 
## Famous

## Authors'

## Detective

## Club

## Edited by Shirrel Rhoades

Former Publisher, Marvel Comics

Smashwords Edition 2013

"I have never felt the slightest inclination to apologize for my tastes; nor to shrink from declaring that mystery or detective novel boldly upholds the principle, in defiance of contemporary sentiment, that infinite Mystery, beyond that of the finite, may yield to human ratiocination: that truth will "out": that happiness is possible once Evil is banished ..."

  * Joyce Carol Oates

Famous

Authors'

Detective

Club

Table of

Contents

Introduction to the

Famous Authors'

Detective Club

Shirrel Rhoades

How Mr. Hogan Robbed a Bank

John Steinbeck

The Clarion Call

O. Henry

Chicago Nights'

Entertainments

Ben Hecht

What Did Poor Brown Do?

Mark Twain

The Trail of

The Brown Sedan

MacKinlay Kantor

Floor, Please

Stephen Vincent Benét

The Dog and the Horse

Voltaire

The Fatal Secret

Daniel Webster

What Happened at the Fonda

Bret Harte

Introduction to the

Famous Authors'

Detective Club

In his essay "The Simple Art of Murder," Raymond Chandler defended writers of detective fiction against mainstream literary novelists.

Speaking like a man who had been blackballed from their country club, he dismissed authors of literary novels as purveyors of "social and emotional hypocrisy."

Fighting words, f'sure.

"Add to it a liberal dose of intellectual pretentiousness," he continued his rant, "and you get the tone of the book page in your daily paper and the earnest and fatuous atmosphere breathed by discussion groups in little clubs. These are the people who make bestsellers, which are promotional jobs based on a sort of indirect snob-appeal, carefully escorted by the trained seals of the critical fraternity, and lovingly tended and watered by certain much too powerful pressure groups whose business is selling books ..."

Chandler had little regard for literary pretention. He argued that "the detective story, even in its most conventional form, is difficult to write well. Good specimens of the art are much rarer than good serious novels."

So-called serious writers, he charged, were in the business of "selling books, although they would like you to think they are fostering culture. Just get a little behind in your payments and you will find out how idealistic they are."

Maybe a few got a little behind. For here in the first volume of Famous Authors' Detective Club, we have collected together stories by noted authors not usually known for writing mysteries.

Steinbeck, Kantor, Hecht, Benét, Harte, et al.

Slumming? Or were they accepting an unspoken challenge (as Chandler out it) to go in "search of a hidden truth."

John Hersey – certainly a member of that country club of respected authors – observed, "Imaginative literature comes closer than any other to being able to give an impression of truth."

As Chandler said, "The murder novel has also a depressing way of minding its own business, solving its own problems and answering its own questions. There is nothing left to discuss, except whether it was well enough written to be good fiction ..."

So we've formed a new club. Herein you'll find some good fiction ... that just happens to be mysteries.

\- Shirrel Rhoades

How Mr. Hogan Robbed a Bank

John Steinbeck

On the Saturday before Labor Day, 1955, at 9:04 ½ a.m., Mr. Hogan robbed a bank. He was forty-two years old, married, and the father of a boy and a girl, named John and Joan, twelve and thirteen respectively. Mrs. Hogan's name was Joan and Mr. Hogan's was John, but since they called themselves Papa and Mama, that left their names free for the children, who were considered very smart for their ages, each having jumped a grade in school. The Hogans lived at 215 East Maple Street, in a brown-shingle house with white trim – there are two. 215 is the one across from the street light and it is the one with the big tree in the yard, either oak or elm – the biggest tree in the whole street, maybe in the whole town. That's pretty big.

John and Joan were in bed at the time of the robbery, for it was Saturday. At 9:10 a.m., Mrs. Hogan was making the cup of tea she always had. Mr. Hogan went to work early. Mrs. Hogan drank her tea slowly, scalding hot, and read her fortune in the tea leaves. There was a cloud and a five-pointed star with two short points in the bottom of the cup, but that was at 9:12 and the robbery was all over by then.

The way Mr. Hogan went about robbing the bank was very interesting. He gave it a great deal of thought and had for a long time, but he did not discuss it with anyone. He just read his newspaper and kept his own counsel. But he worked it out to his own satisfaction that people went to too much trouble robbing banks and that got them in a mess. The simpler the better, he always thought. People went in for too much hullabaloo and hanky-panky. If you didn't do that, if you left hanky-panky out, robbing a bank would be a relatively sound venture – barring accidents, of course, of an improbable kind, but then they could happen to a man crossing the street or anything. Since Mr. Hogan's method worked fine, it proved that his thinking was sound. He often considered writing a little booklet on his technique when the how-to rage was running so high. He figured out the first sentence, which went: "To successfully rob a bank, forget all about hanky-panky."

Mr. Hogan was not just a clerk at Fettucci's grocery store. He was more like the manager. Mr. Plogan was in charge, even hired and fired the boy who delivered groceries after school. He even put in orders with the salesmen, sometimes when Mr. Fettucci was right in the store too, maybe talking to a customer. "You do it, John," he would say and he would nod at the customer, "John knows the ropes. Been with me – how long you been with me, John?"

"Sixteen years."

"Sixteen years. Knows the business as good as me. John, why he even banks the money."

And so he did. Whenever he had a moment, Mr. Hogan went into the storeroom on the alley, took off his apron, put on his necktie and coat, and went back through the store to the cash register. The checks and bills would be ready for him inside the bankbook with a rubber band around it. Then he went next door and stood at the teller's window and handed the checks and bankbook through to Mr. Cup and passed the time of day with him too. Then, when the bankbook was handed back, he checked the entry, put the rubber band around it, and walked next door to Fettucci's grocery and put the bankbook in the cash register, continued on to the storeroom, removed his coat and tie, put on his apron, and went back into the store ready for business. If there was no line at the teller's window, the whole thing didn't take more than five minutes, even passing the time of day.

Mr. Hogan was a man who noticed things, and when it came to robbing the bank, this trait stood him in good stead. He had noticed, for instance, where the big bills were kept right in the drawer under the counter and he had noticed also what days there were likely to be more than on other days. Thursday was payday at the American Can Company's local plant, for instance, so there would be more then. Some Fridays people drew more money to tide them over the weekend. But it was even Steven, maybe not a thousand dollars difference, between Thursdays and Fridays and Saturday mornings. Saturdays were not terribly good because people didn't come to get money that early in the morning, and the bank closed at noon. But he thought it over and came to the conclusion that the Saturday before a long weekend in the summer would be the best of all. People going on trips, vacations, people with relatives visiting, and the bank closed Monday. He thought it out and looked, and sure enough the Saturday morning before Labor Day the cash drawer had twice as much money in it – he saw it when Mr. Cup pulled out the drawer.

Mr. Hogan thought about it during all that year, not all the time, of course, but when he had some moments. It was a busy year too. That was the year John and Joan had the mumps and Mrs. Hogan got her teeth pulled and was fitted for a denture. That was the year when Mr. Hogan was Master of the Lodge, with all the time that takes. Larry Shield died that year - he was Mrs. Hogan's brother and was buried from the Hogan house at 215 East Maple. Larry was a bachelor and had a room in the Pine Tree House and he played pool nearly every night. He worked at the Silver Diner but that closed at nine and so Larry would go to Louie's and play pool for an hour. Therefore, it was a surprise when he left enough so that after funeral expenses there were twelve hundred dollars left. And even more surprising that he left a will in Mrs. Hogan's favor, but his double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun he left to John Hogan, Jr. Mr. Hogan was pleased, although he never hunted. He put the shotgun away in the back of the closet in the bathroom, where he kept his things, to keep it for young John. He didn't want children handling guns and he never bought any shells. It was some of that twelve hundred that got Mrs. Hogan her dentures. Also, she bought a bicycle for John and a doll buggy and walking-talking doll for Joan – a doll with three changes of dresses and a little suitcase, complete with play make-up. Mr. Hogan thought it might spoil the children, but it didn't seem to. They made just as good marks in school and John even got a job delivering papers. It was a very busy year. Both John and Joan wanted to enter the W. R. Hearst National I Love America Contest and Mr. Hogan thought it was almost too much, but they promised to do the work during their summer vacation, so he finally agreed.

During that year no one noticed any difference in Mr. Hogan. It was true, he was thinking about robbing the bank, but he only thought about it in the evening when there was neither a Lodge meeting nor a movie they wanted to go to, so it did not become an obsession and people noticed no change in him.

He had studied everything so carefully that the approach of Labor Day did not catch him unprepared or nervous. It was hot that summer and the hot spells were longer than usual. Saturday was the end of two weeks heat without a break and people were irritated with it and anxious to get out of town, although the country was just as hot. They didn't think of that. The children were excited because the I Love America Essay Contest was due to be concluded and the winners announced, and the first prize was an all-expense-paid two days trip to Washington, D.C., with every fixing – hotel room, three meals a day, and side trips in a limousine – not only for the winner, but for an accompanying chaperone; visit to the White House-shake hands with the President – everything. Mr. Hogan thought they were getting their hopes too high and he said so.

"You've got to be prepared to lose," he told his children. "There're probably thousands and thousands entered. You get your hopes up and it might spoil the whole autumn. Now I don't want any long faces in this house after the contest is over."

"I was against it from the start," he told Mrs. Hogan. That was the morning she saw the Washington Monument in her teacup, but she didn't tell anybody about that except Ruth Tyler, Bob Tyler's wife. Ruthie brought over her cards and read them in the Hogan kitchen, but she didn't find a journey. She did tell Mrs. Hogan that the cards were often wrong. The cards had said Mrs. Winkle was going on a trip to Europe and the next week Mrs. Winkle got a fishbone in her throat and choked to death. Ruthie, just thinking out loud, wondered if there was any connection between the fishbone and the ocean voyage to Europe. "You've got to interpret them right." Ruthie did say she saw money coming to the Hogans.

"Oh, I got that already from poor Larry," Mrs. Hogan explained.

"I must have got the past and future cards mixed," said Ruthie. "You've got to interpret them right."

Saturday dawned a blaster. The early morning weather report on the radio said: "Continued hot and humid, light scattered rain Sunday night and Monday."

Mrs. Hogan said, "Wouldn't you know? Labor Day."

Mr. Hogan said, "I'm sure glad we didn't plan anything." He finished his egg and mopped the plate with his toast,

Mrs. Hogan said, "Did I put coffee on the list?"

He took the paper from his handkerchief pocket and consulted it. "Yes, coffee, it's here."

"I had a crazy idea I forgot to write it down," said Mrs. Hogan. "Ruth and I are going to Altar Guild this afternoon. It's at Mrs. Alfred Drake's. You know, they just came to town. I can't wait to see their furniture."

"They trade with us," said Mr. Hogan. "Opened an account last week. Are the milk bottles ready?"

"On the porch." Mr. Hogan looked at his watch just before he picked up the bottles and it was five minutes to eight. He was about to go down the stairs, when he turned and looked back through the opened door at Mrs. Hogan.

She said, "Want something, Papa?"

"No," he said. "No," and he walked down the steps.

He went down to the corner and turned right on Spooner, and Spooner runs into Main Street in two blocks, and right across from where it runs in, there is Fettucci's and the bank around the corner and the alley beside the bank. Mr. Hogan picked up a handbill in front of Fettucci's and unlocked the door. He went through to the storeroom, opened the door to the alley, and looked out. A cat tried to force its way in, but Mr. Hogan blocked it with his foot and leg and closed the door. He took off his coat and put on his long apron, tied the strings in a bowknot behind his back. Then he got the broom from behind the counter and swept out behind the counters and scooped the sweepings into a dustpan; and going through the storeroom he opened the door to the alley. The cat had gone away. He emptied the dustpan into the garbage can and tapped it smartly to dislodge a piece of lettuce leaf. Then he went back to the store and worked for a while on the order sheet. Mrs. Clooney came in for a half a pound of bacon. She said it was hot and Mr. Hogan agreed.

"Summers are getting hotter," he said.

"I think so myself," said Mrs. Clooney. "How's Mrs. standing up?"

"Just fine," said Mr. Hogan. "She's going to Altar Guild."

"So am I. I just can't wait to see their furniture," said Mrs. Clooney, and she went out.

Mr. Hogan put a five-pound hunk of bacon on the slicer and stripped off the pieces and laid them on wax paper and then he put the wax-paper-covered squares in the cooler cabinet. At ten minutes to nine Mr. Hogan went to a shelf. He pushed a spaghetti box aside and took down a cereal box, which he emptied in the little closet toilet. Then, with a banana knife, he cut out the Mickey Mouse mask that was on the back. The rest of the box he took to the toilet and tore up the cardboard and flushed it down. Fie went into the store and yanked a piece of string loose and tied the ends through the side holes of the mask and then he looked at his watch – a large silver Hamilton with black hands. It was two minutes to nine. Perhaps the next four minutes were his only time of nervousness at all. At one minute to nine he took the broom and went out to sweep the sidewalk and he swept it very rapidly – was sweeping it, in fact, when Mr. Warner unlocked the bank door. He said good morning to Mr. Warner and a few seconds later the bank staff of four emerged from the coffee shop. Mr. Hogan saw them cross the street and he waved at them and they waved back. He finished the sidewalk and went back in the store. He laid his watch on the little step of the cash register. He sighed very deeply, more like a deep breath than a sigh. He knew that Mr. Warner would have the safe open now and he would be carrying the cash trays to the teller's window. Mr. Hogan looked at the watch on the cash register step. Mr. Kent-worthy paused in the store entrance, then shook his head vaguely and walked on and Mr. Hogan let out his breath gradually. His left hand went behind his back and pulled the bowknot on his apron, and then the black hand on his watch crept up on the four-minute mark and covered it.

Mr. Hogan opened the charge account drawer and took out the store pistol, a silver-colored Iver Johnson .38. He moved quickly to the storeroom, slipped off his apron, put on his coat, and stuck the revolver in his side pocket. The Mickey Mouse mask he shoved up under his coat where it didn't show;

He opened the alley door and looked up and down and stepped quickly out, leaving the door slightly ajar. It is sixty feet to where the alley enters Main Street, and there he paused and looked up and down and then he turned his head toward the center of the street as he passed the bank window. At the bank's swinging door he took out the mask from under his coat and put it on. Mr. Warner was just entering his office and his back was to the door. The top of Will Cup's head was visible through the teller's grill.

Mr. Hogan moved quickly and quietly around the end of the counter and into the teller's cage. He had the revolver in his right hand now. When Will Cup turned his head and saw the revolver, he froze. Mr. Hogan slipped his toe under the trigger of the floor alarm and he motioned Will Cup to the floor with the revolver and Will went down quick. Then Mr. Hogan opened the cash drawer and with two quick movements he piled the large bills from the tray together. He made a whipping motion to Will on the floor, to indicate that he should turn over and face the wall, and Will did. Then Mr. Hogan stepped back around the counter. At the door of the bank he took off the mask, and as he passed the window he turned his head toward the middle of the street. He moved into the alley, walked quickly to the storeroom, and entered. The cat had got in. It watched him from a pile of canned goods cartons. Mr. Hogan went to the toilet closet and tore up the mask and flushed it. He took off his coat and put on his apron. He looked out into the store and then moved to the cash register. The revolver went back into the charge account drawer. He punched No Sale and, lifting the top drawer, distributed the stolen money underneath the top tray and then pulled the tray forward and closed the register. Only then did he look at his watch and it was 9:07.

He was trying to get the cat out of the storeroom when the commotion boiled out of the bank. He took his broom and went out on the sidewalk. He heard all about it and offered his opinion when it was asked for. He said he didn't think the fellow could get away – where could he get to? Still, with the holiday coming up –

It was an exciting day. Mr. Fettucci was as proud as though it were his bank. The sirens sounded around town for hours. Hundreds of holiday travelers had to stop at the roadblocks set up all around the edge of town and several sneaky-looking men had their cars searched.

Mrs. Hogan heard about it over the phone and she dressed earlier than she would have ordinarily and came to the store on her way to Altar Guild. She hoped Mr. Hogan would have seen or heard something new, but he hadn't. "I don't see how the fellow can get away," he said.

Mrs. Hogan was so excited, she forgot her own news. She only remembered when she got to Mrs. Drake's house, but she asked permission and phoned the store the first moment she could. "I forgot to tell you. John's won honorable mention."

"What?"

"In the I Love America Contest."

"What did he win?"

"Honorable mention."

"Fine. Fine – Anything come with it?"

