One Minute with the Editor

Last Call for Amateur Detectives

"IF you have solved the mystery of Mrs. Fisher's murder, now is the time to mail your solution. All contest letters must reach us by November 6; and our letter-carrier says he is mighty glad of it.

There's a Story by Her Next Week

DEAR EDITOR: Among all the stories that appear in the magazines, none please me more than the stories of Gertrude Brooke Hamilton. I want to thank you for publishing "The Doll Baby." Give us another story by Miss Hamilton soon.

Coming Soon

"TAKING Title to Your Property"—an article telling you what to look out for when you buy a home—by William Hamilton Osborne, who wrote "How to Make Your Will."

Walt Mason Introduced Himself

THIS isn't Pegasus, you know. No pinions on his shoulders grow. He doesn't need a pair of wings, or any such contwisted things; he doesn't soar above the crowds, or try to navigate the clouds; he sticks to earth, as you may see, in which the steed resembles me.

And since we stick to common things, without a wish to soar on wings, contented with the mundane street, the both of us have lots to eat.

The Pegasus of nobler bards is seldom loaded to the guards with wholesome hay and luscious bats, he has to rustle with the goats for old tin cans and circus bills, the while my wingless charger fills his works with greens and corn and rye; and waxes fat—as fat as I/

Can Baldness Be Avoided?

By EDWIN F. BOWERS, M.D.

"IS there any way by which I can prevent my hair from departing untimely? My father and grandfather were completely bald at forty, and I greatly dread a like fate."

Of all the causes of baldness, possibly the most common is lack of fat-headed-ness. For to have a comfortably thick layer of fat between the bony tables of the skull and the scalp gives a firm foundation for the roots of the hair (the follicles), and permits a circulation and a degree of nutrition of these hair roots not otherwise possible.

If one has an ancestral tendency to a "tight scalp," there is every likelihood that ultimately he will follow in the hirsute steps of his ancestors. And nothing much can be one to prevent it—more's the pity.

However, everything that will encourage the circulation of blood and the better nutrition of the hair follicles should be attempted. Chief of these is massage with the finger-tips—gently loosening the scalp by moving it backward and forward, thereby keeping it from becoming hidebound. Olive oil, or some of the bland vegetable oils, rubbed carefully into the scalp, is most helpful to this end.

Always great care should be taken not to use to much force upon young and tender hair schools that may be coming up under intensive cultivation. Otherwise, these may be torn loose from their delicate fastenings.

Dandruff is also a common cause of baldness, for it may ultimately produce complete atrophy (or shrinking) of the hair follicles. And when the hair bulbs are shrunk or obliterated, there is no longer any hope of bringing nutrition to the hair they supply. A recent article in this magazine described the course to be pursued in this condition. Cleanliness is indispensable in threatened baldness. The so-called "tonics"—except as they contribute to cleanliness and a mild degree of stimulation or irritation—are chiefly valuable for their refreshing odor and pretty color. For if "tonics" could cure baldness, there would be no bald-headed doctors or barbers; and the most casual observation teaches us that there are any number of both. A moderately stiff pair of military brushes, and a reasonable amount of industry in using them, is one of the most effective hair tonics.

If the scalp is dry, it is good common sense to feed it with some readily absorbed oil. Care should be taken also in the selection of soaps; for any soap with a strongly alkaline base is likely to cause a dry, harsh condition of the scalp, and thereby deprive the hair roots of a proportion of their indispensable fatty food.

That form of baldness resulting from wasting diseases or fevers is usually only transitory. The explanation for this form of alopecia is that fever burns fat—including the layer of fat between the scalp and the skull. When the normal condition of fatness is again restored the hair comes back, and flourishes almost as luxuriantly as it did before. Everything that can be done to bring about this normal condition is helpful to hair.

Worry and nervousness, by interfering with the function of nutrition, contribute frequently to baldness. Mental science is an admirable corrective for this variety of hair loss.

On the whole, baldness is a much more serious esthetic than physical loss. And by taking thought of these matters we may, at the same time, take heart. For there are many worse things in life than merely being bald-headed.

How Can I Finance My Invention?

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

"I HAVE a sound, legitimate proposition, protected by several patents," writes a man who is evidently an inventor, and whose initials are J. G. "My resources being exhausted, I can not obtain the small capital required to exploit the business. A few schemers and promoters have tried hard to get hold of the proposition, by I have always managed to slip out of their clutches. Would you be good enough to advise me how to connect with an investor?"

About the hardest thing I know anything about is to market and finance a new invention. The great difficulty is that he majority of new devices are not commercially practical; that is, they will not earn profits without the expenditure of enormous capital, and usually not even then. Several years ago the government had granted more than a million patents, and, although it is the avowed purpose of the Patent Office to refuse grants for inventions that are apparently of no practical usefulness, yet the million patents included many of the most foolish nature.

The Rotary Shoe Heel

ONE man who invented a rotary shoe heel—the idea being to prevent the back part of the heel from wearing down first, refused to get a patent at all, because he said no one else could ever have thought of such a boon to humanity. Inquiry showed that a whole subdivision of the Patent Office was already given over to rotary shoe heels. Another man patented a device to keep horses from balking by gibing them an electrical show. Then, too, so many inventors go out of heir own line. A farmer who had never been beyond his own county invented a fire-escape for skyscrapers.

There have been only a few Bells and Edisons. The average inventor who makes a moderate fortune turns out improvements, attachments, and small changes that make an object practical and conform to already settled trade requirements. A design or invention which is different beyond a certain point is usually, from the business and financial as well as popular view, a "freak" regardless of merit, and the wise manufacturer gradually approaches it with one slight change after another, whereas the true inventor wants to revolutionize the whole industry at once. The only test is, will it pay?

A man who has thirty patents to his record once admitted that only five of them had proved successful. Capitalists and promoters in good standing are hard to interest, because they know only too well how few new inventions will prove commercially successful. Of course, the man who asks the question at eh head of this article believes that his "proposition" will prove a commercial success; but all the burden of proof is upon him. Capitalists know that the majority of claims such as he makes are not sustained by sound business considerations. He must work against a dead wall of prejudice—and rightly too, because the investment of money must be governed by averages and general experience, not by the exceptional case.

There are three general methods of financing an invention. 1. Sell outright to some firm in the same or a similar field. 2. Effect a royalty, lease, or licensing arrangement with some manufacturer in a similar line. 3. Form a company yourself and sell stock. Experts differ as to whether the first or the second method is the better from the inventor's point of view. In the long run, the simplest and surest way is to sell outright. The trouble with the method is that inventors rarely receive more than a pittance. On the other hand, the man who tires to keep most of the benefit himself often wastes years in vain attempts to make satisfactory arrangements.

I can not tell the man whose letter inspired this article to whom to sell his invention, or what firm to approach with a view to manufacturing it on a royalty basis, without knowing the nature of the article, and that is something which he does not mention in his letter. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, if a man has a really useful improvement on some present device or method, a real money-saver, he will get the best results by selling or leasing on a royalty basis to the strongest interests already in the same or the nearest similar field; and it is a very ignorant inventor indeed who does not know who these interests are in his own line. Usually the reason he goes elsewhere is because he has already failed to persuade them of the commercial usefulness of his proposition, or because they will not meet his terms. Sometimes he is afraid they may pirate his idea, and them with their greater resources wear him down in litigation.

The truth is that when an inventor will not or can not place the fruit of his brain with what is called the trade,—that is with the leading manufacturers in his own line,—he enters an uncharted region where he may be lucky enough to encounter a simple-minded capitalist with ready money and a lack of suspicion which is most unusual, but where he is far more likely to meet with irresponsible promoters whose only interest in the inventor is to collect an initial fee, on one pretext or another.

Unknown Millionaires

By BURTON J. HENDRICK

WE can hardly pick up a newspaper to-day without encountering some American millionaire of whom we have never heard. Death, particularly, is a great revealer. When John Jacob Astor died, in 1848, leaving a fortune of $20,000,000, the size of his accumulations caused an international sensation. No American had hitherto succeeded in heaping up such a tremendous hoard. Nothing more strikingly illustrates the economic progress of the United States than the fact that Americans with much greater fortunes than Astor's can now pass their days in virtual obscurity. When they die, the newspapers record the event on an inside page. Only some sensational circumstance about the will discloses the fact that they were exceedingly rich. Seventy-five years ago an American who possessed a million dollars was a household word, while today he is a most commonplace person.

The Richest Mormon

THE newspapers have just reported a curious instance in Utah. A wealthy Mormon named Eccles recently died, leaving, in addition to his legal relations, a plural wife and polygamous children. This equivocal wife has appealed to the courts for a legal standing that will permit her to share in her "husband's" estate. Significantly enough, this case has aroused public interest because it reveals the fact that the Mormons are still practising polygamy. The public overlooks a fact still more important: that, according to the evidence introduced, the deceased left a fortune variously estimated at from $10,000,000 to $30,000,000. That is, this man Eccles had accumulated an estate apparently greater than that which made John Jacob Astor's name famous on two continents; yet how many of us ever heard the name of Eccles until his unsavory domestic affairs received this public airing?

They Felt Sorry For Him

A FEW years ago a shabby old gentleman used to haunt the picture galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He never spoke to any one; no one ever spoke to him. The attendants at the museum regarded him merely as one of the human oddities who take a quiet satisfaction in hanging around public institutions. They felt rather sorry for him, he apparently had so few friends and wore such poor clothes.

One morning an ex-locomotive builder named Rogers died. His will disclosed that he had left his entire fortune, a sum estimated at from $8,000,000 to $10,000,000, to the Metropolitan Museum.

Who is this man Rogers?" the astonished trustees asked.

Even so well informed a man as the president, J. Pierpont Morgan, could not immediately place this obscure possessor of millions. An investigation disclosed that he was the shabby-genteel old gentleman who had spent so much time in the picture galleries. His money, too, turned out to be the real article; indeed, it is the Rogers bequest that has permitted the recent expansion of the Metropolitan and placed it among the great museums of the world.

A few years ago an industrious broker's clerk, named James Henry Smith, was earning his own living in Wall Street. One day he learned of the death of an uncle whom he had not seen for many years, and of whose existence the well informed public knew practically nothing. Yet this uncle left the Wall Street galley slave stock in the St. Paul Railroad

worth $40,000,000! The stock list of the Union Pacific Railroad likewise had its surprises. It showed that one John S. Kennedy, a name scarcely known out-side of Presbyterian and philanthropic circles, had a neat little fortune of $30,000,000 in Harriman securities. This is a fortune larger than any Gould or any Vanderbilt, except William K., possesses to-day; yet the name of Kennedy arouses no envious sensations in the average American heart.

Real Estate Men Knew Him, Anyway

OF all the illustrious obscure, however, no figure presents so many significant angles as that of John D. Wendel, the New York property-owner who died some months ago. The newspapers estimated his wealth at $70,000,000; competent real estate authorities, a few years before his death, placed it at $50,000,000. Probably both these figures exaggerated Wendels fortune. The official appraisers, a few months after his death, placed it at only about $3,000,000. This figure signifies nothing, however, since Wendel, three years before his death, transferred all his most valuable property to his sisters—the purpose evidently being to free the estate from the inheritance tax. His holdings and those

of his four sisters, indeed, formed one compact real estate fortune, aggregating probably not far from $25,000,000. Here, then, was one of the greatest land-owners in the world. Yet there were few Americans who, until his death, knew that Wendel had ever existed. We may be pardoned for not knowing the parvenu millionaires who have heaped up great possessions in railroads and industry; there is no similar excuse for not knowing the Wendels, who are the Hapsburgs of the American Almanach de Gotha.

John D., the bachelor who recently died, was the last survivor of this noble American line.

"Wendels," he once told me proudly, "owned property in New York a hundred years before the Astors were ever heard of. When Peter Goelet was running his hardware store in Hanover Square, my great-grandfather was already a New York land-owner. And I still hold the property he held."

This latter fact furnishes one key to the Wendel character. John G., a contemporary and brother-in-law of John Jacob Astor, had a little deerskin establishment at 73 Maiden Lane. The old gentleman who has just died numbered this same building among his choicest possessions. And it is precisely the same building now that it was then. If any money has been spent "improving" the property since the deerskin days, it betrays externally no evidences of the change. This conservatism was another conspicuous trait of the Wendel character.

Probably most visitors to New York have marveled at the four-story brick house standing serenely at the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-ninth Street. It is opposite the Union League Club, a few blocks north of the Waldorf-Astoria. It rears its ante-bellum facade in stately and solitary splendor in a district of great department stores, hotels, and luxurious shops. Tiffany's wonderful jewelry establishment is only a couple of blocks away; Altman's and Lord & Taylor's new stores stand within a stone's throw. There are probably not half a dozen sections in New York where real estate brings so high a figure. Alongside of the house, on Fifth Avenue, is a vacant lot, about a hundred feet deep, used as a garden.

His Million-Dollar Back Yard

HERE John D. Wendel spent his last years with his sister Josephine. As vacant land the property would easily bring $3,000,000. The vacant lot on Fifth Avenue probably has a market value of nearly a million. Wendel was the only New York millionaire who indulged in the luxury of a back yard in the busiest section of New York's greatest thoroughfare. Here for years he and his sister led a fairly bucolic existence. Their household represented the menage of old New York—the days when the family carriage, rather than the automobile, upheld the family dignity. When the place was built, this section of New York formed the city's outskirts; even as a residential street Fifth Avenue had made little urban progress. And the Wendels, all unconscious of modern changes, persisted in maintaining the mid-century regime.

Every morning, promptly at nine, John D. passed out of the front door, an old faded umbrella in his hand—rain or shine. Sometimes he would walk down Broadway to his office; sometimes the worn family carriage would take him down. He resented fiercely the progress of fashion and business. His determination to keep chickens in his Fifth Avenue yard perpetually involved him in a feud with the New York Health Department. Though the great land-owner had to yield on this point, he preserved his garden intact until his death. The most extravagant offers could not induce him to sell or lease,

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though real estate brokers pursued him night and day and great mercantile establishments uselessly attempted to obtain the site.

"But, Mr. Wendel," one exasperated broker said, "that land is worth a million dollars! Why do you keep it vacant?"

"I keep it for my sister Josephine," he answered. "She needs it to exercise her dog in."

This gentleman of the old school owned almost countless parcels of New York real estate in all parts of the city. He had tenement-houses by the score, business buildings, and large areas of vacant land. Although he prided himself on the fact that the Wendel family antedated the Astors, his grandfather's association with the first John Jacob undoubtedly stimulated the Wendel fortunes. Indeed, as John G. Wendel married Astor's sister, the present Astors and Wendels are related.

