Giving a Young Man His Chance

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

A YOUNG man in Lowell, Massachusetts, wants to know where he can get reliable information in regard to Southern and Western cities and the business positions there. He has a family of children, and limited capital.

Right at the start I must say that getting a job, or a business opening of any kind, is a personal, individual matter. There are no general rules that point the way. If a man has $1000 to invest at 5 or 6 per cent., there is a certain science in it, and it does not take a great deal of expert knowledge to set down a few rules that will keep the $1000 fairly safe. But when a man puts into business not only a fair sum of money, but his time, education, training, and enthusiasm, he expects a great deal more than 5 or 6 per cent., and it is a much more complicated problem.

Advertise in the Newspapers

WHAT might be called conservative investments are made pretty much the country over, and you can judge them all by recognized, well known, and simple standards. This young man wants to go into business in a Southern or Western town, and there are thousands of them. To jeep in close touch and with business conditions and opportunities in all of these places would be a superhuman matter.

But there are ways of getting information. I should say that one of the best ways to start would be to insert a small advertisement in one of several newspapers that run what are called "business columns." State just what you want, how much capital you have, and where you want to go. Then, when replies begin to come in, ask your local bank to write to a bank in the town from which the letters have come, to learn the standing of the parties who have written.

Another method is to write to towns in the section of the section of the country which appeals to you, for such information as the local boards of trade are in a position to furnish. There is hardly an inhabited spot in this country so small that it does not have its own Board of Trade or Chamber of Commerce, ready to help the newcomer in the business field. Of course, excessive enthusiasms of a local nature must be discounted a little.

Then, too, every railroad has an industrial agency which will gladly furnish full information about business opportunities along its line.

How the Federal Government Helps

BUT most important of all is the information that various departments of the Federal Government furnish freely and in great detail. For information concerning any conceivable branch of farming, the Department of Agriculture will send full instruction as to the best section of the country for that particular crop, complete details as to methods, also instructions as to marketing, and now, I believe, even general information as regards financing the proposition.

If the man in Lowell wants to know about any particular industry, manufacturing or commercial, he should write to the Department of Commerce, whose many bureaus constitute a vast storehouse of business knowledge. Of course, the government can not answer a vague question like "Where is there a business opening in the West for me?" But if any citizen asks, "What about the pottery industry in Oklahoma City? Is there nay chance there for me?" I am willing to assert that this random question could and would be willingly answered by some bureau in the Department of Commerce.

Then, too, there are private investigating and statistical organizations a-plenty which, for a modest fee, will make an exhaustive report on any industry in any particular place.

Finally, is this young man sure he has exhausted the possibilities of the old and conservative section where he now lives?

Personally, I do not believe it. People are making first-rate successes in almost every branch of farming and industries in all parts of conservative old New England, and they had no pull, either. It is just as easy to get out of a rut and make a success in Massachusetts as anywhere else.

One Minute with the Editor

Unheard-of Millionaires

EVERY once in a while some worn-looking old gentleman drops dead in the street—a nice old man who looks as if he had never had quite enough to eat. And when they look under his mattress at home they find five or six million dollars. Next week we print a fascinating article by Burton J. Hendrick on "Unknown Millionaires."

And Shorty

ALSO, the inimitable Shorty McCabe desires us to announce that he had been unavoidably detained this week, but will positively be present with us one week from to-day.

The Worm King

By WALT MASON

AT Indian Orchard, Massachusetts State, one William Lee devised a scheme that's great. A fire department engine there he drives, and on his stipend—and his worm farm—thrives. One day he read about a hermit chap, where North Dakota ornaments the map, who made a living with his gun and rod, and from the streams pulled catfish, trout, and cod (?); he kept his fish-worms in a hollow fir, wherein they thrived and always ready were.

When William Lee perused this artless tale, he framed a plan that promised lots of kale. "When people fish," he mused in thoughtful terms, "they have to have a good supply of worms. Nine men in then don;t like to dig the same; if I sold worms, they would applaud my game."

And fifty thousand thrifty wrigglers dwell upon his acre farm and pay him well. The anglers seek his place, from far and near, when comes the fishing season of the year. They buy the worms, and pay once cent apiece, and say they hope his luck will never cease. This year his income from his fish-worm pen will reach a least five hundred iron men. When city people seek the sylvan glades to catch some fish, they hate to carry spades to dig out bait—no fun in that they see, and so they seek the farm of William Lee.

"Worm-farming pays," said William, t'other day, when he had sent some customers away. "When first the plan occurred to me one morn, I planted worms as you would paint your corn—dropped them in rows, without back-breaking toil; and how they thrived in that dark, fertile soil! The earth I dampened, and rich loam I throw upon the rows, which is the thing to do. There they increased, replenishing the earth: they breed too fast to keep the tale of birth. Three kinds of worms are used as anglers' bait, red, brown, and white. The latter's out of date; the fish destroy it, for it isn't tough; I grow the red and brown—they're good enough.

"Worms help the soil and make the green things grow; they loosen earth because they wriggle so. The surface of the garden should be damp, then near the top of the festive worms will camp. Then without trouble you can scoop them out, worms most attractive, corpulent, and stout. Each day I feed them—and they like to eat—with good rich water syrup has made sweet; pr greasy refuse from the tallow store fills them with bliss and makes them long for more. As they approach the time when they;ll grace hooks and feed the fishes in the babbling brooks, they're fed skimmed milk, which makes them firmer grow, and gives the color that good anglers know. If one could do it on a larger scale," said William Lee, "there'd be no end of kale."

Is Dandruff Permanent?

By EDWIN F. BOWERS, M.D.

"WHAT causes dandruff, and can it be driven off the premises?"

That obstinate, irritating, and intractable condition which causes dandruff is due to a disorder of the oil-producing glands of the skin. This alters the character of the secretion, and develops either an oily or a scaly eruption. In the oily form the condition usually extends down the face as well, and makes the nose, forehead, and cheeks "shiny" or grimy-looking. Very frequently there is also a mild degree of inflammation in the sweat-glands, causing intense itching.

In the "dry" variety the secretion forms scales, which powder themselves liberally over the clothing and toilet accessories.

Caused by a Germ?

MANY have claimed that dandruff is a by=product of the activities of certain germs. While this has not been definitely accepted by the medical profession, there is an almost overwhelming amount of evidence in its favor. For the insanitary methods of caring for hair-brushes and combs, practised in even the most "sanitary" barber or hair-dressing shops, are undoubtedly the chief of all the causes of dandruff. There is little or not attempt made to sterilize these most admirable of all disease carriers, they being given merely the customary "wipe" before being laid by in anticipation of the next victim.

Also, for some unknown but esoteric law inherent in the cult of barbers, whenever a feeble attempt is made to comb the superfluous hairs and dandruff out of a brush, invariably the gentle knight of the scissors holds it carefully—bristles up and back down—so that whatever germs and skin debris the implement may have accumulated on the last patient may be preserved for the next.

There should be a national law requiring barbers to have on hand two sets of brushes and combs and a jar of antiseptic solution, so that each customer my have the advantage of a sterilized set of hairdressing tools. This, I am convinced, would do more to stamp out dandruff than all other measures combined.

You Must Be Sure of the Variety

DANDRUFF also accompanies a "rundown" condition—and is especially prominent in tuberculosis, anemia, general debility, and disorders of the alimentary canal. In fact, anything that lowers the physical tone favors the development of dandruff.

But the cure's the rub—and be it noted, in passing, that it may require considerable rubbing.

First, scrupulous cleanliness is essential. All crusts and scales must be removed, and kept removed. Thorough and frequent shampoos with tar soap, tincture of green soap, crude oil, or some of the proprietary preparations containing salicylic acid, cocoanut or olive oil, or white of egg, are excellent. Massage is useful.

If the system is depleted, and appropriate and judicious amount of fresh air, nutritious food, and sleep are imperative. Also possibly a tonic, as recommended by the family physician.

A thorough brushing of the hair and scalp, morning and night, stimulates a healthy circulation of blood in the sweat-glands.

For "dry dandruff" a little pure olive oil or refined petroleum is very effective, if rubbed well and thoroughly into the cuticle.

For the oily variety of dandruff an astringent lotion of quinine, cantharides, resorcin, and alcohol is helpful. Rainwater, or distilled water, in which sulphur has been dissolved to saturation, applied daily, has also given good results.

It is very essential that a distinction be made between the two varieties of dandruff, for the treatment which would favorably influence one would be directly contra0indicated in the other. If any doubt exists, the matter should be referred to a competent specialist.

If dandruff be permitted to go unchecked the next stage may be baldness. Dandruff can be "driven off the premises"; but it requires pluck, perseverance, and perspicacity to drive it.

The Man Who Gambles

By H. ADDINGTON BRUCE

ON first thought, it would seem that there could be only one answer to the question. Why do men gamble? Men gamble because they want to get rich quick. But the right answer is by no means contained in so easy and simple a formula. It can readily be shown that in many cases the money motive is an entirely secondary one, and that in many others it really does not enter in at all.

Not so long ago there died a millionaire who was notorious for his gambling propensities. His name was John W. Gates. Gambling seemed as necessary to his existence as eating and drinking.

A story is told of his having wagered and lost $10,000 on a single stroke in a golf game at which he was merely a casual spectator. On another occasion, when passing through a Southern city, he was urged by some friends to remain overnight and join them in a poker party.

"If you stay," one of them promised, "you'll have a chance to win $35,000 that we are ready to put into the game."

Quick as a flash the reply came:

"I can't stay, but I tell you what I'll do. I'll match you heads or tails for the thirty-five."

History abounds in instances of reckless wagers of enormous sums. At a game of whist played by four wealthy enthusiasts, one participant lost $150,000 after thirty-six hours of continuous play.

The Two Classes of Men that Gamble

ON the other hand, as many of my readers doubtless know from personal experience, the card-table can exercise fully as strong an attraction when the stakes played for are so small as to be negligible. Ralph Nevin, one of the most entertaining historians of gambling, tells the story of a venerable old north-country English-woman who, because she looked red-eyed and weary, was thought by a visitor to be suffering from a heavy cold.

"Eh, lad," she reassured him, "I'se gat na cauld. Some friends kem from Kendal that love a game o' whist dearly, and I'se been carding the morn and e'en, the e'en and the morn, twa days."

And how did you come out?"

"Eh," the old woman replied, "I mun have won a shilling."

Quite evidently, to this simple old lady, as to the millionaire John W. Gates, there was some strange fascination in gambling, altogether apart from the amount of money at stake. Gates certainly did not gamble because he "needed the money," nor did the old woman gamble to get rich quick. Yet both enjoyed gambling.

Which brings us one definite step forward in our answer to the question why men gamble. They gamble, not simply win money, in many cases not primarily to win money, but because of a certain peculiar satisfaction they experience when gambling.

Moreover, as everybody who has gambled will realize if he does a little careful self-analysis this satisfaction consists largely in the establishing of a state of mental tension which contrasts pleasurably with the emotional dead level of every-day life and which causes one for the time being to forget the humdrum and

In our own land, as any police official will tell you, gambling is most prevalent among those two extremes of society, the hard-working poor and the idle rich. The poor find life monotonous because of the routine nature of their grinding occupations. The idle rich find life monotonous because they have no occupation at all. And in the case both of the poor and of the idle rich—as of all others who show a tendency to gamble excessively—it is noticeable that there usually is a lamentable inability to obtain enjoyment by using the mind in beneficial ways.

But the Chinese, whose lives are cast in an iron mold of routine, are far more addicted to gambling than are Americans or Europeans. "Gambling in China is universal," a recent traveler reminds us. "Hucksters at the roadside are provided with cup and saucer, and the clicking of dice is heard at every corner. A boy with but two cash prefers to risk their loss on the throw of a die, to simply buying a cake without trying the chance of getting it for nothing." Even greater gamblers than the Chinese are those savage races on whom civilization has as yet made no imprint.

Here we come to another point essential to a correct understanding of the gambling habit. Gambling, to a savage, has a distinctly religious significance. The savage gambles because he believes that all his affairs are regulated by unseen deities, and he seeks to determine by the outcome of his bets whether he stands well or badly with these deities. Gambling consequently is to the savage a sort of divination, and he often uses for it the same tools that he uses for divination.

Most Gamblers are Superstitious

THE savage is impelled to gamble, both because he has nothing else with which to occupy his mind, and because he is extremely superstitious. There can be no question that this same superstitious streak lingers to some extent in the most civilized of men, and that it plays a part in the making of the civilized gambler.

Modern gamblers, as a matter of fact, are proverbial for their superstitious notions. Like the savage, they have their unseen deities, which they worship under the abstract name of Luck. Like the savage, too, they have all manner of curious rites and customs to persuade Luck to smile on them.

For this purpose they carry the foot of a rabbit, a cherished coin, or a "lucky stone." To propitiate Luck they will go far out of their way to touch a hump-backed man before engaging in any gambling enterprise. When, at cards, a gambler is steadily losing, he will ceremoniously walk around his chair three times, in the hope of appeasing the Luck that is frowning on him. At every turn of the wheel, throw of the dice, or deal of the cards, the gambler perceives the all-powerful influence of Luck.

Gamblers share, further, the savage's desire to establish beyond dispute the fact that Luck is with them, and is staying with them. This it is, perhaps more than anything else, that impels so many of them to gamble at every opportunity, and to persist in gambling even after a long series of disastrous reverses.

They feel, consciously or subconsciously, that they are deserving men, and that Luck will vet reward them in proportion to their merits. In this blind optimism they gamble to the often bitter end.

The gambling habit, then, has as one of its roots superstition. Just as it is one mode of satisfying man's instinctive craving to escape from the monotonous, so also it is an expression of man's instinctive veneration and fear of the unseen and the unknown. There is still another factor entering in to account for its universality and vitality. It helps men to satisfy their instinctive yearning for achievement.

Oddly enough, though gamblers believe so firmly in Luck, whenever Luck smiles on them they glow, at least inwardly, with almost as much self-satisfaction as if they had brought about the desired result entirely by their own skill.

