge of the woods Duncan had disappeared. Morgan sank to the ground. He rubbed his knees ruefully. He shook his head. He shrugged his shoulders. Sitting there in a heap he lighted one of his vile cigars.

“That blasted rheumatism!” he moaned. “That blasted rheumatism! It must have jumped to my gun arm. I’ll have to report sick. I’m not worth a hill of beans at this business as I am. I wonder if I’ve got anything besides rheumatism.”

As he blew the stinging smoke from his nostrils he smiled reminiscently.

A special treat for you this month. The author of “Beau Geste” offers us one of the most deceptive little mysteries in modern fiction. It is a mystery, not of crime, but of situation — a strange problem that confronted the Mayor of Sonango, in Central America, on that awful day known thenceforth as “Boulder Day”; and how the laziest hidalgo between the Rio Grande del Norte and the Panama Canal solved it. Can you? Percival Christopher Wren calls it “Simple.” Perhaps you won’t find it so!

Central America covers a big area and contains a large and very mixed population varying from hundred-per-cent Americans and pure-bred Europeans by way of fifty-per-cent half-bred mestizos to equally pure-bred Indians and Negroes.

Among the people of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador and Nicaragua are hard-working men and lazy men, and among the latter are to be found the very laziest in all the world.

It is a rash statement, but a reasonable and a tenable one withal, that Señor José Hernandez held the palm, as The Laziest of the Lazy, between the Rio Grande del Norte and the Panama Canal.

Naturally he was almost as poor as he was lazy, but not quite, because, being a hidalgo of bluest blood and unmixed descent, he had but to ask and it was given unto him — to the extent of at least ten centavos a time. But even asking involves effort, and, every evening, Señor José was constrained to rise from his comfortable seat in the shady Plaza, stroll along the Avenida Reale and accost such Europeans as he might meet. Only white men, of course; for José Hernandez had his pride, and no Caballero begs from an Indian or a half-caste, however much better off such people may be than himself. A caballero may have no shirt, no socks, only a shoe and a half, and a cotton coat and trousers long unassailed by a Chinese laundryman, and still remain a caballero, a hidalgo and a gentleman, a Don.

And to such, any right-thinking and well-behaved European will give a ten-, twenty-, or fifty-centavo piece, or even a peso. For his heart will be touched at the sight of quiet and dignified suffering, provided he has not been “touched” too often.

So, to the extent of walking a few yards and saying a few words, Señor José Hernandez had to work. It was annoying, but when he had collected a few tens, twenties and fifties, he could go to a stall and there take his choice of hot tamales, fried bananas, cuchilladas, frijoles, enticing sweetmeats, admirable rolls and excellent coffee. Thereafter a few cigarettes, pleasantly enriched with just a little marijuana, and a glass of tequila. And so to bed — on the same bench, his armchair by day, his couch by night.

Ours is a strange world, replete with remarkable phenomena. One of these is the fact that José’s brother, Don Pedro Hernandez, if not one of the busiest men in all Central America, was undoubtedly, and by far, the most industrious, hard-working, capable and successful man in San Antonio if not the whole State of Sonango.

And, as naturally as completest idleness and unadulterated laziness kept José poor as a man may be and live, so, inevitably, had constant hard work, hard scheming and ruthless seizing of every opportunity enriched the admirable Pedro.

While one brother sat in his two-piece suit and his piece-and-half shoes, the other dwelt in a fine house, rode in a fine car, and enjoyed that universal admiration and respect, regard and honour which are the right and proper due of every wealthy man.

One thing Señor Pedro Hernandez did not enjoy was the sight of his disgraceful and abominable brother seated ragged, unwashed and unshorn, from morning till night on his bench in the Plaza, or making his evening predatory stroll along the Avenida Reale in search of the easy centavo.

José was to Pedro a thorn in the side; a curse and a cross which he bore with ill grace. José was the elephant in Pedro’s ointment.

Not only was it galling to Pedro’s pride that his own brother lived upon the casual and careless charity of Pedro’s fellow-citizens, but it was particularly irksome to know that his enemies — and even the rich have enemies — took a mean and despicable pleasure in tossing coppers to his brother as they passed the spot where he sat at the receipt of custom, or when they met him on his evening excursion between the Plaza and the Hotel Grande Imperiale. For there were not a few malicious scoundrels in San Antonio who, laughing aloud, would enter their favourite bar and observe to their friends, its habitués:

“Just met Pedro Hernandez’s begging brother and tipped him a fifty. A bone-idle loafer! But damned if I don’t like him the better of the two.”

And another, with a nasty snigger, would observe:

“Inasmuch as Don José Hernandez does nothing whatsoever, he does nothing wrong. Which is more than one can say for the noble Don Pedro.”

Kind friends — as kind friends will — always told Pedro all about that sort of talk.

But whether José was more likeable than Pedro or not, it is unfortunately undeniable that José was by far the happier of the two.

That such should be the case is of course very wrong, undesirable, and unmoral.

But such, nevertheless, was the position of affairs when there dawned that epochal day known thenceforth, in San Antonio and the parts adjacent, as Boulder Day.

During the darkness of the early hours of that memorable morning, the Earth, as it so frequently did in the state of Sonango, seemed to stretch in its sleep, to turn over, to yawn (in several places) and to give a comfortable little wriggle ere settling down to dream again.

On this occasion, the comfortable little wriggle dislodged a boulder perched somewhat precariously on the side of the mountain that somewhat dubiously protects San Antonio. It was quite a considerable boulder, being about the size of a well-nourished hippopotamus; rotound, indeed, almost spherical.

Released from its resting-place, and doubtless (unlike José) weary of the spot where it had slumbered for so long, it rolled away merrily, and positively bounding with glee, and gaining momentum at every leap, careened down the mountainside, skipped joyously over a shallow arroyo, playfully burst through the houses on both sides of a street, and, by them slightly diverted from its course, bowled innocuously as a child’s hoop, straight down the centre of the Avenida. At length, with a sigh of satisfaction, it came to rest, none too soon for the safety and welfare of life and property in the town of San Antonio.

But it was definitely unfortunate that the Boulder, which stood higher than a big boy and would have needed the outstretched arms of three men for its encirclement, should have come to rest in the exact spot where, somewhat casually perhaps, the tramlines cross the light railway that runs through San Antonio from Jimenez to Loyopa, and right in the way of the not inconsiderable motor, wagon, burro and other traffic that throngs the busy Avenida.

Imagine if you can the consternation of the City Fathers, the anxiety of the worried Mayor, as angrily the wires hummed from up and down the railway, on the subject of the complete blockage of line; as angrily the manager of the San Antonio Light, Power, and Tramway Company assailed him about the blockage of the track; and as leading citizens protested by telephone, telegram and letter, against the inconvenience and annoyance to which they, as merchants and tradesmen, were subjected by the traffic and hold-up.

But, as the Mayor pointed out to the Municipality in Council, it was very easy for railway traffic-superintendents to send telegrams, for tramway managers to make telephone calls, for lorry and taxicab proprietors to make personal calls and personal remarks; but among the few things they forgot to tell him, was how to remove the colossal Boulder!

“Couldn’t it be dragged away?” enquired a Municipal Councillor, desirous of offering helpful municipal counsel.

“Oh, undoubtedly, undoubtedly,” said the Mayor, “if only we had ten thousand traction engines and the means of harnessing them to it.”

“Couldn’t one of our leading contractors, such as Señor Pedro Hernandez, construct a sort of platform on wheels and attach…?”

“Oh, doubtless, doubtless,” smiled the Mayor. “Given a few months, I am perfectly certain he could build ‘a sort of platform on wheels’ of sufficient strength to bear the immeasurable weight of that gigantic rock… And he having done so, perhaps you yourself would be good enough to push the stone on to it, my dear friend?”

Undeterred by the Mayor’s sarcasm, another Councillor made a suggestion.

“What about a crane?” he said. “Are not such contrivances made for the lifting of great weights?”

“True, true,” agreed the Mayor. “Brilliant. I shouldn’t be in the least surprised to learn that in Pittsburgh, U.S.A., or Birmingham, England, there exists a crane that could lift a stone as big as a house and weighing hundreds of tons. But this is San Antonio, Sonango; and I do not at the moment recollect seeing a crane a hundred feet high and a million horsepower strong in anybody’s back-yard.”

In silence the Council sat biting its nails, gnawing its knuckles, nibbling its beard, or merely scratching its head.

Then, as was his place and duty, the Vice-President of the Municipal Council did his bit, and was delivered of a helpful suggestion.

“Dynamite!” he said explosively.

The Mayor suppressed a groan, refrained from rudeness, and observed:

“The Señor would suggest blowing the Boulder, San Antonio, and half the State of Sonango to… to…”

“To hell,” murmured a Councillor readily.

“To dust, I was about to say,” continued the Mayor. “But doubtless our friend knows his own destination best.”

But dynamite, like many other dangerous subjects, has a certain attraction.