In progressive management of property, however, the Wendels fall far behind the Astors. There is a popular tradition that the Astors never sell. This idea is merely a tradition. In the last fifteen years William Waldorf Astor has sold several million dollars' worth of tenement property on the East Side, reinvesting the money in vacant undeveloped land in the Bronx. In this he merely follows the example of the first John Jacob, who established his great fortune by selling profitable land in Wall Street and reinvesting in vacant corner lots uptown.

With the Wendels, however, the practice of not selling amounted to a family religion. It was not policy—it was merely a superstition. It was utterly irrational; for the family would not let go a broken-down rookery even when they could profit handsomely by doing so.

Wendel Wasn't a Miser

THE "Russell Sage of Broadway" somebody once called him. Probably the comparison was unjust and inexact: it was not primarily avarice, but conservatism and family pride, that dictated his business methods. He treated his tenants kindly, especially if they were poor and old; and certainly he missed endless opportunities to squeeze fortunes out of his estate. Nevertheless, the apostle of Henry George would find plenty of sermons in Wendel's career.

The Wendel estate emphasized all the strong points of "Progress and Poverty." Landed property in private hands, according to the George philosophy, can wreak tremendous injury to a community. The tendency of landlordism is not to sell or improve property, but to hold it—frequently as vacant land—until the march of progress has made it valuable. This habit stands in the way of progress; it may sometimes prevent the development of a community or of a section. The Wendel fortune enforces this lesson in a superlative degree. Its policy is not to improve property itself, but to lease out land for stated periods, the lessees putting up the buildings. In England this system works fairly well, but Americans have not taken kindly to it. Business men on this side of the water do not like to put up expensive structures on land they do not own. They will do it in particular instances; but in general the European lease-hold system is not popular.

This explains the fact that wherever there is Wendel property there are usually ramshackle "improvements." The mere fact that the Wendels hold possessions in certain parts of the city frequently explains the dilapidated character of the neighborhood. For example, there is the section of Broadway between Thirty-fourth and Forty-second streets, an area that might naturally be one of the finest sections of New York. In reality it contains not a single first-class business building. It is a section chiefly of one-or two-story buildings. The Metropolitan Opera House and one or two theaters represent its only claim to distinction.

—But He Wouldn't Put in a Telephone

I WELL remember, three years before his death, having a long talk with Wendel. The office in which I found him, at 175 Broadway, hardly suggested the business headquarters of an American millionaire. The building represented the architectural style of the early nineteenth century. It had no elevator. A weary climb up three flights of rickety stairs brought me face to face with a glazed door, simply inscribed, "Mr. Wendel's Office." On entering, the most noticeable object was a large sign, "No Property for Sale"—a warning intended to frighten off enterprising real estate brokers. A few old clerks sat on high stools before ponderous ledgers; they too seemed hardy plants preserved from John Jacob Astor's day.

Mr. Wendel doggedly insisted on keeping everything precisely as it had been in his grandfather's time. He even refused to put in a telephone!

This huge land-owner himself looked the part. His shoulders were bent; a black skull-cap, with fringes of white hair creeping out under the edges, bound tightly a rather finely shaped head; sharp blue eyes gleamed shrewdly under a tall forehead. His frock-coat and heavy boots evidently represented the conventional business dress of half a century ago. In one respect, however, the old gentleman proved disappointing. I had imagined that he would be gruff, unapproachable; on the contrary, he was extremely cordial, in a quaint, old-fashioned way. At first he regarded me with evident suspicion, apparently taking me for another of the numerous brokers who were trying to buy choice pieces of Wendel property. When he learned that I was not, he politely opened an old wooden gate and invited me within. He seemed to delight in talking about his favorite topic—the old New York and the new.

Why Astor Built the Waldorf

"YES, I knew John Jacob Astor," he said. "I knew him very well. I was a boy, of course, but I saw a great deal of him, as our families were related. The greatest man of his time, sir! One of the greatest the country has ever known. Nothing like the Astors of to-day! Willy Waldorf and Jack haven't much of his good sense. You wouldn't have found him building fool hotels like the Waldorf and the Knickerbocker, and he wouldn't have gone in for these big office buildings. These things don't pay. The present-day Astors don't build them for profit. They simply want to do something big. Do you know how the Waldorf happened to be built? I asked Willy Astor, one day, why he was wasting his money in things like this. He told me. Bobby Goelet, he said, had built the Imperial, which was supposed to be the finest hotel in New York. Whenever they met at the club, Bobby would rub the Imperial in on Willy. 'Why don't you do something for New York?' he would say. Look at this fine hotel of mine, the Imperial; you Astors have nothing like that!' Finally Willy couldn't stand it any longer. He called in his architect and said: 'I want you to build a hotel at Thirty-fourth Street that will make the Imperial look like a pig-sty!'"

"Why don't you build one that will do the same to the Waldorf?" I asked him.

"Me! No, I guess not! I am a landowner; I am not a hotel man. Besides, these places are bad for the morals of New York. The demi-monde has never yet used an inch of Wendel property, and it never will. You won't find a saloon on anything we own. Besides, there's no money in these things. Do you know, young man, that two thirds of New York is built on wind? All these skyscrapers are nothing but speculation. Some smart chap gets a piece of land from a company, gets a mortgage, and rushes up one of these huge affairs. He fills it up with tenants whom he steals away from other buildings. Each new skyscraper depopulates a large part of old New York. The promoter makes money, but he's the only one that does. This big, tall city we see around us is a huge mistake. Old John Jacob would have had none of this."

"You don't believe in high buildings?"

"No, sir. No building should be more than five stories high. We'll have a big fire in New York or an earthquake, and then you'll see what will happen. The steel in them will rot sometime, and then they will come tumbling down. I haven't built a single one—and I won't. Five stories is enough! How absurd for people to be riding up and down in elevators! And theaters! The Goelets built the Knickerbocker Theater; I bet they wish they hadn't. These people are running after me all the time to build them theaters. Think of it—places for ballet girls! What is New York coming to, anyway? I don't believe in real estate, anyway. I've got a lot of it,—not so much as you people think I have,—but it's no good. It eats its head off in taxes and assessments. You people write great stories about Astor and other landowners. But you ought to try to run one of these estates for a little while; then things wouldn't look so fine. New York won't let you own your property in peace. It is always building streets, or elevated roads, or subways, or tunnels under the river. No, young man, don't think that real estate in New York is a good investment."

I naturally glanced at his sign: "No Property for Sale." If New York property was so sad a calamity, why did he refuse so many tempting offers to sell?

"Sentiment, young man, just sentiment. In two hundred years the Wendels haven't sold any property, and, as long as I live, they won't!"

The Price He Wanted

STILL, according to report, this same Wendel once narrowly escaped falling from grace. A certain capitalist was making his life miserable about an "extremely valuable Broadway corner." He wanted the site for a bank, and wanted it badly. Wendel persistently refused to negotiate. "Name your price, Mr. Wendel," the banker said; "I'll pay almost anything."

"Oh, well," he replied, merely to get rid of this caller, "cover the plot with gold dollars and I'll let you have it."

The would-be purchaser retired in despair. Suddenly, however, he had an inspiration. He got out pencil and paper, and found that he could actually cover the plot with gold dollars and still not pay a prohibitive price. Next morning he appeared joyfully at the Wendel office.

"I've thought over your proposition, Mr. Wendel," he said, "and have decided to accept it: I'll cover the plot with gold dollars!"

For a moment Wendel was cornered. He had made his own price and had given his word—and the word of a Wendel was sacred. Apparently there was nothing to do but to sell.

"All right," he answered; "I suppose I must let you have it. Remember, however, that those gold dollars must be stood on edge!"

And so the Wendel tradition still remained unbroken.

There are not many unknown millionaires with the fortune of a Wendel. There are hundreds, however, who have possessions that, fifty years ago, would have kept the public eye constantly upon them. Like wheat and corn, they are apparently a staple American product.

How I Missed the Poorhouse

By CHARLES A. HARBAUGH

SOME people are born thrifty, some achieve thrift, and some—die in the poorhouse. The finger of destiny was indubitably pointing me toward the goal last mentioned when an incident occurred that turned the current of an ill-ordered life into one of useful endeavor.

One day a friend of our family, blessed—or cursed—with a streak of exceptional prodigality, gave my twelve-year-old son a new silver dollar. When the boy ran to show me the coin, I jokingly advised him to put it in the bank. He took me seriously, and promised to heed the suggestion, on condition that for every ducat "salted away" by him I should likewise immure a dollar in my own name. I accepted the lad's challenge.

What I suffered during the first year of our pact none but the natural-born spendthrift can understand. My slowly growing savings fund soon became to me a veritable bête noire, and my son, who had inherited the faculty of acquisitiveness from his mother's side of the house, early came to assume the guise of a Spanish inquisitor in his genius for compelling me to disgorge my spare "change" to match up his bankward-rolled dollars.

Finally, however, thanks to my son, our adventure in finance won and held my interest. This prompted me to make a second suggestion; namely, that we pool our resources and join a building association.

The Result of Our Saving Habit

TO cut a long story to the bone, on the boy's sixteenth birthday our building stock represented an investment of nearly a thousand dollars. We then purchased a lot in a thriving section of our city, and built upon it a six-room house, at a cost of twenty-five hundred dollars. Within a week after we offered the property for sale a buyer came along and took it off our hands at a figure that gave us six hundred dollars net profit. Six hundred dollars for three months' work! We had discovered the road to affluence.

Thrice within a twelvemonth we repeated our house-building experiment, and our profits at the end of the period named amounted to approximately two thousand dollars.

Then my son went to college, taking a course in engineering. Meanwhile I went ahead with our building enterprise, having the benefit of his technical knowledge as he progressed in his studies. The boy graduated last year with honors, and we lost no time in organizing a construction company, with him as president and myself as secretary-treasurer.

We are now doing a business that yields us a net annual income not much below $20,000. We no longer have to count the dollars in spending. On the contrary, the family enjoys every comfort and an occasional luxury. Thrift, however, has become with me a habit too deeply inplanted ever to be uprooted.

Last summer my wife and I and our three children took the first vacation we ever had together. We spent several weeks west of the Rockies, visiting, in the course of our travels, the Exposition.

My case is one of thousands in which a chance stimulus to look after the despised penny, and a little will power exercised to make saving a habit, have turned shiftlessness into thrift and aimlessness into purpose.

Clapsaddle's Girl

By ELMORE ELLIOTT PEAKE

llustrations by Douglas Doer

JUDGE Junius Justinian Crowe, followed by his three callers, entered his official chamber, just off the Circuit Court room. The spring term of court had just closed, and the Judge's visitors (attorneys from the northern part of the State) had dropped in for a chat. The afternoon was sultry—a typical southern Illinois brew of weather.

"Judge," remarked one of the men, frown the depths of a leather chair, "what ever became of Wallace Brand? Is he still in the penitentiary?"

Judge Crowe fixed his dark eyes on the speaker with more than casual interest.

"It's rather remarkable, Carson, that you should speak of Brand just now," he answered. "At this minute, in all likelihood, he is on a railroad train, homeward bound. I expect to meet him at the station in an hour. The Governor pardoned him yesterday."

"You don't say so! How long has he served?"

"It would be five years in August."

Carson blew a swirling smoke-ring. Judge, as a special favor, I want you to tell Fleming and Woodward here that story."

Crowe gazed thoughtfully out of the window for an interval, and then addressed himself to the tale.

WESLEY CLAPSADDLE—to go back to the beginning—came here about nine years ago, having bought out our factory. He also bought the Routledge place, a fine old mansion on the outskirts of town. The first Sunday after their arrival, the family came to church in a fine carriage—that was before the automobile bug had addled every third man's brain—behind a span of high-stepping black horses, driven by a clarity boy whom they had brought with them from Kentucky. They also imported a cook, a couple of maids, and an outside man—all black. As you may imagine, their plunge into our social pool made quite a splash.

Clapsaddle invariably wore a silk hat, white waistcoat, and frock-coat. Add to these a pair of flourishing burnsides, a deep voice, and the manners of a Chesterfield, and you have an impressive figure. Hence, when he announced, at a reception tendered him by the Commercial Club, that he intended to add a wagon-hub plant to the box factory, and intimated that a favorable site might bring to Loganstown another factory in which he was interested, Main Street hummed the next day with talk of a boom.

There were in the family two sons, then in college, two little girls, and Louise Vivian sixteen years old. This young lady fluttered the young people as much as her father had their elders, and her beautiful clothes must have inflicted many a pang of envy.

She spent most of her time in a little red dog-cart drawn by a spotted pony. She could be seen on Main Street at almost any hour of the day after ten, and made a pretty and picturesque figure. If she dropped pretty her whip or glove, at least two young men seemed always on hand to dart into the street to rescue it, after which, of course, it was a natural thing for a tête-à-tête to follow. When she ordered soda-water, the boy brought it out to her cart, where she sipped it with perfect insouciance. If she had a sample of dress goods or a spool of thread to match, the dry-goods clerk brought it out to her. This curbstone service was a courtesy, it seemed, which tradesmen always showed ladies in her former Kentucky home.

IN less than a year, though, Loganstown seemed to pall upon Vivian. She had riddled the hearts, in quick succession, of most of the available young men, meanwhile keeping her own whole, and she was probably looking for new worlds to conquer. So the next fall she entered Goodwin Seminary, where she studied music and French. After that she went to Europe. She was gone altogether more than two years. Wesley Clapsaddle occasionally spoke of her being in Paris or Vienna or Rome, where she was being "finished" in music, art, and the languages.

One day, as I stood on the First National Bank corner with Val Hentzpeter, the cashier, he said: "Isn't that Clapsaddle's girl?"

It was. She was driving with great facility a gaudy little orange-red French automobile—a gift from her aunt, I afterward learned. Just opposite us she gave the steering-wheel a quick turn, and the car whisked around a half circle like a rabbit and stopped exactly at the curb.

She was the handsomest woman I ever saw, but she appeared entirely unaware of the admiration she commanded. Unlike her mother, she was democratic to the tips of her fingers. She now shook hands with Hentzpeter and me, chatted a minute over her home-coming and passed on.

Wallace Brand joined us a moment later. As her high-heeled pumps twinkled along the sidewalk, he watched her with a whimsical smile, and said:

"Gentlemen, there goes the most dangerous woman that ever lived in this town. For most women men are called only to work and live. She's the kind they fight and die for."