Let me quote a remarkable statement by a man who made a close analysis of his emotions while playing roulette:

"What was my experience? This chiefly—that I was distinctly conscious of partially attributing to some defect or stupidity in my own mind every venture on an issue that proved a failure; that when I succeeded I raked up my gains with a half impression that I had been a clever fellow and had made a judicious stake, just as if I had really made a skilful move at chess; and that when I failed I thought to myself, 'Ah, I knew all the time I was going wrong in selecting that number, and yet I was fool enough to stick to it,' which was of course a pure illusion.

"But this illusion followed me through-out. I had a sense of deserving success when I succeeded, or of having failed through my own wilfulness or wrong-headed caprice when I failed. I could see the same flickering impression around me. One man, who was a great winner, evidently thought well of his own sagacity. But what quite convinced me of the strength of this curious fallacy of the mind was that, when I heard that the youngest of my companions had actually come off a slight whiner, my respect for his shrewdness instantly rose. and I became conscious of obscure self-reproaches for not having selected numbers as judiciously as he."

How to Keep Men from Gambling

IN the last analysis, accordingly, the gambling impulse derives its strength from a variety of elements, and from elements which are not artificial, but are part and parcel of human nature. This being so, it is absolutely useless to try to put an end to gambling by the enactment of prohibitory laws.

The facts of history, indeed, show that, while it is quite possible to legislate one specific form of gambling out of existence, another will ere long take its place. With the suppression of "hazard" in England, betting on the races became more popular than ever before. On this side of the Atlantic, "policy" was killed, but to-day the "baseball pool" has acquired almost the proportions of the policy evil.

Is there, then, no remedy? Decidedly there is. It is to be found, not in stricter legislation, but in better education—in education of a sort that, beginning in the earliest years of life, will train men to find healthier vents for the instincts that at present so often gain expression in gambling. Inspire a man, from his youth up, with a really ardent interest in some pleasurable occupation of a worth-while sort, and you can depend on it he will not be a gambler.

That Movie Queen Notion

By JOSEPH ERNEST

Illustrations by Harvey Emrich

LISTEN, this is the first time ever I gave anybody the straight dope about that movie business. Bartolomeo thinks I gave it up for him, and I just naturally want him to go on dreaming; and Mommer got so stuck on the idea of having an actress in the family that it would have handed her too much of a jolt to be told the square-toed truth. Say, men are all foolish, and mothers was raised when the world was a lot younger than it is now; but when you've got a pal that put her hair up same time as you did, she knows when you're one shy on the flush.

Remember when you and me had the blue-and-white middy jackets and I wore my hair in two braids? It's away back now, when we was young—more than a year ago. The first night I saw Bartolomeo McGinty, I went to the Tuxedo movies on Fourteenth with Susie Casals from Harlem, and we had it all framed up that we was going to be movie queens. Don't it beat all, some days, how everything happens all to once?

Outside the Tuxedo there was a big poster with a portrait on it, and a piece in print that said, "Lovely Delia Bloom in to-day's feature." And she sure was lovely as a peach in the film we seen, Delia was, so that you got a lump in your throat just to look at her.

When we got out we stopped and give her portrait the once-over. I says to Susie, "Ain't Delia the little doll?" And Susie says, "All right, all right! But she ain't got nothing much on you." And then she looks again, and stares at me, and she says, "You and her might be twins, Vic!" So I says, "Who are you guying?" But I knowed there was something to it, except Delia had it all over me, the way she could throw her eyes about. And I had a hit on her when it came to noses, I had. Delia's was pug.

Then Susie tells me that she's going to quit stenography and go into the movie business herself, because she was sick of getting up every morning the same time and going to the same dinky old office. She seen a piece in the paper where it said a guy gave lessons for ten dollars, and she was going to jump in forty strong and land a job; and then she was going to walk down Broadway and pull a face at every typewriter she could see.

"I'll go in with you," I says. "I got eight dollars saved, and I guess I can raise the rest some place, if I have to hock my lavallyer chain."

Sue says that would be bully, because them agent guys was all down in the dope with red foot-notes, but if we both went together they couldn't pull nothing fresh.

JUST while we was lamping Delia's portrait and fixing what salary we would ask to start, a big young sport in a white hat walks up and gives Sue the high sign. She moves over and talks to him a spell, leaving me to stare at the poster. I could see she wasn't going to introduce me, and it didn't worry me a whole lot, for, although he looked good and handsome as ready money, the boy had guinea sticking out all over him.

But pretty soon his nobs stares right at me and says to Sue, "Who's your baby friend?" So I had to turn around and meet him, and ask how things was in the push-cart business.

He opens his eyes at that, but he says:

"I got no push-carts yet. But I got two fruit-stands in Little Italy, and another at the end of your street in Greenwich. I see you 'most every day on the stoop," he says.

So we all three walks along to the subway. Mr. Bartolomeo McGinty, which was his name, talks mostly to Sue, but all the time he's looking at me. Peeking up under the brim of my hat, I could see his cheek shade from brown to blue high up on the side where he began to shave; and one corner of his eye, silvery bright, with the long black lashes curling out from it. And every other minute he'd take a slant sideways at me, quick and away. Pretty soon I felt the back of my neck melting and running down between my shoulder-blades, and my knees acted like their springs was broken. I was scared stiff, and I didn't know why, because he wasn't nothing but a guinea boy.

"Ain't you coming my way?" asks Sue, when he stops at Union Square.

"Not to-night," says Bart. "I got business in Greenwich Village."

So Sue she shakes hands with him like his fingers was red-hot, and beats it for the train to the uptown dump where she fancied she was living. Bart and me walks back together, not saying very much; but every time I took a flash under my hat he was looking at me, so I got scared some more, and never knowed which way we was walking till we come slap into the wharfs on West Street.

At that I wanted to go home; but he says no, he wanted to talk a piece. And somehow I had to go along. First thing I knowed, we was off the street, and it was dark as pitch all round: nothing to see but the stars, and a gleam of black water in front of us, and rows of tiny lamps away across on the New Jersey side. It was a private clock for one of them wop steamship companies. And we stood there and looked at each other, till I could see Bart's eyes burning black, with that bright pearly glint in the corner. And every time I tried to swallow, I bit on my heart.

"Kid," he says, kinda hoarse, "you got a fellow?"

"Sure," I says. "I got five or six, waiting up home now. That is, if they ain't got tired and quit."

"But you got no steady?"

"They're all steady," I tells him. "Wish some of 'em wasn't quite so darned steady. But Mommer says to treat 'em all alike."

"I guess that's good enough," he says, and moves up closer.

I tried to tell him I gotta go home, but all I got out was a gasp. And then Bart whips both his big arms around me and lifts me off my feet, and kisses me; and his lips was red-hot, if his fingers wasn't. After that he puts his ring on my finger, a big fat signet; and he made me take hold of some dago charm on his watch-guard and swear to be true to him till I died.

"If you ever forget it," he says, "you'll die pretty sudden."

"I might as well tell you," I says, "that I'm going to be a movie queen."

"You're not if I know it," says Bart, and laughs.

"You ain't got me yet," I says, and we walks along to the corner of my street, not speaking another word—except at the last Bart tells me he's at Greek Joe's soda fountain on West Street 'most every night at seven.

When I got home, there was Sammy Lehane loafing on the step at the entrance.

"The boys has all quit long ago," he says. "Your mother's laying for you in the parlor, Vic."

"I got an alibi all ready," I tells him. "As for you and the rest of that bunch of boobs, I wish you'd stay away now and then."

Sammy he gets mad at this.

"I seen you with that big guy at the corner," he says. "What'd your mother say if she knowed you was around town with a dago what runs a peanut stand?"

"G'wan home," I says. "He runs three fruit-stands, he does, and he's no more a dago than you are; and if he was a dago, he'd still look a sight more like a man than you do."

And I run past him upstairs.

MOM didn't have much to say at first; but after a spell she opens out and asks where I was all the evening. I says I been to the movies. So Mom says it don't take all that time to see the movies, and I says I stopped on the stairs to talk to Sammy Lehane. So that's all right. But Mom thinks a piece, and then she says:

"Victoria, you let me know of you talking to any fellow what you don't bring right along here," she says, "and you'll hear something drop. You can have all the friends you want right to home, and I'll never say a word—not if half Greenwich Village is in the parlor every night, burning gas and putting the furniture on the bum. But don't you try to run anything on the side, my girl. And you needn't toss your head at me, neither—throwing your skirts about like you was a woman. You lack a whole lot of being growed up yet."

She said a lot more, but I was away in my room and climbing into bed by that time, and I didn't get it good.

Next day Susie and me goes uptown and digs out the guy that advertised. He was a shiny-faced fellow called Carmion, sitting in a farm office with a ratty old screen and a crazy electric lamp, and a movie camera on three legs. When he seen me he jumps like he was shot.

"Gee, I thought you was somebody I knew," he says. "You heard tell of Delia Bloom, didn't you? Well, I made Delia, you know. I thought at first you was her. I can make anybody that's got talent, I can. But I don't give no more lessons just now—there's too many inter'fering people snooping around these days, that don't want a white man to get a honest living."

He says he'll put us in the books and let us know if anything turns up. Susie offers him ten dollars, but he wouldn't take no money that day, on account of the snoopers, he said. He cussed them good, whoever they was, and poured out a drink from a bottle on the table; and pretty soon his face got so shiny that he looked like he'd been buttered while he was hot.

"I can make your fortune," he tells me, "just like I made Delia Bloom's. You don't need no lessons. I can see from here that you got talent, y'understand, and I'm ready to sign you up right now if you like."

He gets busy and writes an agreement for me to give him half of my first year's salary, which he tells me was nothing because I couldn't expect to get into the big money in less than a year. I signs it with his fountain pen, and he says to have a drink on it. But Susie gives me the wink, and we beat it.

WELL, all that week it seemed 'most every night that something took me past Greek Joe's on West Street. Bart would come out of the soda joint and follow me up. Some nights he was busy and couldn't stop long, but other nights we went to the wop dock and sat on a ledge, with our feet dangling right over the water.

The water was like a big lake of ink with dark buildings all around like shapes cut out of black paper and pasted on the sky; and away out on the river the boats passed like ghosts carrying lanterns, hooting to each other kinda mysterious and mournful. But here and there was one all lit up like a dance-hall, and the shine of them came across to us on the water, till we could see the light in each other's eyes.

Was we happy? Say, happy don't begin to tell about me! And then you see what Bart pulls on me after a week of it. It was a very black night, and I could just see his face like a dab of kalsomine against the wall.

"Looka here, Vic," he says, taking his arm away. "I gotta quit loafing around here nights."

For gordsake!" I whispers.

"It's all right, honey," he tells me. "I'll figure up some way to see you pretty soon. But I just bought some push-carts; and if I don't look out for myself them fellows I'm paying to run them will leave me about enough profits to paint the wheels with. I gotta be up early an watch my business."

"Bart, for the love of heaven," I says, "tell me it ain't no back-down? You're not breaking anything to me that mean little way?"

"Per Bacco!" says Bart, using a wop cuss like he sometimes did. "You got me dead wrong, kiddo. Looka here—gimme your hand."

I did, and he puts it on a great lump in his vest pocket. I asks what is it, and I seen his teeth gleam in the dark.

"Well," he says, grinning, "it's just dough."

He puts his arm round me again, and I grabs his hand and holds it tight there, for I could feel may heart beating clear down to my shoes.

"It's just dough," says Bart. "You

Page 5

"No," I says. "But listen, Bart, why can't you call round some day and see Pop, and then you could come whenever you felt like it? Mommer's always picking on me at home."

"It ain't none of their business, pet," he whispers. "I got to fix my business my own way."

"But I couldn't never marry a man they didn't even see," I says.

"Marry?" laughs Bart. "Who's talking about getting married? I never said I was going to marry nobody."

AT that I threw his arm off, and got up and stood over him in the dark. I'd rumpled all his curls, and they hung over his forehead as he laughed up at me.

"If I had a gun you wouldn't live to say that again!" I tells him, for I was mad enough to have killed him, he looked so handsome and hateful. "Didn't you make me swear," I says, "to be true till I died?"

"Sure, my baby," he answers, and laughs some more. "But you didn't hear me swear nothing, did you? I'm a business man, I am. I ain't no cradle-robber, and I don't promise nothing till I'm sure."

"But we gotta get married sometime," I says, "or what will I do?"

"You gotta get home sometime," he answers, "or you'll get licked." And he jumps up and dusts his clothes with the handkerchief he'd been sitting on. "As to getting married, that depends on a whole lot of things—particular on how you behave. You know, you got a lot of fool ideers, Vic. I don't like that movie queen notion, I don't. No more I don't like decent girls using lip-sticks and rubbing the red off before their mommer sees them."

And then I burst out hollering; and when we got to the street I breaks away from him and beats it for home.

When I got home my eyes was all red, and I was late. The boys had faded, and Mom and Pop was sitting in the parlor alone. Mom says:

"Right here is where this thing has got to be put a stop to. I'm going to know where you been, my lady."

I says I hadn't been no place at all, and burst out hollering again. I felt such a boob! Mom turns on Pop.

"It ain't enough for her," she says, "that she has half the best boys in Greenwich sitting around here nights, but she must run about the streets hunting more, with her high-heeled shoes, and her hat all to one side like a bad woman. The boys ain't good enough for her—she must fool with a guinea that runs a ice-coal wood cellar in Carmine Street."

"He don't run no cellar," I says—for Bart had never mentioned no cellar. "He's an employer, and he's got money in the bank."

"You can't fool me," says Mom, getting madder—"when I seen his name to it with my own eyes: Bartolomeo McGinty—for gawdsake, as though he was white Irish! Didn't I know his father, Antonio Frezza, what was killed blasting rock uptown? And what's more," she says, "I want to know where you come in, my fine lady, to be hiding rouge-sticks about the place. I found one under her bed yesterday! And how do you come to be wearing a ring hung round your neck, that I don't know nothing about who give it to you? Oh, I'm well on to you! If your father ain't man enough to handle you, I'll take a contract to do it myself."