“Couldn’t we have holes drilled in the Boulder and then let sticks of dynamite be inserted in the holes; and then, not exactly blow it to pieces, but… er… break it up, disintegrate it,” suggested a grave and reverend Señor.

“Oh, we could. Undoubtedly we could,” replied the Mayor. “Suppose you go and tell the proprietor of the Hotel Imperiale, outside which the Boulder rests, that you propose to do it.

“And ask him if he has any objection to having his windows blown in, his ceilings brought down, and such of his guests as are not killed, driven insane, or deafened for life,” he added.

Other solutions were propounded, each more fantastic than the last, until, through sheer weariness and a laudable desire to prevent a free fight, if not murder, the distracted Mayor dissolved the Council, with nothing accomplished, nothing done to earn a night’s repose — or achieve the removal of the Boulder.

One thing he could, and would, and did do; and that was to offer a reward of one thousand pesos to anyone who could make a practicable suggestion for the removal of the colossal stone; and ten thousand pesos to him who should achieve it without further damage to life and property in the city of San Antonio…

Returning that night from his office in the City Hall to his once happy home, weary and worn and sad, dejected and depressed to the lowest depths, he passed the seat in the Plaza on which rested Don José Hernandez.

“Señor!” languidly murmured that gentleman. “You want the Boulder removed. I will remove it for you this very night — at the stated price.”

The Mayor was not amused and briefly intimated the fact.

“Nevertheless, Señor,” smiled José gently, “if the sun should rise tomorrow upon the spot where the Boulder now rests and find it empty; find the Boulder vanished with the other miasmas and mists of the morning, I shall apply to you for the sum of eleven thousand pesos.”

“Yes. And you’ll get them!” grunted the Mayor. “And eleven thousand more,” he added contemptuously. “Doubtless you propose to eat it.”

“The money? Most of it. I shall drink some of it, of course.”

“I meant the Boulder,” replied the Mayor, added a little blasphemy, and went on his way, not rejoicing.

And in the morning the sun rose as usual upon the town of San Antonio and beheld it as usual, inasmuch as no gigantic boulder lay paralysing the transport activities of the city.

Informed of the fact ere yet he had left his bed the Mayor could not believe his ears; and five minutes later could not believe the evidence of his eyes.

Slowly, and in a sense reluctantly, he did believe that of the tired-born, languid-bred and lazy-living Señor José Hernandez who, looking if possible more weary than ever, approached him and murmured:

“Would you rather pay the twenty-two thousand pesos into the Bank of Mexico in a lump sum, or hand me two pesos daily for the next thirty years?”

The Mayor appeared to swallow something large, and drew a deep breath.

“Name of the Eternal Father!” he stammered. “But… But… How did… you… do… it?”

Well, how did Don José do it? For this brilliant little story of Percival Wren’s is not only a literary pleasure, it is a mystery puzzle, too, with the added fascination of all such pleasant pastimes… Can you figure out Don José’s solution to the Problem of the Obstructive Boulder? If you cannot, read what Mr. Wren has to say — in the last two paragraphs of the story, printed upside down directly below!

Our favorite department brings you this month No. 4 in our League of Forgotten Detectives. This time it is a brace of detectives — Mr. Robert Leroy Mitchel, scholar and artist, who “turned his trained powers of analysis to the study of crime,” and Mr. Barnes, known as “the cleverest professional detective” of his time. The time is 1898, the author Rodrigues Ottolengui, one of the most neglected of the early mystery writers — although occasionally someone with a long gray beard will speak of Ottolengui’s once-famous book, “An Artist in Crime.” It is interesting to note that writing detective stories runs in the Ottolengui family; for his notable contemporary relative is none other than Octavus Roy Cohen, creator of Florian Slappey and Jim Hanvey… We warn you: “A Frosty Morning” is old-fashioned. But it has a charm that many modern stories lack; and it makes warm, enjoyable reading.

“Then as I understand it, you know that there is a thousand-pound note in this room, and yet you can’t find it. In other words, Mr. Van Rawlston, you wish to know whether a thing can be lost when you know where it is.”

The speaker’s companion, a man of fifty, with the bearing of one accustomed to large affairs, frowned impatiently. A trusted and powerful financier, one grown gray in the management of huge interests, he chafed at the smallness of the mystery which yet seemed to reflect on his executorship of the estate to which the thousand-pound note belonged. And it was with some stiffness that he began —

“Of course I understand that to a man of your experience this matter seems insignificant; but I am up to my ears in mystery. Mr. Barnes, the cleverest professional detective in New York, has spent hours in searching this room — without success. In despair I thought of you, with your cool, analytical brain, and I sent for you. But if you are in a jesting humor—”

“A thousand pardons,” said the other, seating himself in the carved oak library chair. “That’s one for each of your pounds. But there, forgive me and I will be serious. I received your note late because I did not reach home until dinner time. But here I am within half an hour of reading your message. Now, then, about this thousand pounds sterling. You are sure that the money is in this room?”

“Therein lies the mystery. I had it in my hands this morning and within a few minutes it had vanished.”

“Seemed to have vanished, I presume you mean.”

“There was no seeming about it. It was a single bank note and I placed it on this table. Five minutes later it had disappeared.”

“Disappeared is a better word by long odds. That it passed out of your sight I can believe. The question is, how was this disappearance managed, for I do not believe that it was accidental. From what you say I deduce that two or more persons besides yourself were present at the time of said disappearance of said bank note. Am I correct?”

“There were three, but really I can’t see how you guessed there was more than one person with me.”

“It cannot be otherwise. Had there been only one person in the room with you, you would know absolutely that he took the note. That you have a doubt as to the identity of the culprit shows that you suspect one of two or more persons.”

“Mitchel, I am delighted that I sent for you. You are exactly the man who will recover this money.”

“What about Barnes? You mentioned his name.”

“Yes, naturally my first thought was to send for a detective, and I remembered him in connection with that ruby robbery of yours which occurred at my house. He is now following a clue which he considers a good one, and will report during the evening.”

“Good! Nothing would please me better than to succeed where Barnes fails. Every time I outwit him it is a feather in my cap, and another argument in favor of my theory that the professional detective is a much overrated genius — but to your story, and be sure that you relate the exact circumstances of the affair.”

As he finished speaking and leaned back in the padded library chair, the man’s dark, clear-cut profile looked that of a scholar, an artist, anything but that of a detective. And indeed Mr. Robert Leroy Mitchel was both scholar and artist, — none the less so because of late years he had turned his trained powers of analysis to the study of crime and its motives, and to unraveling, as an amateur, certain mysterious offenses against the law, which had baffled the professional detective.

From cases involving life, death, millions of money or the jewels of a kingdom to the disappearance of a thousand-pound note might, indeed, have seemed a descent to the ordinary detective. Not so, however, to Mr. Mitchel, who valued mystery not in proportion to the sum involved, but to the opportunity it gave for the exercise of subtle analysis. And certainly such opportunities seemed abundantly promised by the narrative whose details Mr. Van Rawlston now unfolded for the first time.

“Some thirty years or more ago,” began Mr. Van Rawlston, “there came into my office a young Englishman, who introduced himself as Thomas Eggleston. The object of his visit was curious. He wished to borrow four thousand dollars upon collateral, which proved to be an English bank note for one thousand pounds; an odd request considering that he could have changed his note for American currency, but he explained that for sentimental reasons he did not wish to part with the note permanently. His expectation was to redeem it in the future, and to keep it as a memento, — the foundation of the fortune which he hoped to earn in this land.”

“A singular wish,” interrupted Mr. Mitchel.

“I should say so. Naturally my interest was keenly aroused. I agreed to advance the sum demanded, without charge. Moreover, I put him in the way of some speculations that turned out so well that it was not long before the thousand-pound note was back in his possession. Since then we have been close friends. I have visited him almost daily in this house, and when he died a few days ago, I was not surprised to find that he had named me as executor of his large estate.”

“And the heirs?”

“I am coming to them presently. My friend died very unexpectedly,” continued Mr. Van Rawlston. “Last Saturday he was well, and on Monday, dead. Wednesday morning, the day of the funeral, his man of business brought me his client’s will, and as the executor I appointed this morning for reading it, here in the library, to the family. This consisted of but two members. One was Alice Hetheridge, the daughter of a sister of Eggleston’s who had accompanied him to this country and married here. As both Mrs. Hetheridge and her husband had died while their daughter was still a little girl, Alice had been brought up as her uncle’s child, and it was expected would inherit his fortune. The only other relative present was Robert Eggleston, the nephew of the deceased, but practically a stranger to him, as he had never been in this country nor even seen his uncle until he took up his abode in this house about three months ago.”

“But you have mentioned only two relatives, and I understood you to say there was a third person present.”

“And so there was. When I came I was surprised to find here Arthur Lumley, a young New Yorker, of whom I know nothing except that he is in love with Alice. But as Alice took me aside and explained that she had invited him, I was silenced.

“Now I come to the events of the day.”