"Why, he'll get his picture and his name all over the country. Radio too. Maybe even television. They've already asked for a photograph of him."

"Fine," said Mr. Hogan. "I hope it don't spoil him." He put up the receiver and said to Mr. Fettucci, "I guess we've got a celebrity in the family."

Fettucci stayed open until nine on Saturdays. Mr. Hogan ate a few snacks from cold cuts, but not much, because Mrs. Hogan always kept his supper warming.

It was 9:05, or :o6, or :07, when he got back to the brown-shingle house at 215 East Maple. He went in through the front door and out to the kitchen where the family was waiting for him.

"Got to wash up," he said, and went up to the bathroom. He turned the key in the bathroom door and then he flushed the toilet and turned on the water in the basin and tub while he counted the money. $8,320. From the top shelf of the storage closet in the bathroom he took down the big leather case that held his Knight Templar's uniform. The plumed hat lay there on its form. The white ostrich feather was a little yellow and needed changing. Mr. Hogan lifted out the hat and pried the form up from the bottom of the case. He put the money in the form and then he thought again and removed two bills and shoved them in his side pocket. Then he put the form back over the money and laid the hat on top and closed the case and shoved it back on the top shelf. Finally he washed his hands and turned off the water in the tub and the basin.

## In the kitchen Mrs. Hogan and the children faced him, beaming.

"Guess what some young man's going on?"

"What?" asked Mr. Hogan.

"Radio," said John. "Monday night. Eight o'clock."

"I guess we got a celebrity in the family," said Mr. Hogan.

Mrs. Hogan said, "I just hope some young lady hasn't got her nose out of joint."

Mr. Hogan pulled up to the table and stretched his legs. "Mama, I guess I got a fine family," he said. He reached in his pocket and took out two five-dollar bills. He handed one to John. "That's for winning," he said. He poked the other bill at Joan. "And that's for being a good sport. One celebrity and one good sport. What a fine family!" He rubbed his hands together and lifted the lid of the covered dish. "Kidneys," he said. "Fine."

And that's how Mr. Hogan did it.

The Clarion Call

O. Henry

Half of this story can be found in the records of the Police Department; the other half belongs behind the business counter of a newspaper office.

One afternoon two weeks after Millionaire Norcross was found in his apartment murdered by a burglar, the murderer, while strolling serenely down Broadway, ran plump against Detective Barney Woods.

"Is that you, Johnny Kernan?" asked Woods, who had been nearsighted in public for five years.

"No less," cried Kernan, heartily. "If it isn't Barney Woods, late and early of old Saint Jo! You'll have to show me! What are you doing East? Do the green-goods circulars get out that far?"

"I've been in New York some years," said Woods. "I'm on the city detective force."

"Well, well!" said Kernan, breathing smiling joy and patting the detective's arm.

"Come into Midler's," said Woods, "and let's hunt a quiet table. I'd like to talk to you awhile."

It lacked a few minutes to the hour of four. The tides of trade were not yet loosed, and they found a quiet corner of the cafe. Kernan, well dressed, slightly swaggering, self-confident, seated himself opposite the little detective, with his pale, sandy mustache, squinting eyes, and ready-made cheviot suit.

"What business are you in now?" asked Woods. "You know you left Saint Jo a year before I did."

"I'm selling shares in a copper mine," said Kernan. "I may establish an office here. Well, well! and so old Barney is a New York detective. You always had a turn that way. You were on the police in Saint Jo after I left there, weren't you?"

"Six months," said Woods. "And now there's one more question, Johnny. I've followed your record pretty close ever since you did that hotel job in Saratoga, and I never knew you to use your gun before. Why did you kill Norcross?"

Kernan stared for a few moments with concentrated attention at the slice of lemon in his high-ball; and then he looked at the detective with a sudden crooked, brilliant smile.

"How did you guess it, Barney?" he asked, admiringly. "I swear I thought the job was as clean and as smooth as a peeled onion.

Woods laid upon the table a small gold pencil intended for a watch-charm.

"It's the one I gave you the last Christmas we were in Saint Jo. I've got your shaving mug yet. I found this under a corner of the rug In Norcross's room. I warn you to be careful what you say. I've got it put on to you, Johnny. We were old friends once, but I must do my duty. You'll have to go to the chair for Norcross."

Eternal] laughed.

"My luck stays with me," said he. '"Who'd have thought old Barney was on my trail!" He slipped one hand inside his coat. In an instant Woods had a revolver against his side.

"Pill it away," said Kernan, wrinkling his nose. "I'm only investigating. Aha! It takes nine tailors to make a man, but one can do a man up. There's a hole in that vest pocket. I took that pencil off my chain and slipped it in there in case ol a scrap. Pin up your gun, Barney, and I'll tell you why I had to shoot Norcross. The old fool started down the hall after me, popping all the buttons on the back of my coat with a peevish little .22 and I had to stop him. The old lady was a darling. She just lay in bed and saw her $12,000 diamond necklace go without a chirp, while she begged like a panhandler to have back a little thin gold ring with a garnet worth about $3. I guess she married old Norcross for his money, all right. Don't they hang on to the little trinkets from the Man Who Lost Out, though? There were six rings, two brooches and a chatelaine watch. Fifteen thousand would cover the lot."

"I warned you not to talk," said Woods.

"Oh, that's all right," said Kernan. "The stuff is in my suit case at the hotel. And now I'll tell yon why I'm talking. Because it's safe. I'm talking to a man I know. You owe me a thousand dollars, Barney Woods, and even if you wanted to arrest me your hand wouldn't make the move."

"I haven't forgotten," said Woods. "You counted out twenty fifties without a worth I'll pay it back some day. That thousand saved me and – well, they were piling my furniture out on the sidewalk when I got back to the house."

"And so," continued Kernan, "you being Barney Woods, born as true as steel, and bound to play a white man's game, can't lift a finger to arrest the man you're indebted to. Oh, I have to study men as well as Yale locks and window fastenings in my business. Now, keep quiet while I ring for the waiter. I've had a thirst for a year or two that worries me a little. If I'm ever caught the lucky sleuth will have to divide honors with the old boy Booze. But I never drink during business hours. After a job I can crook elbows with my old friend Barney with a clear conscience. What are you taking?"

The waiter came with the little decanters and the siphon and kit them alone again.

"You've called the turn," said Woods, as he rolled the little gold pencil about with a thoughtful forefinger. "I've got to pass you up. I can't lay a hand on you. II I'd a paid that money back – bin I didn't, and that settles it. It's a bad break I'm making, Johnny, but I can't dodge it. You helped me once, and it calls for the same."

"I knew it," said Kernan, raising his glass, with a flushed smile of self-appreciation. "I can judge men. Here's to Barney, for – 'he's a jolly good fellow.' "

"I don't believe," went on Woods quietly, as if he were thinking aloud, "that if accounts had been square between you and me, all the money in all the banks in New York could have bought you out of my hands tonight."

"I know it couldn't," said Kernan. "That's why I knew I was safe with

"Most people," continued the detective, "look sideways at my business. They don't class it among the fine arts and the professions. But I've always taken a kind of fool pride in it. And here is where I go 'busted.' I guess I'm a man first and a detective afterward. I've got to let you go, and then I've got to resign from the force. I guess I can drive an express wagon. Your thousand dollars is further off than ever, Johnny."

"Oh, you're welcome to it," said Kernan, with a lordly air. "I'd be willing to call the debt off, but I know you wouldn't have it. It was a lucky day for me when you borrowed it, and now, let's drop the subject. I'm off to the West on a morning train. I know a place out there where I can negotiate the Norcross sparks. Drink up, Barney, and forget your troubles. We'll have a jolly time while the police are knocking their heads together over the case. I've got one of my Sahara thirsts on to-night. But I'm in the hands – the unofficial hands – of my old friend Barney, and I won't even dream of a cop."

And then, as Kernan's ready finger kept the button and the waiter working, his weak point – a tremendous vanity and arrogant egotism, began to show itself. He recounted story after story of his successful plunderings, ingenious plots and infamous transgressions until Woods, with all his familiarity with evil-doers, felt growing within him a cold abhorrence toward the utterly vicious man who had once been his benefactor.

"I'm disposed of, of course," said Woods, at length. "But I advise you to keep under cover for a spell. The newspapers may take up this Norcross affair. There has been an epidemic of burglaries and manslaughter in town this summer."

The word sent Kernan into a high glow of sullen and vindictive rage.

"To hell with the newspapers," he growled. "What do they spell but brag and blow and boodle in box-car letters? Suppose they do take up a case – what does it amount to? The police arc easy enough to fool; but what do the newspapers do? They send a lot of pin-head reporters around to the scene; and they make for the nearest saloon and have beer while they take photos of the bartender's oldest daughter in evening dress to print as the fiancée of the young man in the tenth story, who thought he heard a noise below on the night of the murder. That's about as near as the newspapers ever come to running down Mr. Burglar."

"Well, I don't know," said Woods, reflecting. "Some of the papers have done good work in that line. There's the Morning Mars, for instance. It warmed up two or three trails, and got the man after the police had let 'em get cold."

"I'll show you," said Kernan, rising, and expanding his chest. "I'll show you what I think of newspapers in general, and your Morning Mars in particular."

Three feet from their table was the telephone booth. Kernan went inside and sat at the instrument, leaving the door open. He found a number in the book, took down the receiver and made his demand upon Central. Woods sat still, looking at the sneering, cold, vigilant face waiting close to the transmitter, and listened to the words that came from the thin, truculent lips curved into a contemptuous smile.

"That the Morning Mars? . . . I want to speak to the managing editor . . . Why, tell him it's someone who wants to talk to him about the Norcross murder.

"You the editor? ... All right ... I am the man who killed old Norcross . . . Wait! Hold the wire; I'm not the usual crank . . . Oh, there isn't the slightest danger. I've |iim been discussing it with a detective friend of mine. I killed the old man at 2.30 a.m. two weeks ago tomorrow. . . . Have a drink with you? Now, hadn't you better leave that kind of talk to your funny man? Can't you tell whether a man's guying you or whether you're being offered the biggest scoop your dull dishrag of a paper ever had? . . . Well, that's so; it's a bobtail scoop – but you can hardly expect me.to 'phone in my name and address . . . Why! Oh, because I heard you make a specialty of solving mysterious crimes that stump the police . . . No, that's not all. I want to tell you that your rotten, lying penny sheet is of no more use in tracking an intelligent murderer or highway man than a blind poodle would be . . . What? . . . Oh, no, this isn't a rival newspaper office; you're getting it straight. I did the Norcross job, and I've got the jewels in my suit case at – 'the name of the hotel could not be learned' – you recognize that phrase, don't you? 1 thought so. You've used it often enough. Kind of rattles you, doesn't it, to have the mysterious villain call up your great, big, all-powerful organ of right and justice and good government and tell you what a helpless old gas-bag you are? . . . Cut that out; you're not that big a fool – no, you don't think I'm a fraud. I can tell it by your voice. . . . Now, listen, and I'll give you a pointer that will prove it to you. Of course you've had this murder case worked over by your staff of bright young blockheads. Half of the second button on old Mrs. Norcross's nightgown is broken off. I saw it when I took the garnet ring off her finger. I thought it was a ruby. . . . Stop that! It won't work."

Kernan turned to Woods with a diabolic smile.

"I've got him going. He believes me now. He didn't quite cover the transmitter with his hand when he told somebody to call up Central on another 'phone and get our number. I'll give him just one more dig and then we'll make a 'get-away.'

"Hello! . . . Yes. I'm here yet. You didn't think I'd run from such a little subsidized, turncoat rag of a newspaper, did you? . . . Have me inside of forty-eight hours? Say, will you quit being funny? Now, you let grown men alone and attend to your business of hunting up divorce cases and street-car accidents and printing the filth and scandal that you make your living by. Good-by, old boy – sorry I haven't time to call on you. I'd feel perfectly safe in your sanctum sanctorum. Tra-la!"

"He's as mad as a cat that's lost a mouse," said Kernan, hanging up the receiver and coming out. "And now, Barney, my boy, we'll go to a show and enjoy ourselves until a reasonable bedtime. Four hours' sleep for me, and then the west-bound."

The two dined in a Broadway restaurant. Kernan was pleased with himself. He spent money like a prince of fiction. And then a weird and gorgeous musical comedy engaged their attention. Afterward there was a late supper in a grill-room, with champagne, and Kernan at the height of his complacency.

Half-past three in the morning found them in a corner of an all-night cafe, Kernan still boasting in a vapid and rambling way, Woods thinking moodily over the end that had come to his usefulness as an upholder of the law.

But, as he pondered, his eye brightened with a speculative light.

"I wonder if it's possible," he said to himself, "I won-der if it's pos-si-ble!"

And then outside the cafe the comparative stillness of the early morning was punctured by faint, uncertain cries that seemed mere fireflies of sound, some growing louder, some fainter, waxing and waning amid the rumble of milk wagons and infrequent cars. Shrill cries they were when near – well-known cries that conveyed many meanings to the ears of those of the slumbering millions of the great city who waked to hear them. Cries that bore upon their significant, small volume the weight of a world's woe and laughter and delight and stress. To some, cowering beneath the protection of a night's ephemeral cover, they brought news of the hideous, bright day; to others, wrapped in happy sleep, they announced a morning that would dawn blacker than sable night. To many of the rich they brought a besom to sweep away what had been theirs while the stars shone; to the poor they brought – another day.

All over the city the cries were starting up, keen and sonorous, heralding the chances that the slipping of one cogwheel in the machinery of time had made; apportioning to the sleepers while they lay at the mercy of fate, the vengeance, profit, grief, reward and doom that the new figure in the calendar had brought them. Shrill and yet plaintive were the cries, as if the young voices grieved that so much evil and so little good was in their irresponsible hands. Thus echoed in the streets of the helpless city the transmission of the latest decrees of the gods, the cries of the newsboys – the Clarion Call of the Press.

Woods flipped a dime to the waiter, and said:

"Get me a Morning Mars."

When the paper came he glanced at its first page, and then tore a leaf out of his memorandum book and began to write on it with the little gold pencil.

"What's the news?" yawned Kernan.

Woods flipped over to him the piece of writing:

The New York Morning Mars:

Please pay to the order of John Kernan the one thousand dollars reward coming to me for his arrest and conviction.

Barnard Woods.

"I kind of thought they would do that," said Woods, "when you were jollying 'em so hard. Now, Johnny,' you'll come to the police station with me."

Chicago Nights'

Entertainments

Ben Hecht

"Offhand," said Sergeant Kuzick of the first precinct, "offhand, I can't think of any stories for you. If you give me a little time, maybe I could think of one or two. What you want, I suppose, is some story as I know about from personal experience. Like the time, for instance, that the half-breed Indian busted out of the bridewell, where he was serving a six months' sentence, and snuck home and killed his wife and went back again to the bridewell, and they didn't find out who killed her until he got drunk a year later and told a bartender about it. That's the kind you want, ain't it? "

I said it was.

"Well," said Sergeant Kuzick, "I can't think of any offhand, like I said. There was a building over on West Monroe Street once where we found three bodies in the basement. They was all dead, but that wouldn't make a story hardly, because nobody ever found out who killed them. Let me think a while."

Sergeant Kuzick thought.

Then he inquired doubtfully. "Do you remember the Leggett mystery? I guess that was before your time. I was only a patrolman then. Old Leggett had a tobacco jar made out of a human skull, and that's how they found out he killed his wife. It was her skull. It came out one evening when he brought his bride home. You know, he got married again after killin' the first one. And they was having a party and the new bride said she didn't want that skull around in her house. Old Leggett got mad and said he wouldn't part with that skull for love or money. So when he was to work one day she threw the skull into the ash can, and when old Leggett come home and saw the skull missing he swore like the devil and come down to the station to swear out a warrant for his wife's arrest, chargin' her with disorderly conduct. He carried on so that one of the boys got suspicious and went out to the house with him and they found the skull in the ash can, and old Leggett began to weep over it. So one of the boys asked him, naturally, whose skull it was. He said it wasn't a skull no more, but a tobacco jar. And they asked him where he'd got it. And he begun to lie so hard that they tripped him up and finally he said it was his first wife's skull, and he was hung shortly afterwards. You see, if you give me time I could remember something like that for a story.