It was about this time that Clapsaddle's prosperity began to wane. People had discovered that there was more smoke than fire to him. He was a visionary in business. It had leaked out that it was his wife's money—and the last of it—which financed his Loganstown enterprises. He had since borrowed heavily without disclosing the true state of his affairs.

People began to stop calling on the Clapsaddles and failed to replace Vivian's name on their invitation lists.

We were entirely unprepared for the next act in Vivian's drama. When Charlie Holt, my clerk, slipped up to my desk one morning and told me that Vivian and Wallace Brand had been married the night before, I was dumfounded.

Brand was thirteen years her senior, and the longest-headed young fellow in town—a man who loved work as most

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men love play. At thirty-two he had built up the most lucrative law practice in town, and had accumulated in the neighborhood of thirty thousand dollars.

I don't think he had ever kissed a girl in his life. He never danced. He hated a dress suit as a dog does a muzzle. In short, he belonged to that type of men whom the community sets down as confirmed bachelors at twenty-five.

The marriage, naturally, was a nine days' wonder.

Later I learned that Clapsaddle had borrowed five thousand dollars from Brand only two weeks before the marriage. In the circumstances, it was more a gift than a loan.

I did not meet Wallace for two or three days. After I had congratulated him—with a mental reservation, I must confess—he said, still retaining my hand:

"June, between old friends it's best to blink at nothing. You would be more than human if you didn't share the town's surprise over this. I want to tell you that I married Vivian because she's the only woman I've ever loved or ever will love. And, take my word for it, she is worthy of the love of a far better man than I."

It was commonly said, of course, that she had married for money. Gossip never further overshot the truth. I was one of their few intimates after they went to housekeeping, and if ever a woman loved a man it was Vivian Brand. Her love fairly transfigured her; her husband seemed to fill her life completely.

THEN—incredibly to everybody, but most of all to me—their bubble burst. After three short months they separated. Brand never explicitly or connectedly told me the story; but I gathered that Vivian, while in France with her auut, had carried on a rather desperate flirtation with one of our self-expatriated Americans, and, as always happened in her flirtations, it was the man who got burnt.

One day a letter came from him, and the foreign postmark naturally moved Wally to ask whom it was from. Now, the letter—to use Wally's own words—evidently frightened her. One can understand her terror lest it prove a flaming sword to drive her from her Garden of Eden. In her panic she lied to him—she told him it was from a woman; but her agitation betrayed her.

Brand's anger was cataclysmic. He took the letter from her hand forcibly, and read it; and in ten wild, crazy words—his own language again—he stabbed her love to the heart. She staggered out of the room and out of the house without so much as stopping to put on a hat.

These facts, of course, never reached the public; so it manufactured a story to fit the situation. It wasn't a pretty story, and Vivian's name became anathema in Loganstown. Women cut her dead on the street, and it was as much as a young fellow's reputation was worth to lift his hat to her.

Some ten months before her aunt had died, leaving Vivian five thousand dollars. This legacy, with rare devotion, she had turned over to her struggling father. It had proved less than a stop-gap, and he was now on his last legs financially. A few months later he lost the box factory, and went to work in the express office for fifty dollars a month. He still clung to his home, through the tolerance of the mortgage; but the place was as shabby as himself, the paint peeling from the house, the lawn knee-deep with grass, pickets missing, gates awry. The last servant, the horses and carriage, Vivian's cart, pony, and automobile, had all disappeared.

The two sons, of course, left college. The elder one went West. The younger lived here for several months, odd-jobbing in the daytime, playing pool at night; then he, too, went West. Vivian took a position in the millinery department of Cartwright's store.

She had been there but a short time when her father died suddenly. Then the house was sold, and the family moved several blocks farther out, into a little kennel of a place, without furnace, electric lights, bath, or even running water. Yet Vivian, whenever I chanced to meet her, looked as immacutlate and fresh as if she had just emerged from a tub of rosewater. I detected, though, a gathering hardness in her face, a settling of the lines around her mouth. A woman doesn't go through such experiences without either hardening or breaking, and Vivian wasn't the kind you would expect to break.

DURING that winter a traveling hypnotist, advertising himself as "Alexander the Great," came to town for a week. The fellow, though undoubtedly a scamp and a card sharp, did not belong to the ordinary breed of charlatans. He wore their customary silk hat and frock-coat, to be sure; but he had a head that would have honored a statesman's shoulders, a clean-cut face, and a pair of compelling steel-blue eyes.

On Monday, the opening night, a number of professional men attended in a body, by special invitation. I was among them, being interested in hypnotism and having recently read Bernheim and Bramwell on the subject. Alexander promised us more than he delivered. His exhibition was a typical one, with the usual amount of fakery and horse-play.

His pièce de résistance was a telepathist or mind-reader who called out the number of your watch, the initial on your handkerchief, the number of matches in your hand, etc. This satin-gowned, bare-armed young woman, blindfolded and in a state of hypnosis, and speaking in a wandering, halting voice, was very effective. But the chief effect was obtained when, at the close, Alexander suddenly stepped behind her and whisked off her cambric mask, disclosing the face of Vivian Brand. The audience fairly gasped.

How the rogue got hold of her I can not imagine. Nor can I say whether her performance was merely a trick or a real demonstration of telepathy. Conventionally, it was a mad thing for her to do. Still madder, from the same point of view, was her acceptance of a permanent engagement with Alexander, though the presence of his wife muzzled the scandalmongers.

Naturally, I do not agree with those who stigmatized Vivian's act as a wanton escapade to humiliate Wallace Brand. For there is no doubt that her family was on the verge of want. They were four months in arrears with their rent; and when Vivian, on the following Saturday, came into the office of my former law partner, who was agent for the property, to pay this rent, she told him that Alexander was to pay her forty dollars a week. Cartwright had paid her six.

Three weeks later her mother and younger sisters packed the remnants of their household goods and moved back to Kentucky. Thus ended the sad chronicles of the Clapsaddles in Loganstown.

YET not quite. Something like a year afterward I was holding court in Belle City, down on the Ohio River. One suffocating night, after an evening session that lasted until eleven o'clock, I strolled about the business section of the town, loath to retire to my hot room. Alain Street was dark, except for one shop window, which fairly blazed with light. Ten or a dozen people, mostly negroes, were grouped about the window, and a policeman stood in the entrance, twirling his night-stick.

The window was dressed to represent a bedroom. A brass bed, a white-enameled dressing-table, and a couple of white chairs stood out sharply against the black velvet hangings. But it was not until I crossed the street and joined time spectators that I discovered a woman on the bed, asleep.

She lay on her back. A thick plait of hair trailed over one shoulder. A sheet, secured with safety pins along the side of the mattress, was drawn well up over her body, yet not so high but that the square-cut neck of her night-gown, richly edged with lace, was visible. The sleeves of the gown, trimmed with the same stuff, were elbow length; and one bare forearm was arranged across her bosom with almost corpselike precision. Her lashes rested motionlessly upon the white skin beneath her Cupid's-bow mouth drooped slightly, like a babe's in slumber; her breast just perceptibly rose and fell.

Of course you have already guessed that it was Vivian Brand. But I did not recognize her until my eyes fell upon a placard leaning against one of the chairs. It read: "This woman was put into a hypnotic sleep this (Monday) night at the Lyric Theater by Alexander the Great. On Thursday night she will be awakened at the same place by Professor Alexander. Don't miss it! Also be sure to hear the free lecture which the Great Hypnotist will give in front of this store to-morrow at 12:15 sharp."

As I stood there among the wide-eyed, half-fearful negroes, I must confess to a share in their emotions. For seventy-two hours this delicate woman would lie in that unnatural sleep, breathing the hot, dead air of a show window, during a torrid spell that was taxing the vitality of the most vigorous. For three days she would be there for the entertainment of passersby—the curious, the mocking, and the morbid, the pure and the impure. Her volition surrendered to an unscrupulous charlatan, she would be there like one locked in the embrace of a deadly drug, her spirit wandering through some dream-wrought paradise, her plight a public spectacle. A wave of anger passed over me.

Nevertheless, I resolved to hear Alexander the next day. I found the street in the immediate vicinity choked with people, and had difficulty in elbowing my way to the window. Vivian, though still asleep, of course, was not in the restful attitude of the night before. She had turned on her side; her cheeks were flushed. The poisonous atmosphere of the box was doing its work.

A GLANCE was sufficient for me, and I turned to where Alexander sat in an automobile hung with strips of black and orange cloth. He sat with folded arms, his tall hat tilted back, his large mouth set in a straight line, his hard gray eyes fixed, apparently, on the two brass buttons that decorated the back of his chauffeur's coat. He seemed as oblivious to the mob as Vivian herself. Yet, at the stroke of the quarter-hour, he promptly rose, removed his hat, and stepped up on the seat of the tonneau.

"My friends," he began, in a strong, resonant voice, "the woman you see in yon window lies in what is known as a hypnotic trance or sleep. It was induced by myself, and only I can break it. If that building were to burst out in flames, if your fire engines were to come thundering up over these granite blocks, if that plate-glass window were to be smashed, and if all of you, with one accord, were to rend the air with warning cries, not so much as one of her eyelids would quiver.

"Yet at my gentlest whisper she would wake, as you who are present on Thursday night will see. For she has resigned her personality, her ego, her will, her soul, her subliminal self—call it what you will—to me. I am her master. Therefore, my friends," he added, with a dramatic fall of his voice, "were I to drop dead in this car, that woman in yon window would never wake. She would gradually and insensibly pass into a state of dissolution."

He talked only a few minutes. As I moved away some one roughly gripped my arm. Turning, I saw the face of Wallace Brand, as white as chalk. He was the last man on earth I would have chosen to meet at the moment.

"June," said he harshly, "is there no way to stop this hellish business?"

"I'm afraid not, Wally," I answered. "If Alexander were to spit on the side-walk or pluck a flower in the park, we could have him arrested; but for this—"

He wanted to interview Alexander: but, convinced of the futility of that course, I persuaded him to accompany me to my hotel. He had come over to Belle City, he told me, on business, and expected to go home that night.

He did not go, though. I knew why, of course, and I asked the hotel clerk to give him a room connecting with mine. I wanted to keep an eye on him. There was a look about his face that alarmed me. His break with Vivian had left him somewhat like a man suffering from concussion of the brain. He had been avoiding his friends, and even I had seen little of him. Almost the only link with the past was his love of work, and he worked like a slave under the lash.

He promised me now to keep away from both the show window and Alexander. At two o'clock the next morning, however, he entered my room, dressed for the street. "I've got to go down there, June," said he, in a strained voice. "If I can see her and assure myself that she's all right, I believe I can sleep."

When we reached the window he was calm enough, but, a blind man could have seen how much he still loved the beautiful creature lying in that uncanny enthralment. He gazed at her fixedly.

"I see they have installed an electric fan," I ventured, after some minutes. "And the hotel clerk tells me that Mrs. Alexander bathes her face and hands three times a day, and draws back the curtains to renew the air. From what I know of hypnotism, Wally, I'm confident she doesn't suffer. If she did she wouldn't submit to these operations."

"You think not, eh!" he said, turning upon me as if a stranger had obtruded on his revery. "Don't men work and die in hell-holes of every description, every day in the year, in order that their dear ones may eat? Do you think her less capable of such heroism?"

IT was a relief to me when Thursday night came, the night of Vivian's awakening. Wally's tension relaxed, too, and at the supper-table he was almost cheerful. He insisted, however, on my sitting in the office with him until the return of the day clerk, who had gone to the show at the theater.

"Well," reported the clerk, selecting a cigar from the case, "he woke her, all right. But he didn't do it with no whisper. He bawled 'Wake up!' a dozen times, and slapped her face, and dipped his hands in ice water and held them on her forehead and the back of her neck."

"Slapped her face, did he!" observed Wally, with a glittering eye. "Hard?"

"You'd have thought so if you'd heard the smacks. Of course, you can't tell how much of it was faked. The ice water wasn't, though, for he had the pail in the wings, where the audience couldn't see it. One of the stage hands told me, about it."

"How did she act?" asked Brand.

"Well, she sat up on the edge of the cot for a minute and stared at the crowd as if she didn't know where she was. Then she sort of blushed, and dropped back on the pillow and covered her face with the sheet, and four supes carried the cot off the stage."

"And you enjoyed it, I suppose," said Brand, so savagely that the clerk eyed him inquiringly.

"To tell the truth, no," he answered. "I wanted to beat that big brute up."

THE next morning I bade Brand good-by. He had arranged to leave on the eleven o'clock train. Imagine my surprise when he entered the court-room about eleven-thirty and came up to my desk.

"June," said he,—and I have seen men receive the death sentence with the same stony face,—"that man is going to hypnotize Vivian again at noon, in the vestibule of the theater, and make her play the piano for God knows how long. I heard it at the station." His chin quivered; then he added, with the same deadly calm: June, this will stop, legally or illegally!"

I determined to try to stop it legally and adjourned court at a quarter to twelve. We reached the Lyric five minutes before the hour, and, of course, found a crowd. A piano stood in the vestibule, ten or twelve feet from the sidewalk.

In a moment Alexander and Vivian appeared. She was dressed in some filmy black stuff, and wore a black, broad-brimmed straw hat banked with violets. She was pale, and thinner than she used to be. She looked tired. She did not give the crowd a glance, but stood with her eyes fixed upon the box-office window.

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"Ladies and gentlemen," said Alexander, "in a moment I shall hypnotize the young lady before you, and while under my hypnotic spell she will play upon this piano continuously, without a pause, from now until the opening of our exhibition to-night—a period of eight hours."

Brand gripped my arm and smothered a curse.

"Now, it must be evident to you," continued the speaker, "that such a feat as this would be absolutely impossible, under normal conditions, to a slender, delicate young woman such as you see this one to be. In fact, I am credibly informed that in professional endurance contests no male pianists have ever played for a period exceeding six hours. Yet, to show you the marvelous influence of mind over matter, when the mind is properly focused and directed, this young lady will not only play two hours beyond the world's record, but will do it without fatigue.

"To prove this, she will appear upon the stage tonight in her wonderful telepathic act, and will be as fresh as if she had spent these intervening hours in sleep. And let me explain to you once more—for it is it matter of popular misapprehension—that a person in a hypnotic sleep need not have his eyes closed. That is optional with the operator. But when the subject's eyes are open he or she sees only what the operator suggests."

He paused, and Vivian took her place at the piano, on an ordinary round piano-stool. I shuddered at the thought of her sitting there, without any support for her back, for eight hours.