“Kindly be as explicit as possible,” said Mr. Mitchel. “Omit no detail, however trifling.”

“When we four had taken our places at this table I asked Alice, as being familiar with the house, to bring me a certain box named in the will. This she did. It was locked, the key having been brought to me with the will. Unlocking it, I took out a packet containing a bank note for a thousand pounds; the same upon which I had once loaned money. There were also some government bonds and railway securities. Having compared them with the list attached to the will, I then read aloud the testament of my dead friend. A part of this I will read to you as possibly shedding some light on the situation.”

“One moment,” interposed Mr. Mitchel; “you said that the packet taken from the box contained the bank note as well as the bonds and other securities. Are you sure the note was there?”

“Oh, yes! I found it first and placed it on the table in front of me, while I went through the papers and read the will. By this document, Robert Eggleston was made the heir of practically all his property, — a division that would have seemed decidedly unfair had it not been for the following paragraph.”

Mr. Van Rawlston then proceeded to read an extract from the will, in which Eggleston explained why his beloved niece Alice was not made his heiress. In detail the writer related how, when he was a very young man, he had been left dependent on his half brother William, a man of wealth, ten years his senior; how this brother had paid his passage to this country and presented him with a thousand-pound note, on which the young fortune seeker had borrowed the money that became the nest egg of his present large estate; how William would never consent to a return of the money, though his brother had preserved the original note with that end in view; and how, finally, the older brother had died suddenly, killed by the sweeping away of his entire fortune by unlucky speculation. The writer further stated that before his death William had given his son Robert a letter to his American uncle, claiming for that son a share of the fortune resulting from his father’s gift.

In concluding, the writer said —

“I took Robert into my home, and I am bound to say that I have not learned to love him. This, however, may be a prejudice, due to the fact that he had come between me and my wish to make Alice my heiress. In recognition of the possibility of this prejudice I feel compelled to ease my conscience by bequeathing to William’s son the fortune which grew out of William’s bounty. The original bank note, however, was a free gift to me, and I certainly may dispose of it as I please. I ask my niece Alice to accept it from me, as all that my conscience permits me to call my own.”

“An interesting and curious statement,” commented Mr. Mitchel. “Now tell me about the disappearance of the note.”

“There is my difficulty. I have so little to tell. After reading the will, I laid it down, and reached out my hand, intending to give the bank note to Alice, whereupon I discovered that it had disappeared.”

“Tell me exactly where each person was seated.”

“We were all at this table, which you see is small. I sat at this end, Alice at my right hand, young Eggleston at my left, and Lumley opposite me.”

“So that all three were easily within reach of the bank note when you placed it upon the table? That complicates matters. Well, when you discovered that you could not find the note, who spoke first and what comment was made?”

“I cannot be certain. I was stunned, and the others seemed as much surprised as I was. I remember that Eggleston asked Alice whether she had picked it up, adding, ‘It is yours, you know.’ But she made an indignant denial. Lumley said nothing, but sat looking at us as though seeking an explanation. Then I recall that Eggleston made the very practical suggestion that if each person in the room were searched and the note not found it would thus be proven that it had merely been blown from the table by some draught, in which case a thorough search should discover it. Once before, you may remember, I declined to have my guests searched, to my sorrow. It was at the time of the ruby robbery, when the suggestor himself had the jewel. Therefore when Eggleston made this suggestion I began with him. The search was thorough, I assure you, but I found nothing. I had as little success with Lumley, and I even examined my own pockets, with the vague hope that I might have inadvertently put the note in one of them. But all my looking was in vain.”

“Might not one of these men have secreted the bank note elsewhere, and then have possessed himself of it after your search?”

“I took care to prevent that. As soon as I had gone through Eggleston, I unceremoniously bundled him out of the room. I did the same with Lumley, and neither has been allowed in here since.”

“What about the young lady?”

“It would be absurd to suspect her. The note was her property. Still she insisted upon my searching her, and I examined her pocket. Of course I found nothing.”

“Ah! You examined only her pocket. Well, under the circumstances, I suppose that was all you could do. Thus, having sent the three persons out of the room, you think that the bank note is still here. A natural deduction, only I wish that the woman might have been more thoroughly searched. By the way, you said that Mr. Barnes assisted you in examining the room for the note. What view does he take of the case?”

Before Mr. Van Rawlston could reply there was a sharp ring at the door bell, and a moment later Mr. Barnes himself was ushered in, by his appearance completing a trio often before met together for the unraveling of mysteries.

As usual, his coming was the signal for a battle of wits between the professional detective and the expert criminologist, each bent on demonstrating the superiority of his method.

Today the detective seemed for the time in the ascendant. With what appeared the authority of knowledge, he ridiculed Mr. Mitchel’s theory that the case was a complex one, and proceeded, point by point, to state the steps that led to his view of the case.

They were, first, that the note was either mislaid or stolen; second, that if mislaid it would have been found, and that therefore it was stolen; third, that if stolen it was taken by one of the three persons; and fourth, that as one of the three owned the note, and another had just heard of the inheritance of a large fortune, the third by necessity came under suspicion.

To this conclusion, however, Mr. Mitchel, acquiescent up to this point, took strong exceptions. For in the first place, he said, people had been known to steal their own goods; in the second place, rich men were often thieves; and in the third place, Mr. Lumley, being in love with the owner of the note, was as unlikely to steal it as was she herself. One point only he would concede, that Lumley might have stolen the note before he heard that his sweetheart was to inherit it; in which case, of course, he might have desired to return it and yet not had the opportunity. In that event, however, the question arose how he could get out of the room with the stolen property.

“He must have hidden it elsewhere than in his pocket,” said Mr. Barnes. “Remember that you cannot thoroughly search a man in the presence of a lady. At any rate I have strong grounds for believing that he stole the note, as you shall hear.”

His narrative seemed indeed to support his theory beyond the shadow of doubt. For by following Mr. Lumley, after he had left the house, he had discovered that this impecunious lover of Alice Hetheridge went straight to his employer and resigned his position, and then betook himself to a business agency where he obtained an option to purchase a partnership in a good concern, agreeing to pay five thousand dollars for the same. From there Mr. Barnes had tracked him to the New York Central Station, whence the young man had left the city about two hours before.

“What his destination was I don’t know,” the detective concluded, “but one of my men who was stationed there is following him, and will report to me in” — pulling out his watch — “in half an hour, so I have no time to lose.”

As the detective left the room, Mr. Mitchel, unruffled by Mr. Barnes’s apparent victory, turned to his friend with a strange request. This was no other than that he might spend the night in the library that had been the scene of the strange robbery, and that his presence should be concealed from Eggleston and Miss Hetheridge.

Van Rawlston looked at his friend inquiringly.

“I see,” he said finally, “you wish to make a search on your own account, eh? Very good; I will arrange it. And, by the way, as there’s to be an auction sale of the library tomorrow — Eggleston had arranged for it before his death — you’ll see the necessity of settling this mystery as soon as possible. Meantime, as it’s nine o’clock and I need rest, I’ll go home, meeting you here in the morning.”

Before going, however, Mr. Van Rawlston took time to find out that Eggleston was not in the house and that Miss Hetheridge was in her room. Then he dismissed the servant and locked Mr. Mitchel in the library. Next he went upstairs to Miss Hetheridge, told her that he had thought best to lock the library door, and bade her good night. Passing out to the street, he handed the door key to Mr. Mitchel through the front window.

Left thus alone in a strange house, Mr. Mitchel dropped into an easy chair and began to analyze the situation. He did not light the gas, as that would have betrayed his presence, but the glowing grate fire shed light enough for him to get the lay of the land, to note that the long library occupied the whole of one side of the house, the parlors being on the opposite side of the hallway, and that the windows in front overlooked the street, and at the back opened upon a small yard. He even took the pains to find out that just below these back windows stood a shed, the roof of an extension which served as a laundry.

Then returning to his seat, Mr. Mitchel went over in his mind the incidents which had been related to him, and two of his conclusions are worthy of note here.

“Barnes argues,” thought he, “that Lumley may have taken the bank note before he knew that it had been bequeathed to his sweetheart. But the same holds good with the girl herself, and might well explain her stealing what was really her own property. That is one point worth bearing in mind, but the best of all is my scheme for finding the note itself. Why should I trouble myself with a search which might occupy me all night, when by waiting I may see the thief take the note from its present hiding place, always supposing that it is in this room? Decidedly patience is a virtue in this instance, and I have only to wait.”