"Offhand, though," sighed Sergeant Kuzick, "it's difficult. I ain't got it clear in my head what you want either. Of course, I know it's got to be interestin' or the paper won't print it. But interestin' things is pretty hard to run into. I remember one night out to the old morgue. This was 'way back when I started on the force thirty years ago and more. And they was having trouble at the morgue owing to the stiffs vanishing and being mutilated. They thought maybe it was students carryin' them off to practice medicine on. But it wasn't, because they found old Pete – that was the colored janitor they had out there – he wasn't an African, but it turned out a Fiji Islander afterwards.

They found him dead in the morgue one day and it turned out he was a cannibal. Or, anyway, his folks had been cannibals in Fiji, and the old habit had come up in him so he couldn't help himself, and he was makin' a diet off the bodies in the morgue. But he struck one that was embalmed, and the poison in the body killed him. The papers didn't carry much of it on account of it not bein' very important, but I always thought it was kind of interestin' at that. That's about what you want, I suppose – some story or others like that. Well, let's see . . .

"It's hard," sighed Sergeant Kuzick, after a pause, "to put your finger on a yarn offhand. I remember a lot of things now, come to think of it, like the case I was on where a fella named Zianow killed his wife by pouring little pieces of hot lead into her ear, and he would have escaped, but he sold the body to the old county hospital for practicin' purposes, and while they was monkeying with her skull they heard something rattle and when they investigated it was several pieces of lead inside rattling around. So they arrested Zianow and got him to confess the whole tiling, and he was sent up for life, because it turned out his wife had stabbed him four times the week before he poured the lead into her while she slept, and frightened him so that he did it in self-defense, in a way. "I understand in a general way what you want," murmured Sergeant Kuzick, "but so help me if I can think of a thing that you might call interestin'. Most of the things we have to deal with is chiefly murders and suicides and highway robberies, like the time old Alderman McGuire, who is dead now, was held up by two bandits while going home from a night session of the council, and he hypnotized one bandit. Yes, sir, you may wonder at that, but you didn't know McGuire. He was a wonderful hypnotist, and he hypnotized the bandit, and just as the other one, who wasn't hypnotized, was searching his pockets McGuire said to the hypnotized bandit, 'You're a policeman, shoot this highwayman'. And the hypnotized one was the bandit who had the gun, and he turned around, as Alderman McGuire said, and shot the other, unhypnotized bandit and killed him. But when he reported the entire incident to the station –

I was on duty that night – the captain wouldn't believe it, and tried to argue McGuire into saying it was an accident, and that the gun had gone off accidentally and killed the unhypnotized bandit. But the alderman stuck to his story, and it was true, because the hypnotized bandit told me privately all about it when I took him down to Joliet.

"I will try," said Sergeant Kuzick, "to think of something for you in about a week. I begin to get a pretty definite idea what you want, and I'll talk it over with old Jim, who used to travel beat with me. He's a great one for stories, old Jim is. A man can hardly think of them offhand like."

And the old sergeant sank into his wooden chair and gazed out of the dusty station window with a perplexed and baffled eye.
What Did Poor Brown Do?

Mark Twain

We had one game aboard ship which was a good time-passer – at least it was at night in the smoking-room when the men were getting freshened up from the day's monotonies and dullnesses. It was the completing of non-complete stories. That is to say, a man would tell all of a story except the finish, then the others would try to supply the ending out of their own invention. When everyone who wanted a chance had had it, the man who had introduced the story would give its original ending – then you could take your choice. Sometimes the new endings turned out to be better than the old one. But the story which called out the more persistent and determined and ambitious effort was one which had no ending, and so there was nothing to compare the new-made endings with. The man who told it said he could furnish the particulars up to a certain point only, because that was as much of the tale as he knew. He had read it in a volume of sketches twenty-five years ago, and was interrupted before the end was reached. He would give anyone fifty dollars who would finish the story to the satisfaction of a jury to be appointed by ourselves.

We appointed a jury and wrestled with the tale. We invented plenty of endings, but the jury voted them all down. The jury was right. It was a tale which the author of it may possibly have completed satisfactorily, and if he really had that good fortune I would like to know what the ending was. Any ordinary man will find that the story's strength is in its middle, and that there is apparently no way to transfer it to the close, where of course it ought to be. In substance the storiette was as follows:

John Brown, aged thirty-one, good, gentle, bashful, timid, lived in a quiet village in Missouri. He was superintendent of the Presbyterian Sunday school. It was but a humble distinction; still, it was his only official one, and he was modestly proud of it and devoted to its work and interests. The extreme kindliness of his nature was recognized by all; in fact, people said that he was made entirely out of good impulses and bashfulness; that he could always be counted upon for help when it was needed, and for bashfulness when it was needed and when it wasn't.

Mary Taylor, twenty-three, modest, sweet, winning, and in character and person beautiful, was all in all to him. And he was very nearly all in all to her. She was wavering, his hopes were high. Her mother had been in opposition from the first. But she was wavering, too; he could see it. She was being touched by his warm interest in her two charity protégées and by his contributions, towards their support. These were two forlorn and aged sisters who lived in a log hut in a lonely place up a crossroad four miles from Mrs. Taylor's farm. One of the sisters was crazy, and sometimes a little violent, but not often.

At last the time seemed ripe for a final advance, and Brown gathered his courage together and resolved to make it. He would take along a contribution of double the usual size, and win the mother over; with her opposition annulled, the rest of the conquest would be sure and prompt

He took to the road in the middle of a placid Sunday afternoon in the soft Missourian summer, and he was equipped properly for his mission. He was clothed all in white linen, with a blue ribbon for a necktie, and he had on dressy tight boots. His horse and buggy were the finest that the livery stable could furnish. The lap-robe was of white linen, it was new, and it had a hand-worked border that could not be rivaled in that region for beauty and elaboration.

When he was four miles out on the lonely road and was walking his horse over a wooden bridge, his straw hat blew off and fell in the creek, and floated down and lodged against a bar. He did not quite know what to do. He must have the hat, that was manifest; but how was he to get it?

Then he had an idea. The roads were empty, nobody was stirring. Yes, he would risk it. He led the horse to the roadside and set it to cropping the grass; then he undressed and put his clothes in the buggy, petted the horse a moment to secure its compassion and its loyalty, then hurried to the stream. He swam out and soon had the hat. When he got to the top of the bank the horse and buggy were gone!

His legs almost gave way under him. The horse was walking leisurely along the road. Brown trotted after it, saying, "Whoa, whoa, there's a good fellow "; but whenever he got near enough to chance a jump for the buggy, the horse quickened its pace a little and defeated him. And so this went on, the naked man perishing with anxiety, and expecting every moment to see people come in sight. He tagged on and on, imploring the horse, beseeching the horse, till he had left a mile behind him, and was closing up on the Taylor premises; then at last he was successful, and got into the buggy. He flung on his shirt, his necktie, and his coat; then reached for – but he was too late; he sat suddenly down and pulled up the lap-robe, for he saw someone coming out of the gate – a woman, he thought. He wheeled the horse to the left, and struck briskly up the crossroad. It was perfectly straight, and exposed on both sides; but there were woods and a sharp turn three miles ahead, and he was very grateful when he got there. As he passed around the turn he slowed down to a walk, and reached for his tr \---- too late again.

He had come upon Mrs. Enderby, Mrs. Glossop, Mrs. Taylor, and Mary. They were on foot, and seemed tired and excited. They came at once to the buggy and shook hands, and all spoke at once, and said, eagerly and earnestly, how glad they were that he had come, and how fortunate it was. And Mrs. Enderby said, impressively:

"It looks like an accident, his coming at such a time; but let no one profane it with such a name; he was sent – sent from on high."

They were all moved, and Mrs. Glossop said in an awed voice:

"Sarah Enderby, you never said a truer word in your life. This is no accident, it is a special Providence. He was sent. He is an angel – an angel as truly as ever angel was – an angel of deliverance. I say angel, Sarah Enderby, and will have no other word. Don't let anyone ever say to me again that there's no such thing as special Providences; for if this isn't one, let them account for it that can."

"I know it's so," said Mrs. Taylor, fervently. "John Brown, I could worship you; I could go down on my knees to you. Didn't something tell you – didn't you feel that you were sent? I could kiss the hem of your lap-robe "

He was not able to speak; he was helpless with shame and fright. Mrs. Taylor went on:

"Why, just look at it all around, Julia Glossop. Any person can see the hand of Providence in it. Here at noon what do we see? We see the smoke rising. I speak up and say, 'That's the Old People's cabin afire.' Didn't I, Julia Glossop?"

"The very words you said, Nancy Taylor. I was as close to you as I am now, and I heard them. You may have said hut instead of cabin, but in substance it's the same. And you were looking pale, too."

"Pale? I was that pale that if – why, you just compare it with this lap-robe. Then the next thing I said was, 'Mary Taylor, tell the hired man to rig up the team – we'll go to the rescue.' And she said, 'Mother, don't you know you told him he could drive to see his people, and stay over Sunday?' And it was just so. I declare for it, I had forgotten it. 'Then,' said I, 'we'll go afoot.' And go we did. And found Sarah Enderby on the road."

"And we all went together," said Mrs. Enderby. "And found the cabin set fire and burnt down by the crazy one, and the poor old things so old and feeble that they couldn't go afoot. And we got them to a shady place and made them as comfortable as we could, and began to wonder which way to turn to find some way to get them conveyed to Nancy Taylor's house. And I spoke up and said – now what did I say? Didn't I say, 'Providence will provide'?"

"Why sure as you live, so you did! I had forgotten it."

"So had I" said Mrs. Glossop and Mrs. Taylor; "but you certainly said it. Now wasn't that remarkable?"

"Yes, I said it. And then we went to Mr. Moseley's, two miles, and all of them were gone to the camp meeting over on Stony Fork; and then we came all the way back, two miles, and then here another mile – and Providence has provided. You see it yourselves."

They gazed at each other awestruck, and lifted their hands and said in unison:

"It's per-fectly wonderful!"

"And then," said Mrs. Glossop, "what do you think we had better do – let Mr. Brown drive the Old People to Nancy Taylor's one at a time, or put both of them in the buggy, and him lead the horse?"

Brown gasped.

"Now, then, that's a question," said Mrs. Enderby. "You see, we are all tired out, and any way we fix it it's going to be difficult. For if Mr. Brown takes both of them, at least one of us must go back to help him, for he can't load them into the buggy by himself, and they so helpless."

"That is so," said Mrs. Taylor.

"It doesn't look – oh, how would this do! – One of us drive there with Mr. Brown, and the rest of you go along to my house and get things ready. I'll go with him. He and I together can lift one of the Old People into the buggy; then drive her to my house and – "

"But who will take care of the other one?" said Mrs. Enderby. "We mustn't leave her there in the woods alone, you know – especially the crazy one. There and back is eight miles, you see."

They had all been sitting on the grass beside the buggy for a while, now, trying to rest their weary bodies. They fell silent a moment or two, and struggled in thought over the baffling situation; then Mrs. Enderby brightened and said:

"I think I've got the idea, now. You see, we can't walk any more. Think what we've done; four miles there, two to Moseley's, is six, then back to here – nine miles since noon, and not a bite to eat: I declare I don't see how we've done it; and as for me, I am just famishing. Now, somebody's got to go back, to help Mr. Brown – there's no getting around that; but whoever goes has got to ride, not walk. So my idea is this: one of us to ride back with Mr. Brown, then ride to Nancy Taylor's house with one of the Old People, leaving Mr. Brown to keep the other old one company, you all to go now to Nancy's and rest and wait; then one of you drive back and get the other one and drive her to Nancy's, and Mr. Brown walk."

"Splendid!" they all cried. "Oh, that will do – that will answer perfectly." And they all said that Mrs. Enderby had the best head for planning in the company; and they said that they wondered that they hadn't thought of this simple plan themselves. They hadn't meant to take back the compliment, good simple souls, and didn't know they had done it. After a consultation it was decided that Mrs. Enderby should drive back with Brown, she being entitled to the distinction because she had invented the plan. Everything now being satisfactorily arranged and settled, the ladies rose, relieved and happy, and brushed down their gowns, and three of them started homeward; Mrs. Enderby set her foot on the buggy step and was about to climb in, when Brown found a remnant of his voice and gasped out:

"Please, Mrs. Enderby, call them back – I am very weak; I can't walk, I can't indeed."

"Why, dear Mr. Brown! You do look pale; I am ashamed of myself that I didn't notice it sooner. Come back – all of you! Mr. Brown is not well. Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Brown – I'm real sorry. Are you in pain?"

"No, madam, only weak; I am not sick, but only just weak – lately; not long, but just lately."

The others came back, and poured out their sympathies and commiserations, and were full of self-reproaches for not having noticed how pale he was. And they at once struck out a new plan, and soon agreed that it was by far the best of all. They would all go to Nancy Taylor's house and see to Brown's needs first. He could lie on the sofa in the parlor, and while  
Mrs. Taylor and Mary took care of him the other two ladies would take the buggy and go and get one of the Old People, and leave one of themselves with the other one, and

By this time, without any solicitation, they were at the horse's head and were beginning to turn him around. The danger was imminent, but Brown found his voice again and saved himself. He said:

"But, ladies, you are overlooking something which makes the plan impracticable. You see, if you bring one of them home, and one remains behind with the other, there will be three persons there when one of you comes back for the other, for someone must drive the buggy back, and three can't come home in it."

They all exclaimed, "Why, surely, that is so!" and they were all perplexed again.

"Dear, dear, what can we do?" said Mrs. Glossop. "It is the most mixed-up thing that ever was. The fox and the goose and the corn and things – oh, dear, they are nothing to it."

They sat wearily down once more, to further torture their tormented heads for a plan that would work. Presently Mary offered a plan; it was her first effort. She said:

"I am young and strong, and am refreshed, now. Take Mr. Brown to our house, and give him help – you see how plainly he needs it. I will go back and take care of the Old People; I can be there in twenty minutes. You can go on and do what you first started to do – wait on the main road at our house until somebody comes along with a wagon; then send the wagon and bring away the three of us. You won't have to wait long; the farmers will soon be coming back from town. I will keep old Polly patient and cheered up – the crazy one doesn't need it."

This plan was discussed and accepted; it seemed the best that could be done, in the circumstances, and the Old People must be getting discouraged by this time.

Brown felt relieved, and was deeply thankful. Let him once get to the main road and he-would find a way to escape.

Then Mrs. Taylor said: "The evening chill will be coming on, pretty soon, and those poor old burnt-out things will need some kind of covering. Take the lap-robe with you, dear."

"Very well, Mother, I will." She stepped to the buggy and put out her hand to take it

That was the end of the tale. The passenger who told it said that when he read the story twenty-five years ago in a train he was interrupted at that point – the train jumped off a bridge.

At first we thought we could finish the story quite easily, and we set to work with confidence; but it soon began to appear that it was not a simple thing, but difficult and baffling. This was on account of Brown's character – great generosity and kindliness, but complicated with unusual shyness and diffidence, particularly in the presence of ladies. There was his love for Mary, in a hopeful state but not yet secure – just in a condition, indeed, where its affair must be handled with great tact, and no mistakes made, no offence given. And there was the mother – wavering, half willing – by adroit and flawless diplomacy to be won over, now, or perhaps never at all. Also, there were the helpless Old People yonder in the woods waiting – their fate and Brown's happiness to be determined by what Brown should do within the next two seconds. Mary was reaching for the lap-robe; Brown must decide – there was no time to be lost.

Of course, none but a happy ending of the story would be accepted by the jury; the finish must find Brown in high credit with the ladies, his behavior without blemish, his modesty unwounded, his character for self-sacrifice maintained, the Old People rescued through him, their benefactor, all the party proud of him, happy in him, his praises on all their tongues.

We tried to arrange this, but it was beset with persistent and irreconcilable difficulties. We saw that Brown's shyness would not allow him to give up the lap-robe. This would offend Mary and her mother; and it would surprise the other ladies, partly because this stinginess towards the suffering Old People would be out of character with Brown, and partly because he was a special Providence and could not properly act so. If asked to explain his conduct, his shyness would not allow him to tell the truth, and lack of invention and practice would find him incapable of contriving a lie that would wash. We worked at the troublesome problem until three in the morning.

Meantime Mary was still reaching for the lap-robe. We gave it up, and decided to let her continue to reach. It is the reader's privilege to determine for himself how the thing came out.

The Trail Of The Brown Sedan

MacKinlay Kantor

The last recorded words of Sergeant Paul Van Wert, spoken about a minute and a half before he died, were directed at First-Class Patrolman Nicholas Glennan, who opened the door for the three detectives and their manacled prisoner.

"Looks like more Indian summer," said Sergeant Van Wert.