Alexander made a few perfunctory passes of his hands before her eyes, saying quietly, yet with subtle intensity: "Sleep! Sleep! Already you are drowsy, very drowsy. You are asleep. Open your eyes. Now, when I give you the word, I want you to play upon this piano until I command you to stop. Remember that you will suffer no fatigue. The singing birds of this beautiful garden that you see about you, the flowers, the splashing fountains, the cooling breezes, will continually renew your strength." He paused, fixed the crowd with his domineering eye, and gave the command: "Play!"

AT the word her hands struck the keys. Cut-and-dry it as you will, gentlemen, in the desiccating atmosphere of science, there is some thing profoundly impressive about this hypnotism. Vivian had obviously passed, as her master predicted, into an enchanted sphere, leaving behind the gaping crowd, the heat, her weariness, all the squalid accessories of her life. Her face was like one rapt by a beautiful vision. Her pupils were dilated, as if by belladonna, and there was a fixity about her eyes that was incompatible with sight.

Well, we now had legal evidence of a public exhibition which might justly be considered as detrimental to public morals. Our next step was to have it restrained. We called upon the city attorney, the chief of police, and the mayor, one after the other. The city attorney pleaded no jurisdiction; the chief, a burly brute, denounced us as kill-joys; the mayor was polite but regretful.

All these officials were found within a block of the theater. Doors and windows were wide open on account of the heat, and throughout our several interviews the notes of that piano drifted to our ears. To me they were as sad as the dirge of a lost soul. They must have driven Brand crazy.

We returned aimlessly to the theater, and stood on the sidewalk a moment. Suddenly Wallace advanced to the piano and, laying his hand upon Vivian's shoulder, said earnestly:

"Vivian, wake up! This is no place for you. It is Wallace speaking. I want you to come away with me. Wake up! Stop playing!"

He might as well have spoken to an automaton. Her fingers never faltered. She did not miss a note. No change of expression took place. Her eyes never wavered in their sightless stare.

Alexander now appeared from inside. He seemed rather pleased than otherwise at the incident, and stood back with a confident, sardonic smile.

"An old friend of hers, I take it," said he amiably. "In that case, she should recognize your voice. Stop her if you can. If I'm a fake, prove it to the crowd. Tell her the theater is on fire. Tell her that her mother is dead. Lift her hands from the keyboard and close the lid."

Brand acted on the last injunction. The music stopped, but not her hands. They moved up and down the soundless piece of wood. The spectators laughed. Alexander, with a mocking bow to Brand, raised the lid again, and once more the clang of the ancient instrument mingled with the noises of the street.

I half expected Wallace to knock the hypnotist down, but after a moment he returned to my side.

"There seems nothing else to do," said he. Glancing at his watch, he added:

"You are due at the court-house now." He accompanied me for a couple of blocks. But he didn't deceive me. He's not the kind that gives up. I suspected he had a plan in which he did not want or could not expect my assistance. But I had to go to court, and after pressing him as hard as I dared to come with me, I left him.

WHAT happened came out at his trial. He bought a .38 caliber automatic pistol and a box of cartridges. He loaded the weapon in a telephone-booth. He then returned to the theater, and, not seeing Alexander, passed through the auditorium to the stage. Alexander, with it quartette of assistants, was rehearsing a new feature.

"Alexander," said Brand, "I want you to wake that girl."

Everybody except Alexander laughed. Alexander was a judge of human nature; he scented peril, and, stepping behind a table, drew a revolver.

"I'm running this show, sir," he answered. "Leave the stage and the house or I'll call an officer."

Brand advanced a step,—he had not drawn his pistol,—and Alexander opened fire. One bullet entered Wally's left shoulder. Wally then drew his own gun and shot the hypnotist through the heart.

ASKED on the witness-stand why he, a member of a revolver club and an expert shot, allowed his antagonist to jeopardize his life, Brand answered that he was afraid if he killed Alexander it would be impossible to wake Vivian. This was in his mind as he stood over the body of his victim, for he turned to Alexander's assistants, who, frozen with terror, still stood in a line, and asked:

"Are any of you familiar enough with this man's methods to wake the young woman at the piano?"

"I think I can," spoke up a tall, loose-jointed fellow with twitching brows. "For fear something should happen to him, Mr. Alexander, whenever he put her into the long sleeps, always told her in a whisper, so the audience couldn't hear, to answer to my voice. He never done it with these piano stunts, but I think I can wake her."

"Come and try it, then," said Brand.

They went out to the vestibule. The under-study approached the piano and laid his hands on Vivian's.

"Stop playing, Vivian! Wake up!" he commanded in a shaky voice.

He testified in court that he was afraid she would fail to respond and that Brand would kill him too. But her fingers instantly stopped, and she looked at the two men with bewildered eyes. Doubtless the premature awakening, and by another than Alexander, confused her.

"Is it time for the show?" she asked.

"Listen, Vivian," said Brand. "There will be no show. Alexander is dead. I have killed him. He will never hypnotize you again."

She gazed at him fixedly for a moment before recognition dawned in her eyes. For the first time in the whole incident, Brand told me, his heart quickened. Then she buried her face in her hands and began to weep. He would have taken her in his arms then and there; but a policeman stepped forward at that instant and snapped a pair of bracelets on his wrists.

In court Brand pleaded not guilty in order to bring out the facts. The witnesses, including Vivian and himself, told essentially the same story. Judge Thomas sentenced him to fourteen years in the penitentiary, which good behavior would commute to ten. It was an outrageous sentence, in my opinion, and I took occasion to tell Thomas so. Wally was clearly crazed by the abuse and degradation of the woman he loved. Governor Porter, in pardoning him, declared his adherence to this view.

JUDGE CROWE ceased speaking, and again averted his eyes to the motionless leaves of the soft maple outside the window. For a moment his listeners were silent.

"A very interesting and tragic story, Judge," observed one of the attorneys. "But I should like to hear what became of poor Vivian."

"That I can't tell you. I have never seen or heard of her since the trial. She disappeared abruptly after giving her testimony. And now, gentlemen," he added, glancing at his watch, "if you will excuse me, I'll drive down to the station to welcome home this same Wallace Brand."

The distance was a three-minute run in his car. A large number of other cars had preceded his, and there was a throng of citizens on the platform, many of them women.

The train drew in. As the passengers filed out, Junius Crowe was conscious of a constriction about his heart. Facing all these friends would be no easy ordeal for the proud-spirited ex-convict. Then old Fritz Brand appeared in the gang-way, plucking excitedly at his flowing whiskers, and behind him came a tall, broad-shouldered young man of thirty-eight, wearing a neat suit of checks and a straw hat. His hair was slightly grayed above the temples. Yet a deep contentment shone from his eyes.

Judge Crowe sprang forward to grasp his hand. The next instant he paused, with an involuntary exclamation. Brand had turned to assist a young woman down the steps. The woman was Vivian Clapsaddle Brand.

It was not age or grief, but a chastened, nunlike spirituality in her face that at first had tricked Crowe's eyes. Beautiful she still was, but it was now the beauty of the lambent moon, not the noon-day sun. On the bottom step she paused just an instant and glanced at the crowd with timorous eyes, as if realizing that this welcome was not for her—as if feeling that once more it was her fate to set Loganstown agog. Then, spying Judge Crowe, she smiled through quick tears, and a moment later kissed him on the cheek, as if he were her father. She was still under twenty-five.

There was some delay over the baggage, and the two men had a moment together.

"She waited for me five years, June, and expected to wait ten or more," said Brand, with lustrous eyes. "She lived near the prison, and every Sunday afternoon for five years—expecting it to be ten or more, remember—she visited me. That is love, man. Without it that prison would have rotted my soul, and I should have come out human scrap. Now we are going to begin life over again; and, June, we're as excited as two kiddies waiting for Christmas Eve."

Behind the Bolted Door?

By ARTHUR E. McFARLANE

Illustration by Henry Raleigh

SO it was Maddalina whose sharp finger-nails had left those deep red scratches on Mrs. Fisher's arms; it was her shrill voice that had been heard crying "No, no, no!" and "Si, si, si!" on the afternoon of the murder. It was she who had opened the envelop and stolen the bank-notes which Mrs. Fisher had left for Willings.

But—there the trail became blank again.

Was it her hand also that struck the blow at Mrs. Fisher's temple? And, if it were, whose hand had given those ghostly rappings a full hour after the murder? Whose voice had cried, "My God, my God!" in that locked apartment, long after Maddalina had fled?

The shock of Maddalina's attack on D. Hope had left the little group exhausted. The Doctor stood, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. D. Hope had sunk into a chair, and Willings was fanning her. Only the Judge could summon energy enough to ask one of the questions that were throbbing in all their minds.

"Can you make her tell anything else, Laney?" he queried. "Can't you make her tell who the mur—"

But, before the Doctor could answer, their attention was forced back again to the chair where Maddalina, panting and apparently exhausted, was showing signs of waking from her trance. A long-drawn, pitiful moan broke from her lips.

"Ah-h! Madre di Dio!" It was as if, in her first waking moment, she realized that she had been made to betray herself. She dashed herself at her captors like a caged beast. It required all the strength of the three men to force her back into the chair.

Then, spent and flagging, she began to pour forth a ceaseless stream of denials.

She knew nothing of Mrs. Fisher's death. She had not heard of it till next morning, when she read it in Il Telegrafo. She knew nothing of her jewels, her pearls, of any stolen money.

Again the Doctor showed her the big blue envelop that had contained the bank-notes. For an instant she gaped, blenching. But next moment came more denials.

From the street below came the sound of horses' hoofs and a gong. Judge Bishop went to the window and looked out.

"It's Boyce," he said to the Doctor quietly. "He's got his patrol; he's come for her. Can you make her tell anything else?"

"I'm afraid not, but there's just a chance. We'll let her know that we've got Jimmy, anyway. Perhaps that may loosen her tongue. Send for him."

A moment later the little Cockney appeared in the doorway; but, before he could speak a word, even before he could enter, the girl broke forth, shrieking her recognition: "A-i-i!"

THEY had believed her physically spent. But now, at the sight of Jimmy, a beast fury leaped up in her that passed anything she had shown before.

"Liar! English dog! Spy!" she cried out. And the next moment, while she tore at her handcuffs, she had begun to scream such things as Laneham himself had never looked for.

Let them ask their questions of Jimmy too, she shrieked. Let them ask him, first about that scritto—that writing—which the Signora Fisher had had them sign, and that only a few hours before her death! If it was thieves who killed her—jewel thieves from Italy—let any one say what that writing meant!

Let him tell, she shrieked, about the quarrel they had heard! Oh, si, si, si! He had heard it as well as she! Let him tell about that, and say if it had anything to do with the killing of the Signora!

She hardly paused to catch her breath. Like a torrent her accusations rushed forth, one upon another.

And let them ask him about the voice he had heard so often! Let him tell of that! Many times he had heard it, and so had she! In that voice was the devil's work! The corners of her mouth were slavered. She seemed about to have another seizure.

"Let him tell of that—of that—of that!"

Clearly, nothing was to be gained by holding her longer: she was beside herself. At a nod from the Doctor, three patrolmen, who had come with Boyce, the Commissioner, stepped forward, and bore her, still screaming her accusations and denials, downstairs and into the wagon. Judge Bishop went with them.

And again the Doctor, Willings, and D. Hope were left facing the little butler alone.

His face bore telltale evidence that Maddalina's thrusts had struck home. The fatal look was there—the look that comes into the faces of those who are holding back some important bit of information. Dr. Laneham had described it to them at the very beginning as the "Zancray look." It was on Jimmy's face at this moment, unmistakably.

"Well," said the Doctor. "How about it, Jimmy? You gave us to understand that you were telling its everything, you know. And if you're not?"

The little Englishman still stood unspeaking. Perspiration streamed from him, and his eyes were round with a kind of piteousness. But he made no answer.

"How about it? Supposing we take the quarrel first?"

"Dr. Laneham, don't h'ask me, for I carn't tell you!"

"Very well. Maybe we can got at it through the voice. You know, Jimmy, we too heard a voice. And you told its, before, that you did not hear it."

"An' I didn't! I didn't! You were speaking of some fearful voice that you and Judge Bishop and Mr. Willings 'ere 'eard when you broke in after the murder. That I never 'eard. On the day of the murder I 'eard no voice of any kind!"

And here Willings entered the cross-examination.

"Jimmy," he said, "supposing for the time we leave the voice. There's still that third thing—the scritto—the writing. We all want to keep our belief in you. Are you going to keep silent about that, too?"

"No, Mr. Willings!"—it burst out of him. "Not when you put it so, I won't. And that scritto—you'll know anyways why I didn't speak of it before. For, gentlemen, that writing—that writing was Mrs. Fisher's will, that's what it was!"

"A will?"

"That's what it was, sir. The vixen Maddalina, she didn't know——she 'adn't the learning to,—but I knowed. And Mrs. Fisher had written it out 'erself that morning!"

"Jimmy! But why—knowing, knowing

Continued on page 17

Comedy in the Movies

These Society Women Keep Office Hours

---

Making a Dollar Go a Mile

Hub Ducks the Flivver Class

By SEWELL FORD

Illustrations by F. Vaux Wilson

IT'S well enough sayin' how you're goin' to treat every one alike durin' business hours—playin' no favorites and ditchin' any private grouches. But it can't be done. Anyway, I can't run the Physical Culture Studio that way. Not reg'lar. There's some blows in here that I take to right from the first tap of the bell. Then again there's others that gets my short hair bristlin' just by the way they opens the door.

Take Struble, now. I'd never had so much as a glimpse of one side of him until, one muggy afternoon last August, he puffs into the front office fannin' himself with his Panama and moppin' his brow. With the humidity up in the nineties, it wa'n't any day for a fat man to go waddlin' around town—not with such a load of soft, flabby excess as he carries.

He stops in the middle of the floor to get his breath, glances critical around the room, and then demands puffy:

"This Shorty McCabe's?"

"It says Professor on the door, don't it?" says I.

"Eh? Oh, does it?" says he, starin' back stupid at the ground-glass. "So it does! Well, are you the Professor?"

"Uh-huh," says I, sizin' him up a bit hostile, I expect.

He's a squash-face, for one thing. You know—with one of those vacant, untinted maps that has just about as much color and expression as a prize pie fruit in a quick-lunch window. Maybe it's punkin I'm thinkin' of. Anyway, he has a wide, smooth countenance of no particular shade, hair and eyes to match, and a Silly double-chin dimple that it's a wonder some careless barber ain't eliminated long before this.