A couple of hours later, Mr. Mitchel started up from a slight doze, and realized that he had been disturbed, though at first he could not tell by what. Then he heard a sound which indicated that someone was fitting a key into the lock. Perhaps the thief was coming! This thought awakened him to his full faculties, and he quickly hid among the folds of some heavy draperies which served upon occasion to divide the room into two apartments. The door opened, and he heard the stealthy tread of soft footsteps, though at first the figure of the intruder was hidden from his view by the draperies which surrounded him. In a few moments his suspense was at an end. A young woman, of girlish figure, passed by him and went over to the fireplace. She was in a dainty night-robe, her long black hair hanging in waving masses down her back. She leaned against the mantel and gazed into the fire without moving for some minutes, and then, turning suddenly, crossed the room, going directly to one of the bookshelves. Here she paused, then took down several books which she placed upon a chair near by. Her back was towards Mr. Mitchel, but he could see her reach into the recess with her arm, which was bared by the act, the loose sleeve of her gown falling aside. Then there was a clicking sound just perceptible to the ear, and Mr. Mitchel muttered to himself —

“A secret closet, with a spring catch.”

In another moment the girl was replacing the books, and, this done, she hurried from the library, locking the door after her. Mr. Mitchel emerged from his hiding place, and going to the shelf where the girl had been, removed the books and searched for the spring which would unlock the secret compartment. It was not easily found; but Mr. Mitchel was a patient and persistent man, and after nearly an hour discovered the way of moving a sliding panel, and took an envelope from the recess behind. Carrying this to the fireplace, he dropped to his knees, and withdrawing its contents, held in his hand a Bank of England note for one thousand pounds. He looked at it, smiled, and said in a low tone —

“And Mr. Barnes was so certain that he would catch the thief!” Then he smiled again, replaced the books on the shelf, decided that the large sofa might serve as a comfortable bed, and so went to sleep.

He was awakened early, by a sense of cold. Starting up, for a moment dazed by his unfamiliar surroundings, he gazed first at the gray ashes of the dead fire in the grate, and then looked towards the windows thickly covered with frost, and shivered. Remembering where he was, he threw his arms about, and walked up and down the long room to start his blood moving, and induce a little warmth. Presently he went to the back windows and looked at the beautiful arabesques of frost, which resembled long fern leaves. Suddenly he seemed unusually interested, and especially attracted to one of the panes. He examined this closely, and taking a notebook from his pocket made a rapid sketch of the pattern on the glass. Then he raised the sash, looked out upon the shed, and emitted a low whistle. Next he stepped out through the window, went down on his hands and knees upon the tinned roof, and looked closely at something which he saw there. Returning to the room, he proceeded to the most curious act of all. He again opened the secret panel, replaced the envelope containing the bank note, and seated himself at the table where Mr. Van Rawlston claimed that the note had vanished, and in the chair where Mr. Van Rawlston had been when he read the will.

Several hours later, when Mr. Van Rawlston came in, Mr. Mitchel was sitting in the same chair looking through a Bible.

“Well,” said Mr. Van Rawlston, “how did you pass the night? Did the thief pay you a visit?”

“I think so,” replied Mr. Mitchel.

“Then you know who took the note?” asked Mr. Van Rawlston eagerly.

“Perhaps! I do not like to jump at conclusions. This is a magnificent Bible, Mr. Van Rawlston. Is it in the sale today? If so, I will bid on it.”

“Oh, yes, it is to be sold,” replied Mr. Van Rawlston testily. He thought Mr. Mitchel merely wished to change the subject, and at that moment he was more interested in bank notes than in Bibles. He had no idea that Mr. Mitchel really coveted the Bible. But then he did not know that Mr. Mitchel collected books as well as gems.

He was therefore much astonished, some hours later, when the auction was in progress, to find Mr. Mitchel not only bidding on the Bible, but bidding heavily.

At first the bidding was spiritless, and the price rose slowly until Mr. Mitchel made an offer of five hundred dollars. After a moment’s hesitation young Eggleston bid fifty dollars more, and it was seen that the contest was now between him and Mr. Mitchel. Bidding fifty dollars at a time they had advanced the price to nine hundred dollars, when Eggleston remarked: —

“I bid nine fifty,” then turned to Mr. Mitchel and added —

“This is a family relic, sir, and I hope you will not raise me again.”

“This is an open sale, I believe,” said Mr. Mitchel, bowing coldly. “I offer a thousand dollars.”

At this moment Mr. Barnes entered the room, accompanied by a short young man, and Mr. Mitchel’s attention seemed attracted away from the Bible. The auctioneer, noticing this, called him by name and asked if he wished to bid again.

“One moment, please,” said Mr. Mitchel. “May I look again at the volume?”

It was passed to him, and he appeared to scrutinize it closely, started slightly as though making a discovery, and handed it back, saying —

“I have made a mistake. I supposed that this was a genuine Soncino, but I find that it is only a reprint.” Then he turned to Eggleston with a curious smile and said, “You may have the family relic. I shall not bid against you.”

The auction over, the crowd dispersed, and when all strangers had departed, Mr. Mitchel nodded meaningly to Mr. Barnes, and approached young Eggleston, who was tying up the Bible in paper. Touching him upon the arm he said very quietly —

“Mr. Eggleston, I must ask the officer here to arrest you!”

Eggleston’s hands quivered over the knot, and he seemed too agitated to speak. The detective, realizing that Mr. Mitchel had solved the problem, quickly stepped closer to Eggleston.

“What does this mean?” asked Mr. Van Rawlston.

“Call Miss Hetheridge and I will explain,” said Mr. Mitchel.

“No! No! Not before her!” cried Eggleston, breaking down completely. “I confess I loved Alice and wished to make it impossible for her to marry Lumley. The note is here! Here, in the Bible. I stole it and hid it there!” With nervous fingers he tore off the wrapping, and rapidly turning the pages searched for the note. “Heavens! It is not here!” He looked at Mr. Mitchel anxiously.

“No! It is not there. You paid too much for that Bible. Mr. Van Rawlston, I prefer to have the lady called, if you please.”

Mr. Van Rawlston left the room, and Mr. Mitchel addressed Mr. Barnes.

“By the way, Barnes, have you abandoned your theory?”

“I suppose I must now, though I had not up to a moment ago. By the aid of my man I found Mr. Lumley, and accused him of the theft. He would offer no explanation, but willingly agreed to return with me.”

“We seem to have arrived just in time,” said Mr. Lumley quietly.

“In the very nick of time, as you shall hear,” said Mr. Mitchel. “Ah! Here is Miss Hetheridge. Will you be seated, please, Miss Hetheridge.” He bowed courteously as the young woman sat down, and then proceeded.

“I did not think that the bank note had been removed from this room. Why? Because I argued that the theft and the hiding must have necessarily occupied but a moment; a chosen moment when the attention of all three others was attracted away from the table where it lay. The one chance was that Miss Hetheridge might have hidden it in the folds of her gown. The men’s pockets seemed too inaccessible. I agreed with Mr. Barnes that the lady would scarcely steal what was her own, though even that was possible if she did not know that it was to be hers. For a similar reason, I did not suspect Mr. Lumley, and thus by elimination, there was but one person left upon whom to fasten suspicion. I supposed he would return here during the night to recover the bank note, and I remained in this room to watch for him.”

At this Miss Hetheridge made a movement of her lips as though about to speak, but no words escaped, and she shrank back in her chair.

“During the night,” proceeded Mr. Mitchel, “Miss Hetheridge came into this room and hid something. After she had left the room, relocking the door with a duplicate key, I found what she had hidden. It was a one-thousand-pound note.”

There was silence for a moment, then Miss Hetheridge cried out —

“I can explain!”

“That is why I sent for you,” said Mr. Mitchel.

“The note was my own,” said the girl, speaking rapidly, “but after the disappearance of the other I was afraid to have it in my room lest it be found, and seem to inculpate me. I received it only a few days before my dear uncle died. He told me that his brother William had sent it as a present to my mother upon her marriage, but as he had doubted the good intentions of my father, he had kept the matter a secret. As both my parents died, he had held the note in trust for me. He did not invest it, because he thought that his own fortune would be an ample legacy to leave me. A short time before he died I passed my twenty-first birthday, and he gave me the note. That is the whole truth.”

“To which I can testify,” interjected Mr. Lumley. “And I may now add that Miss Hetheridge had not only promised to be my wife, but she offered me the use of her money to buy the partnership, which to Mr. Barnes seemed such a suspicious act.”

“I have only to explain, then,” continued Mr. Mitchel, “how it was that I decided that Miss Hetheridge was not a thief. This morning I found heavy frost on the windowpanes. Upon one, however, I noticed a circular, transparent spot, where the pattern of the frosting had been obliterated. Instantly I comprehended what had occurred. The thief, the real thief, had come in the night, or rather in the morning, for I know almost the hour. He stood upon the shed outside, and melted the frost by breathing upon the pane, with his mouth close to the glass. Thus making a peep-hole, he must have seen me asleep on the sofa, and so knew that it would be useless for him to attempt an entrance. As the person who did this trick stood upon the shed, I had but to measure the distance from the shed to his peep-hole to be able to guess his height, which I estimated to be more than six feet. Next there was some very interesting evidence in the frost on the tin roof, — the marks made by the man’s feet, or his heels rather, for the frost was so light that only the impressions of the nails in the heels would show. My own made complete little horseshoe-shaped marks, composed of dots. But those of my predecessor were scarcely more than half a curve, which proved that he walks on the side of his foot, thus slightly lifting the opposite side from the ground, or roof, as it was in this instance. This much decided me that Miss Hetheridge was not the thief, and I returned her bank note to the place where she had hidden it. Then I sat at the table where the will was read, and studied the situation. The easiest way to hide the note quickly seemed to be to slip it into the Bible which stood on the table. Therefore I was not surprised when I found the bank note, which I have here.”