"Another good day," nodded Nick Glennan, and pushed on the bronze crossbar which served as handle for the narrow panel. When you're convoying a tough guy like Rainy Moper out of a railroad station you don't use the revolving door. No, you use the regular door – Detective Johnson goes ahead, and the tough guy follows along, locked tight to Detective Cohen's wrist. You, Sergeant Van Wert, bring up the rear. You nod to the cop on station duty and say something about the weather. He opens the door for you, and you all go outside and get killed.

Said the News-Detail, in its second extra published about an hour and fifteen minutes later: "The three detectives were jubilant, for Rainy Moper, murderer, mail bandit, and extortionist, had fought a hard battle against extradition. Their arrival at the Union Terminal was unheralded. They stepped from the Pullman, brushed through the first crowds of office-bound commuters, and hustled their prisoner out of the station."

Said the News-Detail, in its special copyrighted story which went ticking over twenty wires: "Officer Nicholas Glennan, hero of the raid which wiped out the American Packing Company payroll bandits last March, was on station duty. He spoke to his fellow officers and opened the door for them, then started back toward the lower station level."

Said Antonio Bambasino, proprietor of the Union Terminal Smoke Shop: "I was just looking out the window when those men come out with him. They is a blue touring car parked close, with another man he sit at the wheel. One detective he get in front. Those two more start to get in back with the Rainy Moper fellow. Nobody say a word. Then the guns to shoot they start, like this –"

Sister Mary Louis, Superior of St. Joseph's Mercy Hospital, was only twenty feet away, walking toward the station door. Accompanied by Sister Clementina, and having just emerged from a taxicab, Sister Mary Louis was not expecting to see the very quintessence of murder . . . She had level gray eyes, a firm chin, and her calm voice had only a slight tremble in it as she talked to the police.

"I noticed," she declared, "that a brown sedan was parked beside the blue touring car. Just as the group of officers got into the touring car, a man opened the door of the sedan. No, he had no mask. He held something in his hands; it must have been a machine gun. A man was shooting from the front seat, too. We heard the shots ... we stood there, petrified. Looking at those men. No one screamed. It happened too suddenly. Then the brown car went forward across the low curb, turned past the lamp post, and raced up the street – "

Taxicab Operator Fred Cepak, license No. 1786, got a good look at the men in the brown car. "There was three. One driving, one in the front seat beside him, and one in the back. Two of them was big, fleshy guys, and the one driving was a little dark runt. Naw, they weren't masked or nothing. And well dressed, kind of. The guy in back pulls up with a machine gun, but the fellow in front had an automatic in each hand. The shots go bang, bang, plunk – faster than I can say it – then the little guy says, 'Hell. You got him!' And with that they shag-tail outa there. The cops in the touring car are sliding down, dead as anything, all blood and –

The sedan door came open, just as the gunmen bounced off the curb. Then this cop comes out the station door and starts to shoot – "

They were good witnesses, for the most part. Somehow they seemed unusually methodical in telling what they saw. It was as if the blast of gunfire had robbed them of all hysteria, Eight o'clock, on a bright Indian summer morning . . . there in front of the sober railroad station. They were mainly accurate in their statements.

Nick Glennan, with only thirty minutes left before he would be relieved by Officer Canaday, thought he'd see whether he had gained or lost any weight during the hours since he came on duty. He found a penny in his breeches pocket and dropped it into the maw of the slot-machine scales, there in the south corridor of the station.

Then the shooting began . . . He had his gun out, before he reached the street. As he opened the glass panel he could see Detective Johnson's wet, red face sliding lower and lower in the front seat of the police car. That was enough; it told a long story to Nick Glennan in just two-fifths of a second.

The brown sedan swished across the wide parking plaza, its left rear door jolted open, swaying, a wide gray arm reaching out and trying to pull the door shut. Glennan's revolver rang hoarsely, three times. Then, thinking that he had missed, he expended his remaining three bullets in the direction of the gas tank. A huge gray shape tumbled out across the running board of the swaying sedan. Slowly, painfully, it was trying to pull itself back inside as the car swerved around the corner into Comanche Street. Glennan had missed the gas tank, but one of his first three bullets had found a fleshy resting place.

He leaped to the bloody running board of the parked car. People screamed, all around him. Detective Johnson and Sullivan, the driver, had the blank stare of death frozen in their eyes. Out of the red-spattered rear seat came a faint sigh. It was Cohen; he died in the ambulance, five minutes later.

Glennan snapped to the paralyzed taxi driver behind him: "Switch on. Back out. Switch her on, I tell you – "He ran to the lamp post and wrenched open the big green box. He jerked the receiver from its hook and said rapidly: "Glennan on Number Forty-three. Carload of hoods shot up Bureau car just now, at this point. Ambulances, squads, Union Terminal.

Brown sedan went south on Comanche Street – stop all brown sedans at city limits! Medium-sized car – might be an Olds or Chrysler. I'm on my way – "

A traffic cop was sprinting from the Bailey Street intersection, and another from the east plaza. People screamed, screamed.

Glennan fell into Fred Cepak's green taxicab. "Get going down Comanche," he gasped. Through the open window he howled down to the nearest traffic cop: "Stay on it, Bert!" and the cab went swaying toward the corner, with Officer Nicholas Glennan reloading his gun in the back seat.

He snapped the cylinder home, and climbed out on the running board. In front of the Alcazar Hotel a newsboy was out in the street. "That sedan – yelled Glennan.

"Went south – south – "

There wasn't much traffic. The cab skidded around the left side of a southbound street car, narrowly missed a northbound car, and screeched down the tracks. There were men lining the curb – a few of them. Somebody pointed, waved. Yes, they must have seen that fat gray shape on the sedan's side, slowly pulling its wounded self back to safety.

"Keep the horn going, buddy," said Glennan to Taxicab Operator Fred Cepak.

"Okay."

Looooooo, wailed the horn.

A block away from Paxton Boulevard they could see the traffic cop waving his arms. "Slow!" snapped Glennan. He leaned out and waved an answering hand.

The traffic cop's face was familiar, but to save his life Nick couldn't recall his name.

"Brown sedan? Think it's a Chrysler. She just made a left turn, on the yellow. East on Paxton. What's –"

"They just rubbed out a whole carload from the Bureau," Glennan snarled. "Get over on the box for orders." But he was a hundred yards away as he said the last words, and the cop could only stare after him with puffy eyes.

At the top of the hill by the Episcopal Church, Nick could see the long length of the boulevard sluicing away toward the misty smoke of suburbs. Cars, glistening blotches, the wide band of concrete was dotted with their beetle shapes. Between his dry lips Glennan muttered a curse. This would be the same old story. Lost in traffic. Give any car a minute's start, and the driver had a good chance for a clean getaway. I had to phone, he kept hurling at himself, I had to! Block the highways – get the news on the radio – stop a brown sedan at the city limits – yes, he had to phone – And that extra minute or two, which brought an ambulance: it might mean life for Van Wert or Cohen. There had been that faint sigh from the shambles of the death car. An extra minute – an ambulance . . . had to phone.

"Keep going, bud," he said to the chauffeur.

They raced on. At each of the next three corners, Glennan shrieked to pedestrians or grocery men in front of their shops: "See a brown sedan? Speeding?"

The men gaped at him. Yes, she went that way. No, that was – Did you say a black car? Hey, Pete, wasn't there a car just went speeding past? Yeh, she went north. Right there. Up that street. Yeh. Going like hell –

With Fred Cepak and the green cab Nick Glennan went hurtling up the cross street. North. A car – going like – He overtook it; a small roadster with three high school girls in it.

"Swing her back," he groaned wearily. "It's the same old story, sure as life. The damn sedan's gone . . ."

They came back into Paxton Boulevard. Sirens moving toward them from the east and from the west. Glennan j umped off the running board and held up his hand. A big, black limousine let its brakes crunch; the tires burned in brown ribbons on the concrete. Hard faces, hard eyes staring at him. "Brown Chrysler. Out this way. That's all we know . . . Make for Five Mile Corners, Al." They whistled away; someone was opening the rifle box and dealing out ammunition.

And so it went. There was a cordon around the whole town in less than ten minutes. The telephones jangled and squawked; teletype ribbons took up the story, and state police began to whine up and down the long, open highway on their motorcycles. Brown sedan after brown sedan – farmers, schoolteachers, radio repairmen, dentists, Fuller Brush men – car after car, they were overhauled and lined up, their hands above their heads. What's your name? Where you been? Let's see your license. Keep 'em covered, Jack. Car after car . . .

Detective Abraham Cohen died while the ambulance was still seven blocks away from General Hospital. As for Johnson and Van Wert and the driver, they were past any need for hospitalization. And Mr. Rainy Moper, extortionist and five times a murderer, had gone to his own private brimstone pool with all speed. The women who had fainted were being revived in drug stores beside the station. Newspaper reporters, policemen, gabbling witnesses – a herd of men festered around the blue touring car with its shattered windshield and wet leather cushions.

Nobody was sure what mob had done it. It was hard to believe that any hoodlums, however hopped and demoniac they might be, would cheerfully kill four officers in their eagerness to effect the demise of Rainy Moper.

Nick Glennan got back to the Union Terminal plaza in time to find his brother, Detective Sergeant Dave Glennan, on the job. Fourteen other officers of various kinds were with him.

Before Nick went away to report, he took a walk across the street. He found something lying on the asphalt, near the corner of Comanche Street. It was at this point that the big man in the gray suit had sprawled out of the open door when Nick fired. Glennan picked up the object, looked at it dazedly, made as if to throw it away, and then thrust it into his pocket. Slowly he made his way through the packed crowd and into the wide, guarded circle.

"Four of the best guys who ever lived," his dry-eyed brother muttered to him.

Nick Glennan nodded dully. "Yes," he whispered.

They checked up: block by block and man by man. As the brown sedan passed the Alcazar Hotel, the big man who sprawled through the open door had managed to pull himself inside; a man in the front seat had reached back and slammed the door. The cop at Paxton and Comanche was positive in his identification; it must have been the same sedan, he declared – a shiny one with three men in it – which made a left turn into Paxton Boulevard. Pie blew his whistle at them. If they'd made the turn on the red light, he would have grabbed a car and gone after them, but it was getting on toward the rush hour for city-bound traffic, and any driver is apt to make a mistake and turn on the yellow light instead of the green. Just a split second's difference.

But Paxton Boulevard is mainly a residential street, and in the shuttling stream of cars – in the absence of more cops – the runaway car had vanished. School kids: some said one thing and some said another. You couldn't be sure. It seemed fairly certain that the gunmen had gone north into the new additions between Paxton Boulevard and the railroad; at least they hadn't passed Five Mile Corner.

Eight police cars went cruising through the new prairies, the flat subdivisions. Marble-eyed men examined every alley and driveway and private garage. The human manacles around the main highways were drawn tighter and tighter . . . the teletype clicked and buzzed, phones were a screaming chorus.

First-Class Patrolman Nick Glennan came slowly down the steps from police headquarters. "No," he told the clustering reporters, "they've got my story, inside. Go in and talk to the Inspector. You don't want to talk to a damn fool who missed because he was a poor shot."

"Listen, Glennan," said McCail of the News-Detail and Luff of the Tribune, "nobody's blaming you. You did everything you could – "

Nick shrugged. "That's all right, but I should've got them." He adjusted his peaked cap.

In a gray Packard parked beside the curb were Sergeant Dave Glennan and Detectives Kerry and Horn. "Nick," called Dave.

Nick went over to the car. His corpulent brother was hunched deep in the rear seat with a feather pillow between his shoulders. Dave Glennan's back was still sore, after a famous shooting scrape in March. "All washed up?" he asked kindly.

"Yes. I've just been talking to Inspector Bourse."

"You're off duty now?"

Nick blinked at him. "Yes."

"Want to take a ride?"

Promptly enough Nick climbed into the Packard beside his brother. "Let's go," said Dave. They went, swiftly and silently, up the Avenue.

The young patrolman turned his sad eyes to the huge sergeant. "Where you rolling?"

"I've got an At Will assignment, but I keep in touch with the Bureau. If they need me they'll shoot it to us on the radio." He shoved the pillow higher between his shoulders. "Did you show the Inspector what you found?"

"Yes. He said it was nothing."

"That's what I say, me boy. Nothing."

Kerry asked: "What did you be finding, Nick?"

The patrolman fished a small object out of his pocket and passed it across to Kerry and Horn. "A bottle opener," grunted Horn.

"Yes, it is that."

It was three or four inches long – a flat oval of silvered metal with a sharp tongue at one side, and a long handle. HOFFBRAU LIGHT OR DARK. Drin\ the best was stamped into the handle.

"You get 'em with a case of Hoffbrau beer," explained Horn. "Whenever you buy a case, they give you a free bottle opener."

Dave Glennan nodded. "That's the trouble; that's the reason it ain't no clue. There's too many of them around."

"Where'd he find it?"

Nick said: "Out on the plaza. It was about where the car was when the big guy slipped out through the door."

"You thought he might have dropped it? . . . Dave, how many cars go by that station in a day?"

"One a minute, perhaps. Lots more in rush hours. I don't know; your guess is as good as mine . . . The Inspector said to forget it, eh. Sparrow Cop?"

Nick turned his bitter eyes on him. "I'm a sparrow cop no longer," he said softly. "Though I was on the park police last March, when I grabbed those hoods who shot you – out there on Acola Street."

There was silence in the car for a moment. Dave flushed; awkwardly, he patted his kid brother's knee. "Suppose Inspector Bourse had told you to regard this bottle opener as a clue, Nick. How would you work it?"

Nick took a long breath. "The city flusher," he said, "cleans off that plaza at the Union Terminal every morning. It was there this morning, a bit late – five o'clock, it was. It shoots a powerful stream of water; it would wash that bottle opener up to the curb, like chaff. So the bottle opener was dropped since five o'clock – "

"We're listening," said Dave.

"If a man dropped it from a moving car – or if it got jolted out of the side pocket of a moving car – it wouldn't roll far. It ain't the right shape. I picked it up ten feet from the curb, but to the north of the safety island. And the brown sedan crossed there, headed southeast, cutting across the wrong side of the plaza . . . You see? It was in a kind of no-traffic zone. If it fell from any other car it came from one traveling between the stanchion and the curb, because all traffic is supposed to move outside the stanchion."

Kerry said: "And those cars are few and far between. Maybe the big guy did drop it, Nick – "

"Shut up," Dave said. "Would you call up the Hoffbrau Brewing Company by long distance and arrest them all, Nick?"

The radio began to crackle; Nick Glennan didn't answer. The grating voice said: "Squads Eight, Nine, and Sixteen. Suspicious car reported on Pearl Street south of railroad tracks. Abandoned brown sedan. Signal Twenty-four B. Squads Eight, Nine, and – "

"Here's Dorchester Avenue," Dave directed the driver. "Down Dorchester to the Paxton cut-off, then left." The balloon tires howled as the car swung quickly into Dorchester Avenue . . . forty, forty-five, fifty, fifty-five . . . the speedometer ribbon blurred. The siren sang in an endless alto.

Kerry, not the liveliest-witted man in the squad, was mumbling to himself, "Signal Twenty-four B. Signal – "

"You dope," said Horn wearily, "that's 'As you approach the designated point, watch for criminals fleeing from the scene.' "

"As if they hadn't fled from the scene an hour ago," grunted Sergeant Glennan. "I always did say that if you. didn't have a license number, you didn't have much to go on."

Nick grinned his tired grin. "When the day comes that they make it jail for the man who drives with muddy license plates, we'll have a better break. There was dirt an inch thick on those plates. Nobody got a smell of them. You can't put teeth in an ordinance that carries a two-dollar penalty."

Vacant lots began to flicker past them.

"Pearl Street," meditated Dave. "That's a block or two past Washington. It's nothing but a big mud hole there – no houses or nothing . . . Turn right at the second corner, Frank."

Horn asked: "And no rise out of anybody at the Gallery?"

"No," said Nick. "We all looked and looked. The taxi driver and the nuns and all of us. It wasn't anybody ever mugged in this town,"

"I say they were trying to spring him," grunted Dave.

"And him handcuffed to Cohen?"

"I know the Chief and most of the others think it was a push-off. But it wasn't worth it: if anybody'd wanted to rub out Rainy, they could have managed it easy with stabbing, after he went to the pen. They never needed to risk all this. No, they were primed to spring him. Maybe they didn't realize he was tied to Cohen. They got rattled, maybe. Remember what the taxi driver said about it? 'Hell, you got him!' That was no push-off."