Pop he runs a hand over his bald spot and looks at me kinda bashful.

"How about it, Vic?" he says.

But I says that I'll find some way to fix Sammy Lehame for squealing, the little skunk; and I says I wasn't going to stand for having everybody always picking on me, and that I was going out and work for the movies. And I slings off to bed. But I didn't get to sleep. I laid awake and hated everything in the room.

Well, Mom and Pop went to it, out there. Pop said it wasn't none of his affair; that if Mom couldn't control me she oughta take shame to herself, a big woman like her. And he allowed that if it was a boy it might be different, because he could lick a boy. Mom says:

"I suppose you think that lets you out; but it don't. You gotta find that young lady a job, so she won't want to be running around evenings with no wops."

"Yes, and first thing you know," says Pop, "some guy in a skyscraper office will tell her how pretty she is, and that's the last you'll see of her. Home's the best place for a fool girl that's pretty like she is. She ain't got good sense yet."

I UP and shut the door then. A long time I laid awake. I tried to hate Bart, but I couldn't do it like I wanted to. Only I'd have felt better if I could have disfigured him a bit, so no other girl would ever look at him as long as he lived.

Then I heard Mom and Pop coming up the passage to bed, and he was telling her not to worry, it would be all right; and Mom blew her nose and didn't say nothing. I felt like something heavy dropped on my chest, and I wanted to get up and grab them both, and tell them I was sorry I was such a wicked sinner, and that I would try to be a better daughter. But they'd went in and shut the door, and I couldn't knock on it, because I went on tiptoe and tried, and my hand wouldn't knock. So I tiptoes back to bed in the dark, but not feeling very good.

Pretty soon I hear a step and the door opens a bit, and it was Pop. He puts his head in by inches like he was afraid, and whispers, "Vic, you ain't asleep?" I seen by the streak of light from the passage how gray he was getting round the ears. He comes in and sits on the bed, and asks was I worrying about anything serious. And I grabbed his hand in the dark and kissed it, and I says no, I wasn't worrying, except that I was stuck on a fellow that wasn't worth caring about, not a nickel; and it served me right for being a fool.

"It ain't so long since, Vic," says Pop, "but I could come in here and play with you, and never even ask if you was undressed. Queer to think I can't do it no more! It's like you wasn't my little girl, but some other young woman that's come to stop over with us. Life's no end of a queer stunt, Vic."

I wanted to holler so much I daresn't open my mouth, and he goes on:

"You know, Vic, when you wasn't but an hour old I went out into Hudson Street,—at night it was,—and I looked up at the stars, and I swore to God I would work till my back broke, but you should have silks to wear, and servants to wait on you, and everything the finest in the land. And I done my best, girlie, but I'm still in the same bum flat, and your mother and me's getting no younger. 'Stead of having everything fixed up for you to the queens taste, you gotta hit the world and hustle for yourself, and take your chances. I been a failure, Vic, but I got no grouch for myself. There's still one thing that would make me feel it was worth while living, and that's to see you a good, happy woman. And there's one thing that would be bitter as death, and that's if any harm come to you—"

His voice got kinda shaky, and he stammered till he looked like a little boy behind his whiskers; so I slips my arm round his neck and tells him its all right, that I ain't a fool no more, because my heart was broken, and I got experience, and knowed life wasn't no cinch. I told him I was going to be a movie star, and never love any man again, except him. And at last he pats me on the shoulder, and says he knowed all along it was all right; and he beats it back to bed.

THE very next afternoon I acted in the movies! It was as sudden as that, because I guess if I hadn't done something quick I'd have gone batty. I got a letter from the shiny-faced guy Carmion, and slapped on some rouge and went to see him. He took me uptown, calling on the way for two high-balls.

"I gotta have me talking-cap on," he says, "because I'm going to put you right over. I made Delia Bloom, don't forget, and I'll make you."

In the movie company's office there was a thin man with a mop of curly yellowish

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Carmion bangs his fist on the table and says, "Take a slant at her," he says, "and then see if you can tell me I got no goods to deliver."

The thin guy he looks at me, and then at Carmion, and first crack out of the box he asks me what kind of a paper I signed. So I tells him, and he says to Carmion to table it.

"What for?" asks Carmion. "Do you want her or don't you? That's what I'm here to find out."

"I ain't arguing," replies the thin guy. "I'm telling you to table that snide contract, or nothing doing—not if the business was closing down for want of her."

So Carmion lugs out the paper, and the thin guy gives it the once-over, and laughs, and tears it in little pieces. Then he pulls a ten-spot and throws it to Carmion across the table.

"Now," he says, "you get scarce. That'll be all of your rake-off."

"Looka here, Marshall," says Carmion. "You ain't acting folksy. Friends don't pull that stuff."

"Get t'hell out of here," shouts Marshall. "You know what you was canned for."

He puts his hand on the 'phone, and looks Carmion hard in the eye; and Carmion he gets cold round the ankles, and his talking-cap don't seem to do him no good. When he'd went out, Marshall turns to me.

"If you want a job," he says, "you can have five dollars a day for a try-out, and more to come—except I hear of you talking to that toad again. If I do, you get canned and I write and knock you to your folks, see? Want to start now?" And I says: "You betcha!"

SO he hits on some bells and brings in a whole bunch of people. This guy Marshall seemed to get ideas so fast you could see him jump when they hit him. He danced around like pop-corn and run his fingers through his celery-top, and he wouldn't let nobody else have a word in the say-so.

"Wilkins, you gotta get busy," he says to a sawed-off guy that looked like he'd lost his last friend. "We want a bang-up serial for this kid to double Delia Bloom in—call it "Delicia's Double' or some punk like that, and give it lots of red fire. I want the first dope Monday."

"Monday!" yells little Misery, clapping his hands to his head. "Ain't I got the 'Cinches of Celia' to finish yet?"

"Who d'ya think you are, Augustus Thomas or William Shakespeare?" shouts Marshall, waving his arms. "I said Monday! Here, Alice," he says to a girl with her face all painted black and white, "take the kid along and scrub that color off her. Give her some dark powder and a line on the ingenoo make-up. We'll try her out on some of the rough stuff in the 'Cinches' and save Delia Bloom's temper."

Well, before my head stopped swimming I was dressed and rushed into a big glass barn like a tomato house, and they shoved me into some scenery that seemed to be all on fire, and half blinded me with smoke. In front a guy with a camera worked to beat the band; and Marshall jumped about like a cat on cinders.

"That's right," he yells. "If she don't act natural, scare her stiff. Now tear off another twenty of that, Jimmee!"

Just when I thought I would faint, a big actor with a ax breaks in, and he carries me out. After that they dropped me about twenty feet on to a net, and next they tied me to the end of a bed with a gag in my mouth, and almost yanked the hair off of me, one of them. I tell you, it ain't no pipe, being an ingenoo.

But at night, when I got home, you should have seen the shlemozzel. Sam Lehane and all the other boys was there, raising Cain, and Mom as proud and happy as a cat full of cream, telling the neighbors that I'd always showed talent from a child; and that she wasn't surprised, as talent had always ran in her family. Only Pop, he didn't say much.

It went along like that for ten days at the movie works. Sometimes they'd hang me up by a rope from a building, and sometimes they'd take me in a auto to New Jersey and tie me to a railroad track; and once they dragged me through a mud-hole that they made special, letting on it was a quicksand. And Marshall says I done fine and was the gamest ever.

WHEN I'd drew some money I bought me some kid shoes and some silk stockings with diamond clocks up the front, and I used a lip-stick right in front of Mommer and she never cracked nothing. I had a dandy military suit too, and you betcha the girls around home was some jealous. But every night I went past Greek Joe's and seen nobody, and I came right back and mostly went to bed and cried. And Mom says I was getting good sense at last.

It was one day while we was doing "Delicia's Double," and I was running

"You're not going to see me any more, Mr. Marshall. I got married to my Gerard this morning."

"If you can't think up nothing better than that, Delia," says Marshall, grinning kinda sickly, "I'll get back to my work. That joke had paresis in the dark ages of the one-reel chase."

"But it's so," says Delia Bloom. "Do I have to swear out an affidavit?"

"I wouldn't believe you was such a fool for twenty affidavits," answers Marshall, pretty short.

"Well, I'm leaving for Palm Beach tonight," says Delia. "You might be decent enough to wish me luck."

Marshall turns round sharp at that.

"Delia, you know you can't do it," he says, mighty serious. "We happen to have your signature on a little contract."

"You watch me and see if I can't," she comes back. "I'm afraid you don't realize that I got really and truly married today. Gerard says to quit the business, so your contract isn't worth a nickel."

And she bounces off to talk to the other girls, that was all round darling Gerard like flies on maple syrup; and Marshall follows her, tearing his hair out by the roots. But Delia gives him the sardonic laugh, and collects all our congratulations. When she comes to me she grabs me and musses me up with kisses before all the bunch, and she says:

"You dear little angel-faced mutt," she says, "get busy and do as I done before that celery-crested snapping-turtle throws you off the Woolworth," she says, "to make a fillum."

And she shoots off with dear Gerard in his electric car. Marshall raves around a bit, and then I seen him go off and sit alone in his office and cuss to himself.

IT made me sorry for him, how Delia had let him down. So pretty soon in I goes, and I says not to worry, because I knowed the business now, and I would work double time and see that he got by with the stuff.

But he only stares at me kinda stupid. Then he grabs me by the arm pretty hard.

"I mean it kind, kid," he says, "but you got the wrong notion of your job. You ain't no movie actress. You're just a little damfool squab what we got because she looked like Delia Bloom, to double in the rough stuff—and now that Delia's quit, your job's gone with her. We can't finish the 'Double' without Delia. Better do like she told you. Grab off a husband some place nearer home. Delia had the right dope every way—damn her!"

That night I never spoke to nobody at home, but, soon as it was dark I went out and sat on the old ledge in the wop steamship dock. It was black as ink all round, with the steamboats hooting mournful over the river in front, and behind not a sound but now and then a street car. I got to thinking over it all—how Bart didn't want me no more, and how I didn't have no job; and pretty soon I starts in crying to myself. But after a spell it got away from me, and I slumps down over the ledge and hollers to beat the band. "Bart, my Bart," I keeps hollering, "where are you?"

And just then somebody puts an arm round my shoulders and says, "Don't be scared, kiddo." It was Bart himself.

"Where you been at all this time?" I says.

Bart whispers that he's been calling around there pretty much every night, because he knowed that if I really cared for him I would come back there, when I got through with foolishness; and he sits down beside me and dangles his feet over the water. He thinks a spell, and then he says, very husky:

"Vic, you're the only part of my business that I don't seem to handle right. But I got to put it over or bust, all the same, because all the money in the world ain't no use to me without you. You see, it ain't no good me working my head loose to get rich, if you gonna spoil it all fooling around with a lot of bum actors. I ain't going to risk marrying any girl that's got fool notions. Vic dear, I want to ask you to quit it for my sake."

"And wear cotton stockings all my life?" I says. "Nothing doing! I wouldn't quit now, not for no guinea that was ever born."

I knew I didn't have no job to quit, but I wasn't taking nothing from him.

"Guess again, Vic," Bart whispers. "I ain't going to live without you," he says "and you needn't think you're ever going to kiss any other fellow, because you ain't. I'm the last," he says.

"You got hold the wrong end," I laughs, "You was the first."

"And I'm the last as well," says Bart, "I'm begging you to cut it out, so we can get married proper and decent. I won't ask you again."

I SEEN the old pearl-button glint in his I eye, but something else behind it that glowed like a red spark; and he looked so handsome and savage I went kinda faint. So Bart he grabs me so hard I could feel all the big muscles in his arms a-trembling like chills and fever.

"Honey boy," I says, "I'll promise anything if you won't quarrel with me no more."

Bart tears off a great gasp, and hugs me till I near broke in two. After that he leans back against the wall, and I was afraid he was sick. But pretty soon he pulls something heavy out of his pocket and throws it into the water. I seen it shine, and I hollers "Oh!" But Bart puts his arms round me and holds me.

"Wait till I get me breath back," be says, "and then we'll go and collect five dollars from your Pop."

"Whatdya mean, five dollars?" I asks.

"I seen him at the corner of your street last week," he says, "and I asked him he thought I could marry you. And he says not in a hundred years. So I bets him five dollars that I'd make you cut out the movie business, and using make up and smoking cigarettes, and marry you inside of a month. Well, he grins an says to go ahead, if I thought I was so clever; and he hoped I got away with it, because it would be the cheapest five dollars' worth he ever bought. And Joe Raffale's going to be sent up for six months for stabbing his uncle, and I bought out his store today at half price. So you won't have to wear no cotton stockings, Vic." And he hugs me some more.

"But," he says, "if you ever set me back another fifteen bucks for a gun, I'll maybe find a use for it the next time. I don't like to waste nothing, Vic, what I paid good money for. I'm a business man, I am."

Behind the Bolted Door?

By ARTHUR E. McFARLANE

Illustration by Henry Raleigh

IT was Professor Fisher, the murdered woman's husband, whom they saw. With a little cry of terror, D. Hope fell back, and Willings himself gave ground. And, indeed, the man, his eyes glaring crazily, his hand clutching a revolver, was a sight terrifying enough.

He had crept up behind them as they were busy in their search of Maddalina's rooms; and now—his face pallid, his eyes staring with the set fixity of the demented—he advanced threateningly toward Willings.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded hoarsely.

"I'm here—I'm here for Dr. Laneham."

"You lie! You lie! I know what you are here for! You have killed my wife," Fisher continued to come straight at him, the revolver pointed at Willings' chest,—"and so, here in these rooms—"

But he got no further.

It was D. Hope who acted. With one rush, she fairly leaped upon the man. With her right hand she caught his gun hand. Her left she clapped over his fore-head. She got her knee into his back. And by the time Willings reached him she had brought him down.

The pistol, a poor silver and mother-of-pearl affair, went clattering to the floor. Willings kicked it to the other end of the room.

A MINUTE later, attracted by the noise, half a dozen officers rushed in.