He drew forth the bank note from his pocket and handed it to Mr. Van Rawlston, who asked —

“But why, then, did you try to buy the Bible?”

“I had no idea of doing so. You forget that I had not seen Mr. Lumley. He, too, might have been six feet high, and he, too, might have had the habit of walking on the side of his heel, as I quickly observed that Mr. Eggleston does. With only one of the men before me I decided to run up the price of the Bible, knowing that if he were guilty he would bid over me. Mr. Eggleston followed my lead, and I was almost sure of his guilt until he made the remark that he was buying a family relic. It was a possible truth, and I was obliged to go on bidding to see how anxious he was to possess the volume. Then, as I said awhile ago, Mr. Lumley arrived in the nick of time. One glance at his short stature, and I was ready to let the Bible go.”

“You said you could almost tell the hour at which this man peeped through the window,” said Mr. Barnes.

“Ah, I see! You want me to teach you tricks in your own trade, eh? Well, frost forms on the windowpane when the thermometer is near or below thirty-two. On the wall here I found a recording thermometer, which discloses the fact that at three o’clock this morning the temperature was as high as forty-five, while at four it was below thirty. Frost began to form between those hours. At five it was so cold, twenty degrees, that I awoke. Our man must have come between half-past four and five. Had he come before then, his peep-hole would have been fully covered again with frost, whereas it was but thinly iced over, the mere freezing of the water of the melted frost, there being no design, or pattern, as there was over every other part of the windowpane. So I may offer you a new version of an old saw, and say that, ‘Frost shows which way a thief goes.’ ”

At least twice we have gone on record as averse to publishing the so-called “short short” story, and twice we have published them. In the tradition of inconsistency, we now publish still another — Miss Chessman’s most ingenious “Accused.” A powerful vignette never before published anywhere.

Michael Carriday pressed the bell marked “Prentiss.”

What shall I do? he wondered as he waited. I can’t ask her outright. I can’t say, “Madam, I’ve come courting — but first tell me if you turned on the gas which killed your husband?”

If Mrs. Prentiss were innocent — and he wouldn’t be here at all if he didn’t half think so — such an attitude would ruin his chances.

Stella, the fat maid who opened the door, looked at him dubiously. “Ain’t you the district attorney?” she asked.

“Not today,” he reassured her. “I’m plain Mr. Carriday today. Will you tell Mrs. Prentiss I’m here?”

Stella stood firm, with the air of a faithful servant who knows what liberties she may take.

“You’ve bothered Mrs. Prentiss enough,” she said. “The verdict said not guilty, and that’s the truth. She ain’t going to be bothered no more.”

Michael said patiently, “I’m just here as a friend.” He paused and lowered his voice. “Mrs. Prentiss is a beautiful woman, you know, and she was very brave through the whole messy business. A man remembers those things.”

And that was true — a man did remember a tremolo smile, a pair of pain-filled eyes, a dainty head held proudly. Then, unhappily, he remembered something else. In his mind he saw the kitchen… the fat old man on the floor of the gas-filled room.

“Just tell her I’m here,” he said again.

“Come with me,” Stella said, as if making up her mind and preceded him into the living room.

Michael sat down. The way the chair was placed, he could see the closed door to the kitchen. He got up and changed his seat.

He was not ordinarily finicky about death — a man in his position could not afford to be. He did not turn a hair when he examined, as he frequently had to, a mutilated body. But there was something insidious about gas. It was so harmless, yet so deadly. If he were to commit suicide, he thought, it would be by a bullet, or by drowning — certainly not by gas.

Mrs. Prentiss came into the room. She was wearing a housecoat of pale blue satin and lace. She looked very young; he realized again that she must have been thirty years younger than the paunchy — and dead — Mr. Prentiss.

“Stella tells me you’ve come as a friend,” she said. When she smiled, a little warm wave of pleasure ran through him. She sat down next to him, turning deliberately so that she, too, sat with her back to the kitchen. She was refreshingly lovely, now that the strain was over, and she looked at him with guileless directness.

How had he ever doubted her for a moment? And yet, on the heels of that thought came another: If Mrs. Prentiss were as fat as her husband had been, would Michael still wonder? Or would he be convinced that, with a single quick gesture, she had turned on the gas-cock in the kitchen?

He looked involuntarily at the slender, rounded arms, and so vividly did he picture it that he could almost see the fatal twist of the wrist, could almost hear the hiss of escaping gas, could almost smell it again. If what he feared were true, how could he accept a jury’s verdict of not guilty? Certainly not for the woman he hoped — yes, he almost dared hope — to make his wife.

“You’re going to stay here?” he asked, looking about him, but avoiding the kitchen door.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I couldn’t. I’m going away for a month or so. Then I’ll see.”

He couldn’t bear the thought of having her gone for so long. He wanted to tell her so, almost did, but his Vermont hard-headedness held him back.

The maid came in with a batch of letters.

“More of them notes, I guess,” she said proudly.

Mrs. Prentiss explained to Michael: “Notes of condolence. Notes of congratulation, too, that the State decided I’m not a murderess.”

Her voice caught, and a quick sympathy welled up in him. “Tell me yourself,” he said hurriedly, carried beyond caution. “Let me hear you say it. I must hear you say you didn’t do it.”

Her nostrils dilated with quick scorn. “What makes you think I care how you feel, Mr. Carriday?” She fussed with the letters in her hand. “You needn’t stop to say goodbye. Stella will show you out.”

“I said it badly,” he cried. “Naturally you don’t care how I feel — yet. I believe all the evidence. I want to believe it. Don’t you see? I just want you to tell me yourself. Just say, ‘Michael, I didn’t do it,’ and I’ll never question it or think of it again. And then I’ll make you care that I care. I swear it. I’ll make you forget every cruel moment you’ve spent in the last month.”

She looked up from the letters which she had been sorting with quick, nervous gestures. Her head lifted proudly.

“I don’t believe you,” she said. She held up the letters. “I’ve been getting letters like this every day. And not one questions my innocence. That was left for the man who says he loves me.” Her contempt stung him.

“There isn’t anyone who cares the way I do!”

“Any one of these people cares more,” she said hotly. “Perfect strangers, too.” She pulled out a letter at random. “Take this one. You’ll find no veiled accusations here.”

She tore the envelope open angrily. Instead of a letter, there fell out a printed slip of paper. Mrs. Prentiss looked up quickly. Her face twitched, and became white, and before Michael could understand, she fainted.

Stella flew to her mistress. Michael tried to slip by her, to obtain the paper which Mrs. Prentiss still held in her lax grasp. But Stella, mingling abuse of him with her endearments for the unconscious woman, made him keep his distance.

Mrs. Prentiss opened her eyes slowly, but recoiled at the sight of him.

“Get out,” she said in a whisper. Her face was set and colorless.

Stella seconded her mistress’s command. “You better go now,” she warned him.

“As you wish,” Michael said. Now was his opportunity! He moved quickly by Stella, and bent over Mrs. Prentiss to say his goodbye. The paper that had caused her to faint lay in plain sight.

Michael looked at it, and knew why Mrs. Prentiss had fainted.

It was the gas bill.

He felt a little faint himself.

Introducing Loreto Santos, the wealthy Argentinian who turned dilettante detective, and who was the constant wonder of his friend, Inspector Comfort of the C.I.D. in London… Here is an exploit of Santos’s, in which cold deduction solves the problem of “the locked, barred door” — one of the most fascinating themes in all detective fiction.

“Confess, my brother,” said Cleta, “that you are just a little bit of a crank. You refuse to help Inspector Comfort in most of his important cases, and yet I have known you give a whole week to some trumpery affair of a broken-down actor.”

She sat down her empty coffee-cup upon the breakfast table, and rose to get a cigarette.

“Your attitude towards life is paradoxical,” she accused him.

Loreto Santos twirled round upon the music-stool and looked at his beautiful sister with laughter in his light grey eyes.

“Paradoxical!” he repeated. “Well — perhaps. But time turns our most outlandish paradoxes into truisms. When you speak of my attitude towards life you really refer to my position with regard to crime. That is very simple. Like all the best thinkers on the subject, I am concerned only with prevention, and never, or seldom, with punishment. I don’t believe in social revenge. Anyway, chiquita, my interest in crime is purely intellectual. If I can outwit and frustrate the criminal, I am interested; if the crime is already committed, I am bored. Why should I — a man of absurd wealth — play the part of policeman? No, I leave that to friend Comfort, and I go my own sweet way. As for the ‘Death Diary’ murders, they interest me, but I want a holiday. We are due at Lady Groombridge’s next week, and Comfort must play the sleuth by himself. Voilà tout.”