They shouted and argued back and forth, above the wailing siren. The Packard skidded into the miserable pavement of Pearl Street. No houses here; the wasteland and marshes spread out, block after block. Rubbish piles, tilted signboards . . . Far ahead near the railroad viaduct, a dark group of men milled around a huddle of cars. Dave leaned out and squinted his narrow eyes. "That's Rhineheimer's squad. Eight. They got here ahead of us."

Anna Watelowitz and Irene Krzanowski were the best witnesses who had yet figured in the case. They had been playing games – playing house, mostly – since seven-thirty o'clock in the vacant lot which bordered Pearl Street.

Along about the time they came out to play, said Anna Watelowitz and Irene Krzanowski, they peeked through a brake of dry weeds and saw two cars drive into the narrow lane from the direction of the railroad tracks. One of the cars was brown and one was black.

Two men got out of the black car and joined another man in the brown car. The brown car went away . . . Anna Watelowitz and Irene Krzanowski picked two tomato cans full of burdock burrs. They went over to the lone man who still sat in the black car – he had turned it around until it faced toward the railroad viaduct – and they said, "Hey, mister, buy some fine popcorn, a big bag for a nickel." But the man didn't want to buy any burdock-burr popcorn. He had a snarly white face and he said: "You damn kids," and so they ran away as fast as they could go. They hid in a thicket of marsh grass, where the man couldn't find them.

Finally (it had been quite a long, long time) the brown car came back. It came from the south, and the men jumped out of it hastily and jumped into the black car beside the other man, and went bouncing away toward the railroad tracks ... An hour passed before Irene and Anna mustered enough courage to approach the abandoned brown sedan. When they climbed up on the running board, they saw blood inside. They ran home, and told, and Mrs. Watelowitz went clear down to the phone at Poppashveli's Handy Grocery, and called the police.

Dave Glennan sat with his feather cushion against his back, jingling a handful of empty .45 caliber shells in his hand. "Yeh, you better do that, Rhineheimer. Take those girls down to headquarters. Maybe they can pick those mugs out. How'd you like a nice fast ride in a great big car, girlies?"

The little radio chanted: "Squad Sixteen, attention. Communicate by telephone at once. Squad Sixteen – "

Sergeant Dave Glennan did his communicating from the phone at Poppashveli's grocery. When he rejoined his companions, there was a slight smile on his grim lips.

"Let's go, Frank." He slid into his seat. "They got the St. Louis paper to cooperate and send some pictures over the telephone to the News-Detail office. They've got 'em at the Bureau now: pictures of four hoods who trailed around with Rainy Moper in St. Louis and K. C.

Even a telephoto picture means a lot. There wasn't any doubt in the minds of the police and detective forces, half an hour later, that they were looking for Benjamin Farnum, Joe Vitale, and Claude Powers. And according to the two little Polish girls, licking their ice cream cones in the squad room, the fourth photograph was the living image of the man who said, "You damn kids." The fourth photograph was named James Lippert.

"Farnum, Vitale, Powers, and Lip-pert,"chanted Sergeant Dave Glennan as he climbed into the lean Packard. "We're all ready to put the finger on them, except that we don't know where they are."

Kerry swore harshly. "Highway cops! Sure, they'd let the whole army slide through them, if we were after the army– "

"Never mind, Kerry. There's lots of cars on the highway."

"They'll be halfway to Buffalo or El Paso by now."

Glennan looked over at his kid brother, the slim patrolman with the old-young face. Nick was twirling a shiny bottle opener between his fingers.

"That gadget, Nick – "

"Yes?" queried Nick smoothly.

"If you were wearing plainclothes – "

Nick Glennan said: "If I was wearing plainclothes, I'd sure regret that those kids didn't notice the license of the black car. The brown car, we have now learned, was stolen late last night from a roadhouse this side of Midvale, and belongs to a dentist named Holder. But – the black car – those little girls did notice that it had suitcases in it. It's their traveling car, like as not. And when men who like beer go a-traveling, where do they buy their beer?"

"In grocery stores at home, before they start out."

"Not if they're in a hurry. No, indeed. It's only after they reach their destination, mind you, that they feel free to indulge in a bit of a drink. At road-stalls. At hot-dog stands. That's where they would be buying it."

Everybody grunted.

"I'm cock-eyed, and I never expected to be taking suggestions from a steer in harness," muttered Dave Glennan, "but we might take a drive in the country. It's a fine Indian summer day, as poor Van Wert remarked before those gorillas got him . . .

"Highway Twenty-six is the short line from St. Louis and Midvale. Let's mosey out to the city limits and invest in a hot-dog and a glass of beer."

Three out of the first nine road-stalls were all that sold Hoffbrau beer, and none of those three road-stalls had sold a twelve-bottle case in weeks and weeks. No, they didn't remember any four guys in a black car. Yes, it seemed like those guys might have been here . . . No. No spikka En-gliss. Sella nice hamburg –

"As a plainclothes officer, Nicholas," said Dave Glennan to his brother, "you're a stiff pain in the – "

"Don't say it," whispered Nick. "You insult me, and I'll be forgetting that you still got a hunk of lead alongside your chiropractor's delight! And here's another hot dog stand, gas station, or whatever you call it."

It was a rambling one-story shack at the intersection of Routes Twenty-six and Fifty-five. There were four gas pumps in front and two water-closets in back. The owner was named Basilio Constanopolus, and yes, he carried Hoffbrau beer. Light or dark. How many bot' you want?

"Not one!" snarled Dave Glennan, and exhibited his badge.  
1 "Listen, police," wept Mr. Constanopolus, "I ain't never sold a bootleg since we got a good beer. What the hell? No, police – "

"Talk to him, Nick," ordered the sergeant.

Patrolman Glennan smiled his sweetest smile. "Now, Mr. Constanopolus, you think hard and try to help us. Did you sell a case of Hoffbrau during the night?"

"There was those man – "Basilio wrinkled his forehead.

"Maybe they drove in with two cars?"

"They have hamburg egg sandwich. Yes, it was so. And they buy a twelve-bot' case."

Nick twirled the opener in his hand. Mr. Constanopolus let his eyes become narrow and somber. "Those are free, for no money. They come in a case."

"They came in two sedans? Four men?"

The Greek shrugged. "Maybe four. It was pretty late they come. They eat somethings; then they go away with beer."

"Now," crooned Nick, "you didn't by any chance be noticing their license plates?"

Mr. Constanopolus said: "Not the one car. I see the license on the one under the light, beside the pump."

Five pairs of hard eyes were on his face. "Yes?" drawled Dave Glennan.

"Not the number. I see the name of what state. All day I count how many state come to stop here. Some day maybe I see twenty-five. Utah, I see – Col'rado, New Yawk – all those place I see on the cars."

"What was this one, buddy? What state?"

"Jefferson," said the Greek.

Nobody spoke for a moment. "Jefferson?" asked Nick slowly.

Mr. Constanopolus shrugged again. "I see," he said.

"But, listen, friend. there isn't any such state."

"On the car. It is a black car, I remember now."

"What color was the license plate?"

"I don't know. It was Jefferson. I read. I have a kids what go to school. He tell me about once there was a great man here in this country it is Jefferson. So, maybe he have a state name' for him, uh?"

Kerry sobbed: "Hell. Lay off, Nick. I got it."

"What?"

"He must have got it mixed up with Washington. It was a Washington State license."

Obstinately, Constanopolus shook his head. "I not get the number, see, for why the hell I remember numbers? Just the name, Jefferson. I spell it, uh? Chay-ee-eff-cff-ee – "

"Aw," growled the sergeant. He opened the car door. "Come on, Nick. Get going. Maybe it was Washington, maybe not. He don't know what it's all about."

"Jefferson!" Basilio Constanopolus howled after them, as the Packard crunched over the gravel and turned back toward the city again.

First-Class Patrolman Glennan tried to go home and rest, but it was no go. Ordinarily he would have been sound asleep long before this hour. The hands of the little electric clock in his kitchenette crawled past noon, and he merely played with the scallops which Alice had baked for him. Finally he put on his blouse and belt and cap, snatched a kiss from the prettiest face this side of County Cork, and went down to headquarters. "Beautiful man," he said to the mutt-faced Sergeant Beasley, "we did have a colored chart that showed all the auto license plates in the United States. What went with it?"

"You'll find it tacked beside the Museum in the other room," said Beasley, "and you ain't so good-looking yourself, punk. I may be within seven months of my pension, but I bet I could still plug a gas tank in a car if I had a full gun to do it with."

Nick's ears were purple. For want of any retort he went into the next room and looked at the chart of auto license plates. He leaned upon a cabinet full of rusty revolvers and dusty blackjacks and perforated stars, and studied the little colored oblongs . . . Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin ., . Most certainly there was no State of Jefferson in the United States.

Suddenly he bent closer to the chart. His ears grew pale and purple once more. From the outer room Sergeant Beasley watched him, sniffing.

Glennan came out. His eyes were very bright, and a slight flush still clung around the roots of his hair.

"Get me the Bureau, will you?" he asked of the man at the switchboard.

"Guests will use the house phones around the corner," mocked the switchboard.

Nick glared. He went around the corner to the single instrument in its dim nook.

"Is Dave Glennan out with his squad?"

The dim voice of the Bureau said: "No. He's in with the Lieutenant. Who's calling?"

"This is Officer Glennan, his brother. Can I talk – "

"Sure. I'll get him for yuh."

Connections buzzed and stuttered . . . Dave's voice. "Yeh."

Nick said: "Tell me this, Dave. Do they still think those guys left town?"

"Left town? Say, what do – "

"With airplanes and state troopers and all, tailing them all over hell. What do you think?"

Dave gulped once or twice. "Why – what makes you think they'd lie around here? Sure, it's been done before, but– "

"At night they could make it. We know they went north under that railroad viaduct from the prairies, and there's two good streets, not much traveled, leading back to town. Take a small hotel – an outlying one, you see. With garages near by, and –

"For God's sake," yapped Sergeant Glennan, "have you gone nuts, or what?"

"I'll be coming to the Bureau as fast as a cab can get me there," snarled the ex-sparrow cop, "and you be going in with me to talk to Inspector Bourse. I'm going to tell you upholstered cushion-bellies what kind of a car to look for!"

It was at the end of the fiftieth-floor west-corridor of the Hotel De Soto. Two adjoining rooms, 524 and 526. The occupants were listed as the Hot-Cha Orchestra from Louisville. Their names were Morgan, Fry, Adams, and Johnson . . .

"The nerve, the brazen nerve of them!" gritted Inspector Bourse. "Using the name of a man they just killed – "

He stood beside a bed in room 508, with a throng of officers blocking the open door beyond. The operator connected him with room 524, and a coarse voice yelped nervously at him.

"This is Inspector Bourse," said the old man with the gold badge. "I want to tell you sniveling hyenas that you're washed up. No, hold on – I'll do the talking! Every room around you – on all sides, above and below – has been vacated. There arc officers at the top and bottom of the fire escapes, and in opposite windows commanding your rooms. We've got machine guns trained on your doors, and tear gas all ready to let go. You can come out, with your hands up, or you can stay there and take it!"

There was a long, heart-breaking silence. Then the rasping voice began to stammer –

"Break?" echoed the old Inspector. "Yeh, you gave our men a break this morning. Pie-eyed, hopped-up bums: you chopped the whole carload down! Only one of you got a shot in the arm for his pains. Auto accident, you told the chambermaid when she saw the bloody bandages! Remember this: you can only get life in this state – so think it over, and think fast – "

Down the hall there was the sudden blam of an automatic. Old Bourse dropped the phone upon the bed...

"So that's the answer, eh?" he whooped. "Let 'em have it, boys! The taxpayers'll foot the bill for damage – "

Five machine guns began to pound.

They carried them away in four neat, body-length baskets of brown wicker. Two officers had been wounded, neither seriously. Up in his temporary headquarters in room 508, old Inspector Bourse patted Nick Glennan's arm as that embarrassed young man slid his gun into its holster.

"Smoke up!" he said to the Glennan boys. "Here – twenty-five centers, and never say the old man is a tightwad. Boys, I knew your grandfather – I was just a little kid when he got killed in the anarchists' riot, but I do remember him – and I want to say that the old fellow must be very, very proud of you tonight."

"I didn't do a damn thing, Inspector," growled Dave. "It was all the doings of my kid brother."

"And him still with a stiff arm and unsteady shoulder from that affray last March," nodded the Inspector. "It's quite like a Glennan not to whine around and alibi because he wasn't shooting so good, and all of a sudden. Well, Nick – and I hope to see you a sergeant like your brother before you're many months older – I must say that your deduction on those license plates was a slick piece of work. It was easy enough for us to run the car down, once you gave us the tip. The boys got it in the thirteenth garage they went to, and the rest was easy, too."

Nick's ears were red again. "I just played a hunch, sir, about them not having run out of town."

"But what good would the hunch have done if you hadn't lined up the car? Sure, it isn't every cop could spot a car on the evidence you had and lead us right to the killers."

First-Class Patrolman Glennan wriggled, but his weary face was grinning. "The Greek had a word for it, sir! Jefferson, he said, and of course we thought he was crazy. But I went down to headquarters and had a look at the chart of license plates. Just by chance I noticed that Kentucky – you see how it was, Inspector. The Kentucky license was number 345-328 – a hot car, no doubt – but it had the letters K-Y, very small in one corner, and the number 33 very small in the other. And all the way across the bottom was the name of the county: Jefferson. It's an odd way they must have in Kentucky, putting the names of their counties on the license plates."

"From Kentucky," said Sergeant Dave Glennan, "come fast horses and beautiful women. From the Glennan family comes cops. If you wouldn't object, Inspector, I'd like to offer us all a little drink – just for luck. I'm mighty proud of my ugly relative, and – "

Inspector Bourse thrust out his jaw. "Of course I object, Sergeant! It's contrary to law and regulations and the best traditions of our department . . . Ring immediately for ice and ginger aid"

Floor, Please

Stephen Vincent Benét

"Floor, please!" said Sally Bunch mechanically. Then she smiled. "Why, it's Mr. Cavendish! Hot, isn't it, Mr. Cavendish?"

The young man smiled in reply, displaying teeth so white and even that, as his personal stenographer had remarked, "It just wasn't right they were in a man."

"Yes, it is hot," remarked in his pleasant voice.

Sally glowed.

"Those Palm Beach suits now," she proffered timidly. "I hope you don't think I'm fresh, Mr. Cavendish, but – well, I got a kid brother – he thought – are they really as cool now as the advertisements make out they are?"

Mr. Cavendish glanced over his quiet, expensive raiment appreciatively.

"Oh, yes, they're as cool as anything we poor devils of men can wear on a day like this. My floor? Good morning!"

He stepped out of the elevator, smiling. Sally dreamily revolved the wheel that closed the doors and started the elevator up again. As a matter of fact, she had no brother, but chances of a couple of minutes uninterrupted talk with a real gentleman like Mr. Cavendish were few. Even as it was, she had risked something – the proprietors of the Metal Products Building did not encourage talkativeness on the part of its elevator girls. "Complete refinement in deportment," said the little booklet on Service, "is a more than necessary adjunct for each and every one of our employees."

Sally sighed. She knew her deportment was not all that it should be, in spite of the correspondence course in The Etiquette of Fashionable Society she had just completed. But how were you ever going to get to know real swell people if you just stood on your feet all day long, like a dummy, and never opened your face?

Sally had been an elevator girl in the Metal Products Building for a little over a year. It was the "refinedness" of the thing – the opportunities for acquiring culture and social polish as well as, possibly, in the future, a real, "Ritzy" husband – that had appealed to her in taking the job in the first place. She not only had the normal American yearnings to rise above the station in which birth had placed her – she had original ideas on how it might be done and was strongly determined to do it.

There were plenty of millionaires who married their private secretaries, their nurses, even their cooks. She read about them in the papers – enviously. But Sally could not spell, sick people made her nervous, and she always got hot when she cooked. Very well, then, why not start a precedent herself? "Wealthy Clubman Weds Elevator Girl. Her Politeness Impressed Me from the First, Says New-made Benedict."

She could see it all now, with many pictures, on the front pages of all of the papers.

At first, the Metal Products Building had seemed to offer a happy hunting ground. The uniform she had to wear was becoming, the pay acceptable, and clients of wealth and refinement were in evidence throughout. The Metal Products Building was one of the very latest downtown skyscrapers. Hand-wrought bronze register gratings, vast marble columns in the entrance hall, indirect lighting from alabaster bowls; even Sally's elevator had the air of a Roman boudoir.