"Struble's my name," says he. "H. K."

"Struble's Soaps?" says I.

"Yes, sir," says he, a trifle chesty.

"I've seen the billboard ads," says I.

"Should hope you had," says he. "I spend a hundred thousand a year on 'em. Bet you've used the soap, too."

"That's right," says I. "Sometimes in hotels and railroad wash-rooms you can't get anything else. Pardon me if I seem to hint that it's perfectly punk stuff."

"Maybe so," says he. "But we make the sales, just the same. That hundred thousand comes back a good many times in the course of a year. That's what I'm in business for."

"I could guess that," says I. "Much obliged for your droppin' in, but I'm stocked 'way up on soap."

He gives me a blank, injured stare, sort of like a cow that's run unexpected into a wire fence.

"See here," says he, "I'm not selling any soap. That's not what I hunted you up for."

"My mistake," says I. "Do I have another guess?"

I don't. He announces that he's come to have me put him in shape. "I'm a little overweight," says he, "and I need fixing up generally. What I want you to do is to work off forty or fifty pounds of this, get me so I can breathe easier, and put some snap into me. I want to sleep better and enjoy my meals more. I'll give you a month to show what you can do."

"Huh!" says I, eyein' him cold. "That's some contract."

"I can pay for it," says Mr. Struble, pattin' his check-book pocket. "So get busy."

I EXPECT you know the Struble type. They're common enough. They ain't all soap magnates, either. A six or seven figure bank balance seems to affect 'em that way. When they want something they go into the market after it, whether it's an old master or a new wife; and they expect the sales-persons to hop around lively. Struble he was condescendin' to give me an order for about a thousand dollars' worth of health.

Course, I could see he didn't mean to be specially raw about it. Just his way.

"Sorry," says I, "but my class of fatty degenerates is full."

You'd 'most thought that would have jolted him, wouldn't you? But say, he's got a head like a billiard cushion—everything caroms off.

"Class!" says he. "I don't want to go into any class. A private course is what I want."

I shakes my head. "Try golf," says I.

"Bah!" says he. "Haven't I been at that fool game all summer? That is, as long as I could stand it. The lessons wa'n't so bad; I was paying for them. And when that thick-headed Scot couldn't show me how to do it, why, that was up to him. When it came to playing, though—" He groans dismal.

"Why, I thought even the dubs enjoyed it," says I.

"I didn't," says he. "Maybe I might if— Say, what do you think? The only man in my club that I could get to go out with me was an old wreck who was near eighty and had had two strokes. I suppose I do play pretty bad, but is that any reason why I should be treated as if I had smallpox? Three hundred members, and only one would he seen on the course with me. Think of that! I couldn't believe it at first. Not until I'd asked nearly half of 'em, Then I broke my clubs and quit. Resigned, too. Blast 'em! Golf snobs, that's what they are. I'd like to get even with the whole lot some way. But don't talk golf to me. I'll take my exercise in private, where I won't be snubbed or snickered at. That's why I came to you. Now name your price."

Honest, I did everything but lead him out to the stair landin' and throw him down. Hints! You might as well shoot hot doughnuts at a dreadnought. Why, I near went hoarse tryin' to convince him I didn't care to take him on at all. He knew what he wanted, knew he could pay, and wouldn't listen to anything else. My little whims on the subject, whatever they might be, didn't interest him at all. He insists on being shown through the gym., havin' the apparatus explained to him; and, the first thing I know, I've assigned him a locker and marked down his time for three afternoons a week.

"You needn't look for any fancy calisthenics, though," says I. "A case like yours calls for rough work, so don't beef at what I put you through."

"I understand," says he. "To-morrow at 3 P.M."

SAY, he was game, all right. I had him tossin' the medicine-ball until he leaked like a sprinklin' cart; made him work the rowin'-machine as long as he could stay in the seat; and then stood

him in the needle spray while Swifty Joe played the hose on him. We pared him down fifteen pounds that first week, and if there was a muscle on him that wa'n't as sore as a boil it was an oversight on our part.

But back he comes for more every trip, satisfied that he's gettin' his money's worth, and actually showin' a little face color from it. After each session, too, he likes to sit around the office a while and tell what a whale of a success he's made of the soap business.

That seems to be his one line of conversation—the only thing he knows, in fact. First off it gave me an earache, then it got to be sort of amusin', and after a spell I worked up more or less interest in the tale. Also I was a little curious. How was it, anyway, that such a plain bonehead as Struble, in a country as full of live wires as ours, could go out and connect with so much kale? Oh, he had it! You can't build a four-story cut-granite mansion, with a hundred-foot Riverside Drive frontage, just on hot air. So one day I puts it to him flat.

"Struble," says I, "how in blazes did you ever break into the plute class? Where'd you get your start?"

And he comes back enthusiastic with the details. Seems that twenty-odd years ago he'd been foreman of a dinky little soap factory over on the edge of Jersey City. And when the boss died, him and the widow got together and figured out a scheme for keepin' the business runnin'. Somehow or other they did it. And inside of a year, what with sittin' up with her so many evenin's over the books, they'd got real chummy. Next he knew he'd married her and had the outfit in his own name.

He was makin' a pretty fair article of soap, too; good, honest stuff anyway, that would take off the dirt. And he was squeezin' out a decent livin' at it. Then, one day, this Hicks gent shows up. He's a promoter with a little capital and a lot of nerve. Hicks gets Struble backed into a corner of the office, feeds him the first real Havana perfecto he'd ever stuck a tooth into, and springs his proposition. He wants to buy in, mortgage the plant up to the eaves, and invest the proceeds in a premium advertisin' scheme. You know, one of these "save-the-wrapper" games. Struble turned pale and gasped. The mere thought of takin' a risk like that left him weak in the knees. He admits it. But Hicks was a persuadin' guy. He could pump sportin' blood into a dill pickle. And by noon next day Struble had signed off a half interest and the thing was under way.

"I wouldn't go through it again for worlds," says Struble. "The strain of those first six months! Why, we had to pay out our last hundred dollars, sometimes our last five, on those ad contracts—thousands at a whack. Then the premiums: we bought cheap china sets by the carload, gilt clocks and parlor organs by the gross; all sorts of junk, just to give away. Seemed like pouring money down the sewer. And us kiting checks to meet our pay-roll! Makes me shiver to think of it. Why, the least bad turn would have broken us there, many a time—perhaps sent us both to jail.

"And then—well, then we began to get it back. Orders, dribbling along at first, then steadier bigger; and at last a stream of them. Rush orders, too. We were nearly swamped with 'em. Couldn't get our base fats, not half fast enough. 'Substitute,' says Hicks. 'Chuck in anything.' 'But it won't be good soap,' says I. 'They won't know the difference, nor care,' says he. 'They're after the premiums.'

"Well, he was right. The cheaper we made the soap, the more we had left for ads; and the more we threw into advertising, the more soap we sold. 'That's the dear American public,' says Hicks. 'Show 'em a chance to get something for nothing and they'll buy themselves poor—and us rich.'

"They did, too. You've seen our factories, eh? The buildings alone cover twelve acres. Three thousand hands, counting day and night shifts. All cheap labor, too. That's what counts—girls in the packing-room, boys in the box-shop, Poles and Italians running the reducers. Such people don't need much to live on. Besides, we're not making fancy goods. Profits are what we're after. We get 'em, too. Look at last year. Bad, eh? But it didn't affect our sales. Jumped 'em, in fact. And we cut our melon just the same."

At which Struble wags his head and

---

poses chesty for me, to come across with the admirin' gaze. I had to grin, too. So here was a sample of what we reward with homes on Riverside Drive, and limousines, and English butlers? We're a great people.

Me bein' one of the common people, I grins. Smart guy, this Mr. Struble. He knows how to put it over us. 'At-a-boy! He's got the coin to prove it.

"Well," says I, "you can take it easy enough now. Have things pretty soft, eh?"

"Yes," says he. "We're livin' up among the swells, right with the best of 'em. Seemed sort of odd at first. Does yet. But I guess we'll get used to it. Sort of lonesome at times, though."

"No young folks comin' on to help you enjoy it?" I asks.

STRUBLE'S big moon face clouds up and a starey look settles in his wide-set eyes.

"There's only Junior," says he, "and he—well, I'm a little disappointed in him."

"Don't he take kindly to the soap business?" says I.

"I didn't want him to go into that," says Struble.

"I see," says I. "Sent him to college, did you?"

Struble nods. "I tried," says he. "I wanted him to be a lawyer, or something like that. I—I guess he did his best, too; but he couldn't seem to make it."

"Didn't fire him, did they?" says I.

Struble sighs. "Not exactly," says he. "But after he'd been a freshman two terms without making any progress—well, he didn't want to keep on. I'd sort of got discouraged, too—and after all I'd done. Why, he had everything he wanted—fine rooms, racing car, Jap valet. There wasn't a boy in college had more. But he just couldn't seem to stick to his books. I don't know why."

"I've heard of just such cases," says I. "And sometimes it's the young hick with the fastest roadster that studies slowest. Odd, ain't it?"

Struble gives me one of his stupid stares, indicatin' that he don't get the connection.

"Didn't hit the sportin' life too hard, did he?" I suggests.

"What, Junior?" says Struble, "No, he's a good boy, you know. Not a bit wild. He felt as badly about failing as we did—his mother and I. But there was no use going on. I had a straight talk with him. He'd have gone into the factory if I had insisted. But I didn't want him there. Not yet, anyway. I wanted him to make good on his own hook, like I did. So I got him a place with a firm of brokers; nice, clean business. But he didn't take to that, either. No head for figures. I found another job for him, with a big machinery company, down at Perth Amboy. Took away his allowance this time, too. He's down there now. His mother makes a fuss: says he'll get sick, maybe starve. But if he's going to be a rank failure I want to know it. He understands. This is his last chance. If he comes home this time— Oh, I'll take care of him, but that's all. Put him on a pension, you know, and sort of count him out."

"Heard how he's getting on?" says I.

"Not lately," says Struble. "Not for a month or so. I—I suppose he will be showing up soon. Then I'll know he's no good. It—it's kind of tough, McCabe, with only one."

"Oh, maybe he won't turn out a fiivver, after all," says I.

Struble sighs deep. "I wish I could think so," says he, "but—"

Just then the front office door opens brisk and in breezes a square-shouldered, heavy-treadin' gent in a stream-line frock-coat and knife-blade pants.

"Hello!" says he, "Hub around?"

"Yep," says I. "Around the axle, as usual, just inside the spokes."

"Don't," says he. "This is my busy day. I mean Struble."

"Eh?" says I, "Why, this is Mr. Struble here"; and I points to H. K.

The stranger takes one glance and laughs. "That's funny," says he. "Odd name, too. But it's Hub Struble I'm looking for."

The soap magnate gazes at him puzzled, and it looked like a deadlock until the new arrival begins to explain.

"Malloy's my name," says he, "I'm with the General Sports Company; assistant manager. And I've been trailing this young Struble for three days. Had word he was working in Perth Amboy, but found they'd let him go three weeks ago."

I glances over at Struble, and he blinks pathetic at me.

"They gave me two addresses," says Malloy. "I tackled the downtown one first, a big office building, and some clerk steered me up here. You don't know him, eh? Then I'll try the other number, around on Sixth Avenue."

"Wait," says Struble. "Is—is it something he owes?"

"Owes!" says Malloy. "Say, what's that to you?"

"Not much," says Struble; "only—well, I'm his father, you see."

"Wha-a-at!" says the assistant manager. "Hub Struble's father, are you? Well, say, I don't need to tell you that you've got some boy there. Yes, yes."

Struble he just blinks and waits for Malloy to go on—which he does.

"We've had our eye on him," says he, "ever since he made such a showing in the Junior Met. Then, when he waded through to the semifinals in the open—well, we knew he was a comer. And those are the ones that can handle our goods best, the ones that are getting the lime-light. See?"

We didn't, either of us.

"I—don't quite understand," says Struble. "Just what is it my boy has done?"

Which was where Malloy got his jolt.

"Say, you don't mean to tell me," says he, "that you don't know Hub Struble's golf record? Why, if he'd sunk a six-foot putt on the eighteenth he'd stood a good show of pulling down the open championship! Say, his drives are the sweetest wooden club work you ever saw; two-seventy-five, as a rule, straight on the pin, with a swing as easy and graceful as a toedancer waving a silk scarf. What he can't do with a mashie, too! Why that youngster'll be making Travis look like a beginner one of these days. Don't you read the golf news in the papers?"

Struble acts kind of dazed.

"No," says he. "Of course, I knew he played rather a good game. Brought home a cup last year, I remember, from some college tournament. But he never talked much about it. You see, I'm such a duffer myself that I expect he didn't feel like mentioning golf to me. But you—you think Junior is likely to be good at it?"

"He's our pick of the young amateurs," says Malloy, "and I'm betting that inside of a year, if he plays the open dates, he'll be one of the best known golfers in the country. Physique, form, temperament—he's got 'em all. Why, there at Detroit I saw him make a hundred-yard mashie pitch to a green with a gallery standing twenty deep behind the ropes and a battery of camera men almost at his elbow; and he went at it as steady as if he'd been practising out behind the club-house. That's tournament nerve for you! His first play before a big crowd, too, I hear. Oh, he'll come through. You watch!"

"Suppose he does," asks Struble, "What is there in it—playing golf?"

"Playing par golf," corrects Malloy, "is a profession, and a mighty good one if it's worked right. For instance, there's a twenty-five-hundred-dollar job waiting for him with us, and he goes and comes about as he pleases. Then they'll be naming irons and golf balls after him, for a good bonus. The magazines'll be wanting articles from him. Resort hotels will send him invitations. Millionaires will take him along in their private cars and give him market tips in exchange for advice on how to cure a slice. Oh, it pays, all right! But what's he doing in a cheap rooming joint over on Sixth Avenue? That's what I'd like to know."

"I think that interests me some, too," says Struble, "McCabe, suppose you go along with us. It isn't far. Besides, you know about him."

So the three of us goes scoutin' up Sixth Avenue until we comes to this furnished room place over an Italian caterer's. The maid that answers our ring directs us to the back hall room up two flights.

"Come," says a listless voice on the other side of the door, and Struble swings it open.

AND there, sittin' with his chin in his hands on a rickety cot-bed, is this husky-built heir to the soap works. Nice, pleasant-faced youth he is, too, with light wavy hair, placid blue eyes set almost as wide as H. K.'s, and a good, clear complexion.

"Oh!" says he, glancin' up and turnin' pink in the ears. "It's you, is it, dad?"