He turned to the piano with a shrug of his broad shoulders, as though he dismissed the whole discussion. Soon there flowed from beneath his fingers the majestic swelling strains of a choral prelude by Bach.

Cleta Santos leant back in a deep armchair, and, whilst listening appreciatively to the music, gazed with a certain wonder at her brother’s broad back.

Loreto was continually a source of perplexity to his sister, and to most of the people who came in contact with him. Born in the Argentine of Spanish parents, Loreto had been educated in England, and on the death of his parents he had made his home in Europe.

With his sister, who was many years younger than himself, Loreto had lived in several European capitals before finally settling down in London in the big house overlooking Regent’s Park. Here his vast wealth and various gifts, intellectual and artistic, together with Cleta’s beauty, had made them welcome in certain charming circles of society.

At first Loreto had lived merely as a dilettante, a fine amateur pianist who patronized various arts; then by mere chance his attention had been drawn to a certain notorious crime, and his great gifts as a criminologist had come to light.

Subsequently he had interested himself considerably in crime — crime, that is, as a battle of wits. A kind of chess problem to be worked out — and always Santos was concerned only with the anticipation of criminal events.

The man, too, was a philanthropist of the highest order, and his vast scheme for aiding first offenders upon their liberation from prison had cost him thousands. His attitude towards the criminal was, in fact, most humane, though it never degenerated into the sentimental.

Cleta, listening to his music, smiled to herself. She knew that Loreto’s mind was not entirely absorbed by his playing, for upon the otherwise bare music-holder was propped a newspaper, and it was folded at the latest report of what had become known as the “Death Diary Murders.”

One of Miss Shore’s specialties in fiction is husbands-and-wives-and-their families. Here is Miss Shore’s specialty in prime form, pleasantly mixed up in a jewel-theft. And when we tell you that the “detective” in the story is a dentist (how many dentist detectives do you know?), you can only drop whatever you are doing and find out why “Opals Are Bad Luck” for some people, but good luck for others. An original story, never before published.

I don’t know what made me dig up that old yarn about the opal pendant the night my wife invited Zoe Cameron and her dentist friend to dinner and the opera. Skeletons belong in six feet of ground with a marble slab over them. But from the moment that dentist fellow stepped into our foyer he got my goat. Not because he didn’t wear soup-and-fish. Hell, the night I married Alice was the first time I ever had one on my back. But when I was a young punk, working my way up in Hodgett’s Bank, I used to look at people who had money and made up my mind that Joel Quinn would have it too. But this fellow seemed to be having some private joke on me and my penthouse and the special glass dome on my foyer which gives it the look of perpetual sunlight.

For instance, while Abraham Lincoln, our butler, was taking their wraps, Zoe introduced him to the dentist and I mentioned that Abraham had been with my wife’s family over thirty years, and so we didn’t treat him like a servant. “I happen to be very democratic,” I explained.

“I can see that,” this Dr. Marcus said, and held out his hand to Abraham. “How do you do, Mr. Lincoln,” he said.

Abraham took the hand. “Nobody nevuh call me Mr. Lincoln, ’cept my own people,” he grinned. “You-all go ’head and call me Abraham, suh.”

“Thank you sir,” replied Marcus, “I’d like to. Everybody calls me Doc.”

I decided he’d never get a dollar of mine for his clinic, no matter how many rickety kids he took care of. My wife had been to the clinic with Zoe and she came home saying the guy had the greatest heart she had ever met and the clearest thinking mind. Well, I wanted to get a look at this Master Brain. And when I did, I wondered what a smart, two-fisted newspaper woman like Zoe Cameron could see in a thin, frayed young dentist with cigarette fingers.

Zoe was looking very smooth in something brown. She always reminds me of a high-priced radio — newest model, dark wood, satin finish, going 24 hours a day. But you like to have her around. She was full of some mystery yarn she was writing and it seems this Master Brain had helped her figure it out. “He helped me analyze the underlying situation—” she corrected me. “Actually there are no mysteries — only things we don’t understand — and puzzles.”

“Oh, but the Who-Done-It—” my wife protested, leading the way into the dining room, “Don’t you call that a mystery?” She was wearing something honeycolored like her hair and looking her loveliest which, from where I sit, is pretty damn lovely. Alice never draws attention to her hair or her lips or her figure. Only whenever you hear the words supple or mellow or gracious, you think of Alice.

“No,” Zoe said, “he calls it a confusion — like the present world situation, to which we must apply the searchlight of reason, lit with the electric bulb of science.” She was ribbing him, of course, but you could see she was impressed. He did have a good forehead, and I know women go for those deep, smudgy eyes, but personally give me the cleancut American type. “We must go after the underlying roots, ignoring the intertwined surface vines. Right, Doc?”

He had a sort of quick, private smile that gave you a flash of the way he must have looked in high school. “Did I really sound so pompous? All I meant was that those surface vines seem to hold the problem, whereas actually they only obscure it.” For all the attention he was paying to his clear turtle soup, it might have been the essence of surface vines.

“It came to me like a flash,” Zoe gushed, “that I was trying to assemble a lot of clues in my yarn, instead of digging into the root situation. Once I saw that, it’s kindergarten play to trail some tangled vines across it.”

Alice was thrilled and they talked about root-causes and vine-surfaces of practically everything from swing to the profit motive underlying our whole civilization. When Abraham had served the salad, I decided it was time for all good business men to come to the aid of the party. “I’d like to tell you a little situation that happened to us about six years ago. I’m sure we’d appreciate a great analytical searchlight, lit with the electric bulb of science.” I knew my wife was looking at me pleadingly, but I wanted to see this Master Mind either come through or get off the throne. “You don’t mind, Alice—?”

“You mean you’ve got a mystery—?” Zoe’s hungry brown eyes fairly snapped at it.

“Well, maybe it’s only a puzzle—”

“I don’t think I’d tell it, Joel—” Alice suggested gently.

“Oh come on—” pleaded Zoe. “Although if there’s a skeleton in any of the Quinn closets, I’ll never believe in cedar linings again!”

“It wasn’t a Quinn closet. It happened while we were still living with Alice’s mother in the Barroway mausoleum, in Baltimore.”

Zoe’s fork remained in midair. “Alice! You’re not one of the Baltimore Barroways! You never mentioned it!”

“We’re not very proud of the connection,” I said and reached over for my wife’s hand.

“If it’s going to embarrass Mrs. Quinn—” suggested the dentist and that settled it. I don’t need anybody to tell me how to handle my own wife. So I told the story.

One of the great figures of modern English literature, whom we never associate with any form of detective-crime fiction, is H. G. Wells. Usually we think of Wells as a world-historian, as a serious novelist, or as the creator of the most fascinating scientific romances ever written. Always on the alert for discoveries, your editors have tracked down a realistic “crook” story by Mr. Wells. And where do you think we found it? In a collection of scientific fantasies called “The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents,” published in 1895!

It is a moot point whether burglary is to be considered as a sport, a trade, or an art. For a trade, the technique is scarcely rigid enough, and its claims to be considered an art are vitiated by the mercenary element that qualifies its triumphs. On the whole, it seems to be most justly ranked as sport, a sport for which no rules are at present formulated, and of which the prizes are distributed in an extremely informal manner. It was this informality of burglary that led to the regrettable extinction of two promising beginners at Hammerpond Park.

The stakes offered in this affair consisted chiefly of diamonds and other personal bric-à-brac belonging to the newly married Lady Aveling. Lady Aveling, as the reader will remember, was the only daughter of Mrs. Montague Pangs, the well-known hostess. Her marriage to Lord Aveling was extensively advertised in the papers, the quantity and quality of her wedding presents, and the fact that the honeymoon was to be spent at Hammerpond. The announcement of these valuable prizes created a considerable sensation in the small circle in which Mr. Teddy Watkins was the undisputed leader, and it was decided that, accompanied by a duly-qualified assistant, he should visit the village of Hammerpond in his professional capacity.

Being a man of naturally retiring and modest disposition, Mr. Watkins determined to make this visit incog., and after due consideration of the conditions of his enterprise, he selected the role of a landscape artist, and the unassuming surname of Smith. He preceded his assistant, who, it was decided, should join him only on the last afternoon of his stay at Hammerpond. Now the village of Hammerpond is perhaps one of the prettiest little corners in Sussex; many thatched houses still survive, the flint-built church with its tall spire nestling under the down is one of the finest and least restored in the county, and the beech-woods and bracken jungles through which the road runs to the great house are singularly rich in what the vulgar artist and photographer call “bits.” So that Mr. Watkins, on his arrival with two virgin canvases, a brand-new easel, a paintbox, portmanteau, an ingenious little ladder made in sections (after the pattern of the late lamented master Charles Peace), crowbar, and wire coils, found himself welcomed with effusion and some curiosity by half-a-dozen other brethren of the brush. It rendered the disguise he had chosen unexpectedly plausible, but it inflicted upon him a considerable amount of aesthetic conversation for which he was very imperfectly prepared.