"It's all right," Willings said. "It's all right. Thanks to Miss Hope, here, there's no harm done. I think you'd better try to get the Professor back to his own quarters again."

The officers got hold of the Professor and fought their way with him toward the door. Twice he almost broke from their grasp to fling himself at Willings.

"You have killed her—you have killed her!" he shouted at the top of his lungs. "You are the murderer of my wife!"

Willings stood flushed and silent, listening to the maddened cries of accusation, which grew fainter as the Professor was pushed down the hall toward his own rooms. When at last a door closed, shutting off the tumult, he turned to D. Hope, and found her leaning heavily against the wall, one hand pressed to her face.

"I don't think I can stand much more," she confessed with a pathetic little smile. "Let's finish and get away."

Willings took one step toward her, and their hands touched.

"You heard what he said," he began. "I know you wouldn't—"

A quick flush spread across the girl's face: her hand fastened around his.

"How could you even ask me such a thing?" she panted. "You know—"

"Then we won't say any more about it."

Still holding her hand, he led the way to Maddalina's clothes closet.

"Just one more look for that writing," he said. "Surely the Doctor wouldn't have sent us here on a wild-goose chase. There must be writing somewhere."

And this time the search was successful. Far back, on the unpainted support of the hat-shelf, a smear that at first looked like shoe polish proved to be a smudge made by a wet thumb blurring out something in lead pencil.

"We've found it!" cried Willings exultantly, and the pressure of her hand was her answer to his triumph. "Let me look at it from the side." He laid his cheek against the wood. "Just what I thought. It's sunk right in. Wash off the wood and we can read it all."

And they did. The graphite itself had been smudged out. But almost every letter and figure remained sunk in the soft pine as if made by a stylus. They read:

"I think," said the Doctor, that night—"I think I'd be pretty safe in guessing that our Maddalina is at one of those three addresses this minute."

But that was many hours later. Mrs. Fisher's funeral was set for that afternoon; but, after the Professor's attack upon Willings, neither he nor D. Hope felt that they could bear to attend it. They went back to 390 and there rested, going over in their talk the weird events of the past few days. It seemed almost a lifetime since, in that locked apartment, Doctor Laneham and Judge Bishop had heard the strange knocking, the voice calling, "My God, my God!" and, breaking in, had found the body of Mrs. Fisher beside the swimming-pool. Two days had gone by. They had found Jimmy; now the trail to Maddalina seemed opening. But had they really made any progress? Were they any nearer to the real murderer of Mrs. Fisher than they had been before?

It was nearly five o'clock, and they were still intent on their discussion, when Dr. Laneham arrived to interrupt them.

"Well, what luck, my confederates?" he demanded heartily.

FOR answer, Willings handed over the three addresses, and told Dr. Laneham of the strange attack upon them by Professor Fisher. As the younger man reached that part of the story the Doctor rose and began to pace the room, looking anxiously at D. Hope. Finally he burst forth:

"I shouldn't have let you do it. I might have known—I ought to have foreseen— But, at least," he concluded more calmly—"at least, we can be pretty sure that it won't happen again."

"You mean the funeral put him out of his mind?" asked Willings.

"That's the explanation," the Doctor agreed. "We can just dismiss him from our thoughts for the present. We have other things to worry about." He glanced again at the three addresses that Willings had handed him. "Know

Page 8

"I know that Chrystie Street address all right," answered Willings. "Not the exact house, maybe, but I know the block all right. It's a bad one—what the police call a 'bomb block.'"

"I think I know it too," echoed D. Hope. "And if Maddalina is in such a place I don't see how we can hope to get her out without just going to the police outright."

"I don't know," said the Doctor, "but I've always admired the way these ambulance orderlies go anywhere and do anything. Why couldn't two young gentlemen in white ducks and uniform caps go in, tell the proper story, and carry the lady off as a bad case of pellagra or what not? Doesn't it sound feasible?"

"Gad!" said Willings, "I believe you're right."

They let D. Hope go back to the settlement. There were a lot of things she must attend to, she said, and she promised to be back with them for a late dinner. Willings went with her as far as Twenty-third Street, where the old book-stores abound. There he left her, and turned to the book-stores.

"M-u-n-d," he muttered to himself. It was a curious thing to be looking for.

Through shelf after shelf he plodded, and, finding nothing, turned his steps at last back to 390. D. Hope had not yet returned.

THE Doctor was with Jimmy, getting everything he could from him about Maddalina. The little Cockney seemed to know very little. "I never wanted to know nothink about her," he said with vehemence. "I could see she was a bad 'un from the first."

Maddalina had once been in trouble with the law, someway. He rather thought it was a kidnapping. But Mrs. Fisher hadn't got her through any regular "prison-gate," or agency: she had given her a chance "on some private recommend." And, for the rest, Jimmy knew neither Maddalina's friends,—none had ever visited her,—nor her correspondents, nor where she went on her days off.

"All I can tell you," he said, "is that she's a she-devil for temper, and is as strong as any man."

Dinner was announced, but D. Hope had not yet come back. Willings called up the settlement.

She had left there an hour before, "with a message for Dr. Laneham that he mustn't be anxious if she didn't get back that night"!

"Well!" said the Doctor,—and neither of them knew what to think,—"isn't that a bit out of character?"

"It's so much out of character," said Willings, "that I'm going down there at once to learn who saw her last!" And in another half hour he was in Hudson Street.

But he returned knowing as little as he had before. He could only hasten back to Seventy-second Street to take counsel with the Doctor again.

LANEHAM himself was just entering the door; they mounted the stairs together. In the library, they could hear Mrs. Nielson talking to some one. It was a woman in a nurse's uniform. But they did not recognize her. They did not know it was Daphne Hope till she turned.

"You—you said that an orderly in his white ducks could go anywhere," she said; "and when I got down there—to the settlement—and saw Miss Stewart, our district nurse, I couldn't see why these things shouldn't do every bit as well!"

Whatever she had been doing,—and already they suspected,—her eyes still glittered, her words were still disjointed, and she had to begin again.

"I knew that Maddalina wouldn't know me. The only day I was ever at the Fisher apartment—when she was at the door—she hardly looked at me—"

"D. Hope!" exclaimed the Doctor.

"You're not going to tell us," gasped Willings, "that—that you've been down to that place in Chrystie Street?"

"I have—and nothing happened to me whatever. And Maddalina's there—in some rooms on the fourth floor, at the back—and I'm sure you can get her any time!"

For a minute Willings stood staring at her in open-eyed admiration. Then, as she turned and caught his glance, he bounded to the Doctor's side. "Come on, Doctor," he cried. "Let's hurry."

The older man smiled and put out a restraining hand.

"Not so fast, my friend—not so fast," he counseled. "It's to-morrow night, not to-night, that we're going to nab Maddalina. There's some very important preparations to be made first."

The two young people exchanged looks of obvious disappointment, but yielded to his better judgment. He had not failed them, thus far; there seemed to he nothing to do but leave themselves in his hands.

"Small things," he said, with a smile, as he unwrapped them before the curious eyes of Willings and D. Hope. "Small things, and we won't need them until later. The big thing is first of all to kidnap Maddalina. I've arranged with the Riverside Hospital people for a private car, and got an interpreter from the Ospitale Garibaldi. Everything is ready—and the goose hangs high."

"But you won't let D. Hope go—" Willings objected.

"Of course I'm going!" flashed the girl. "Haven't I been there once already? And, besides, there isn't any danger, is there, Doctor Laneham?"

"Not the slightest," said the Doctor. "Why, all we're going to do is what the Italian quarter sees done every day in the year—we're going to back our ambulance up before a tenement, walk in, grab a certain young lady, and walk right out again. Nothing could be simpler—and even Maddalina won't cut up much—unless I miss my guess. She may know we're making a mistake, and try to tell us that she isn't sick and doesn't want to go to the hospital. But, after all, why should she worry? We aren't the police—and at worst it means only a day or two in a nice clean bed at the hospital. No, I think D. Hope can come."

THAT night found them, after a long, bumping ride in the ambulance, at 489 Chrystie Street, climbing the first flight of foul and narrow stairs.

It was a typical Italian tenement. There came to them from that "fourth floor back" a smell of garlic and minestra, and a clucking gabble of Sicilian.

"That's the door," breathed D. Hope.

"All right," said the Doctor. "Remember, now, all you need do is nod your head. After that you keep out of it."

Peppino, the interpreter, gave a solid double knock.

Instantly the gabble fell dumb. There was a quick scampering noise inside, a child's frightened cry quickly hushed. Then an old crone's voice came halting: "Che vuole? What do you want?"

For answer Peppino merely drove his official toe against the door and shook the knob. "Open, nom di Dio, open!"

Slowly, cautiously, the door swung back.

They were looking into a middle room, half bed-half dirty living-room. The old woman, with two thick-set, villainous-looking men, were all backing furiously to the farther wall. A moment later though, seeing the white duck and uniforms, they gave forth a general snarl of relief.

"Nessuno!" they cried. "Nessuno—no one is seek here. You have meesteck!"

But the doctor had already pushed on into the room beyond—another bed-room. Like little animals, three very dirty children had jumped to the high bed.

Laneham went straight over to them, and, taking hold of them one by one, he pulled down their chins between thumb and finger and examined their throats.

"All well, all well," the old woman kept nervously parroting. "Bene, motto bene!"

"Yes, yes," assented the Doctor, and, going on, he reached the door that led to the kitchen.

The girl must have had her eye at the key-hole. In an instant, as the door swung back, she must also have recognized D. Hope. For, barely had D. Hope recognized her, Maddalina, when, spitting her rage and fury, she seized a huge Italian table-knife and was fairly throwing herself at them.

"Look out!" cried the Doctor.

They gave way quickly, clustering about the door in a nervous group.

Which, obviously, was exactly what she had reckoned on. For, with another leap, she flung herself to the window, jerked it open, and was dropping down the rear court fire-escape.

Next moment, Peppino, the interpreter, hot with battle, was following her. And after him Doctor Laneham, too, leaped to the fire-escape. But it was slippery with ice and sleet, and Willings pulled him back again.

"We can make it from below," he cried, "through the lower hall. Come on, D. Hope." He caught her hand. Again there was that quick responsive pressure that seemed to transform this whole ugly business into a mere play-time. He sought her eyes, but they were turned to the door. Together they leaped down the stairway, following the Doctor through the long, narrow hallway and into the yard.

MADDALINA and her pursuer had disappeared, but there was no need of asking where. Almost at the foot of the fire-escape, there opened a narrow cellar-way. Already other householders were pouring into it as into a hopper. Instantly the Doctor plunged after them, and D. Hope and Willings were almost on his heels.

Through a long, narrow wood-house they fought their way, lighted by an occasional lantern. Endless bundles of kindlings were piled on either side, and the air was heavy with the smell of kerosene, and coal, and the odors of human-kind. At last they broke through into the broader area of the cellar beyond, and there, surrounded by bins of potatoes and crates of beets and cabbages, Maddalina stood at bay.

It was their first chance for a real look at her—and she was handsome enough, thought Willings, with her lithe, slim body swaying back and forth, her eyes flashing, the long cruel dagger in her hand. Handsome enough—yes—but with a cruel sort of handsomeness. Had Mrs. Fisher ever seen her like that, he wondered?

But there was little time to think of this or of anything. Behind them the passageway filled up with a shouting, pushing throng. "Che cosa? What is the matter?" they shouted. Maddalina, if she heard their cries, gave no heed. Blazingly she swayed to and fro, wild-animal gutterings seeming to choke her throat, and she appeared on the point of throwing her knife to the ground and striking at the interpreter with her hands.

"She has a maladia!" Peppino cried to the crowd. "The city has commanded that we take her to the ambulanza!"

With a leap he was at her, and, feinting, he made a first try for that knife hand.

He did not get it. She slashed at him viciously, and only by dropping knee down did he escape the blade.

There was a yell of delight: other knives began to come out.

"Peppino, listen to us!" Both Willings and Laneham tried to hold him.

But he twisted away from them. "I will get her!" he shouted. "The roba!"

And, catching up an empty basket, he ran at her with it.

He used it almost exactly as the Roman retiarius used his entangling net. In half a minute he had caught the blow as he wanted it. The knife went through, stuck, and, amid cries of anger, he was about to make his victory good when some one threw the girl a second knife.

It was all that was needed—in every way. The Doctor jumped forward and saved Peppino. But the blade doubled back and cut the buttons from his sleeve. Next moment, too, a hairy hand was jerking him off. And, from behind, some one was jumping upon Willings, as he tried to protect D. Hope. An instant later Willings was down. Laneham was held in a dozen hairy arms. They were beaten, trapped, at the bottom of the wickedest tenement in New York.

SUDDENLY, from the floor where he was still wrestling with Maddalina, the interpreter uttered a piercing cry:

"Il malocchio!" he cried. "Il malocchio!'

It was as if a lightning bolt had dropped among them. The crowd surged back wildly. "Il malocchio!" they echoed. The dark hole was full of it—"Il malocchio, il malocchio!" In a dozen seconds it echoed through the passage, as they pushed their way back; and the cellar was left empty except for D. Hope, Willings, the Doctor, and the interpreter.

Then, as Peppino rose from the dirt floor, they caught their first glance of Maddalina and began to understand. She lay gasping; her body began to arch, her jaws to set and froth, her eye balls to turn terrifyingly backward. Nope of her own people had stayed to help her, not even Peppino. With one terrified cry, "Nom de Din," he fled after his retreating countrymen down the long passageway.

"What is it, Doctor?" cried Willings. "For heaven's sake—"

"Epilepsy," he jerked back. "Il malocchio—the evil eye. No Sicilian will face it. But she's all right. Don't you worry. Stand to and give me a hand we'll have her in the ambulance in a jiffy."

Five minutes later they were in the ambulance together and speeding away toward Seventy-second Street.

As they rode the Doctor worked over the unconscious girl, and as he did so a soiled, much folded paper dropped front her dress-front. It was a letter, a love letter. The Doctor's Italian was sufficient for him to decipher it. It assured Maddalina that now, without doubt, the writer's passion would endure forever; and that she should have two of them whatever "they" might be—for herself.