"Gee, this is the place for me!" thought Sally, when she first envisaged the ensemble.

But now that a year had passed, she began to wonder. It was easy enough to get acquainted, hut most of the acquaintances were the wrong kind – fat, perspiring men who called her "sister" and leered when they were alone with her in the car – scrubby, uninteresting bookkeepers and filing clerks who, if she gave them half a chance, would doubtless display intentions as honorable as they were dull. Really, Sally thought, it was only Mr. Cavendish who kept her on the job.

She sighed again. He was certainly a darb. The perfection of his teeth when he smiled was what had first attracted her, she admitted. Girls were so silly. Or, maybe, it was his looks in general – handsome but manly – he wasn't one of those pretty-pretty boys. And his clothes! And his heavy, expensive English shoes! And his grand manners! And here he was – couldn't be more than thirty, and yet he was manager or something of the Continental Perfume Company on the eighth floor. That seemed a funny business, somehow, for a real man like him to be in, but then he .had his artistic side, too. They'd talked about things, and he was always so nice and democratic with everybody.

Sally dreamed. To all appearances she opened and shut doors, sped up and down, said "Floor, please!" Really, however, she was rescuing a wounded, but uncomplaining, Mr. Cavendish from a burning building just as they do in the movies. Her reverie was rudely interrupted.

"Well, how's Nellie, the beautiful cloak model, today?" said a jarring voice.

Sally hardly bothered to turn her head. "Oh. Hello, Mr. Considine," she said wearily. "The nineteenth?"

"Yea, my fair damsel, an' it please thee," said the sandy-haired young man with the Irish nose. "Old King Brady is on the trail again, and trouble may be expected to pop almost any time this morning. Say, Sally, when are you off?"

"Five thirty," said Sally mechanically. "Here's your floor."

The young man lingered. "Meet meat the trysting oak!" he murmured with an absurd gesture. "The Merrivale Street entrance, kid. I would have words with thee – words of import and gravity."

"Fat chance!" said Sally. She slammed the doors and shot upward. Billy Considine, she considered, was just the kind of bird that didn't get you anywhere! A little, fresh ham detective – an irritatingly unquenchable hanger-on! No matter if she had had to tell him five times that she'd be a sister to him, tonight she positively wouldn't – she positively –

Five thirty found her sweeping haughtily out of the Merrivale Street entrance. But a block away she found herself taken affectionately by the arm.

She turned freezingly. "Now, Billy Considine –"

"Aw, Sally, be reasonable!"

"Billy, I told you –"

"Aw, yes, but this is important."

She groaned exasperatedly. "Well?"

"Well, the chief just kicked through with a bonus on that bum check business. So how about Ugugii's and a couple of cups of red ink?"

"I beg your pardon. I am engaged for the evening."

"Aw, Sally, you're not! And then we could go to Harmonyland and shake a little toe or two."

Sally began to weaken. She loved to dance. "Well, Billy– only, you understand, it's the last time."

"Till the next time," said Billy, and grinned. "Right you ate, my queen of the elevator shafts I How's the beautiful Mr. Cavendish today?"

It took him four subway stops to pacify her, but he managed it. There was something horribly persistent about Billy Considine. Later, discussing the dubious antipasto with which Ugugii's celebrated dollar dinner began, Sally found it necessary to be polite.

"How's the work going, Billy?"

"Like a breeze, my fair flower," said Billy gallantly, "like a Coney Island breeze." Then he grew more veracious. "And saps out in Hicksville Center think it must be the berries to be a private detective!" he groaned. "Oh, just so exciting and everything. Exciting – blah! This morning I get up in the night to go out and work on a fat Dutchman the chief thinks is up to some funny business or other. I trail him around all day, till Sullivan takes over the job, and the worst thing he does is to take a golf lesson at Mimbel's, with the thermometer up so high it fairly makes me drip every time I think of him. Then I write my report and quit – and, oh yes – strike the chief for my bonus, and he gives it to me all right, but says I've been dead on my feet all month, except for that one piece of luck, and to get busy from now forward, or I'll be sleeping out in the park. If they'd only give me a real case, once in a while."

He stabbed viciously at a flaccid slab of pimento. "How about you, Sal? Everything sittin' pretty?"

"Well, if you think you have a stupid time, Billy Considine! Seems to me every day I live's just like every  
other day, except for the date. Sometimes I think if they put me on the other shift – the expresses to the twentieth – things'd be different. But –"

"Oh, there wouldn't be any difference," said Billy gloomily. "What's the use? If I could grab off a big bunch of kale – or get hold of a classy crime – I want to start my own agency, Sal – I know I could get away with it. I'm sick of these routine jobs. But you've got to have a rep to –"

Thick, steamy soup replaced the antipasto. They talked on, hardly heeding each other.

"You know what the trouble is with you and me, Sally," Billy was saying; "the trouble with both of us, we haven't got enough incentitive – that's the big trouble.  
Now, Sally – aw, listen, Sally – if you'd –"

"Oh, yes, if we got married and had an apartment in the Bronx – and a baby – and a phonograph on the pay-every-month-till-you're-dead system," said Sally, with tired scorn. ''No, Billy, there's nothing in it."

"Aw, Sally, you're a lot too good for me – don't 1 know that? But if we got married we could sort of help each other – two of us. I'd just have to be a success if you married me, Sally. And there's a lot of jack in this agency business, once you get started right. Won't you, Sally?"

"You know I'll help you every way I can, Bill," said Sally, a trifle moved; "but ""Aw, I know," said Billy acridly; "you needn't tell me. It's that Cavendish bimbo – that ya-ya, stuffed shirt, toothpaste ad of a Cavendish, You used to listen to me before his fairy footsteps came into your life! He's a –"

"Mr. Cavendish is a gentleman – a real gentleman – a man anyone should be proud to know!"

"Then what's he doing in a perfume works – playing he's a geranium? Sounds pretty funny to me."

"Mr. Cavendish intended to be a painter," said Sally stiffly. "He has very fine artistic tastes. He –"

"A painter? Yeah, a sign-painter – That's about –"

"If you persist in insulting my personal friends, Billy –"

"Oh, all right," grumbled Billy unwillingly. "All right, I'll lay off. But I got a hunch about this man, Cavendish – I just don't like him at all."

They talked forcedly of other things through the rest of dinner, but, by the time they got to Harmony-land, Sally's ruffled feelings were somewhat soothed. In fact, when she went to bed that night, she admitted that Billy at times could be quite sweet. If he wasn't so crude he might July came – August – and another proposal from Billy, an even more persistent one than usual, this lime.

"Listen – I've got my chance! Are you listening to me, Sally? It's jewels," he gloated, "stolen jewels. Just like in a book." They were alone on a bench on Riverside Drive.

"Yes?" said Sally uninterestedly. She was thinking of Mr. Cavendish.

"The chief is wild. The whole department's up in the air. I can't tell you much about it – only a job as big as a whale's been put across. Our client's one of the biggest bugs in town – he's had the regular police on it, but they can't show a thing. There's a knockout of a reward. They know the crooks must be trying to get the stuff out of the country, but that's all they know." He whispered a name.

"Good Lord!" said Sally, impressed.

"Keep your face frozen tight about it, kid – don't breathe a word! Everybody in the office is after that reward; but it's my chance, my big chance, and I'm going to collect on it or end up smelling a lily!" He proceeded to more personal topics.

The next evening, as Sally was hurrying toward the subway, she suddenly found Mr. Cavendish at her elbow.

"Oil, Miss Bunch!" He was obviously surprised. "Hotter than ever, isn't it?"

She nodded; she felt too wilted to speak.

"You're on your way home?"

"Why, yes, Mr. Cavendish."

"The subway must be terrible these days."

"It's – it's very hot," said Sally briskly. She felt a little sick at the thought of the crowded train.

He hesitated. "Miss Bunch"– Sally winced; she hated her name – "I suppose you'd think it rather impertinent of me," he smiled, "but my car, as it happens – I always drive home from the office – do you live very far uptown?"

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Cavendish, but I couldn't – I really couldn't."

He smiled again. "Why not? It isn't much to do. I assure you, it makes me feel like a brute, riding back in the open. Come, why not?"

"I couldn't," said Sally in a very feeble voice. "Besides, it's way up on One Hundred and Thirty-Fifth Street."

He looked at her sharply. "Nonsense! You're tired. Don't be silly. A breath of air will do you all the good in the world. And, besides – I'll confess – it isn't all altruism, Miss Bunch. I wanted to ask you something – a favor."

"Oh, then I'll accept," said Sally gratefully.

The smooth motion of the car – the cool air on her checks. She sighed with content, relaxing. They said very little until they were near Central Park, but even in what little he said Mr. Cavendish displayed a graceful formality that thrilled her.

"And now, Miss Bunch," he said, "If I might ask you –"

"Another letter?" said Sally happily. "Oh, I'd be so charmed."

"Yes, another letter." Cavendish glanced about him. His voice sank. "About the same deal, to the same address. No answer. I'll pick you up in ten minutes at the subway station. Of course, you'll say nothing?"

"I'd die first," said Sally.

He laughed. "Oh, it won't require that. But you know how these business things are – everyone out to cut the next fellow's throat. Miss Bunch, I hate to impose on your good nature this way, but I know that I can trust you. If I were mistaken –" For a moment his eyes were as blank and chilly as little hailstones. "And then we'll go for a spin in the Park," he ended.

"That would be just lovely, Mr. Cavendish," said Sally with fervor, as she took the letter. It had no address upon it, but she knew where to go.

The man at the desk regarded Mr. Cavendish distrustfully. The officers of the Continental Perfume Company were in conference behind locked doors.

The Continental Perfume Company was a blind; they were the fences of a criminal organization. The letters were written instructions to arrange for the selling of gems to foreign buyers.

"I don't like this business with the girl, Jim," said the man at the desk, "Miss Lunch, or whatever her name is. I don't like it at all."

"My dear man," said Mr. Cavendish in his elegant drawl, "trust me – trust me."

"We've darn well got to trust you – all of us," growled the man at the desk. "You know that, but I don't like it all the same."

"Well," said Mr. Cavendish wearily, "I can't go. You won't trust a regular messenger. You say they're watching all the rest of us. I know the girl, and she's the safest route we can try. Oh, don't be a fool, Red! Don't you see – it's my idea that –"

"Oh, I see all right," said the other man with displeasure. "It's a good enough idea – you always have ideas, I'll hand that to you, Jim – but how about guarantees?"

"The best," said Mr. Cavendish. He smiled and picked an imaginary thread from his coat sleeve. "You know about men, my dear man. Leave the women to me."

Talks with Mr. Cavendish – little errands to do for Mr. Cavendish – once – incredible – dinner with Mr. Cavendish in a small French restaurant off Broadway. This episode Mr., Cavendish considered "venturesome,"

And then the Saturday afternoon in the last week of August. It was hotter than ever, and nearly everyone in the Metal Products Building went off at noon. The big main doors were shut; the only open entrance was the Merrivale Street one, where a sleepy attendant dozed over a register intended to keep track of those who went in and out after hours. Few of the elevators were running; the girls took turns at staying in on Saturday afternoons. This afternoon it was Sally's turn to stay.

She was startled out of what had begun to be a waking doze by the sudden appearance of Billy Considine hurrying toward her, accompanied by two strangers in big, flat shoes.

"Take us up to your little friend Cavendish's outfit, Sally," he said with a magnificent air. "We've got the goods on him at last!"

"The goods?" said Sally, stupefied.

"The goods – all wool and a dozen yards crooked. Make it fast, kid – this is a pinch. All set down here, Mike?"

"All set," said one of the strangers.

"All right – let's go, Sally!"

The car shot upward. In the seconds of its flight to the eighth floor, Sally thought desperately fast. Billy and the stranger were talking together in absorbed, low voices. There must be some mistake. She must warn Cavendish."

Here you are!" she said, half sobbing. The car stopped, and she slammed open the doors, hilly and the stranger dashed out. Instantly she shut the doors behind them, and whirled her wheel. She had left them on the fourteenth floor – six floors above the Continental Perfume Company's offices. Even if they slid down the banisters, she would be able to warn Mr. Cavendish before they reached him.

At the eighth floor she clanged the doors open again. A cry of terror dried in her throat. Mr. Cavendish stood before her, and his right hand gripped a stubby blue automatic whose little black eye looked directly at her solar plexus,

"Oh, Mr. Cavendish!" she began reproachfully, but Mr. Cavendish seemed far too hurried to chat.

"Down!" Mr. Cavendish mouthed at her. "Down! Make it fast!" His mouth looked tight and cruel.

"Not the ground floor, you little fool! The basement – the basement!"

The elevator fell like a stone and stopped. Sally shot the doors back with incapable fingers. Emptiness – gray gloom.

"Thank Heaven!" said Mr. Cavendish, his revolver weaving in front of him. "Where's the door?"

"There's a way out around that pile of boxes," said Sally weakly. "To the right; but – oh, Mr. Cavendish –"

"Keep your mouth shut, you poor little half-wit, or I'll plug you," said Mr. Cavendish impolitely.

A footfall – a heavy, solid, official footfall – sounded beyond the pile of boxes. Mr. Cavendish, rattled, was galvanized into furious activity. He leaped back into the elevator and slammed the doors. They shot upward.

A furious buzzing began in the elevator.

"That's the alarm," said Sally dully. "They're going to shut off the juice."

"Oh, Lord!" said Mr. Cavendish, sourly realizing his recent errors in judgment. "That breaks it.

Well "He seemed suddenly in the grip of a brilliant idea. He dropped the revolver – fumbled horribly in his mouth for an instant, mumbling disjointed phrases. "Try it – nothing  
else to do – girl worships me – might have enough luck to get–"

Suddenly, violently he was thrusting some object into Sally's hand – a moist, rough object, full of sharp projections.

"Hi' 'em!" he gurgled sharply at her. "Hi' 'em. Goo' girl! Doenell. Never 'ell. Ee oo a-er."

The elevator shot down again toward the ground floor.

"Oops!" said Mr. Cavendish imperatively, and Sally stopped.

Half fainting, Sally opened the doors. Mr. Cavendish stepped out with dignity – into the arms of Billy Considine.

"Put 'em up!" said Billy.

Mr. Cavendish's arms rose slowly to the perpendicular. The stranger named Mike at once began an expert survey of Mr. Cavendish's pockets.

"Uh ih uh caning uh is ex-or-ary er-or-ance?" began Mr. Cavendish. Billy laughed.

"Say, 'Ritzy Jim, what's the matter with your talk machine?" he queried. "Run out of gas?"

"Em" whirred Mr. Cavendish angrily and fell silent.

"No dope," said Mike disgruntledly.

Cavendish smiled. The infinitesimal pause that followed was broken by a scream from Sally. She had just looked down at the object that Mr. Cavendish had recently forced into her hand.

"His teeth!" she screamed hysterically. "He gave me his teeth."

She slumped toward the floor of the car. Mr. Cavendish saw his chance for freedom and took it – to be tackled by the second stranger before he had gone three steps. "Now will you be good?" said the stranger, sitting on his chest.

Sally, reviving in Billy's arms, opened her eyes and shut them at once.

"His teeth!" she moaned. "His horrible teeth! They're there! Oh, Billy, take them away!"

"All right, kid," said Billy, soothing her. "All right, darling. Say, Mike, did you – oh, hot cat!" For Mike, holding Mr. Cavendish's former teeth in one large hand, was slowly unscrewing a prominent molar from its plate. "Some filling!" he said and grinned.

A thin shell of enamel-like substance lay in his hand –a shell with a curious brilliant core that winked and glittered –a diamond.

"The sparklers," said Mike. "Now I'd say this fella had the most expensive false teeth in the world, wouldn't you, Bill?"

"Am!" said Mr. Cavendish violently from the floor.

Then they took him away.

Some weeks later, as Victorian romancers used to remark, a young man and a young woman might have been observed entering a large, official-looking building in downtown New York. The young woman wore a brand-new ring, and every time the young man looked at it he smiled

"It's a grand day, today, eh, Sally?" said Billy Considine.

"Billy, dear."

"And next month there'll be yet a grander," proceeded Billy.

"Now, Billy, we may not be married for months and months. You mustn't hurry."

"I'm not hurrying you – I'm just telling you," said Billy comfortably. "You're not going Cavendishing again, if I can help it, my dear, and you were nearly an accessory."

"Oh, Billy, it was sweet of you to tell them that I'd helped you."