"Hubert," says Struble, clearin' his throat, "why didn't you come home?"

"I couldn't," says the boy. "I—I hadn't made good. It isn't in me, I guess. I've been trying again, here in town. It's no use. I—I'm sorry, dad."

"They tell me you're quite a golfer," says Struble.

"That's the trouble," says Hub. "I only asked for ten days or so off for the tournament, and they gave me the chuck."

"You did well though, I'm told," says Struble. "You've gotten to be a crack, eh?"

"Oh, I can shoot it a little at times, says Hubert. "But what's the good. Why, I can't earn enough to pay caddie fees."

"Perhaps I can fix that," says Mr. Malloy, pushin' to the front. "Remember me, don't you? I'm with the General Sports. I was talking to you at Detroit.

He gets straight to business, Malloy does; and inside of half an hour young Mr. Struble has signed a two years' contract and has a five hundred advance check in his fist.

Old H. K. he watches the proceedin's pop-eyed and gaspy. "Well, well!" says he. "Why, I was twice your age before I ever had half that much. Now I guess we can go home and talk to mother, eh Hubert?

SAY, do you keep the run of these golf meets? I never used to, but since got to know Hub Struble I've sort of followed what he's been doing. He's down in the long-leaf pine belt now, I see, shootin' some of them Southern courses in the seventies. Then here the other day, in a picture section, I runs across a big half-tone showin' him playin' off the finals—Asheville or Pinehurst or somewhere. And loomin' up prominent in the front edge of the crowd of spectators, with a pair of field-glasses slung over one shoulder and a snap-shot box across the other is H.K. Struble.

And say, at last he's gettin' some real satisfaction out of them soap profits. He's the proud father of a golf champ. Well, that's something. I'm kind of glad he's got that much. For, after all, Struble ain't near such a punk proposition as his soap.

Nobody's Baby

By HERMAN LANDON

Illustration by George Brandt

KINGDON WARD really should have torn his long hair, paced the studio floor with quick, nervous steps, and growled impious allusions to models in general and specifically to baby models who burst into shrill fortissimo at the wrong time. He did nothing of the kind. Though an artist, he was a very sensible young man, and wore his hair short and tear-proof; and the studio was one of those small and dingy affairs that offer considerable resistance to the walking off of the megrims. So he merely scowled a little and said:

"Please take it away, Miss Brooks."

Resignedly he erased the charcoal tracings from the canvas, while Wilda Brooks tucked a robe about her, swept back the long, tawny hair that tumbled about her face, and stepped from the model-stand.

"You little chorus of yells!" she scolded, frowning upon the offending infant, who smiled sweetly once more, now that the third attempt to pose it had been firmly rebuked. "Think it's great sport to throw us down like that, don't you? And you're the fourth one that's queered the picture for us."

With a little fretful grimace the artist expressed disapproval of the blithesome slang that profaned the artistic atmosphere of his studio. "Perhaps you can find another this evening," he suggested. "There ought to be a baby somewhere that will cuddle in your arms and look reasonably cherubic and won't shriek at sight of a plumb line. Here we have been wasting a week—"

He chanced to look up just then, and seeing that she was a very tired girl and sensing a note of sadness in her flippancy, he finished the sentence with a good-natured laugh, "Oh, well, don't lose sleep over it. Confound that Morrence! All very well for him to insist that 'Mother Love' must be finished in four weeks: He wants a picture of a mother clasping a cuddling baby to her breast—a baby wrapped in that white filmy stuff, and its bare little legs sticking out, and lots of the soul stuff thrown in. That's the way he put it. It's to be a present for his wife, I understand."

"And it's to be finished in four weeks," observed Wilda shrewdly, watching ruefully the rapid obliteration of the charcoal lines. "I'm the greatest little guesser there ever was when it comes to a man who wants a mother-and-baby picture for his wife and says it must be ready on the dot. And now it's up to me to find a fuzzy-headed darling that will cuddle and won't raise the roof. Honestly, Mr. Ward, I don't believe it's been born yet. I've been hunting for it till I am rocking a cradle in my sleep."

"We might advertise,” suggested the artist. "Something like this: 'Baby, for artist's model; must be gentle, reliable—'"

"That last part sounds as if you wanted horse, " mocked Wilda. "Leave it to me."

She retreated behind the screen, emerging later in a gray check suit with burnt orange trimmings, and a helmety head-piece equipped with a lonesome quill. Ward squinted at the appalling tout ensemble, and asked her not to forget the baby advertisement.

"Queer girl," he reflected, when Wilda was gone, "But she is the best model I ever had. She can hold a pose, and somehow she seems to fit into almost any kind of role, from a madonna to a grisette. She can put feeling in it too. A fine, lovable girl, in spite of her slang."

WILDA'S heart sank when she entered the studio the next morning and beheld a fearful gathering of infants and mothers, it was plain that Ward shared her misgivings. Nevertheless he decided to try a few of the more promising, The first, a robust youngster of admirable cuddling qualities and an indomitable purpose to go through life smiling, was quickly eliminated when the mother, a tubby woman with a purple-spotted face, insisted on herself posing with the baby. The second could both cuddle and look cherubic, but was disqualified by inability to synchronize these attainments. Toward the third Wilda could not assume a mother feeling, and the fourth looked sickly. The fifth was flatly rejected by Ward because it lacked a mysterious quality which he called "character"; and the face of the sixth wrinkled into a maze portentous of tears and howls as soon as he began to sketch.

Wilda fled in disgust before the seventh aspirant had been selected. "No baby means no wages, and no wages means a bench in the park and strict dieting," she thought with irrefutable logic as she entered a car and rode northward. There was but one thing to do: she must find a suitable baby somewhere, "even if I have to kidnap one," she told herself as she stepped off and crossed over to the Drive.

The long, shady stretch was crisp-aproned and white-capped with nurses pushing baby carriages or resting on the benches. Wilda squinted disapprovingly at their charges, all immaculate and resplendent in fresh toggery, all dully sedate and well behaved. "They don't look healthy," she observed, hurrying on. "And I don't think they'll cuddle. Besides, they're not for rent."

She was tired, and her hopes dwindled as she went on. She had almost decided to turn back, when she stopped short before a baby carriage occupied by a young hopeful sufficiently different from the others to compel attention. Heaven only knows whence came the vague little whisper that told Wilda it had never been pampered overmuch, and caused her to doubt very seriously whether any one ever had pinched its toes and interpreted its "Ah goo's" and "Dee-deee's" as wonderful linguistic achievements.

"Hulloh, Kiddlewinks!" she greeted, stooping over the carriage.

The baby sat erect, the little white hood obscuring most of its face, and viewed the artist's model gravely out of its big and solemn eyes—in the way small dogs, squirrels, and infants have—as if it wished to be very certain that Wilda was a desirable acquaintance. And then, the inspection having ended in her favor, the baby indicated with a nod and a wistful smile that she might come nearer.

"I'm cra-azy about you, Kiddlewinks!" wheedled the model.

Kiddlewinks waved two chubby little hands with an absurdly impotent elbow motion, and smiled from ear to ear and from temples to larynx, and uttered a friendly "Woo-ooo." And as Wilda reached for the baby she noticed for the first time that a young woman with a wan little smile about her lips had been watching her all the time.

"Boy or girl?" she asked, taking the baby in her arms.

"Girl," said the young woman, watching the baby's attempt to poke a finger into Wilda's mouth. The result was all that could have been desired. Encouraged by this success, Kiddlewinks undertook, with equally gratifying results, to insert two fingers.

"Listen, Nursy," said Wilda, trying to assume a businesslike air, and seating herself on the bench. And she proceeded to outline the plan whereby she was to borrow Kiddlewinks for four hours a day—from ten to twelve in the morning and from two to four in the afternoon—for a consideration of fifty cents an hour. "She will be posing for a real artist, and she will be as famous as—as Cleopatra of Troy," she added temptingly.

The custodian of Kiddlewinks smiled vaguely at this, and noticed with approval that the baby nestled confidingly in Wilda's arms and that the model seemed to know how to handle a child with a healthy appetite for mischief.

"That's two dollars a day, and it's all velvet," pursued Wilda seductively. "I'll give you the address,"—she scribbled it on a scrap of paper,—"so you will know where I am taking her to if you should want her in a hurry. What do you say?"

"I—I don't know," faltered the young woman, looking askance.

"Don't you see it's love at first sight between Kiddlewinks and me?" Wilda deftly wooed a smile from the baby. "You want to come with me, don't you, Kiddlewinks?"

The baby turned up a beaming face and with a nod and an emphatic "De-dee," signified approval of the arrangement.

"See—Kiddlewinks is willing," pleaded Wilda.

The young woman regarded her with a glance that was keenly searching; perhaps also a little sad, though Wilda was not sure. "You will be good to her?" she asked hoarsely.

"Just as if anybody could hurt a darling lamb like Kiddlewinks!" protested Wilda. And then, anxious to close the bargain while the other was wavering, she opened her bag and found a frayed and lonesome two-dollar bill. "A day's pay in advance," she coaxed.

The young woman gazed dully at the bill Wilda had pressed into her hand.

"All right, then. But you be sure and be good to her," she admonished in a husky voice scarcely audible to Wilda, who was anxious to return to the studio with her find. She rose; but suddenly the young woman snatched the baby from her, hugged it to her breast, and kissed it. Wilda, waiting impatiently, thought she heard a half-smothered sob. But the next moment Kiddlewinks was back in her arms, and Wilda hurried away and entered a car.

WHEN she reached the studio she found Ward dejectedly eating a luncheon of coffee and sandwiches.

She exhibited Kiddlewinks.

"Sure it will cuddle?" demanded the artist, regarding the baby in a cold and critical way.

"Greatest cuddler ever was," Wilda assured him. "Isn't she the darlingest? Better finish that sumptu's repast and get busy. Kiddlewinks' time is valuable."

Wilda stepped behind the screen and proceeded to remove Kiddlewinks' bootees and socks. But her busy fingers stopped suddenly and a little murmur of surprise slipped from her lips; for tucked within one of Kiddlewinks' socks was a folded little wad that proved to be a frayed two-dollar bill.

"Lordy!" exclaimed Wilda.

She stared at the bill, and then she stared at Kiddlewinks. "Now what do you make of that?"

But Kiddlewinks was not a solver of deep mysteries and had no theory to offer.

Wilda hurried through the remainder of the robing process. She mounted the model-stand, and the baby, draped in white and filmy stuff that exposed generous proportions of two soft legs and the usual allotment of twinkling toes, nestled contentedly in her arms. Ward worked spiritedly, cluttering up the canvas with swift, bold strokes that slowly and mysteriously assumed outline and harmony, and admitted that Kiddlewinks was precisely right.

After the sitting Wilda dressed

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hurriedly, tossed her head at Ward's warning against kidnappers, motor-trucks, and other things inimical to the welfare of a perfect baby model, and ran for a car. Kiddlewinks gurgled happily and improved the moments by sliding her fingers exploringly up and down Wilda's face. Reaching the point where she had found the nurse and Kiddlewinks, Wilda left the ear and crossed to the Drive.

There she stopped and looked about in amazement. The bench where the nurse had sat was occupied by a fat womam who had gone to sleep over a novel. All the nearby benches were filled; but the nurse was not there. Wilda walked a mile or more, thinking the young woman might have moved, and then she retraced her steps and walked an equal distance in the opposite direction. The nurse was nowhere to be found, and it was mearly one o'clock, and she was hot and tired, and Kiddlewinks was constantly growing heavier.

She sat down on a bench amd waited patiently. "What do you know about that?" she sighed, looking down into Kiddlewinks' troubled face. "And you and me both tired to death. Bet, you're hungry too. Tell you what we'll do, Kiddiewinks. We've lived up to our part of the bargain. We were here on time. Now we go home—yes, home. There's a nice Irish lady across the hall. She and you would make great friends, Kiddlewinks."

She placed Kiddlewinks in the hook of her arm and boarded a car. The baby slept peacefully when they reached the rooming house. The nice Irish lady who lived across the hall kissed Kiddlewinks twice on the forehead and twice on each check, and, with a climacteric smack on the mouth, voiced the opinion that "nixt to me own she's the swaytest young'n there ever was."

THE baby snug in Mrs. Callahan's arms, Wilda hurried out and telephoned Ward that she would he late, but that Kiddlewinks was intact and in good health. And then she lunched on an indigestible mess at the bake-shop across the street, went back to the roomimg house for the baby, and relieved the mind of a certain young artist of innumerable worries by walking into the studio with an unimpaired Kiddlewinks in her arms. But it was not until she was seated on the model-stand that she acquainted Ward with the latest developmemts in the adventures of the baby.

"Lordy! that nurse will get panicky!" she concluded. "And she will run home to her mistress and spring a kidnapping tale and the police amd newspapers will do the rest. Lovely mess!"

Ward thought it might not be quite so bad as she feared, and proceeded to paint. After the sitting Wilda and Kiddlewinks made another trip to the Drive; but the outcome of the expedition was a second call on Mrs. Callahan and a lengthy conference that terminated in the Irish lady's assurance that she had never yet known a time when the good Lord didn't look after babies just as helpless and ill rated as Kiddlewinks.

"I looked through the papers this morning," remarked Ward, when Wilda and the baby entered the studio the next day, "and there was not a line about the kidnapping of a baby answering the description of Kiddlewinks. She seems to be a child of mystery, doesn't she?" He proceeded to squeeze a great number of small tubes and to pile little patches of green, orange, pink, and yellow on the canvas. "With longer sittings maybe we can finish before the—police come snooping around."

Wilda nodded absently. Her mind was occupied with speculations concerning the fortunes of Kiddlewinks.

"Must be for you, Miss Brooks," said Ward, handing her a letter, and of a sudden she realized that the mail carrier had come and gone, and it occurred to her that he had looked at her with a sly grin. She gave a little start as she glanced at the directions on the envelop:

Her fingers trembled as she tore the rim of the envelop, drew out a slip of paper, and read the brief note:

There was nothing else, not even a signature. Wilda read the note a second time, then stared at the writing for several moments, and then she stared at Kiddlewinks, at the bewildered artist, and at the door that the mailman had closed behind him fully five minutes before.

"Oh!" she gasped of a sudden, tearing the paper with nervous rips. "Oh!" came again the quick little gasp, and quite involuntarily she hugged Kiddlewinks to her with a vehemence that caused the baby to look up at her with mild reproach in its eyes.

"Anything about Kiddlewinks?" wondered Ward.