"We'll file that for future reference," said the Doctor. "And, Willings, as soon as we make Seventy-second Street, I want you to help me upstairs with her, to the, library. I've made my preparations there."

"Preparations?"

"I'll explain in a moment."

The car swung in and stopped. They carried Maddalina, still unconscious, up the front steps, into the broad hall.

On the stairs, Laneham spoke quickly to Jacobs. "That kettle and some boiling water—and the envelop and paper!"

In the library they found Judge Bishop waiting for them.

The Doctor merely nodded; and, the the Judge rose from the big reading chair, he put Maddalina into it, and began to prop her up with pillows.

"Laneham! In the name of all that's unholy, what are you going to do?"

"What am I going to do? Easy, now. And, Willings, will you 'phone the Commissioner that he can send for her at ten? What am I going to do?" His face was lit by a sort of professional ruthlessness' "I'm going to try to obtain a little evidence by methods not yet admissible in police departments and courts of law, which is why I insisted on going after Maddalina myself. And her present state could not be more receptive to the business if I'd worked and planned to have it so. In Maddalina's case, I'm going to try the effects of a few minutes of scientific hypnotism!"

Meanwhile Jacobs had nervously brought in the "preparations"—the kettle, and boiling water, and the envelop and paper.

The kettle was the little copper kettle which Laneham had bought that morning, a duplicate of the one in Maddalina bathroom. With it was a gas tube and ring, which he rapidly attached and lit and set up on a pipe-stool at Maddalina's knee.

The envelop was practically a replica of the big blue bank envelop from which Mrs. Fisher's notes had been taken; and

Continued on page 19

How a Play Is Made

What Happens Between Midnight and One o'Clock?

Page 11

Live-Wire Kids

Getting the Luxury Money

By EDWARD MOTT WOOLLEY

IN a small city within one night's ride of New York lived a young woman who had to abandon college on the death of her father. She and her mother received a house weighed down with a mortgage, and there was only a very small income.

The first thought that occurred to them was to rent rooms. This is the natural resource of many women in emergency. They did rent two or three of the rooms, and then offered table board; but the returns were disappointing. The daughter studied stenography and in a few months secured a position, and in this way they struggled along for a year or more.

Why People Pay High Prices

IT chanced, then, that the girl was invited during her vacation to visit a wealthy woman who was staying at an expensive hotel in New York. Here the young woman saw throngs of people spending their money on an amazing scale. Many of them paid from five to ten dollars a day for a room alone, and as much more for their meals.

This glimpse of luxury money set the girl to thinking. Why were these people willing to pay such high prices? On analysis, the answer seemed to be this: Because they got what they wanted.

First, it was a matter of rococo sumptuousness—of Louis XV beds and hangings to match; of Louis Quinze exaggeration; of costly dining-room equipment. But back of all this lay a subtle atmosphere that had to be analyzed closely to be defined. Yet, after all, what did these people get? Rooms, beds, food! And, on analysis again, the food did not seem to be greatly different from the every-day cuisine at home. The difference lay largely in the service.

Was there any chance to get some of the luxury money at home? Here was a field that had never occurred to her. In fact, she was doubtful even now that any opportunity of the sort existed in her home city.

On her return she took the city directory, and selected the names of people who seemed to come inside this classification. The population of the place was 75,000, and she found a good many hundreds who were, relatively, luxury people. By checking up the addresses, she began to separate those who lived in homes of their own from those who boarded. It was an interesting research, though at the time she had no great idea of utilizing it. Of course, she knew many of these people.

Furnishing a High-Priced Room

HOWEVER, the New York luxury money had made a deep impression on her, and finally she and her mother determined on an experiment. One of their rooms, which had rented for $15 a month to a young clerk, was vacant. First, they redecorated it with good paper of a cheerful pattern and frieze. They gave the woodwork three coats of white enamel, and finished the floor. They put in a window-seat attractively cushioned, draped the windows, laid a new rug of old tapestry pattern, and fashioned a canopy over the head of the bed, with a square brass lantern suspended from it. Then they added some new touches to the furniture.

The extra cost of this room, over and above the investment it had represented before, was estimated at $110, most of the work having been done by the women themselves. The daughter, however, was not satisfied with the atmosphere of the hall below, and $75 was spent on that.

They did not advertise this room, as they had done before, but wrote personal letters to people whose names were on their "luxury list." Thirty or forty letters were sent out before the room was rented, but the new guests took it at $30 a month without question. On an investment of less than $200 they realized fifteen dollars a month.

The occupants of the room took their meals at the best hotel in the city, which was not far away. Formerly they had also roomed there, paying a good deal more than $30 for accommodations that were not so good. It looked as if there ought to be more luxury money in sight, and another room was fitted out at once. Some of the additions were a new rug, an artistic cheval glass, a couch, and various touches of that same mysterious thing, known as atmosphere, without which luxury money will not be tempted.

What Do "Luxury People" Want?

IT takes a certain amount of taste and good breeding to bestow such an atmosphere, and many sellers of space are, unfortunately, provincial. In selling any commodity, a vital thing is to know what people want. It is almost impossible to know just what luxury people want until you make something of a study of the subject, and observe with your own eyes. That is undoubtedly why the bulk of the luxury money gravitates into the hands of comparatively few people in the caravansary line.

This second room had rented for $10 a month, but now it was taken quickly at $20. Two small rooms adjoining each other had been let to young men of the employed class at $8.50 and $10 respectively. The partition was now torn out and the rooms thrown together. Lavatory facilities were provided, new lighting fixtures installed, and the room refurnished quite elaborately. Then began a well planned campaign to go after a luxury occupant. They sent out an engraved announcement to a carefully selected list of "prospects," and this was followed up by personal letters on embossed stationery, describing this particular room. Then, out of that mysterious luxury country that had hitherto been unknown to the mother and daughter, there came a man and wife who took the room at $35.

Downstairs were two rooms that had been rented, on and off, to young men of small income. As yet, no attempt had been made to give these quarters any distinction. One room had brought $12 and the other $14. The smaller of these rooms was now turned into a "den." A ceiling of pine ribs was put in, and suitable decorations were made, along with some Turkish hangings and that sort of thing. The other room was transformed by the magic touch of atmosphere, and then the two were offered as something distinctive for a bachelor. Here, as in the former instances, the selling effort was concentrated directly upon the luxury market. A list of luxury bachelors was made, and they were reached by personal letters and by a display advertisement which of itself had distiction. Within a week the two rooms were rented to a bank cashier at $40 a month.

Meanwhile the dining-room had also received attention. The original price for board had been $6 a week, and the first raise was to $8. Then it went up to $10, and finally to $12. Long before that, the first boarders had all gone. The establishment was in a new class. The transformation of the dining-room was really the hard part of the problem, the young woman says. It was not hard to get $12 a week for the right sort of service, but the right sort of service required study to get and discipline to maintain. Dining-room service is a study in itself, and there is a great mass of material available to the student. This young woman says she went down to New York periodically, and still does, to observe the methods in the exclusive places, and to consult authorities in the books of the libraries. Of course all things are relative. She did not try to imitate those extravagant city hostelries that decorate their dining-rooms with gilded passementerie, use embroidered napery, and freeze the table water en globe. But she did increase her price on the strength of such touches as service plates, dainty casseroles, Bohemian glass-ware, decorations, color schemes, and bettor trained maids.

Finally the demand for the commodity this young woman and her mother were selling became so great that they gave up the old house and took a long-term lease on a mansion near the business part of town. This place was fitted up in the degree of luxury that conformed to the market, and became an exclusive boarding-house which has returned its proprietors a good income. They are on the road to a competency. The daughter has long since given up stenography, and is making a specialty of catering to the luxury people.

Now, of course it would not be possible to do this sort of thing with every boarding-house, nor in every community. In business the first important question is the location. No good business man will start a store or a factory without first analyzing his location and his prospective customers. The woman who opens a boarding-house is just as much in business as the man who starts a store—though, unfortunately, there are many women who do not realize this.

But in almost every community there is a luxury market in some degree. It must be a poor location indeed that has no people who are willing to pay something more for better living quarters. And in numberless communities there are undoubtedly women of inherent ability who are merely selling space at a low price, when they might perhaps add largely to their incomes by selling the same space with a touch of luxury and atmosphere added.

Study Your Market

THE study of markets is one of the most fascinating things in business, and in no line is the luxury market more susceptible to the influence of the seller than in this particular field. Of course there will always be a large demand for the ordinary boarding-house, with its clean and bare respectability, and there will always be women enough to supply that demand—women who lack the ability or perhaps the vision to go higher. But discerning women in good locations have the opportunity at least to study and experiment, and to find out whether the space they are renting can, with the exercise of principles well known to the good business man, be made to return a much higher percentage of income on the investment.

It strikes me that the main preliminary is to analyze the market,—to separate the luxury possibilities from the small-income class,—and then to find out what these luxury people want. This can be done, as it is done in other lines, by simple research and observation.

Moreover, it is distinctly possible to raise the standard of people's wants, provided they have the necessary income. This is being done all the time in business. The shrewd woman with space to rent has it in her power to tempt her "prospects" with charm and atmosphere. But first she must find the right sort of "prospects"; and this is a nice, clever undertaking that ought to appeal to the ingenuity of bright women—just as it appealed to the young woman I have told you about. But to build up about you an entourage of this sort is no task for a tyro. It is a real business undertaking.

Prester Jim

The Story of a Seventh Avenue Magician

By VALE DOWNIE

Illustrations by J. C. Coll

THE first time Tinta saw Prester Jim, he was picking cherries out of the balmy April air in Bryant Park, and eating them with immense relish. There could be no doubt that they were real cherries, for when he had eaten them he spat out the stones on the cement walk. The cherries seemed to be suspended invisibly in space until he stretched forth two bony fingers and touched them into luscious being.

Tinta presently touched the arm of her companion.

Henrietta, Tinta's guardian, a loud spoken but good-humored girl of twenty, was much more interested, just now, in her companion—a very casual young man in the theater-ticket-retailing business, by name Slicker Dunn—than she was in Tinta. Nevertheless she presently found a moment in which to heed the child's request.

"What is it, kid?" inquired Henrietta.

"Would you just look at that man?" observed Tinta with restraint.

"What man?"

"The little white-haired one—over there."

Henrietta and her admirer turned their eyes upon Prester Jim, who at this moment reached straight above his head and pulled down a cluster of three cherries.

Mr. Dunn laughed. "Some cherry-picker, kid, ain't he? If you go over and ask him, I'll bet he'll give you some."

Henrietta was a chambermaid in the Forty-sixth Street boarding-house where resided Tinta and her Aunt Kate; and there were two reasons why she liked to have the child with her when she was lucky enough to have an afternoon out. In the first place, she liked to oblige Miss Montaine—Aunt Kate's stage name; and secondly, she greatly enjoyed baiting Mr. Dunn.

"I like cherries," confessed Tinta.

"It's old man Medlo," continued Dunn. "I know him well. He works in the movies and vaudeville."

"He ain't a personal friend of yours, is he?" inquired Henrietta with caution.

"Not any," said Dunn.

"Then go ahead, Tinta, if you want to. Ask the gentleman for some cherries, and then beat it right back here. You gotta learn sometime not to have nothin' whatever to do with strange men."

THIS rather illogical permission being granted, the little girl sidled across to the vicinity of Prester Jim, who nodded cordially, but went on picking cherries out of the air, first with one hand and then with the other. He did not offer to share with Tinta, who was somewhat piqued; but presently he observed a curious something about one of her curls, and when she had come a step nearer he took a cherry out of the end of it. This one obviously belonged to Tinta, and she was permitted to eat it.

"I just happened to notice it," explained the stranger. He had a funny, weak voice; but his half shut eyes twinkled. "Not many little girls have them."

"I never found one there before," said Tinta.

"Probably not. You see, it's a gift to be able to find them; and it takes practice, too," asserted Prester Jim.

Tinta screwed her head around until she could almost look down her back. She felt a side-curl carefully.

"Do you think there are any more?" she inquired gravely.

Prester Jim raised two curls in his hand. One was empty, but the other had two cherries in it. His interest was palpably awakened. He made a systematic search—to Tinta's growing delight finding cherry after cherry, some of them in clusters of two and three. It was very exciting.

Prester Jim himself admitted that it was very curious.

"The simple truth is," said he, "that I never knew but one other person who had cherries in her hair; and that was the Peri Kitinklo. She was much older than you, but she didn't show her age; for peris never really grow up."

"I'm seven years old," said Tinta with interest, sitting on the edge of the bench.

"Kitinklo was six hundred and fifty-four when I knew her," observed Prester Jim, quite casually, "and that was when I was a boy in Persia some two hundred years ago."

"Oh-h-h!"

"Yes. You see, there is a little secret about me that not everybody knows. I am a magician. Many people won't believe it, but I am, nevertheless. So that accounts for my acquaintance with little Kitinklo. She was related to me, in a sort of a way—a grand-niece, in fact. Her uncle was my brother, the illustrious Prester John, Emperor of India. My name, by the way, is Prester Jim. Speaking of names, what is yours?"

Tinta told him. She then asked if there wasn't more to tell about the Peri Kitinklo.

"Why, yes, there is," replied Prester an affably. "There is lots, if one just knew where to begin." And thereupon he proceeded to tell the story of fascinating Kitinklo and Prince Mangu Can, nephew of the Grand Cham of Tartary. It was a tale of jinns and ogres and fairies and hippogriffins, and in the end the beautiful Kitinklo married Prince Mangu, and they lived happy ever afterward.

Tinta listened to it all with unwavering attention, and at the end she drew a long breath and expressed her pleasure at the happy outcome of Kitinklo's affair with the Prince of Cathay. She said she liked to hear about pens and jinus, but the hippogriffins rather scared her. Prester Jim allowed it to be understood that he had been much in the society of such creatures in the course of a long and adventurous life.

"If you should happen to come to the park tomorrow afternoon about this time," he concluded,—for Henrietta and her young man had risen and were evidently preparing to depart,—"you will find me here again, and I shall he pleased to tell you something that will really surprise you."