“Have you exhibited very much?” said Young Porson in the bar-parlour of the “Coach and Horses,” where Mr. Watkins was skilfully accumulating local information on the night of his arrival.

“Very little,” said Mr. Watkins, “just a snack here and there.” “Academy?”

“Of course. And at the Crystal Palace.” “Did they hang you well?” said Porson.

“Don’t rot,” said Mr. Watkins. “I don’t like it.”

“I mean did they put you in a good place?”

“Whadyer mean?” said Mr. Watkins suspiciously. “One ’ud think you were trying to make out I’d been put away.”

Porson had been brought up by aunts, and was a gentlemanly young man even for an artist; he did not know what being “put away” meant, but he thought it best to explain that he intended nothing of the sort. As the question of hanging seemed a sore point with Mr. Watkins, he tried to divert the conversation a little.

“Do you do figure-work at all?”

“No, never had a head for figures,” said Mr. Watkins, “my miss — Mrs. Smith, I mean, does all that.”

“She paints, too!” said Porson. “That’s rather jolly.”

“Very,” said Mr. Watkins, though he really did not think so, and, feeling the conversation was drifting a little beyond his grasp, added, “I came down here to paint Hammerpond House by moonlight.”

“Really!” said Porson. “That’s rather a novel idea.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Watkins, “I thought it rather a good notion when it occurred to me. I expect to begin to-morrow night.”

“What! You don’t mean to paint in the open, by night.”

“I do, though.”

“But how will you see your canvas?”

“Have a bloomin’ cop’s—” began Mr. Watkins, rising too quickly to the question, and then realising this, bawled to Miss Durgan for another glass of beer. “I’m goin’ to have a thing called a dark lantern,” he said to Porson.

“But it’s about new moon now,” objected Porson. “There won’t be any moon.”

“There’ll be the house,” said Watkins, “at any rate, I’m goin’, you see to paint the house first and the moon afterwards.”

“Oh!” said Porson, too staggered to continue the conversation.

“They doo say,” said old Durgan, the landlord, who had maintained a respectful silence during the technical conversation, “as there’s no less than three p’licemen from ’Azelworth on dewty every night in the house — ’count of this Lady Aveling ’n her jewellery. One’m won fower-and-six last night, off second footman — tossin’.”

Towards sunset next day Mr. Watkins, virgin canvas, easel, and a very considerable case of other appliances in hand, strolled up the pleasant pathway through the beech-woods to Hammerpond Park, and pitched his apparatus in a strategic position commanding the house. Here he was observed by Mr. Raphael Sant, who was returning across the park from a study of the chalk-pits. His curiosity having been fired by Porson’s account of the new arrival, he turned aside with the idea of discussing nocturnal art.

Mr. Watkins was apparently unaware of his approach. A friendly conversation with Lady Hammerpond’s butler had just terminated, and that individual, surrounded by the three pet dogs which it was his duty to take for an airing after dinner had been served, was receding in the distance. Mr. Watkins was mixing colour with an air of great industry. Sant, approaching more nearly, was surprised to see the colour in question was as harsh and brilliant an emerald-green as it is possible to imagine. Having cultivated an extreme sensibility to colour from his earliest years, he drew the air in sharply between his teeth at the very first glimpse of this brew. Mr. Watkins turned round. He looked annoyed.

“What on earth are you going to do with that beastly green?” said Sant.

Mr. Watkins realised that his zeal to appear busy in the eyes of the butler had evidently betrayed him into some technical error. He hesitated.

“Pardon my rudeness,” said Sant; “but really, that green is altogether too amazing. It came as a shock. What do you mean to do with it?”

Mr. Watkins was collecting his resources. Nothing could save the situation but decision. “If you come here interrupting my work,” he said, “I’m a-goin’ to paint your face with it.”

Sant retired, for he was a humorist and a peaceful man. Going down the hill he met Porson and Wainwright. “Either that man is a genius or he is a dangerous lunatic,” said he. “Just go up and look at his green.” And he continued his way, his countenance brightened by a pleasant anticipation of a cheerful affray round an easel in the gloaming, and the shedding of much green paint.

But to Porson and Wainwright Mr. Watkins was less aggressive, and explained that the green was intended to be the first coating of his picture. It was, he admitted in response to a remark, an absolutely new method, invented by himself. But subsequently he became more reticent; he explained he was not going to tell every passer-by the secret of his own particular style, and added some scathing remarks upon the meanness of people “hanging about” to pick up such tricks of the masters as they could, which immediately relieved him of their company.

Twilight deepened, first one, then another star appeared. The rooks amid the tall trees to the left of the house had long since lapsed into slumbrous silence, the house itself lost all the details of its architecture and became a dark grey outline, and then the windows of the salon shone out brilliantly, the conservatory was lighted up, and here and there a bedroom window burnt yellow. Had anyone approached the easel in the park it would have been found deserted. One brief, uncivil word in brilliant green sullied the purity of its canvas. Mr. Watkins was busy in the shrubbery with his assistant, who had discreetly joined him from the carriage-drive.

Mr. Watkins was inclined to be self-congratulatory upon the ingenious device by which he had carried all his apparatus boldly, and in the sight of all men, right up to the scene of operations. “That’s the dressing-room,” he said to his assistant, “and, as soon as the maid takes the candle away and goes down to supper, we’ll call in. My! how nice the house do look, to be sure, against the starlight, and with all its windows and lights! Swopme, Jim, I almost wish I was a painter-chap. Have you fixed that there wire across the path from the laundry?”

He cautiously approached the house until he stood below the dressing-room window, and began to put together his folding ladder. He was much too experienced a practitioner to feel any unusual excitement. Jim was reconnoitering the smoking-room. Suddenly, close beside Mr. Watkins in the bushes, there was a violent crash and a stifled curse. Someone had tumbled over the wire which his assistant had just arranged. He heard feet running on the gravel pathway beyond. Mr. Watkins, like all true artists, was a singularly shy man, and he incontinently dropped his folding ladder and began running circumspectly through the shrubbery. He was indistinctly aware of two people hot upon his heels, and he fancied that he distinguished the outline of his assistant in front of him. In another moment he had vaulted the low stone wall bounding the shrubbery, and was in the open park. Two thuds on the turf followed his own leap.

It was a close chase in the darkness through the trees. Mr. Watkins was a loosely-built man and in good training, and he gained hand-over-hand upon the hoarsely panting figure in front. Neither spoke, but, as Mr. Watkins pulled up alongside, a qualm of awful doubt came over him. The other man turned his head at the same moment and gave an exclamation of surprise. “It’s not Jim,” thought Mr. Watkins, and simultaneously the stranger flung himself, as it were, at Watkins’ knees, and they were forthwith grappling on the ground together. “Lend a hand, Bill,” cried the stranger as the third man came up. And Bill did — two hands, in fact, and some accentuated feet. The fourth man, presumably Jim, had apparently turned aside and made off in a different direction. At any rate, he did not join the trio.

Mr. Watkins’ memory of the incidents of the next two minutes is extremely vague. He has a dim recollection of having his thumb in the corner of the mouth of the first man, and feeling anxious about its safety, and for some seconds at least he held the head of the gentleman answering to the name of Bill to the ground by the hair. He was also kicked in a great number of different places, apparently by a vast multitude of people. Then the gentleman who was not Bill got his knee below Mr. Watkins’s diaphragm, and tried to curl him up upon it.

When his sensations became less entangled he was sitting upon the turf, and eight or ten men — the night was dark, and he was rather too confused to count — standing round him, apparently waiting for him to recover. He mournfully assumed that he was captured, and would probably have made some philosophical reflections on the fickleness of fortune had not his internal sensations disinclined him for speech.

He noticed very quickly that his wrists were not handcuffed, and then a flask of brandy was put in his hands. This touched him a little — it was such unexpected kindness.

“He’s a-comin’ round,” said a voice which he fancied as belonging to the Hammerpond second footman.

“We’ve got ’em, sir, both of ’em,” said the Hammerpond butler, the man who had handed him the flask. “Thanks to you.”

No one answered this remark. Yet he failed to see how it applied to him.

“He’s fair dazed,” said a strange voice; “the villains half-murdered him.”

Mr. Teddy Watkins decided to remain fair dazed until he had a better grasp of the situation. He perceived that two of the black figures round him stood side by side with a dejected air, and there was something in the carriage of their shoulders that suggested to his experienced eye hands that were bound together. Two! In a flash he rose to his position. He emptied the little flask and staggered — obsequious hands assisting him — to his feet. There was a sympathetic murmur.

“Shake hands, sir, shake hands,” said one of the figures near him. “Permit me to introduce myself. I am very greatly indebted to you. It was the jewels of my wife, Lady Aveling, which attracted these scoundrels to the house.”