"Yes—that is, no," said Wilda huskily. "Nothing—that you would care about. It only concerns us women," she added with forced levity, looking dowm at Kiddlewinks.

"I thought it might concern the great baby mystery," mumbled the artist apologetically.

Wilda kissed the fuzz on Kiddlewinks' head. "Oh, you needn't worry. You can have Kiddlewinks as long as you want her. Nobody will ever come for her—nobody cares about her."

Ward stared perplexedly, and hoped that Wilda was not ill.

"Nobody cares—a button about her!" she repeated with a sob, and this time Kiddlewinks uttered a mild protest against the vehemence of the hug. "Oh, yes, she does care, I guess; but she can't help it. Yes, I'm sure she cares—cares a lot. That's why she wouldn't leave her on a doorstep as some of them do, and that's why she wouldn't take the money."

The artist laid aside the palatte and gazed despairingly at his model. "Would you mind telling me what all this is about, Miss Brooks?"

Wilda brushed her face and glowered at him as if he were responsible for all Kiddlewinks' tribulations. "No, I don't think I'll tell you—ever," she said defiantly. "You wouldn't understand. You're only a man."

Ward shook his head and picked up his brushes; but several times that morning he had occasion to remind Wilda that she had changed her own and the baby's position. And in the afternoon it was almost as bad.

"I don't understand it," he said, looking at her with a puzzled expression. "You always could hold a pose before. I suppose that note has something to do with it."

"Oh, no," protested Wilda lightly. "It's old age and infirmity coming on me. Go ahead. I'll be good now."

AFTER Kiddlewinks had gratified her hunger and slept off her weariness that evening, Wilda took the baby into her own room and laid it on the bed.

"So that's it, is it, Kiddlewinks?" she murmured.

Gravely and in silence she gazed for a long time at the baby, who was rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

"And I thought she was your nurse. I might have known, only we were in a hurry. Don't I remember now how she looked at you when I took you away—and how she kissed you? There is only one person in all the world can look at you that way, Kiddlewinks."

The baby, now quite awake, regarded her soberly and lay very still.

"Guess we understand, don't we, Kiddlewinks? And we won't blame her. Lots of trouble in the world, Kiddlewinks. It's an awful mess when you stop to think. In a year or two you'll be quite a little girl, and you'll romp about in the sand and wade in the mud puddles and stub your little toe and cry. You'll forget that, though. But a little later you'll be wondering why you have no daddy and mama like the rest of the kids. Yes, you will, Kiddlewinks. And it's going to hurt worse than when you stubbed that little toe of yours. Guess I ought to know. Oh—"

Fiercely she kissed the soft little face, and Kiddlewinks regarded her very gravely, as if she had known all the time that it was a very troublesome world she had entered.

"No, not that," murmured Wilda, suddenly calm again, "not if I can help it! Because it—it wouldn't be right, Kiddlewinks."

She took the baby in her arms and held it close to her. For a long time she sat in deep thought, kissing Kiddlewinks' head and face, her eyes shining warm and bright through the mist in the fringes. Suddenly tilting the child's head against her face, she whispered a little fiercely:

"Say 'mama'!"

The tiny fingers fumbled about Wilda's wet face, and then the baby responded with a little affectionate coo.

"You—you darling!" whispered Wilda hoarsely. "Say it again!"

"Ah-dooo," gurgled Kiddlewinks; and with a passionate sob Wilda crushed the baby closer to her.

In the midst of her tender purlings the long strident peal of the telephone reached her ears from afar. She listened intently, a dubious smile curling her lips, and then the landlady rapped and announced that a gentleman was calling Miss Brooks.

"Is it—he?" asked Wilda.

The landlady believed that it was.

"Please tell him I am not at home, will you, Mrs. Jens?"

The landlady grinned understandingly and closed the door, and Wilda once more took the baby in her arms. "He won't do, Kiddlewinks," she said reflectively. "He won't do at all—now!"

Whatever thoughts were in Kiddlewinks' mind found expression in a winning little coo.

"I am afraid he has no use for little Kiddlewinkses, anyhow. Besides, he is not good enough for you—not half good enough. He isn't a man, Kiddlewinks, not a real man—like Mr. Ward. He gets mushy over a few bottles of suds—I mean he—he acts foolish at times, Kiddlewinks. So, you see, we had to send him away. Now, if he was a real mam like—Mr. Ward, it, would be different. Mr. Ward is a man! You get to know them when you pose for then. But Mr. Ward is going to be awfully great amd famous some day—much too great and famous for us, Kiddlewinks. So—well, if the darling hasn't gone to sleep!"

IN her dreams that night Wilda wept, and smiled, moaned and crooned, all the while reaching out for a soft and warm little body and murmuring caresses that came from depths never before gaged.

And she seemed a little flustered the next morning; but Ward, though from time to time he looked at her in a puzzled manner, found no fault with the way she held the pose. Absently she watched the patches of color melt into live tints, and from time to time she gave Kiddlewinks a little hug that drew a contented murmur by way of response. Then she began to notice that a vague hesitancy had crept into Ward's manner of painting. His hand faltered at times, and often he turned to fix a lingering look of wonderment on her. Presently he laid his brushes aside, and with arms akimbo gazed musingly at Wilda.

"You're either in love. Miss Brooks, or—well, your being in love is the only explanation I can think of just now." A slow smile flickered about his lips.

Wilda kissed Kiddlewinks' head with a smack that coaxed forth a blithesome "Ah-dooo," and assured Ward she was not in love, though there was no telling what might happen.

The artist smiled in a whimsical and rather bewildered fashion. "Yesterday I was painting Wilda Brooks, artist's model; height five feet five; weight about one hundred and thirty; hair reddish brown; eyes bluish gray; measurements nearly perfect. Today I seem to be paintimg someone else—a girl with a queer sort of tang in her hair that makes you think of a sleepy and moodish spring rain, and eyes with that deep and soft and quivery blue in them that you see in the sky about the twenty-first of May—if you can guess what I mean. Measurements—but measurements and proportions don't seem to matter any longer.

Wilda looked down at Kiddlewinks and restrained the habitual flippant retort. "I am sorry," she murmured confusedly. "I don't understand. My hair's combed the same way, and—but I couldn't sleep well last night. Maybe that's why."

"You needn't be sorry," said Ward. "And it isn't your hair. If it's imsomnia, I am brutal enough to hope it will afflict you for some time. Why, Miss Brooks, that expression is simply great; but it makes this daub of mine look like a caricature by comparison. Now we are going to start all over again, and if you can hold that expression, we are going to make a picture that will be the envy of the season."

Wilda could not restrain a smile at this boyish enthusiasm. "I can hold it, I guess. But I don't know what you mean."

Ward whistled happily as he pried the unfinished picture from the easel, replaced it with a fresh canvas, and once more picked up his charcoal lumps. Again, slowly and magically, life grew out of the blur of hues and tints. He worked swiftly and with apparent carelessness, like a man sure of himself; and as the days passed Wilda observed, a little ruefully, that "Mother Love" was nearing completion. In a few days it would be finished, and then would begin once more the weary climbing of dusty stairs, the dejected search for work in studios where there would be no place for Kiddlewinks.

OF a sudden a few irrelevant tears slid from her eyes, trickled down to the corners of her mouth, and fell on Kiddlewinks' head, and with a half-stifled sob she pressed the baby closer to her, tilted back the little head, and kissed a soft cheek.

Ward wheeled about and looked at her a little reproachfully. "Why didn't you tell me? You are tired out. I didn't realize it. The pose has been too hard."

She laughed hysterically. "Oh, don't mind me. I am all right now."

He stared at her queerly. He stared at Kiddlewinks too, and slowly his puzzled look—yielded to an understanding that found expression in a wonderfully comprehensive, "Oh, I see." He shifted his glance from the model-stand to the canvas and regarded the picture. Then he turned again to Wilda.

"Go home and rest," he urged gently. "Get a good rest. Then we will begin all over again."

Wilda looked up. "All over again?"

"Yes. This," glancing at, the picture, "isn't good enough—not half good enough. It isn't you."

"I hope I haven't—changed again?"

"No-o. You did change once, and I am just beginning to understand why." His voice was soft, his eyes pensive, "This time—" He swung around and stepped to the window and looked down at a litter of tin cans in the alley.

"It isn't she this time," he mumbled "It's—hang it all if I am not beginning to think it's myself that's changed!"

He swung about lithely and smiled at Wilda and pinched Kiddlewinks' toes.

"Morrence will have to wait," he said.

"He can make it a birthday present a year from now if he wants to. I don't fancy having this kind of picture hung among his old chromos, anyhow. Tomorrow we make a fresh start, and it's going to come pretty close to real art, or I miss my guess! Now go home and sleep. And I think Kiddlewinks needs a rest too." Again he pinched Kiddlewinks' toe, coaxing her face into a vast smile, and before he had realized his undignified conduct he had kissed the baby on the mouth.

"Oh, you men!" laughed Wilda, hurrying back to the corner to dress.

Ward looked at her out of the corner an eye as she passed out, and noticed that the burnt orange trimmings and the helmet had disappeared.

"And she hasn't said 'Rats!' or 'Lordy' in a week," he observed as he pried the tacks out of the canvas board.

"I don't understand him at all," sighed Wilda, when she and the baby were in the car. "But these artists are a queer

---

lot, Kiddlewinks. And he blushed like a boy when he kissed you!"

After Kiddlewinks had fallen asleep Wilda sat on the edge of the bed and gazed for a long time at the curled little body. She leaned over the bed and touched the fuzzy head with her lips.

"You don't know it,—of course you don't, Kiddlewinks,—but you came just in time," she murmured. "A little later—oh, well!" And then she sighed in a very tired fashion, but happily, and a wistful smile flickered about her lips as she prepared for bed.

She awoke toward morning with a vague, unreasoning dread. Drowsily she reached out her arm; instinctively her hand fumbled about Kiddlewinks' forehead. It was hot and dry. She gave a half-stifled cry, and her fingers slid over the tense and twisted little body. She clutched it to her, feeling that her own flesh and the love that pulsed within her were powerful to shield it from all the world's ills.

A convulsive tensing of muscles in the little body, and suddenly a sense of utter helplessness smote her. With a choking lump in her throat, she ran from the room and bade Mrs. Callahan hurry for a doctor. Returning, she crumpled beside the bed, quavering and sobbing before the trustful appeal in the burning eyes.

"Kiddlewinks! Kiddlewinks!"

And then there was only a soundless fluttering of lips.

A streak of dawn trembled at the window; a wisp of cold gray light crept timidly into the room; and she wondered whether henceforth dawn would always come like that—always cold, gray, cheerless.

It seemed as if hours had passed, and then the doctor breezed into the room with his medicine chest, and began to order Mrs. Callahan about until the good lady panted and perspired from unwonted exertion. A tub appeared as if by magic, and Wilda knelt beside it and held the baby in the water, staring dully at the doctor when he suggested that Mrs. Callahan might do it as well. The physician stood beside her, and she heard a watch loudly tick off the seconds, while Mrs. Callahan flurried about and tried to utter consoling words that were smothered by sobs, and in her anxiety to help created so much bustle that the gruff little doctor bade her be still.

Through it all unvoiced snatches of prayer trembled on Wilda's lips. Slowly, very slowly, she felt her arms grow numb; it seemed that time had slipped numberless cogs, and slowly the world dissolved into blurred, dancing specks.

AFTER a long time her fitful dreams merged into a grateful feeling that the sunlight and the warmth had come back, and that Kiddlewinks was very close to her, and that all was well. For a while she was content to lie thus, gazing drowsily and with half-opened eyes into the caressing warmth and brightness about her, vaguely sensing the nearness of some one beside Kiddlewinks—some one strong and tender, as a real man should be. And then, opening her eyes a little more, she reached in the direction where she felt quite sure that Kiddlewinks and the other must be.

"Is she all right?" she asked softly; but she did not need the answer to know that Kiddlewinks was out of danger.

Nor was she surprised that the answer did not come in Mrs. Callahan's brogue, but in a familiar masculine voice which, thrilled her wondrously. She gazed at the window, where the curtains fluttered in a friendly breeze, and at the little plant that had been her sole companion in the days when there was no Kiddlewinks.

"I was worried when you didn't come," said some one at her elbow, "and so I looked you up. I have just sent Mrs. Callahan out for some hot broth. And in the meantime Kiddlewinks and I have been discussing very grave matters."

"Oh," said Wilda, smiling, but without turning her head.

"Kiddlewinks and I have decided that she needs a daddy, and we have decided to ask you whether I will do. What is your answer, Wilda?"

"Oh," said Wilda again, this time with a quick breath; for he had gently taken her hand in his. Then, after a long pause, "Kiddlewinks knows."

And then Wilda turned her head, overwhelmed by desire to see what a real man looks like when he holds a baby in his arms.

Behind the Bolted Door?

Continued from page 8

what that must signify—surely you could have told us about that before? And why didn't you?"

"Because well I knowed you'd take it exactly as you're taking it now!"

"As we're taking it now?"

"That she could only 'ave made 'er will like that, and in such 'aste and 'urry as to 'ave two servants witness it, because she 'erself knowed what was coming, and intended it! You're thinking already of the words she wrote on that murder note! And you take it now that she was consenting! But she wasn't! She wasn't! I said it before, and, knowing 'er as I did, I'll always say it!"

"Yes," said D. Hope haggardly; "and so will I!"

And, partly to get away from that at least, Laneham once more went back to the voice.

"Jimmy, listen. You spoke of the voice we heard, the voice that cried 'my God!' as 'fearful.' You mean that the one you heard was not?"

"Why, sir, why,"—he seemed again to be evading,—"I never thought of it as so. It wasn't loud enough."

"Wasn't loud enough? Good heavens!"

"No, sir," he whispered, "no. I— sometimes I was 'ardly sure I 'eard it at all."

"Jimmy!"

But once more, if for the moment the Doctor could not go on, Willings in his turn took it up:

"Jimmy, was it the voice of any one now living?"

Again the sick white perspiration mottled out in great drops upon the little Cockney's temples.

"Mr. Willings, I—I don't know."

"I'll ask my question in another way. It's important, Jimmy; we've got to know whose voice that was, and the only clue we've had so far—if you can call such a ghastly idea a clue—is what Mr. Grady of the Electric Protection Service told us last night. The voice sounded like the voice of his workman, 'Old Throaty,' the man who put in the jewel-safe for Mrs. Fisher; and Old Throaty, Jimmy, is dead. Did you, Jimmy, ever think that it was his voice you heard?"