Tinta promised to come if she could, and hastened off.

Prester Jim remained sitting in the sun and watched the three cross Forty-second Street and turn up Sixth Avenue. Then he pulled out of his pocket a paper bag containing two cherries, which he gave to the sparrows fluttering down on the walk. That done, he put on his green felt hat, got up rather stiffly, and buttoned his wrinkled sack coat over his faded vest.

ONCE started, he got some of the stiffness out of his, joints, and presently was moving down Sixth Avenue at a sprightly clip, shuttling across in front of street cars, under the elevated, and dodging dray-wagons with the best of them. In fact, he was late, and there was some necessity for haste. He reached the theater in about ten minutes,—it was a cheap vaudeville house on Seventh Avenue,—but had only time to slip on a black wig and a truly diabolic and Galliclly pointed beard, when his act was called. The make-up cut twenty-five years off his apparent age, but added nothing to the charm of his personality.

Before a small and greatly bored audience the "Great Medlo" now exhibited his repertoire of prestidigitation. He juggled marbles, walnuts, and billiard balls. He did curious things with croquet mallets and bicycle rims. He caused silk handkerchiefs to disappear in the air and reappear most marvelously. At the end he made three tea-trays spin simultaneously on three wooden pedestals, the one above the other and the whole erection supported on his chin. This act elicited some slight interest on the part of the audience, which had been obviously wearied by what went before. The Great Medlo's triumph was rendered incomplete, and the effectiveness of his act correspondingly weakened, however, by his Failure to make the uppermost pan spin properly. He tried three times, and each time it fell to the stage. The audience applauded half-heartedly as he retired.

In the wings lurked a large, blond man, with a high voice and thin, damp red hair parted in herringbone fashion.

"Say, Doc," he squeaked, as Medlo came off the stage, "you're falling down pretty regular on that whirligig stunt of yours. What's the matter with you?"

"I—I burnt my finger on a cigar end the other day," explained Medlo. "It's dev'lish annoying; but it'll be all right in a couple of days. You've no idea how a little thing like that will spoil your nerve."

Medlo had, as a matter of fact, burned his finger; but that wasn't what made the third tray come toppling down so regularly. His real trouble was rheumatism.

"Well, for goodness' sake brush it up, Medlo," admonished the manager. "The whirligig is the only good thing you've got, and if you fall down on that we'll have to drop you from the bill, that's all. Why don't you practise a little?"

"I guess I'd better," said Medlo, smiling.

He could not, of course, tell the manager that he had been working on this particular trick every night until twelve o'clock for the past week.

It was written that he would never again perform the "whirligig stunt" with complete success; and he knew it.

BY favor of Henrietta and sufferance of Mr. Slicker Dunn, the affair of Tinta and Prester Jim now progressed with great rapidity. Nearly every day they saw each other in the park, whither they were accustomed to resort soon after luncheon.

In exchange for Prester Jim's wealth of entertainment, Tinta gave Prester Jim a full account of her own life; but that didn't take very long. She had been born seven years before in Pennsylvania. She could not remember having a father, and two months ago her mother had died suddenly, of pneumonia. Then she had come to live with her mother's half-sister in New York. This

Page 15

Prester Jim said he would greatly enjoy meeting Aunt Kate, and it was only two days afterward that he was triumphantly haled up three flights of dark stairs to her boudoir. It transpired that Miss Montaine had heard of the Great Medlo—from her mother,—and he was

"He's a good-hearted old guy," Aunt Kate told Henrietta, "and on the square, even though he is a little bit nuts. He wants to take the kid to see some of the traps in his studio, as he calls it, tomorrow morning. I'm going to let her go."

PRESTER JIM'S "studio" was a rather small and dark room that had once been the back parlor of a brownstone house on West Forty-fourth. It was lighted by two gas-jets, and was crammed with such a tangle of junk that it was almost impossible for one to move around in it. In one corner was a battered leather couch which opened out to make a bed, and beside it a small washstand with a bowl and pitcher. The rest of the furniture consisted of the appurtenances of prestidigitation.

Tinta ran into a big arm-chair and knocked it half across the room; it was made of paper. Dumb-bells, horse-pistols, blunderbusses, heaps of netting, ornate croquet sets—the corners were piled high with them. These and yet other wonders were duly exhibited by Tinta's painstaking and solicitous host.

At the last he showed her the pie pans of the Grand Cham. There were three of them, of various sizes, and they looked more like tea-trays to Tinta; but Prester Jim assured her that they had once been used to bake pies in.

In Tartary they use nothing else," he explained. "The large one is for pumpkin pie, the medium one for apple, and the little one for elderberry. The Grand Cham never eats any pie but elderberry."

Prester Jim paused and sighed, the while he pulled out a three-legged stool and a little tabouret.

"IT is a sad tale, but you'll have to hear it sometime, so I may as well tell you now, he said. "You see, when I was a boy in Tartary, some nine hundred or a thousand years ago, I was inclined to be a bit mischievous. Besides, I was always hungry and passionately fond of pie. One day I happened to be in the pantry of the Grand Cham, and there espied three luscious pies upon the shelf, pumpkin, apple, and elderberry. Being sorely tempted, I ate all three. Alas, if I had but left the little elderberry pie for the Grand Cham's dinner!"

Prester Jim had seated himself on the stool and balanced a little pedestal, shaped somewhat like a potato-masher, on the point of his chin, with the pumpkin-pie pan whirling on top of it.

"Of course I was discovered," he went on, "and haled before the Grand Cham in his hall of justice, which is guarded by eighteen blue leopards and twenty-four purple crocodiles."

Prester Jim had set another pedestal on the large tray and the smaller apple-pie pan was quickly rotating on the top of that. Tinta was giving rapt attention.

"The Grand Cham's green parrot, whose name was McAndless, had seen me through the pantry window, eating the pies. McAndless went at once and told on me. 'By rights,' said the Cham, 'I ought to eat you for dinner tonight, since you have the pies inside of you: but I know it would annoy your brother Prester John, and I don't want to do that. So I will simply decree that you must take those three pans and balance them on your chin three times a day, for the rest of your life.' He was a cruel one!"

Prester Jim was talking mostly through his nose now, the while he hoisted the third pedestal into its socket in the upper tray, by means of a curious rod with an elbow joint near the end.

"But the worst is yet to be told," went on the magician tensely. "He put an Abyssinian jinx in that little pan—so that—about nine times out of ten—it won't spin for me at all. He played it low on me—the Grand Cham. But—steady, Tinta—steady and—there—she—goes—look out!"

"Oh, dear!" cried Tinta with feeling, and dodged back just in time. The jinx in the Cham of Tartary's pie pan had once more prevailed over Prester Jim, and the whole spinning structure rattled to the floor.

The old man took a green silk handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his forehead with a trembling hand. Tinta, however, lost not a moment in fruitless repining, but set to work at once to collect the pans, pedestals, and crooked cane from the four quarters of the room. She brought them, one at a time, to the old magician. Thus encouraged he set to work once more, and after perhaps half a dozen failures he succeeded in exorcising the evil spirit of the smallest tray in such measure as to make it spin.

A shriek of joy from the now wearied little girl was full reward for his pains.

"I beat the old Cham that time, didn't I?" sighed Prester Jim, mopping his face once more with the handkerchief.

"Yes, sir," replied Tinta, "you did. I just hate the old Cham. I think he's just as mean."

"He is—just," commented Prester Jim.

Then they repaired to the dining-room, where the landlady of the boarding-house regaled them with sandwiches filled with stuffed olives and cheese. After that Prester Jim took Tinta back to Forty-sixth Street and turned her over to her Aunt Kate.

THE course of true love now encountered serious interruption. Henrietta quarreled with Slicker Dunn. The consequence of the disagreement was that Henrietta went no more to Bryant Park; she chose to walk up Fifth Avenue to Central Park instead, and Tinta was obliged, perforce, to go with her. Thus two loving but timid souls were severed, apparently for all time. Prester Jim actually called at the boarding-house one day; but Henrietta and Tinta had gone out. The old man turned sadly away.

Tinta never espied a box of cherries on a fruit-stand without recollection and poignant regret.

In the course of time Aunt Kate got out of bed and went about the room with a cane. Later she was able to venture out of doors with Tinta for short strolls up and down the shady side of Forty-sixth Street, and an occasional excursion as far as Fifth Avenue.

One day, over on Seventh Avenue, they ran into a billboard on an easel in front of a vaudeville house. It had on it a picture of a man balancing three pie pans on his chin. Tinta timidly expressed her desire to see this show, and they went in.

The bill, a rather dull one, was half over. The theater was fairly well filled. Tinta and her Aunt Kate took seats near the rear. A comic singer with a voice like a saw performed, and was allowed to retire unharmed. A lady with a figure far from sylphlike came out, gamboled awhile, perspired, sang a song, and vanished.

A drop now went up, revealing the inner stage set with the paraphernalia of magic. A black-haired, black-bearded man sat in the center. There, sure enough, were Prester Jim's pie pans on the tabouret. But the performer was not Prester Jim. Tinta brushed away a tear.

The magician went through a repertoire of simple "stunts" that did not seem to interest the audience greatly. People yawned and strolled out. When two of his three tennis balls rolled off the stage on to the orchestra there were some snickers of amusement.

When he finally prepared for the climateric feature of his performance, there was scarcely a flicker of interest. The audience was obviously bored, save for a small girl in the back row.

TINTA could not understand how this strange man happened to be in possession of the Cham of Tartary's enchanted pie pans. He went on with his performance much as Prester Jim had done, spinning one after another on the tops of the little glittering pedestals.

The littlest pan of all had a jinx, just like Prester Jim's, for it came tumbling pervasely down, quite as his had done. Tinta sighed.

Now the magician did a strange thing. He tore off the black beard. which had interfered somewhat with his work, and the black wig, which may have got down too close to his eyes. The little silver-haired man, who now stood revealed as none other than Prester Jim, returned with new determination to the spinning of the three trays upon his chin.

"Look, look!" said Aunt Kate, as she suddenly recognized Tinta's friend.

But the little girl was unable to reply. She stared, gasped, and fingered her curls. She slipped off her seat into the dark side aisle, unnoticed by her guardian, and moved unconsciously, a step at a time, as if drawn by a magnet, toward the stage.

Presently she reached a little stairway at one end, and stopped. It was evident that Prester Jim was in trouble. He couldn't make the third pie pan spin at all. Obviously he needed assistance. Tinta hastily climbed up the stairs on to the stage.

The sleepy audience rubbed its eyes. The fairy was evidently a real flesh-and-blood one and very pretty.

Prester Jim glanced at his new assistant, and the three pie pans of the barbarous Cham of Tartary rolled in all directions.

Tinta scampered after them. One pan rolled three times around the stage in circles with Tinta after it, her curls bobbing behind. She chased another into the wings. The third was recovered by the pianist, who handed it up to the little girl and was nicely thanked.

The audience was palpably interested.

"Hello, Tinta!" said Prester Jim. "You came just in time. The jinx almost got me today. Now that you are here, I'll have another try."

But the third effort was no more successful than the second.

Tinta stood with clasped hands and watched, as if her life depended upon it, the spinning of the first and second trays. When the third wabbled and brought the whole outfit to the floor with a crash, the audience sighed so that you could hear it a block. It, too, had been holding its breath.

Tinta jumped to retrieve the rolling pans. She was the busiest little girl in New York.

Prester Jim presently realized that nobody cared particularly whether he made all of his pans spin or not. In fact, to succeed would probably spoil the effect, since it was Tinta's performance in recovering the "rolling stock" that seemed to arouse the most general interest. As fast as she recovered one, therefore, he dropped another.

The audience howled with delight and wiped its tearful eyes.

MISS MONTAINE hurried up the side aisle to the wings of the little stage. Here she found Tinta sitting on the knee of Prester Jim.

"Excuse me," a fashionably dressed young man was saying, "but did I understand you to say that you would stay on two weeks longer, at twenty-five?"

The Great Medlo evidently did not hear him.

"I'm afraid you'll have to come a little stronger," said Miss Montaine, introducing herself into the conversation without any more formality than the bare statement that she was Tinta's guardian. "The kid will have to get twenty-five, and Uncle Jim, here, ought to drag down fifty. What do you say to seventy-five dollars for the act? Of course we've got to touch it up a little and add some more business. But you can see for yourself that its going to be a ripping little bill-header."

"It probably will," said the young man, "as a juggling comedy duo. It was dead rotten before you introduced the kid and the new stuff. But I'll take you on for two weeks at seventy-five, and I'll make it all right with the agency, too, if you have to shift any dates. What do you say, Medlo?"

Prester Jim said merely:

"Ah—I thought so," and drew two long fingers from a long curl that hung down over Tinta's shoulder. Between the ends of these fingers he held the stem of a big cherry.

"Oh, goody! goody!" cried Tinta.

"That's for you," said Prester Jim. "But this one is for me."

And with that he deliberately kissed Tinta upon a round, unblushing cheek.

The Gift of the Princess Sophia

By ELIZABETH JORDAN

Illustrations by Frank Snapp

THE round Teutonic face of the clerk at the Alpenhof beamed at me over the hotel register like a friendly harvest moon.

"The gnädige Fräulein is exactly in time to join the party for the Spitzethal-Klamm," he affably assured me as I wrote my name on the page he indicated. "See, the omnibus is ready to start. In another five minutes the gnädige Fräulein would have been too late."

I was not dressed for mountain climbing. My traveling skirt, of a length admirably suited to ordinary walking, was certainly not adapted to the scaling of Bavarian peaks. But I could not think of missing this opportunity to make the famous climb, so I took my place among my follow climbers, greeting them collectively with a little bow, which they gravely returned as they made room for me.

This was not a simple matter. The open omnibus was already comfortably filled, and several of my companions, especially a fat Berlin professor and his Frau, were of such huge proportions that they took up more than their proper share of space. However, a vacant place was created, and I settled into it with a sigh of content.