“Very glad to make your lordship’s acquaintance,” said Teddy Watkins.

“I presume you saw the rascals making for the shrubbery, and dropped down on them?”

“That’s exactly how it happened,” said Mr. Watkins.

“You should have waited till they got in at the window,” said Lord Aveling; “they would get it hotter if they had actually committed the burglary. And it was lucky for you two of the policemen were out by the gates, and followed up the three of you. I doubt if you could have secured the two of them — though it was confoundedly plucky of you.”

“Yes, I ought to have thought of all that,” said Mr. Watkins; “but one can’t think of everything.”

“Certainly not,” said Lord Aveling. “I am afraid they have mauled you a little,” he added. The party was now moving towards the house. “You walk rather lame. May I offer you my arm?”

And instead of entering Hammerpond House by the dressing-room window, Mr. Watkins entered it — slightly intoxicated, and inclined now to cheerfulness again — on the arm of a real live peer, and by the front door. “This,” thought Mr. Watkins, “is burgling in style!” The “scoundrels,” seen by the gaslight, proved to be mere local amateurs unknown to Mr. Watkins, and they were taken down into the pantry and there watched over by the three policemen, two gamekeepers with loaded guns, the butler, an ostler, and a carman, until the dawn allowed of their removal to Hazelhurst police station. Mr. Watkins was made much of in the salon. They devoted a sofa to him, and would not hear of a return to the village that night. Lady Aveling was sure he was brilliantly original, and said her idea of Turner was just such another rough, half-inebriated, deep-eyed, brave, and clever man. Someone brought up a remarkable little folding ladder that had been picked up in the shrubbery, and showed him how it was put together. They also described how wires had been found in the shrubbery, evidently placed there to trip up unwary pursuers. It was lucky he had escaped these snares. And they showed him the jewels.

Mr. Watkins had the sense not to talk too much, and in any conversational difficulty fell back on his internal pains. At last he was seized with stiffness in the back, and yawning. Everyone suddenly awoke to the fact that it was a shame to keep him talking after his affray, so he retired early to his room, the little red room next to Lord Aveling’s suite.

We didn’t think it fair to include in this issue (as we have) a parody of Dorothy L. Sayers without giving you a story by Miss Sayers herself So here is “The Leopard Lady,” of which we will say merely this; Read the first three pages. If then you can put the story down, you are suffering from hardening of the imagination.

“If the boy is in your way,” said a voice in Tressider’s ear, “ask at Rapallo’s for Smith & Smith.”

Tressider started and looked round. There was nobody near him — unless you counted the bookstall clerk, and the aged gentleman with crooked pince-nez halfway down his nose, who stood poring over a copy of Blackwood. Obviously, neither of these two could have uttered that sinister whisper. A yard or two away stood a porter, wearily explaining to a militant woman and a dejected little man that the 5.30 having now gone there was no other train before 9.15. All three were utter strangers to Tressider. He shook himself. It must have been his own subconscious wish that had externalised itself in this curious form. He must keep a hold on himself. Hidden wishes that took shape as audible promptings and whisperings were apt to lead to Colney Hatch — or Broadmoor.

But what in the world had suggested the names “Rapallo’s” and “Smith & Smith”? Rapallo — that was a town in Italy or somewhere, he fancied. But the word had come to him as “Rapallo’s,” as though it were the name of a firm or a person. And “Smith & Smith,” too. Fantastic. Then he glanced up at the bookstall. Of course, yes — “W. H. Smith & Son”; that must have been the point from which the suggestion had started, and his repressed desires had somehow pushed their message past his censor in that preposterous sentence.

“If the boy is in your way, ask at Rapallo’s for Smith & Smith.”

He let his eye wander over the books and magazines spread out on the stall. Was there anything — yes, there was. A pile of little red books, of which the topmost bore the title: “How to ask for What you Want in ITALY.” There was the other factor of the equation. “Italy” had been the match laid to the train, and the resulting spark had been, queerly but understandably enough, “Rapallo’s.”

Satisfied, he handed a shilling across the stall and asked for the Strand Magazine. He tucked his purchase under his arm and then, glancing at the station clock, decided that he had just time for a quick one before his train went. He turned into the buffet, pausing on the way to buy a packet of cigarettes at the kiosk, where the militant woman was already arming herself with milk-chocolate against her wait for the 9.15. He noticed, with a certain grim satisfaction, that the dejected man had made his escape, and was not altogether surprised to encounter him again in the buffet, hurriedly absorbing something yellow out of a glass.

He was some little time getting served, for there was quite a crowd about the bar. But even if he did miss his train, there was another in. twenty minutes’ time, and his odd experience had shaken him. The old gentleman with Blackwood’s had drifted up to the door by the time he left, and, indeed, nearly collided with Tressider in his shortsighted progress. Tressider absently apologised for what was not his fault, and made for the barrier. Here there was again a trifling delay while he searched for his ticket, and a porter who stood beside him with some hand-luggage eventually lost patience and pushed past him with a brief, “By your leave, sir.” Eventually, however, he found himself in a first-class carriage with four minutes to spare.

He threw his hat up on the rack and himself into a corner seat, and immediately, with an automatic anxiety to banish his own thoughts, opened his magazine. As he did so, a card fluttered from between the leaves on to his knee. With an exclamation of impatience directed against the advertisers who filled the pages of magazines with insets, he picked it up, intending to throw it under the seat. A line of black capitals caught his eyes:

and beneath, in smaller type:

He turned the card over. It was about the size of an “At Home” card. The other side was completely blank. There was no address; no explanation. An impulse seized him. He snatched up his hat and made for the door. The train was moving as he sprang out, and he staggered as his feet touched the platform. A porter sprang to his side with a warning shout.

“Shouldn’t do that, sir,” said the man, reprovingly.

“All right, all right,” said Tressider, “I’ve left something behind.”

“That’s dangerous, that is,” said the porter. “Against regulations.”

“Oh, all right,” said Tressider, fumbling for a coin. As he handed it over, he recognised the porter as the man who had jostled him at the barrier and had stood behind him at the bookstall talking to the militant woman and the dejected man. He dismissed the man hastily, feeling unaccountably uneasy under his official eye. He ran past the barrier with a hasty word to the ticket collector who still stood there, and made his way back to the bookstall.

“Strand Magazine,” he demanded, curtly, and then, thinking he caught an astonished expression in the eye of the clerk, he muttered:

“Dropped the other.”

The clerk said nothing, but handed over the magazine and accepted Tressider’s shilling. Only when he was turning away did Tressider realise that he was still clutching the original copy of the Strand under his arm. Well, let the man think what he liked.

Unable to wait, he dived into the General Waiting Room and shook the new Strand open. Several insets flew out — one about learning new languages by gramophone, one about Insurance, one about Hire Purchase Payments. He gathered them up and tossed them aside again. Then he examined the magazine, page by page. There was no white card with the name “Smith & Smith.”

He stood, trembling, in the dusty gas-light of the waiting-room. Had he imagined the card? Was his brain playing tricks with him again? He could not remember what he had done with the card. He searched both magazines and all his pockets. It was not there. He must have left it in the train.

He must have left it in the train.

Sweat broke out upon his forehead. It was a terrible thing to go mad. If he had not seen that card — but he had seen it. He could see the shape and spacing of the black capitals distinctly.

After a moment or two, an idea came to him. A firm that advertised itself must have an address, perhaps a telephone number. But, of course, not necessarily in London. Those magazines went all over the world. What was the good of advertising without a name or address? Still, he would look. The words “Smith & Smith, Removals,” in the London Telephone Directory would steady his nerves considerably.

He went out and sought the nearest telephone cabinet. The directory hung there on its stout chain. Only when he opened it did he realise how many hundred firms called “Smith & Smith” there might be in London. The small print made his eyes ache, but he persevered, and was at length rewarded by finding an entry: “Smith & Smith, Frntre Removrs & Haulage Cntrctrs,” with an address in Greenwich.

That should have satisfied him, but it did not. He could not believe that a firm of Furniture Removers and Haulage Contractors at Greenwich would advertise, without address, in a magazine of world-wide circulation. Only firms whose name was a household word could do that kind of thing. And besides, in that second Strand there had been no advertisement.

Then how had the card got there? Had the bookstall clerk slipped it in? Or the militant woman who had stood beside him at the tobacco kiosk? Or the dejected man sipping whisky and soda in the buffet? Or the old gentleman who had passed him in the entrance? Or the porter who had waited behind him at the barrier? It came suddenly into his mind that all these five had been near him when he had heard the voice of his repressed wish whisper so persuasively, and so objectively:

“If the boy is in your way, ask at Rapallo’s for Smith & Smith.”

With a kind of greedy reluctance, he turned the pages of the Telephone Directory backwards to R.

There it was. There could be no mistake about it this time.

with an address in Conduit Street.

A minute later, Tressider was hailing a taxi outside the station. His wife would be expecting him, but she must wait. He had often been detained in town before. He gave the taxi the Conduit Street address.