The little man's hands gripped the chair; he moistened his lips, and his answer came in a thick whisper.

"Yes, sir," he gasped. "That's what I thought, Mr. Willings. I tell you, I know the voice, and that's whose it is."

PERHAPS an hour had passed. They still sat there, talking little, but waiting on the chance that the Judge might yet return. Laneham had left them a moment, to speak to Jacobs.

"And, Mr. Willings, sir," said Jimmy, "if, because I'm still 'olding something

---

back, you're going to feel to-night that you can't believe in me—if, when it's not two days since you and Miss 'Ope, 'ere, were h'offering your lives for mine—"

"No, no; we don't feel so at all."

"For I'm a man too, for h'all I've been at service, an' I'm feeling sick to the soul right now—"

"I know you are, Jimmy. But no more, no more. I guess we've all of us had enough and too much for tonight. Let's thank the Lord that now, at last, it's ended."

Ended! While he spoke the street bell was ringing again. And a minute later the downstairs man came up to say that Professor Fisher and Inspector McGloyne were in the hall. Two more policemen were with them, too. What did they want? He couldn't rightly understand.

But McGloyne had heard the question from below. And, with his foot already on the stairs, he was answering it himself.

"I'll tell you what I want! I want to know right here an' now who's runnin' the Department! I want to get to the bottom of that Maddalina biz! An', while I'm here, by-y heaven, I'm just going to have your Jimmy butler lad!"

ENDED? That night ended? They were to feel afterward that it had only just begun. And with the hours to follow the mystery of those bolted doors in the Casa Grande was to enter upon a chapter wholly new.

They came up. And the big detective had evidently come from the Bureau in a single, raging burst of speed. His lips, his fingers, his very body, still trembled with that insult known only to the man who finds, or believes he finds, that he is no longer considered fit to do his work. For all his hard-shell brutality, too, one could not but feel in him a sort of honesty and sense of honor.

"Dr. Laneham," he said, "I don't know what the Professor, here, has got to say to you. He was in the Bureau tonight when we heard of Maddalina. But if he feels like I do—"

"I haf this to say," broke in Fisher—"and only this. If you haf Jimmy here, you shall gif him up, and at once."

At that moment his frenzied glance fell on the little butler, half hidden behind D. Hope.

"Professor!" he cried, cringing beneath the glare. "In the name o' Gord! You don't believe it was me that done it? You can't! You couldn't!"

"You say you did not!" the Professor answered fiercely. "You will find the police know more! That iss he, Inspector; that iss he!"

If, on this the first day after Mrs. Fisher's funeral, he was no longer acting like a maniac, he was none the more lovable for that. McGloyne himself now gave no heed to him.

"It's got to come to a show-down, an' nothin' more to it!" he shouted at the Doctor. "Whether the Commissioner is with you or whether he ain't, the kind of thing that's been put on me tonight, when I'm supposed to be coverin' the job as detective head—" He stopped, his voice choked out in helpless rage.

"I know," said Laneham, "I know. But, Inspector, will you let me ask you just one thing? If you're covering this job as it ought to be covered, how was it possible, two nights ago, for the thief or murderer to come back again?"

"How was it possible? How was it possible?" The veins on his big neck swelled and knotted. "Because there wasn't any comeback, see? There wasn't any!"

"I have only the 'E.P.' evidence for it."

"Yes, that's all you have got! They send in a fake alarm, they stick a big knife in the wall, and then they raise the cry that the murderer has walked right through my men and into the apartment again. God! Any way they can find to do me dirt! It's about in the same class as your ghost voice an' spirit rappin's! A come-back! In all my twenty years I've never had one, an' I never will have, an' any one knowin' only how I've placed my boys up there at the Casa Grande will know that, by the livin', there couldn't 'a' been!"

"I can understand your believing that there wasn't."

"I believe it, an' I know it!" He struck his hand down upon the table. "If you want to go up there right now I'll prove it to you!"

"And what of Jimmy? What of him?"

"Yess, yess," cried Fisher.

"I'll tell you what about Jimmy. If you or any man can show me where I been leavin' holes, you can keep him—see? You can keep him!"

The turn came as quickly as that. To quiet Fisher, it was agreed that McGloyne's two men should be left in charge. Willings went with the Doctor to get his great-coat. And presently they were all on their way together in McGloyne's big green police car.

As they neared the corner of that Casa Grande block, the Inspector turned around.

"To show you if I'm coverin' this job, I'll begin right here, outside."

Dropping from the machine, he lightly whistled.

Immediately a big figure, obviously a plain-clothes man, stepped out from the shelter of a doorway.

"That's number one. An' I got his fellow up above."

He spoke to the driver, and, standing on the running-board, had himself carried on to the service entrance on the south side of the great apartment-house.

"Here's a second place where a hole might be."

This time he tapped on the high iron grill-work gate.

Again immediately his sentry showed himself.

"Same peg-post work at the north side," he said, "an' I'd like to see what your friend Grady could put again that!"

"How about the Casa Reale?" Laneham asked.

"There ain't any connection between the two houses. You can't even get from a Casa Grande to a Casa Reale window. If you could, I'd have things screwed down there as well. Now we'll go inside."

He pushed on through the big main entrance.

Yet, even in the rotunda, he stopped again, to point with his blunted thumb to the little room behind the telephone-desk.

"I've got another plain-clothes in there, too."

Then he passed on to an elevator.

THE house was already asleep. The upper floors were as quiet as they might have been at two in the morning. McGloyne himself let his voice fall as he led the way down that soft, gray-padded corridor.

"They tell me Grady said he could 'a' walked in on his hands. Well, things is exactly now as they was a-Thursday night,—unless you want to put me down a liar,—an' you'll see for yourselves how far your hands would take you! Big as it is, this here apartment has just two outside doors, an' only two. There's one." He turned the corner, and a sentry stepped out to meet them. "What's more, it's locked." He showed them that it was. "And here"—he turned another corner—"is the other."

At it, too, one more patrolman stood on guard.

"Grady an' his hands! Now come on in."

He opened the door. The deep-piled hall "runner" of the inside corridor took their footfalls. And, pulling out the clicking key, the big Inspector turned toward the little inner stair—when he stopped.

He stopped, and they all stopped. And once more Willings, at least, had that sense of his heart-beats stopping. From above them, and inside the rooms that had been Mrs. Fisher's, there had come what might have been the echo of that clicking key.

They stopped short, their faces crying out the terror in their hearts. An echo! But it was not an echo. They all of them knew it was not. And, while they stood there, it came again.

"Say, what the," McGloyne barely breathed it. His eyes were on the Doctor. But it needed no second look to see that Laneham knew as little as he did himself.

Again that click of metal in a door, as if the lock, turned slowly and cautiously had finally fallen into place.

And then suddenly once more a hand was knocking!

"What the—!" The big man whispered it. The patrolman from the door moved toward him galvanically, as if for protection. Laneham glanced at Fisher. But he, too, had nothing to tell them.

"What iss it?" His voice was dry with fear. "Ah, Gott, what iss it?"

As if drawing nearer to answer, it came a second time:

Tap—tap—tap.

It was that same knocking they had heard in the hour of the murder. It came from the same bony hand—if hand it was. And again—there could be no doubting it—those doors in Mrs. Fisher's rooms were opening to it, as they had before.

Scarcely an hour before, Willings had told himself that if ever again he should hear anything like that knocking, he would try better to note and analyze what it was he heard. Now his chance had come, and he could only stiffen himself there, blood-chilled, his very pulses listening.

Beside him the patrolman was crossing himself again and again.

Three times the hand had rapped before. They waited, still breathless, and again it came:

Tap—tap—tap!

And with that third knocking came the voice.

"My God!" it moaned, slowly and horribly, as from the damned. "My God! Oh, my God!"

NONE stirred. None could stir, till the last sighing echo of it had died away. And now McGloyne, too, was crossing himself. Nor could any one have believed that so much color could have left that purple jowl.

"You've got me, Doctor," he whispered. "And, my God—the Professor!"

Fisher was holding to the jamb of the corridor door. Without it he plainly would have fallen. Laneham leaped to his side.

"I haf an aneurism—my heart iss bad," he said congestedly. "Let me get oudt."

Laneham took him by one arm, and McGloyne lifted him by the other.

"You ain't ever heard it before, Professor?" he asked.

"No, no! No, neffer! Let me get oudt. Help me oudt."

They helped him into the big Jacobean reception-room, turned on the lights, and left him with the patrolman who had been at the other door.

Then they returned to the white-faced officer who had been with them.

"Call up Hines from below," his chief commanded him, "an' we'll go through. You'll go with us, Doctor?" It was as near a plea for help as that big man had ever come. The Doctor nodded.

"I'll say now there'll be nothin' for eyes to see or hands to touch," continued the big fellow. "But it's in the line o' duty, an' we'll make our inspection."

They mounted the little stair. Again, even as when Laneham and the Judge had tried to break in after the murder, all three corridor doors to that private suite were locked. Again, when they had thrown on the inside lights, they could

---

see at a first glance that those little rooms were empty.

McGloyne crossed to the windows. "We left them locked," he said, "an' they're all locked now."

"Can you tell me," Laneham asked, "what walls abut on other rooms or apartments?"

"What walls abut? Doctor, to-morrah I'll see you get them floor-plans—or as soon as we can get out duplicates. But, so far as that goes, I can tell you know. There's only that little writin'-place at the end there, an'—God save the mark, the swimmin'-pool itself."

"Well, we'll look again at them."

They looked at the little writing-room first. Its windows, like the others, were still locked. But they were only the narrowest lancets; not even a boy could have entered by them. Then they examined the wall, and even the paneling. With his heavy policeman's clasp-knife McGloyne tried the baseboard and pried at the oaken strips that made the panel frames. They were solid and immoveable.

"They've never been touched since the house was built."

But even with that he did not rest.

"Hines," he ordered, "you an' Benny take your night-sticks an' go over the walls everywhere an' sound them."

Then he returned to Laneham.

"I'm goin' through all the motions, Doctor. But you've heard that knockin' and that voice before, an' you know if night-sticks are goin' to locate it. Tell me, have you been able to get anything that'd even seem like a line on it?"

"The best we know is that Jimmy, the butler, practically identifies the voice as that of the workman who put in the wall safe. And he is dead."

"I believe you. I believe you." Again the big man crossed himself and his voice dropped. "The Virgin defend us!"

"There's this to learn yet," said Willings: "If there was an 'E. P.' alarm tonight."

"I'll call them up," said McGloyne at once, "an' ask."

A telephone stood beside him, and he made the call. "I know there ain't been though," he said. "It was no wall safe that thing was lookin' for this night!"

And a minute later the "E. P." operator answered. There had been no alarm.

"That's the way it was goin'," went on the big Inspector, and he pointed toward the pool.

ONE of the patrolmen had already stepped in upon the tiled floor and switched on the great moony, bell-like dome. As they followed him, the same tranquil radiance shone down upon marble and tiles and water as had lit their first search, when the horrors of the murder itself were revealed. There was the same deadly stillness, too.

Once more they examined walls and windows, the bank of plants, now beginning to wither, the very pool itself.

They found nothing. If any one, or anything, had made a midnight visit there, neither sign nor trace was left behind.

And then suddenly McGloyne's great shoulders gave a start.

"The doors, Doctor," he said. " I never noticed them before. The doors!"

"The doors?" But if Laneham had remembered all of Jimmy's story, he would have known what the big man meant.

"Between those other rooms an' this, the pool. When I left at six all of them was closed an' shut. But when we come in just now—after the hearin' of it—you saw it, too—every one of them was standin' open!"

"Inspector."

The second patrolman was trying to speak to him from the dressing-room.

"Yes, yes, Hines. What is it, man—what is it?"

"Will you come out here an' look at this!"

He was pointing to the dressing-table, and to something which, had it not been so directly under his eyes, they must all have seen at their first entrance.

Upon a tiny lace handkerchief, spotted with dried blood, and marked "G. F."—Mrs. Fisher's initials—lay a bit of funeral palm and a freshly cut white rose.

To be continued next week

He Planted This Tree

ON the banks of the St. Vrain River in northern Colorado stands a little weather-stained log cabin and a big old cottonwood tree. The great plains, like a sea, sweep away toward the east. Westward, terracing high above, rise the Rocky Mountains. The cabin was built by Chester L. Smead in 1859. That year, too, he planted this cottonwood tree. He was proud to be snapped while measuring the three-foot tree of his early planting.

Every tree is a silent spectator of events and lives an adventurous life. This cabin, standing midway between Denver and the Estes Park region, became a half-way house on a famous highway; and, through the years, entertained trappers, hunters, prairie-schooner travelers, miners and prospectors.

Among the notables who have stood beneath the cottonwood are Helen Hunt; Miss Isabella L. Bird, the greatest of women travelers; Miss Anna Dickinson, the first woman to climb Long's Peak; Dr. F. V. Hayden, father of the Yellowstone National Park; Rocky Mountain Jim; Lord Dunraven; and Albert Bierstadt.

Enos Mills.

ON account of the severity with which the censor wields his pen, and because of other reasons, pictures form "the front," in the European conflict, have been difficult to obtain. For reasons that they know best, the belligerants have barred the camera-man from many scenes of action which he wished to snap. On the German frontier especially, the camera is looked upon with almost as much suspicion as a bomb.

The accompanying photographs, however, show some interesting details of warfare. They show the soldiers in action, the firing of cannon, the explosion of shells, and the general manœuvering in the trenches.

But, to be quite frank, if they have succeeded in their purpose of fooling the observer, these war scenes were staged and photographed right here in our own United States. One day, a few weeks ago, the photographer motored over to a sand-pile known to New Yorkers as the "Jersey bog," carrying his camera, a dozen or so toy tin soldiers, miniature field ordinance, some blasting powder, fuse, and other "war impedimenta."

It was by no means an easy matter to set the scenes and time the camera so as to snap the guns in action. The trenches were dug from three to four inches deep in the sand, and the embankments were built up proportionately. The preparing of the soldiers for action was perhaps the most difficult matter, because they all tended to assume the same rigid posture. It was therefore necessary to bend them into the proper shapes, and in some cases to paint them, to give the proper variation of dress. The trees were carefully selected twigs stuck into the sand. The smoke and flash effects were obtained by placing small quantities of blasting powder in holes dug in the sand, igniting the powder by means of fuses.

Powder was also placed in the mouths of the cannon and set off in a similar manner.

When everything was ready, the fuses were lighted and the camera bulb presses at the right second.

A retired military man to whom the "war" photographs were shown was completely victimized by the hoax.