MY fellow passengers revealed the usual types one encounters in the Bavarian and Austrian Tyrol: two Englishmen, a dozen German men and women with knapsacks on their backs, two Austrian officers, an Englishwoman, and a Scots-woman.

But in the corner opposite me sat a woman who, at first glance, appeared as conventional and out of place as I myself must have looked. Yet, at a second glance, I realized that I had nothing of the effect of completeness and finish that marked the appearance of this woman. Her costume was a superbly fitting gray tweed coat and skirt, and her small, perfectly shaped boots had been turned out by a master of the art of boot-making. Over one shoulder was swung a small, soft gray leather knapsack; on the owner's hands were heavy gray dogskin gloves. She sat stiffly in her corner, her eyes straight ahead, grasping a worn, steel-tipped alpenstock.

At her right, the wife of the Herr Professor beamed good-naturedly upon her and uttered a few guttural words; but if the veiled woman heard them she made no sign.

ONCE out of the congested vehicle, my fellow passengers scattered like seed in the wind. The Englishmen and the two Austrian officers took the first gradual ascent of the mountain at a pace that promptly carried them out of sight; the Englishwoman and her Scottish companion humbly turned their faces toward the least difficult route; my German neighbors started forward at the slow, steady, dogged walk which endures unchanged for hours; and I, who had learned the value of this method from their countrymen in previous climbs, followed their example, though I lagged behind them. For it was no part of my plan to add myself to any group, and possibly handicap that group by my lack of equipment.

My German companions, after a few friendly efforts to take me with them, had gone their way and were now well ahead of me, though still sending back an occasional hail. Halfway between them and me the figure of the veiled woman climbed upward slowly, steadily, and without effort. It was evident that she too wished solitude in her ascent. I was already finding the going much more difficult than I had expected. The constant slipping of my boots on the wet rocks, the difficulty of getting a good hold for my feet at the points where real climbing took the place of walking—all this was chastening my pride, while it aroused my combative instincts.

At the refuge hut I had the soles of my boots scratched and roughened and a few nails driven into them. Then I went on, and, keeping my nerves under control and my eyes frequently on the gray figure now far in advance of me, I succeeded in making headway. With every hour my surroundings grew wilder and more sinister. Bleak walls of rock rose on all sides, shutting out the sight of sun and sky, and in this gloom from time to time an abyss like the narrow mouth of an inferno yawned before me to be bridged. But now I was feeling the fascination of the experience, and there had awakened in me that strange passion which makes the climber forget alike cold and hunger, danger and fatigue.

SUDDENLY before me yawned the black opening of a natural tunnel, cutting into the side of the mountain. Through this I must crawl in the dark, to reach a sheer wall at its far end, and climb up that to find a narrow outlet into another black passage that led to light and the outer air.

I went forward very slowly, at first erect, my arms extended, my fingers touching the dripping wall on each side, my feet carefully feeling their way over the slippery and uneven rocks. The utter silence and darkness around me were at first impressive, then awesome. I wished I had brought some matches; I wondered if I might take the wrong turn and got lost; and I was not wholly reassured by the memory that there was said to be no turn; that the grim passage stretched straight before one to its end. Then the impact of my head against a jutting rock brought me to a standstill and warned me that the space between the top and bottom of the tunnel was narrowing. I was bending far forward, and vainly trying to catch some point of light as a guide, when I heard a sharp, clear whistle ahead.

"Low bridge!" a woman's voice called gaily.

I answered as gaily. I was glad to hear that voice, with its warm, human quality, and oddly relieved by the knowledge of companionship.

"I'm as low as I'll ever get," I called back. "My head is almost on a level with my knees."

From the darkness beyond came the sound of a laugh. "You are in the worst of it," my unseen neighbor assured me. "Five minutes more should bring you to the wall. I am standing against it now."

Even in the difficult manœuvers that followed as I made my way forward, I found myself speculating on the speaker's nationality. She was not German, I decided, nor was she French or Italian or Spanish. She might be—a hard bump against a projecting ledge jerked a protest from me, and in the next moment my outstretched hands, now straight before me, touched my unseen neighbor. Again I was glad she had spoken. It would not have been pleasant to have that encounter without some warning.

"I waited for you," she remarked casually, "because we shall have to assist each other. No woman can make this alone. If you had not come, I should have been forted to turn back. That would have been a disappointment." Briefly she explained the situation. "There are three footholds on the wall," she said, "the lowest about four feet from the ground. If you will bend and allow me to stand on your shoulders, I can draw myself up and grasp a rung that is above the first foot-hold. You can then climb up with the aid of my foot and knee. It is not easy; but it can be done."

"I shouldn't care to drag your leg out of its socket," I assured her doubtfully.

She laughed again, a low and contagious laugh. "There is no danger of that," she said lightly. "I have done this before—two years ago. I know the—the what do you call it?—the trick. If you do not mind," she added, "we shall start. I have stood here waiting until I am very cold."

I bent. Immediately I felt her light weight on may back.

"Now straighten yourself very slowly," she directed, "until I am high enough to get a firm grasp and draw myself up. There is a ledge on the side that helps very much."

The last words came out with a jerk. I straightened slowly. Her weight was no trifle. The spiked soles of her heavy boots seemed to be cutting through the cloth of my coat and into my shoulders. I felt her draw herself up. Then there was silence while she worked in the dark. Suddenly I heard her voice:

"Now—ready! Catch my foot and then my hand. I have a firm grip with the other."

I have often wondered since exactly how we two got up that sheer, slippery, icy wall. It took, she told me afterward, less than fifteen minutes; but there were moments when the experience became to me a nightmare of straining, futile effort in the dark. It was obvious that my companion, however, was enjoying every moment of the episode.

"Is it not wonderful?" she gasped once, when we were resting after an unsuccessful effort to reach the top, and there was the thrill of the born climber in her voice.

At last she achieved the upper tunnel, and, lying there flat and firmly braced, she dragged me after her. For five minutes following our successful effort we sat side by side and panted for breath. At the far end of this upper passage we could see a gleam of light. Still rather breathless, my companion rose to her feet.

"We must not remain here," she reminded me, "in the cold and dampness. Let us get outside."

WHEN we emerged the towering rocks around us still almost blocked out sun and sky; but the gloom in which we were wrapped seemed blessed day by contrast with the darkness of the galleries from which we had emerged. For an instant we stared at each other with frank curiosity and friendly comradeship. My companion was the lady of the omnibus. Her face was still flushed by her recent exertions. This color and the brilliant smile she threw at me gave me a momentary impression of great beauty and charm, which later, when I saw her face in repose, I modified. Then it was pale, cold, almost hard, and there was a certain hardness too in the expression of her thin-lipped mouth and the dark gray eyes, which had a trick of narrowing when they looked at one. For the moment, however, she was happy, enthusiastic, and charming.

"My compliments, Mademoiselle!" she said. "For an amateur you did that very well."

"I couldn't possible have done it with any one else," I told her honestly. "You dragged me after you as if I had been a bag of meal. It was a fine exhibition of strength and skill on your part, and mere obedience on mine."

"And pluck," she assured me gravely. "Oh, yes, you have pluck, and it is the supreme quality for this." She indicated the peaks around us with a wave of her hand.

Quite naturally, and without comment, we continued our climb together, and during the intervals when we could talk she launched into a rhapsody on mountain

NOW we were walking comfortably, in single file, I behind, on a narrow mountain ledge, four, possibly five, feet wide. At our right towered a sheer wall of rock. At our left yawned a precipice, from whose far depths came the mighty roar of a mountain torrent. It was no doubt my interest in my companion that made me forget may previous caution and my too smooth boot-soles. Even when I had slipped and fallen, and felt myself sliding down the unguarded incline leading to the abyss below, I was not immediately alarmed.

Instinctively I grasped the nearest support, a bit of the ledge, which held me for a moment, then crumbled in my grasp. I felt myself steadily slipping downward, and in a moment of indescribable panic realized what had happened. At the same instant I heard my companion cry out. At the point where I had fallen the narrow hedge had widened into a sort of bulging brow of the cliff, sloping toward the ravine for twenty or possibly thirty feet, then breaking off short. I was already well over the side of the slope, and slipping us slowly but as surely as an avalanche in its beginning, my progress impeded by rocks and dwarfed vegetation, as well as by my frantic clutchings at ledges and roots which held me for a second, then broke in my hand.

The awful deliberation of the descent, the time it gave me for thought, made the experience indescribably horrible. I had supposed that when one went in this way one went swiftly—not slowly, losing ground by inches first, and then by feet, while the tortured mind contemplated its fate. I seemed to have been slipping a long time when my right foot found sudden support on a projecting rock, and simultaneonsly my left hand, clutching madly at space, caught a root which, now that

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I had slipped about fifteen feet. A few feet below me, I knew, the elbow of rock broke off sharply. I dared not think of what lay below it. On the ledge above I saw my new friend kneeling looking down, her face the color of ivory, her gray eyes wide with fear. Around us rose the implacable peaks, hushed and waiting. For a long moment we two stared straight into each other's eyes, and as I looked a sudden hot scorn for the woman surged up within me.

"She's going to let me die without lifting a finger to help me!" I reflected, and turned my eyes away from her to a bit of blue sky, barely visible between the over-hanging rocks. Then at last, as if she had been suddenly galvanized into some form of activity, I saw her move and heard her voice.

"Are you steady?" she called down. "Have you a sure foothold?"

My voice when I answered sounded strange to my ears. It held an indifferent flatness, as if all vitality had gone from it. "I don't know," was all I said.

Her next words, however, sent a thrill through me. "I'm coming down," she called.

"You're not!"

In my quick rebellion my body must have stiffened. The ledge under my foot moved slightly. I held my breath. Already I had forgotten her. My whole attention was concentrated on that rock. Would it go, or would it hold? It held; but, I knew, less firmly than before. I heard her voice again, and caught a gasp of sudden relief. Her gray eyes, still gazing down upon me, now held a look of cool determination.

"Courage!" she said. "Hold fast and be patient. I have a plan." Her head disappeared.

THERE was a long silence, a silence that seemed endless. A great bird appeared between me and the blue speck of sky, and wheeled slowly about with hardly a movement of its wings. I wondered what it was, and at a quick thought shut my eyes, feeling suddenly faint. At last I heard the woman moving at the top of the cliff; but I could not see what she was doing. Then again I caught her voice, with a now note in it—a note of confidence. Her head appeared over the ledge. She seemed to be lying flat and holding something in her hands.

"I have made a rope," she said. "I shall drop one end of it down to you. Then I shall help you up. Do not be afraid. It can not break, and I will have a firm hold here. Catch the end when it comes. Then wait until I say 'Ready!' and try to draw yourself up very, very slowly."

She leaned over the precipice, something black and white and long and knotted dangling from her hand. One end, finished with a very large knot, swung lightly above my head. With a deep breath I raised my right hand and grasped it.

"So far, so good," I said.

MY voice, I know, was not steady. The voice above me sounded as cold as the water of the mountain streams around us; but afterward, in recalling it, I remembered that its foreign accent was very marked.

"I have made many knots," it said. "When I say 'Ready!' get ready. Then I will count one, two, three. Start on 'three.'" There was a pause. "Ready!" she called.

I set my teeth.

"One," began the even voice above me, "two—three!"

To loosen my left, hand from the supporting root, to grasp the rope with it as well as with my right, to raise myself with infinite care, to lift my foot from the friendly rock, to trust my weight to that frail length of silk and linen,—these things took all my courage. I knew now how she had made her rope. I did not believe that it would hold me; but as I began my advance, almost imperceptibly at first, digging my knees and elbows into the cliff to ease the strain, my brain cleared with the discovery that the rope was stronger than I had thought it could possibly be.

When I had almost reached the top two firm hands grasped my wrists. For a wild moment I had a horrible fear that I was falling backward and dragging my rescuer with me. In the next I found myself over the edge and on the narrow path way, spent, collapsed, but safe. For a moment or two I saw nothing. When I rose to my feet and faced my companion I found her quietly rolling up the rescue rope, and the remark that came to my lips was one of the banal utterances we voice in crises.

"Have you left anything on yourself at all?" I demanded weakly.

She answered with hurt dignity. "Indeed, yes, my dress!" she said, and for a wild moment, looking into each other's faces, we struggled with incipient hysteria, Having overcome my impulse to laugh and cry, I thanked her briefly, as one does whose heart is full.

"You have saved my life," I said. "Now I will save yours by sharing my clothes with you and getting you back to the refuge hut in the shortest time on record."

With the toe of her boot she kicked from our path a short length of broken wire that lay there.

"That is what tripped you," she said. "The protection wire has been cut and carried away."

IT was four o'clock in the afternoon when we reached the refuge hut, two exhausted, disheveled apparitions that sadly taxed the nerves of the comfortable mountain woman who received us. But she was equal to the emergency we presented. In five minutes we had hot drinks, in ten minutes our wet clothes were off and drying, in half an hour we had purchased from her what we needed of clean, homespun apparel, and in an hour we were ourselves again and basking in the blaze of a great open fire. Our hostess, her curiosity as to the details of our experience satisfied at last, bustled about us for a time. Then, her duty done, she departed to prepare for the other members of our expedition, soon to appear.

Left alone, I again tried to thank my companion; but at my first words she checked me.

"It has been the most interesting day of my summer," she said lightly, "and I owe that to you. So we are quits, as you Americans say." She hesitated for a second, and then went on. "Besides, if you had been killed, I should have been haunted forever by the contempt in your eyes when you looked up at me and found me wanting. Do you remember that moment? I had to save you to save my self- respect. But I could not have done so if I had not had my knife."

"And I don't even know your name," I murmured.

She smiled. "Does that matter?" she asked. "They are of no importance, these handles of ours."

She checked herself suddenly. Her eyes, looking through the open door of the hut, had seen moving figures in the distance. Silently she nodded toward them.

"Our companions!" she murmured. "They are returning."