"You'll make a grand Mrs. Sherlock yet, Sally, my dear!"

"Floor, please?" said a weary elevator attendant. Sally started.

"Going up!" she began automatically, but Billy interrupted.

"Wherever they keep the marriage licenses, buddy!" he said, with a grin. "And make it snappy!"

The Dog And The Horse

Voltaire

Zadig found by experience that the first month of marriage, as it is written in the book of Zend, is the moon of honey, and that the second is the moon of wormwood. He was some time after obliged to repudiate Azora, who became too difficult to be pleased; and he then sought for happiness in the study of nature.

"No man," said he, "can be happier than a philosopher, who reads in this great book, which God hath placed before our eyes. The truths he discovers are his own; he nourishes and exalts his soul; he lives in peace; he fears nothing from men; and his tender spouse will not come to cut off his nose."

Possessed of these ideas, he retired to a country house on the banks of the Euphrates. There he did not employ himself in calculating how many inches of water flow in a second of time under the arches of a bridge, or whether here fell a cube-line of rain in the month of the mouse more than in the month of the sheep. He never dreamed of making silk of cobwebs, or porcelain of broken bottles; but he chiefly studied the properties of plants and animals; and soon acquired a sagacity that made him discover a thousand differences where other men see nothing but uniformity.

One day, as he was walking near a little wood, he saw one of the queen's eunuchs running toward him, followed by several officers, who appeared to be in great perplexity, and who ran to and fro like men distracted, eagerly searching for something of great value they had lost.

"Young man," said the first eunuch, "hast thou seen the queen's dog?"

"It is a bitch," replied Zadig, with great modesty, "and not a dog."

"Thou art in the right," returned the first eunuch.

"It is a very small she-spaniel," added Zadig; "she has lately whelped; she limps on the left forefoot, and has very long ears."

"Thou hast seen her," said the first eunuch, quite out of breath.

"No," replied Zadig, "I have not seen her, nor did I so much as know that the queen had a bitch."

Exactly at the same time, by one of the common freaks of fortune, the finest horse in the king's stable had escaped from the jockey in the plains of Babylon. The principal huntsman, and all the other officers, ran after him with as much eagerness and anxiety as the first eunuch had done after the bitch. The principal huntsman addressed himself to Zadig and asked him if he had not seen the king's horse passing by.

"He is the fleetest horse in the king's stable," replied Zadig; "he is five feet high, with very small hoofs, and a tail three feet and an half in length; the studs on his bit are gold, of twenty-three carats, and his shoes are silver of eleven pennyweights."

"Where is he?" demanded the chief huntsman.

"I have not seen him," replied Zadig, "and never heard talk of him before."

The principal huntsman and the first eunuch never doubted but that Zadig had stolen the king's horse and the queen's dog. They therefore had him conducted before the assembly of the grand desterham, who condemned him to the knout, and to spend the rest of his days in Siberia. Hardly was the sentence passed, when the horse and the dog were both found. The judges were reduced to the disagreeable necessity of reversing their sentence; but they condemned Zadig to pay 400 ounces of gold for having said that he had not seen what he had seen. This fine he was obliged to pay; after which, he was permitted to plead his cause before the council of the grand Destrehan, when he spoke to the following effect:

"Ye stars of justice, abyss of sciences, mirrors of truth, who have the weight of lead, the hardness of iron, the splendor of the diamond, and many of the properties of gold; since I am permitted to speak before this august assembly, I swear to you by Oromazes, that I have never seen the queen's respectable bitch, nor the sacred horse of the king of kings. The truth of the matter is as follows: I was walking toward the little wood, where I afterward met the venerable eunuch and the most illustrious chief huntsman. I observed on the sand the traces of an animal, and could easily perceive them to be those of a little dog. The light and long furrows impressed on little eminences of sand between the marks of the paws plainly discovered that it was a bitch, whose dugs were hanging down, and that therefore she must have whelped a few days before. Other traces of a different kind, that always appeared to have gently brushed the surface of the sand near the marks of the forefeet, showed me that she had very long ears; and as I remarked that there was always a slighter impression made on the sand by one foot than by the other three, I found that the bitch of our august queen was a little lame, if I may be allowed the expression. With regard to the horse of the king of kings, you will be pleased to know that walking in the lanes of this wood I observed the marks of a horse's shoes, all at equal distances. This must be a horse, said I to myself, that gallops excellently. The dust on the trees in a narrow road that was but seven feet wide was a little brushed off, at the distance of three feet and a half from the middle of the road. This horse, said I, has a tail three feet and a half long, which, being whisked to the right and left, has swept away the dust. I observed under the trees that formed an arbor five feet in height that the leaves of the branches were newly fallen, from whence I inferred that the horse had touched them, and that he must therefore be five feet high. As to his bit, it must be gold of twenty-three carats, for he had rubbed its bosses against a stone which I knew to be a touchstone, and which I have tried. In a word, from a mark made by his shoes on flints of another kind, I concluded that he was shod with silver eleven derniers fine."

All the judges admired Zadig for his acute and profound discernment. The news of this speech was carried even to the king and queen. Nothing was talked of but Zadig in the anti-chambers, the chambers, and the cabinet; and though many of the magi were of opinion that he ought to be burnt as a sorcerer, the king ordered his officers to restore him the 400 ounces of gold which he had been obliged to pay. The register, the attorneys, and bailiffs, went to his house with great formality to carry him back his 400 ounces. They retained only 398 of them to defray the expenses ol justice.

Zadig saw how extremely dangerous it sometimes is to appear too knowing, and therefore resolved that on the next occasion he would not tell what he had seen.

Such an opportunity soon offered. A prisoner of state made his escape and passed under the windows of Zadig's house. Zadig was examined and made no answer. But it was proved that he had looked at the prisoner from this window. For this crime he was condemned to pay 500 ounces of gold; and, according to the polite custom of Babylon, he thanked his judges for their indulgence.

"Great God!" said he to himself, "what a misfortune it is to walk in a wood through which the queen's dog or the king's horse have passed! How dangerous to look out at a window! And how difficult to be happy in this life!"

The Fatal Secret

Daniel Webster

An aged man, without an enemy in the world, in his own house and in his own bed, is made the victim of a butcherly murder, for mere pay.

Deep sleep had fallen on the destined victim and on all beneath his roof. A healthful old man, to whom sleep was sweet, the first sound slumbers of the night held him in their soft but strong embrace. The assassin enters, through the window already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment. With noiseless foot he paces the lonely hall, half lighted by the moon: he winds up the ascent of the stairs, and reaches the door of the chamber. Of this, he moves the lock, by soft and continued pressure, till it turns on its hinges without noise; and he enters, and beholds his victim before him.

The room was uncommonly open to the admission of light. The face of the innocent sleeper was turned from the murderer, and the beams of the moon, resting on the grey locks of his aged temple, showed him where to strike.

The fatal blow is given! And the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death!

It is the assassin's purpose to make sure work; and he yet plies the dagger, though it was obvious that life had been destroyed by the blow of the bludgeon. He even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail in his aim at the heart, and replaces it again over the wounds of the poniard. To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse. He feels for it, and ascertains that it beats no longer. It is accomplished. The deed is done. He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes. He has done the murder – no eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. The secret is his own, and it is safe!

Ah! Gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner where the guilty can bestow it and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye which glances through all disguises, and beholds everything, as in the splendor of noon, such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, even by men.

True it is, generally speaking, that "murder will out." True it is that Providence had so ordained and doth so govern things, that those who break the great law of heaven, by shedding man's blood, seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. Especially, in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must come, and will come, sooner or later.

A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, everything, every circumstance, connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery.

Meantime, the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself; or rather it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment, which it dares not acknowledge to God or man. A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance, either from heaven or earth.

The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and, like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears it workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master. It betrays discretion, it breaks down his courage, it conquers his prudence.

When suspicions, from without, begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstance to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth. It must be confessed, it will be confessed, there is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession.

What Happened At The Fonda

Bret Harte

"Hell!" said the editor of the Mountain Clarion, looking up impatiently from his copy. "What's the matter now? "

The intruder in his sanctum was his foreman. He was also acting as pressman, as might be seen from his shirt-sleeves spattered with ink, rolled up over the arm that had just been working "the Archimedean lever that moves the world", which was the editor's favorite allusion to the hand press that strict economy obliged the Clarion to use. His braces slipped from his shoulders during his work, were looped negligently on either side, their functions being replaced by one hand, which occasionally hitched up his trousers to a securer position. A pair of down-at-heel slippers – dear to the country printer – completed his negligee.

But the editor knew that the ink-spattered arm was sinewy and ready, that a stout and loyal heart beat under the soiled shirt, and that the slipshod slippers did not prevent its owner's foot from being "put down "very firmly on occasion. He accordingly met the shrewd, good-humored blue eyes of his faithful henchman with an interrogating smile. I won't keep you long," said the foreman, glancing at the editor's copy with his habitual half-humorous toleration of that work, it being his general conviction that news and advertisements were the only valuable features of a newspaper. "I only wanted to talk to you a minute about makin' suthin more o' this yer accident to Colonel Starbotde." Well, we've a full report of it in, haven't we?" said the editor wonderingly. "I have even made an editorial para, about the frequency of these accidents, and called attention to the danger of riding those half-broken Spanish mustangs."

"Yes, ye did that," said the foreman tolerantly; "but ye see, thar's some folks around here that allow it warn't no accident. There's a heap of them believe that no runaway hoss ever mauled the colonel ez he got mauled."

"But I heard it from the colonel's own lips," said the editor, "and he surely ought to know."

"He mout know and he moutn't, and if he did know he wouldn't tell," said the foreman musingly, rubbing his chin with the cleaner side of his arm. "Ye didn't see him when he was picked up, did ye?"

"No," said the editor. "Only after the doctor had attended him. Why? "

"Jake Parmlee, ez picked him outer the ditch, says that he was half choked, and his black silk neck-handkerchief was pulled tight around his throat. There was a mark on his nose ez ef some one had tried to gouge out his eye, and his left ear was chawed ez ef he'd bin down in a reg'lar rough-and-tumble clinch."

"He told me his horse bolted, buck-jumped, threw him, and he lost consciousness," said the editor positively. "He had no reason for lying, and a man like Starbotde, who carries a derringer and is a dead shot, would have left his mark on somebody if he'd been attacked."

"That's what the boys say is just the reason why he lied. He was took suddent, don't ye see – he'd no show – and don't like to confess it. See? A man like him ain't goin' to advertise that he kin be tackled and left senseless and no one else got hurt by it! His political influence would be ruined here!"

The editor was momentarily staggered at this large truth.

"Nonsense!" he said, with a laugh. "Who would attack Colonel Starbottle in that fashion? He might have been shot on sight by some political enemy with whom he had quarreled – but not beaten."

"S'pose it warn't no political enemy," said the foreman doggedly.

"Then who else could it be?" demanded the editor impatiently.

"That's jest for the Press to find out and expose," returned the foreman, with a significant glance at the editor's desk. "I reckon that's whar the Clarion ought to come in."

"In a matter of this kind," said the editor promptly, "the paper has no business to interfere with a man's statement. The colonel has a perfect right to his own secret – if there is one, which I very much doubt. But," he added, in laughing recognition of the half reproachful, half-humorous discontent on the foreman's face, "what dreadful theory have you and the boys got about it – and what do you expect to expose?"

"Well," said the foreman very seriously, "it's jest this: You see, the colonel is mighty sweet on that Spanish woman Ramierez up on the hill yonder It was her mustang he was ridin' when the row happened near her house."

"Well?" said the editor, with disconcerting placidity.

"Well," hesitated the foreman, "you see, they're a bad lot, those Mexicans, especially Ramierez, her husband."

The editor knew that the foreman was only echoing the provincial prejudice which he himself had always combated. Ramierez kept a fonda, or hostelry, or a small estate – the last of many leagues formerly owned by the Spanish grantee, his landlord – and had a wife of some small coquetries and redundant charms. Gambling took place at the fonda, and it was said the common prejudice against the Mexican did not, however, prevent the American from trying to win his money.

"Then you think Ramierez was jealous of the colonel? But in that case he would have knifed him, Spanish fashion, and not without a struggle."

The foreman saw, the incredulity expressed on the editor's face, and said somewhat aggressively, "Of course the boys know ye don't take no stock in what's said agin the Mexicans, and that's the reason why I thought I oughter tell ye, so that ye mightn't seem to be always favoring 'em."

The editor's face darkened slightly, but he kept his temper and his good humor. "So that to prove that the Clarion is unbiased where the Mexicans are concerned, I ought to make it their only accuser, and cast doubt on the American's veracity?"

"I don't mean that," said the foreman, reddening. "Only I thought ye might – as ye understand these folks' ways – ye might make some copy outer the blamed thing. It would be a big boom for the Clarion."

"I've no doubt it would," said the editor dryly. "However, I'll make some inquiries; but you might as well let the boys' know that the Clarion will not publish the colonel's secret without his permission. Meanwhile," he continued, smiling, "if you are very anxious to add the functions of a reporter to your other duties and bring me any discoveries you may make, I'll look over your copy."

He good-humoredly nodded and took up his pen again – a hint at which the embarrassed foreman, under cover of hitching up his trousers, awkwardly and reluctantly withdrew.

It was with some natural youthful curiosity, but no lack of loyalty to Colonel Starbottle, that the editor that evening sought this "war horse of the Democracy ", as he was familiarly known, in his invalid chamber at the Palmetto Hotel. He found the hero with a bandaged ear and – perhaps it was fancy suggested by the story of the choking – cheeks more than usually suffused and apoplectic. Nevertheless, he was seated by the table with a mint julep before him, and he welcomed the editor by instantly ordering another.

The editor was glad to find him so much better.

"Gad, sir, no bones broken, but a good deal of 'possum scratching about the head for such a little throw like that. I must have slid a yard or two on my left ear before I brought up."

"You were unconscious from the fall, I believe."

"Only for an instant, sir – a single instant! I recovered myself with the assistance of a No'the'n gentleman – a Mr. Parmlee – who was passing."

"Then you think your injuries were entirely due to your fall? "

The colonel paused with the mint julep halfway to his lips, and set it down. "Sir!" he ejaculated, with astounded indignation.

"You say you were unconscious," returned the editor lightly, "and some of your friends think the injuries inconsistent with what you believe to be the cause. They are concerned lest you were unknowingly the victim of some foul play."

"Unknowingly! Sir! Do you take me for a chuckle-head, that I don't know when I'm thrown from a buck-jumping mustang? Or do they think I'm a tenderfoot to be hustled and beaten by a gang of bullies? Do they know, sir, that the account I have given I am responsible for, sir? – personally responsible? "

There was no doubt that the colonel was perfectly serious, and that his indignation arose from no guilty consciousness of a secret. A man as peppery as the colonel would have been equally alert in defense.

"They feared that you might have been ill-used by some evilly disposed person during your unconsciousness," explained the editor diplomatically; "but as you say it was only for a moment, and that you were aware of everything that happened "

"Perfectly, sir! Perfectly! As plain as I see this julep before me. I had just left the Ramierez rancho. The senora – a devilish pretty woman, sir – after a little playful badinage had offered to lend me her daughter's mustang if I could ride it home. You know what it is, Mr. Grey," he said gallantly. "I'm an older man than you, sir, but a challenge from a fascinating creature, I trust, sir, I am not yet old enough to decline. Gad, sir, I mounted the brute. I've ridden Morgan stock and Blue Grass thoroughbreds bareback, sir, but I've never thrown my leg over such a blanked Chinese cracker before. After he bolted I held my own fairly, but he buck-jumped before I could lock my spurs under him, and the second jump landed me! "

"How far from the Ramierez fonda were you when you were thrown? "

"A matter of four or five hundred yards, sir."

"Then your accident might have been seen from the fonda? "

"Scarcely, sir. For in that case, I may say, without vanity, that – er – the senora would have come to my assistance."

"But not her husband? "

The old-fashioned shirt frill which the colonel habitually wore swelled with indignation, possibly half assumed to conceal a certain conscious satisfaction beneath. "Mr. Grey," he said, with pained severity, "as a personal friend of mine, and a representative of the press – a power I respect – I overlook a disparaging reflection upon a lady, which I can only attribute to the levity of youth and to thoughtlessness. At the same time, sir," he added, with illogical sequence, "if Ramierez felt aggrieved at my attention he knew where I could be found, sir, and that it was not my habit to decline giving gentlemen – of any nationality – satisfaction, sir! – personal satisfaction."