WITHOUT another word she left me, and I heard her moving about in the next room. Her manner since our return had puzzled me. I was still pondering its meaning when my attention was diverted by the appearance of half a dozen members of our original party,—the Herr Professor and his wife, two of their compatriots, and the two Austrian officers. The Germans, hearing of my accident from our hostess, closed around me with immediate interest. One of the Austrian officers, however, had lingered on the veranda, and soon I heard his voice in quick summons to his friend. Excitedly, when the latter had joined him, their two voices blended.

"By heaven, so it is!" cried the second officer in German. "And to think we did not recognize her in the bus!"

Facing the door, I followed the direction of their glance. Well down the trail leading from the hut, was the familiar figure of my unknown friend. Her knapsack over her back, her little hat firmly on her head, she was swinging along with extraordinary swiftness. Most obviously she was leaving, had left—and without one word of farewell to me! I went to the door, and with hurt, incredulous eyes stared after her. Near me, the two Austrians watched her and talked in low tones. Two sentences caught my attention.

"Shall we follow, and offer our services?" suggested one.

The second officer shook his head. "I can not imagine anything," he said, "that would annoy her more."

"Pardon me," I began in their own tongue, "but you seem to know the lady who is leaving. May I ask who she is?"

For a second both men hesitated. Then, with his most finished bow, one of them answered.

"Fräulein," he said courteously, "we do not know her; but we know who she is. She is one of the best mountain climbers in Europe."

"Yes," I replied slowly, "I have reason to know that. She saved my life to-day. Can you tell me her name?"

The second officer smiled. "There is a good deal of it," he said; "but I will tell you as much as I remember. She is the Princess Sophia Maria Victoria Clotilde, first cousin of his Majesty the Emperor of Austria, and affianced wife of Grand Duke Franz August."

His companion took up the recital. "She has a trick of slipping away from her suite," he explained, "and making solitary and dangerous climbs. Without doubt many exalted personages are at this moment anxiously tearing their hair in the valley below us."

The gray figure on the mountain path was almost out of sight. Unseeingly, with blurred eyes, I stared after it. Certainly Sophia Maria Victoria Clotilde had a royal way of doing things! A few hours before she had given me my life, as casually as she might have handed a child a toy. Already, judging by her abrupt departure, she had forgotten the trivial incident. I bent and picked up a long coil of knotted silk and linen that lay on a rude bench on the veranda.

"I will keep this," I murmured, "as a souvenir."

Over my shoulder the round face of the hut's custodian appeared red with excitement. In silence, for an instant, she stared at the knotted mass I was rolling into compact form. From her apron pocket she drew forth a large gold piece and solemnly gazed at that. Then, at last, her conflicting emotions found expression.

"Lieber Gott!" she cried in hushed tones. "A princess! And she wears my new red flannel petticoat this minute!"

His Job Is Telling People Philadelphia Is Alive

HERE is a widespread impression that the city of Philadelphia, is either dead or sleepeth, a superstition which, like most others, dies hard. Those who live in Philadelphia resent the imputation. Years ago they began a systematic campaign to stamp it out. They pointed with pride to their Liberty Bell; they called the world to see their electric lights, hot and cold running water, and Elks Club—but without visible result. The world still passed by unheeding. Then it occurred to somebody that what the city needed was a press agent; and forthwith Colonel Edward J. Cattell was delegated to the task.

In the succeeding sixteen years he has attended five thousand banquets, delivered thousands of addresses, and told more than five million people that what they think about Philadelphia isn't true at all. And he seems at last to be getting his story across.

In the last ten years Colonel Cattell has attended more banquets than any other man in the world, last winter speaking at as many as ten in a week. From January 1 to June 1 of this year he spoke at two hundred and ninety-three banquets in thirty-eight different cities, and in the month of April he attended seventy-one different functions—from a meeting of a brick-layers' union to a banquet of bankers which was held in the Hotel McAlpin, New York.

One should suppose that the Colonel's board bill must be light, but here comes the curious part of the story. The Colonel attends thousands of banquets, but he never eats the food. His formula is this:

"Before going to a banquet, stop at a good restaurant and order two soft boiled eggs, a piece of toast, and a cup of black coffee. Then you're ready to enjoy the occasion."

Officially the Colonel is Philadelphia's "statistician." He has a string of acquaintances that circles the world.

The Colonel's Friends

HE knew Disraeli and Gladstone, and on many occasions dined and chatted with them. In one day he met and talked with ex-President Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, the nerve specialist and author.

Being seventy-four, Colonel Cattell counts on twenty-six more good working years, in which he hopes to take every man, woman, and child in America aside and whisper confidentially in their ears that they can take it from him, Philadelphia is some town.

The Worst Volcanic Disaster I Ever Saw

By Dr. W. E. AUGHINBAUGH

MAY 8, 1902, found me in Barbados, in the British West Indies, on my way to St. Pierre, Martinique, French West Indies, ninety-six miles away, my object being to make a study of the poisonous snake known as the fer de lance, in the hope of discovering an anti-toxin serum for its bite. I had spent much time in the poisonous reptile laboratory at Paral, India, in this line of work, and went to Martinique at the request of the French Colonial Government.

A Shower of 250,000 Tons of Ashes

AT about four o'clock in the afternoon of the day above mentioned, and without any preliminary warning, the sky suddenly became dark and the atmosphere assumed a terrible stillness. Following this phenomena, it seemed as if the entire animal world sensed an approaching danger. Hens began to cackle; roosters crowed; dogs barked; horses whinnied; cows lowed. Then came a violent earthquake, followed by a shower of warm ashes, which lasted for thirty-six hours. The government agricultural department estimated that 250,000 tons fell.

As an accompaniment to this sulphurodored salvo, every little while the sky was lighted by what seemed to be highly charged bursting aerial bombs. In all this din and confusion, the overwrought nerves of the negroes on the island gave way, and, imagining the end of the world had come, they burst forth into shrieks and moans and groans. They gathered in groups at street corners—some singing hymns, others hysterically praying. Then came a tidal wave, another earthquake, and a second tidal wave.

We knew at once that the old slumbering volcano of Mt. Pelee, at the base of which St. Pierre, a town of some 60,000 inhabitants, nestled, had become active. The fact that no cable news came to us, together with the extreme violence of the phenomena we had experienced, convinced us that the loss of life was enormous. A relief expedition was organized by the American Consul-General, McAllister, and the services of a British ship offered by the Colonial Government. Provisions, hospital supplies, tents, and five physicians, with a detail of soldiers and sailors, left for St. Pierre on this ship. I received a temporary commission as surgeon from the Colonial Governor.

We arrived at what had been St. Pierre the next morning at six o'clock. Nearing the island, we could smell the decomposing bodies for fifteen miles at sea. Before us, about the semicircular bay front, covered with a pall of gray ashes, was all that remained of St. Pierre.

Five landing parties were organized, each one composed of hospital corps men, marines, an interpreter, with a surgeon in charge. Mine was the second to reach shore. The sight that greeted us beggars description. In the branches of an uprooted tree lay the disemboweled body of a man. A mother lay in front of me, her dead arm still protecting her baby's face. In a church, the bishop, six priests, and two thousand worshipers were dead.

Dead with Swords in Their Hands

TWO regiments of French troops, evidently ordered out at the first signs of calamity, stood or sat—all of them dead—with guns and swords in their hands.

With me was the Italian Consul to Barbados—the only civilian allowed in our party. He had come in the hope of finding his two daughters, who had been attending a convent in Martinique. We located the school. About the shattered statue of the Virgin of Guadeloupe were the bodies of more than two hundred pupils, surrounded by the remains of eighty-six nuns. In each hand was a rosary. I opened the mouth of each one of those dead girls until I came to the Consul's daughters, whom we identified by peculiar dental work they had had done.

I never want to be present at such a scene as took place when that poor father recognized his children. Of the forty-odd men in my command, not one could keep from weeping.

No words can describe the devastation of that ruined city. Death was everywhere. Not one living thing escaped. We returned to the ship, bearing the bodies of the two girls, leaving military-guards against possible vandals. Within a few hours two French men-of-war approached, and we left them with their dead, shaping our course for the English island of St. Vincent, which had also suffered. What I saw there is another story.

He's the Richest Dog in the World

PETE CRAFTS, of Brookline, Massachusetts, is getting old and losing the splendid proportions that attract fanciers of English bulls; but he has the consolation of being the richest dog in the world.

Pete's master left a legacy of many thousands of dollars, to be used expressly for the dog's care. Pete eats at his own table, from a china plate. His mahogany wardrobe contains an attractive assortment of sweaters, blankets, and collars.

A Valet and a Suit-Case

WHEN he travels, Pete has his attendant to carry a suit-case marked "P.C.," and also a pink silk for use during the siesta hour on the beach.

At home, Pete has a private bath, a fine soft bed, and a sun-parlor. His walks out-doors are regulated by the thermometer. If the temperature is too low, Pete stays inside for fear of taking cold.

The richest dog in the world naturally has responsibilities: but Pete Crafts feels that his age entitles him to a certain amount of leisure. It's up to younger dogs to win Carnegie medals.

Behind the Bolted Door

Continued from page 8

the paper might have been that bill-sized blank paper which had been substituted for the money. To make the thing complete, the Doctor had drawn forth his wallet, and was filling the big envelop with genuine bank-notes of his own, and gumming it down on them.

Then, and then only, did he turn to the girl.

With long, broken sighs, with eye-flutterings and troubled picking of the fingers, she had begun to come to. The Doctor waited for another moment, as if watching the effects of an anesthetic. Then, plainly, the moment came. Placing himself directly in front of her, he pressed her hands down into her lap, and began to smooth and palm her temples, to draw her opening eyes to his, and to put her under the modern enchanter's spell.

"One of the minor details not yet explained," he murmured, "is how and by whom these bank bills that Mrs. Fisher left for Willings were slipped out of the envelop and the blank paper slipped in."

He put the envelop into Maddalina's hand.

"Possibly, as a beginning, we may get an answer to that."

And, while they looked, she was answering it.

Into her eyes there was coming a kind of consciousness, a kind of comprehension and memory. And them,—it halted their breathing to see it,—with a furtive, twitching eagerness, she was stooping over. She was laying the gummed wrapper of that big envelop against the now streaming kettle spout. She was holding it there ill it was soft, and opening it, and slipping the Doctor's genuine money out, and thrusting in the imitation. Then, swaying with emotion, she was sealing it down again.

"Gad!" gasped the Judge.

"It isn't legal evidence," Laneham repeated, "but I think it's tolerably convincing, and we know now where Mrs. Fisher's money went to first. The stolen bills were fifties. From a love letter we've just been reading, I should say that Maddalina is still waiting for the two of them that were promised to her. And now we'll see if we can take another step."

He spoke to D. Hope: "Will you do something to help? Come here and stand in front of her for just a minute."

"Oh, Doctor, I can't!"

"For just a minute. And it may be the one thing needed."

And when she had let him place her, he turned to Maddalina again.

"Maddalina, Maddalina!"

"Si, si, signor."

"This is the Signora Fisher. Do you see her? The Signora Fisher."

"Si, si, the Signora."

"And she says she doesn't trust you any more—that you are dishonest—a bad girl—and she must send you away. Do you understand? You are a bad girl—motto cattiva—very bad."

From the first instant the girl's fierce eyes had begun to change—to narrow and to blaze again. "No, no, no, no!"

"You have been spying—trying to find where she keeps her jewels, her pearls."

"No, no, no, no!" Again those furious wild-animal gutterings seemed to choke her throat.

"Maddalina,"—the Doctor was ruthlessly persistent,—"Maddalina, I don't believe you."

"Ma, si, si!"

"You are plotting something. I know it."

"No, no, no, Signora!"

"You will not deny it if I bring in the police."

"Ma, si!—Si!—Si!"

"Si!—Si!—Si!"—or "See!—See!"

It was merely that—the Italian word for "yes."

The Doctor glanced at Bishop, and saw there the same puzzled, half fearful expression that was in the faces of Willings and D. Hope also.

"'No! No! No!'" he muttered. "'See! See! See!' Those were the cries that the woman in the Casa Reale heard in Mrs. Fisher's apartment that afternoon. Do you understand?"

But he should not have allowed his attention to be distracted even for a moment. For in that instant Maddalina, gathering her lithe body like a panther, had flung herself at D. Hope. They were on her in half a minute, pulling her back. But they were too late. On D. Hope's arms and around her neck were deep red scratches.

There had been those same scratches on the arms and about the neck of Mrs. Fisher.

To be continued next week

This Fire Chief Had Never Fought a Fire

EARL N. KURTZ was twenty-four years old when he was appointed Chief of the Fire Department of Columbia, Missouri, and had never fought a fire in his life. Yet in his first year in office fire losses were only $20,000, as against $175,000 the year before. And the losses in the first half of the present year have been kept down to $4000. Moreover, although Columbia has a population of only 12,000, its fire department now ranks second only to that of Kansas City in the State of Missouri.

Chief Kurtz certainly didn't have experience when he went on the job, but he had an idea. The idea was: Why not, instead of fighting fires, prevent them? Working on this theory, he persuaded the presidents of the two women's colleges in Columbia to organize fire drills in their schools and delivered lectures on fire prevention. Next, Chief Kurtz called on property-owners and requested them to clean up the rubbish on their premises, and to comply with the law in erecting fire-escapes on their dwellings and public buildings. Then he asked the local press to give him space for publishing fire prevention measures. He said: "There are a thousand ways of preventing a

Citizens of Columbia are beginning to be careful; they are cleaning up the inflammable rubbish about their houses and places of business, and eliminating possible fire-traps. The results are to be seen in the figures on fire losses of the town.

Then He Reformed the Department

BUT fire prevention is not all that Kurtz has accomplished. When he took charge as Chief, the fire station was dirty, and the department badly organized. He and his firemen made a general clean-up. Labor-saving devices were built, a systematic method of drying out the hose was arranged, the large doors at the entrance to the station were made to open automatically when a fire alarm was given, and a place was assigned for every hat, helmet, boot, coat, and broom. The huge motor fire-truck fairly glistens with brightness. Both the interior and the exterior of the fire station are spotlessly clean.

The young Chief's ingenuity and earnestness have won the day for him. The chaps who used to make "fire dates" with teh girls are the only folk with a kick coming.