He added, with a singular blending of anxiety and a certain natural dignity, "I trust, sir, that nothing of this will appear, in your paper."

"It was to keep it out by learning the truth from you, my dear colonel," said the editor lightly, "that I called today. By the way, how do you account, Colonel, for you having been half strangled? "

The colonel brought his hand to his loose cravat with an uneasy flounced frock, bare head, and tawny braids, as she stood beside this incarnation of equine barbarism, Grey could remember nothing like it outside of a circus.

He stammered a few words of admiration of the mare. Miss Cota threw out her two arms with graceful gesture and a profound curtsey, and said, "A la disposicion de le Us ted, senor."

Grey was quick to understand the malicious mischief which danced in the girl's eyes, and even fancied it was shared by the animal itself. But he was a singularly good rider of untrained stock, and rather proud of his prowess. He bowed.

"I accept that I may have the honor of laying the senorita's gift again at her little feet."

But here the burly Ramierez intervened. "Ah, Mother of God! May the devil fly away with all this nonsense! I will have no more of it," he said impatiently to the girl. "Have a care, Don Pancho, it is a trick!"

"One I think I know," said Grey. The girl looked at him curiously as he managed to edge between her and the mustang, under the pretense of stroking its glossy neck. "I shall keep my own spurs," he said to her in a lower voice, pointing to the sharp, small-roweled American spurs he wore, instead of the large, blunt, five-pointed star of the Mexican pattern.

Without attempting to catch hold of the mustang's mane, Grey in a single leap threw himself across its back. The animal, utterly unprepared, was at first stupefied.

But by this time her rider had his seat. He felt her sensitive spine arch like a cat's beneath him as she sprang rocket-wise into the air.

But here she was mistaken. Instead of clinging tightly to her flanks with the inner side of his calves, after the vaquero fashion to which she was accustomed, Grey dropped his spurred heels into her sides and allowed his body to rise with her spring and the cruel spur to cut its track upward from her belly almost to her back.

She dropped like a shot, he dexterously withdrawing his spurs and regaining his seat, jarred but not discomfited. Again she essayed a leap; the spurs again marked its height in a scarifying track along her smooth barrel. She tried a third leap, but this time dropped halfway as she felt the steel scraping her side, and then stood still, trembling. Grey leaped off. There was a sound of applause from the innkeeper and his wife, assisted by a lounging vaquero in the corridor. Ashamed of his victory, Grey turned apologetically to Cota. To his surprise she glanced indifferently at the trickling sides of her favorite and only regarded him curiously.

"Ah," she said, drawing in her breath, "you are strong – and you comprehend!"

"It was only a trick for a trick, senorita," he replied, reddening. "Let me look after those scratches in the stable," he added, as she was turning away, leading the excited animal toward a shed in the rear. He would have taken the reins which she was still holding, but she motioned him to precede her. He did so by a few feet, but he had scarcely reached the stable door before she suddenly caught him roughly by the shoulders and, shoving him into the entrance, slammed the door upon him.

Amazed and a little indignant, he turned in time to hear a slight sound of scuffling outside, and to see Cota re-enter with a flushed face.

"Pardon, senor," she said quickly, "but I feared she might have kicked you. Rest tranquil, however, for the servant has taken her away."

She pointed to a slouching peon who was angrily driving the mustang toward the corral.

"Consider it no more. I was rude. Santa Maria! I almost threw you, too. But," she added, with a dazzling smile, "You must not punish me as you have her. For you are very strong – and you comprehend."

But Grey did not comprehend, and with a few hurried apologies he managed to escape his fair but uncanny tormentor. Besides, this unlooked-for incident had driven from his mind the more important object of his visit – the discovery of the assailants of Richards and Colonel Starbottle.

His inquiries of Ramierez produced no result. Senor Ramierez was not aware of any suspicious loiterers among the frequenters of the jonda, and except from some drunken American revelers he had been free of disturbance. Ah! The peon – an old vaquero – was not an angel, truly, but he was dangerous only to the bull and the wild horses – and he was afraid even of Cota! Mr. Grey was forced to ride home empty of information.

He was still more concerned a week later, on returning unexpectedly one afternoon to his sanctum, to hear a musical, childish voice in the composing room.

It was Cota. She was there, as Richards explained, on his invitation, to view the marvels and mysteries of printing at a time when they would not be likely to "disturb Mr. Grey at his work." But the beaming face of Richards and the simple tenderness of his blue eyes plainly revealed the sudden growth of an evidently sincere passion, and the unwonted splendors of his best clothes showed how carefully he had prepared for the occasion.

Grey was worried and perplexed, believing the girl a malicious flirt. Yet nothing could be more captivating than her simple and childish curiosity as she watched Richards swing the lever of the press, or stood by his side as he marshaled the type into files on his composing stick. He had even printed a card with her name – Senorita Cota Ramierez – the type of which had been set up, to the accompaniment of ripples of musical laughter, by her little brown fingers.

The editor might have become quite sentimental had he not noticed that the grey eyes which often rested on himself, even while she apparently listened to Richards, were more than ever like the eyes flanks her glance had wandered so coldly.

He withdrew presently so as not to interrupt his foreman's innocent tête-à-tête, but it was not very long after that Cota passed him on the highroad with the pinto horse in a gallop, and blew him an audacious kiss from the tips of her fingers.

For several days afterwards Richards's manner was tinged with a certain reserve on the subject of Cota which the editor attributed to the delicacy of a serious affection, but he was surprised also to find that his foreman's eagerness to discuss his unknown assailant had somewhat abated. Further discussion regarding it was naturally dropped, and the editor was beginning to lose his curiosity when it was suddenly awakened by a chance incident.

An intimate friend and old companion of his – one Enriquez Saltillo – had diverged from a mountain trip especially to call upon him. Enriquez was a scion of one of the oldest Spanish-Californian families, and in addition to his friendship for the editor it pleased him also to affect an intense admiration of American ways and habits, and even to combine the current Californian slang with his native precision of speech – and a certain ironical levity still more his own.

It seemed, therefore, quite natural to Mr. Grey to find Saltillo seated with his feet on the editorial desk, his hat cocked on the back of his head, reading the Clarion exchanges. But he was up in a moment, and had embraced Grey with characteristic effusion. "I find myself, my leetle brother, but an hour ago two leagues from this spot! I say to myself, 'Hola! It is the home of Don Pancho – my friend! I shall find him composing the magnificent editorial leader, collecting the subscription of the big pumpkin and the great gooseberry, or gouging out the eye of the rival editor, at which I shall assist!' I hesitate no longer, I fly on the instant, and I am here."

Grey was delighted. Saltillo knew the Spanish population thoroughly – his own people and their Mexican and Indian allies. If anyone could solve the mystery of the Ramierez jonda and discover Richards's unknown assailant, it was he. But Grey contented himself at first with a few brief inquiries concerning the beautiful Cota and her anonymous association with the Ramierezes. Saltillo was as briefly communicative.

"Of your suspicions, my leetle brother, you are right – on the half! That leetle angel of a Cota is, without doubt, the daughter of the adorable Senora Ramierez, but not of the admirable senor, her husband. Ah! What would you? We are a simple, patriarchal race; thees Ramierez, he was the Mexican tenant of the old Spanish landlord – such as my father – and we are ever the fathers of the poor, and sometimes of their children. It is possible, therefore, that the exquisite Cota resemble the Spanish landlord. Ah! Stop – remain tranquil! I remember," he went on, suddenly striking his forehead with a dramatic gesture, "the old owner of thees ranch was my cousin Tiburcio. Of a consequence, my friend, thees angel is my second cousin! Behold! I shall call there on the instant. I shall embrace my long-lost relation. I shall introduce my best friend, Don Pancho, who lofe her. I shall say, 'Bless you, my children,' and it is feenish! I go! I am gone even now! "

He started up and clapped on his hat, but Grey caught him by the arm.

"For Heaven's sake, Enriquez, be serious for once," he said, forcing him back into the chair. "And don't speak so loud. The foreman in the other room is an enthusiastic admirer of the girl. In fact, it is on his account that I am making these inquiries."

"Ah, the gentleman of the pantuflos, whose trousers will not remain! I have seen him, friend. But remain tranquil. The friend of my friend is ever the same as my friend! He is truly not enticing to the eye, but without doubt he will arrive a governor or a senator in good time. I shall gif to him my second cousin. It is feenish! I will tell him now! "

He attempted to rise, but was held down vigorously by Grey.

"I've half a mind to let you do it, and get chucked through the window for your pains," said the editor, with a half laugh. "Listen to me. This is a more serious matter than you suppose."

And Grey briefly recounted the incident of the mysterious attacks on Starbottle and Richards. As he proceeded he noticed, however, that the ironical light died out of Enriquez's eyes, and a singular thoughtfulness, unlike his usual precise gravity, came over his face. He twirled the ends of his penciled moustache – an unfailing sign of Enriquez's emotion.

"The same accident that arrive to two men as opposite as the gallant Starbottle and the excellent Richards shall not prove that it come from Ramierez, though they both were at the fonda," he said gravely. "The cause of it have not come today, nor yesterday, nor last week. The cause of it have arrive before there was any gallant Starbottle or excellent Richards; before there was any American in California – before you and I, my leetle brother, have lif! The cause happen first – two hundred years ago!"

The editor's start of incredulity was checked by the unmistakable sincerity of Enriquez's face. "It is so," he went on gravely. "It is an old story – it is a long story. I shall make him short – and new."

He stopped and lit a cigarette without changing his odd expression.

"It was when the padres first have the mission, and take the heathen and convert him – and save his soul. It was their business, you comprehend, my Pancho? The more heathen they convert, the more soul they save, the better business for their mission shop. But the heathen do not always wish to be convert; the heathen fly, the heathen skidaddle, the heathen will not remain, or will backslide. What will you do? So the holy fathers of those days make a little game. You do not of a possibility comprehend how the holy fathers of those days make a convert, my leetle brother?" he added gravely.

"No," said the editor.

"I shall tell to you. They take from the presidio five or six dragoons – you comprehend – the cavalry soldiers, and they pursue the heathen from his little hunt. When they cannot surround him and he fly, they catch him with the lasso, like the wild hoss. The lasso catches him around the neck; he is obliged to remain. Sometime he is strangle. Sometime he is dead, but the soul is save! You believe not, Pancho? I see you wrinkle the brow, you flash the eye; you like it not? Believe me, I like it not, neither, but all life it was savage in my country in those days, and the manner of saving souls was of no moment compared with the savings."

He shrugged, threw away his half-smoked cigarette, and went on.

"One time a padre who have the zeal excess if for the saving of soul, when he find a heathen young girl have escape the soldiers, he of himself have seize the lasso and flung it! He is lucky; he catch her – but look you! She stop not – she still fly! She not only fly, but of a surety she drag the good padre with her! He cannot loose himself, for his riata is fast to the saddle; the dragoons cannot help, for he is drag so fast. On the instant she have gone – and so have the padre. For why? It is not a young girl he have lasso, but the devil! You comprehend – it is a punishment, a retribution – he is feenish! And forever!

"For every year he must come back a spirit – on a spirit hoss – and swing the lasso, and make as if to catch the heathen. He is condemn ever to play his litde game; now there is no heathen more to convert, he catch what he can. My grandfadier have once seen him – it is night and a storm, and he pass by like a flash. My grandfather like it not – he is much dissatisfied. My uncle have seen him, too, but he make the sign of the cross, and the lasso have fall to the side, and my uncle have much gratification. A vaquero of my father and a peon of my cousin have both been picked up, lassoed, and dragged dead.

"Many people have died of him in the strangling. Sometimes he is seen. Sometime it is the woman only that one sees, sometime it is but the hoss. But ever somebody is dead – strangled. Of a truth, my friend, the gallant Starbotde and the ambitious Richards have just escaped! "

The editor looked curiously at his friend. There was not the slightest suggestion of irony in his tone or manner; nothing, indeed, but a sincerity and anxiety usually rare with his temperament. It struck Grey also that Saltillo's speech had litde of the odd Californian slang which was always a part of his imitative levity. He was puzzled.

"Do you mean to say that this superstition is well known?" he asked, after a pause.

"Among my people, yes."

"And do you believe in it? "

Enriquez was silent. Then he arose, and shrugged his shoulders. "Quien sabe? It is not more difficult to comprehend than your story."

He gravely put on his hat. With it he seemed to have put on his old levity. "Come, behold, it is a long time between drinks! Let us to the hotel and the barkeep, who shall give us the smash of brandy and the julep of mints before the lasso of Friar Pedro shall prevent us the swallow! Let us skid-dadle! "

Mr. Grey returned to the Clarion office in a much more satisfied condition of mind. Whatever faith he held in Enriquez's sincerity, for the first time since the attack on Colonel Starbottle he believed he had found a really legitimate journalistic opportunity in the incident. The legend and its singular coincidence with the outrages would make capital copy.

No names would be mentioned, yet even if Colonel Starbottle recognized his own adventure he could not possibly object to this interpretation of it. The editor had found that few people objected to being the hero of a ghost story or the favored witness of a spiritual manifestation. Nor could Richards find fault with this view of his own experience, hitherto kept a secret, so long as it did not refer to his relations with the fair Cota. Summoning Richards at once to his sanctum, Grey briefly repeated the story he had just heard and his purpose of using it. To his surprise, Richards' face assumed a seriousness and "It's a good story, Mr. Grey," he said awkwardly, "and I ain't sayin' it ain't mighty good newspaper stuff, but it won't do now. The whole mystery's up and the assailant found."

"Found! When? Why didn't you tell me before?" exclaimed Grey in astonishment.

"I didn't reckon ye were so keen on it," said Richards embarrassedly, "and – and – it wasn't my own secret altogether."

"Go on,"said the editor impatiently.

"Well," said Richards slowly, "ye see there was a fool that was sweet on Cota, and he allowed himself to be bedeviled by her to ride her cursed pink and yaller mustang. Naturally the beast bolted at once, but he managed to hang on by the mane for half a mile or so, until it took to buck-jumpin'. The first buck threw him clean into the road. It didn't stun him, yet when he tried to rise, the first thing he knowed he was grabbed from behind and half choked by somebody. He was held so tight he couldn't turn, but he managed to get out his revolver and fire two shots under his arm. The grip held on for a minute, and then loosened, and the some-thin' slumped down on top o' him, but he managed to work himself around. And then – what do you think he saw? That that hoss with two bullet holes in his neck, still grippin' his coat collar and neck-handkerchief in his teeth! Yes, sir! the rough that attacked Colonel Starbottle, the villain that took me from behind when I was leanin' agin that cursed fence, was that same God-forsaken, hell-invented pinto hoss!"

In a flash of recollection the editor remembered his own experience, and the singular scuffle outside the stable door of the jonda. Undoubtedly Cota had saved him from a similar attack.

"But why not tell this story with the other?" said the editor, returning to his first idea. "It's tremendously interesting."

"It won't do," said Richards, with dogged resolution.

"Why?"

"Because, Mr. Grey – that fool was myself!"

"You! Again attacked!"

"Yes," said Richards, with a darkening face. "Again attacked, and by the same hoss – Cota's hoss! Whether Cota was or was not knowin' its tricks she was furious at me for killin' it – and it's all over 'twixt me and her."

"Nonsense," said the editor impulsively. "She will forgive you. You didn't know your assailant was a horse when you fired. Look at the attack on you in the road!"

Richards shook his head with dogged hopelessness. "It's no use, Mr. Grey. I oughter guessed it was a hoss then – thar was nothin' else in that corral! No, Cota's already gone away back to San Jose, and I reckon the Ramierezes got scared of her and packed her off. So, on account of its bein' her hoss, and what happened betwixt me and her, you see my mouth is shut."

"And the columns of the Clarion too," said the editor, with a sigh.

"I know it's hard, sir, but it's better so. I've reckoned mebbe she was a little crazy, and since you've told me that Spanish yarn, it mout be that she was sort o' playin' she was that priest and trained that mustang ez she did."

After a pause, something of his old self came back into his blue eyes as he sadly hitched up his braces and passed them over his broad shoulders. "Yes, sir, I was a fool, for we've lost the only bit of real sensation news that ever came in the way of the Clarion."

= = =

About The Editor

Shirrel Rhoades is a former publisher of Marvel Comics. Also, he has held executive positions with Reader's Digest, Scholastic, and Harper's. And he has served as fiction editor for The Saturday Evening Post. For 17 years Mr. Rhoades was a senior faculty member at New York University's Center for Publishing. He loves a good mystery.

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