What Do Men Like in Women?

THE pastor of a city church recently addressed this question to a large number of unmarried young men:

"What qualifications do you look for in the girl you expect to marry?"

he received many different answers; but practically all the letters agreed on one point. Almost without exception these young men wrote first on their list, "Good Health."

Beauty, good temper, education, money—all these were written down as secondary considerations.

And in subordinating every other consideration to Good Health these young men were wise. For a good disposition is the natural expression of good health; and good health is the foundation of all real beauty.

Darwin has pointed out that the healthiest plants are invariably those that put forth the most brilliantly colored flowers. And hence it follows that the healthiest plants are those that are most likely to have a part in the curious mating process that Nature has ordained for flowers.

The brilliant colors of the male flower attract the bee or insect, which, lighting on the flower, is dusted with the pollen from its stamens, and flies off to the female flower to scatter the pollen there, and so fertilize the seed that will provide next season's flowers.

A. R. Wallace, the great scientist, points out in his book, "Tropical Nature," that

the colors of an animal fade during disease and weakness, while robust health and vigor add to their intensity. In all quadrupeds a "dull coat" is indicative of ill health or low condition; while a glossy coat and sparkling eye are invariable accompaniments of health and energy. The same rule applies to the feathers of birds, which are only seen in their purity during perfect health.

Those young men who specified Good Health as the chief charm of young womanhood doubtless believed they had reasoned the whole thing out. As a matter of fact, they were merely responding to an impulse as old as the world.

From the beginning of time the brilliant colors of the healthy flower have lured the bee; the perfect plumage of the healthy bird, the glossy coat and sparkling eye of the vigorous animal, have proved the strongest attraction to the other sex.

"The reason why so many more proposals [by city folks] are made in the country," says H. T. Finck, author of "Romantic Love and Personal Beauty," "is not only because there are more frequent opportunities of meeting in a summer hotel, but because young folks retire early and appear in the morning with an exuberance of health, born of fresh air and sound sleep, which can not fail to inspire love."

Not all girls are born with an equal endowment of beauty: but Good Health is a blessing that any girl can win who is willing to work for it.

And there is no beauty, in the eyes of the male of the species, like the splendid exuberance of good health.

If you doubt it, don't ask Laura Jean Libbey: ask the flowers of the field or the birds of the air.

Bruce Barton, Editor

Missing Roberta Hoyt!

By ADELE LUEHRMANN
Author of "Who Was Marie Dupont?"

Illustrations by R. M. Crosby

MY fate was settled by a police whistle, and—I mention this merely to show how I feel about it—when the mystery was finally solved, I tracked down the policeman who blew that particular whistle at that particular moment and presented him with a yellow-back and my blessing.

About a year and a half before, I had finished a law course at the University of Georgia and gone back to Atlanta, my home, and opened an office, intending to acquire a practice as quickly as possible. But clients did not come with a rush, and things were getting rather discouraging when, all unexpectedly, a distant relative of my mother's who lived in New York died and left me fifteen thousand dollars. When I was suddenly summoned to the august presence of the executor to receive my inheritance, I did not hesitate, believe me.

It was my first trip to New York. On the day that things began to happen I had been there a little less than a week. Talbot Sands, a class-mate of mine at Georgia, who had renounced the law and his family traditions for a job on a New York paper, had been showing me my way about, ordering my viands, selecting my raiment, and generally superintending the disbursement of the legacy. It was an occupation that suited Tal down to the ground, and he had expressed a readiness to go right on with it as long as the going was good. But sitting alone in a law office is a chastening experience, and I had announced definitely and firmly that I was going back to Atlanta when my week was up. New York was a great town, and Tal was quite right about the big men and big fortunes that were made there every day in the year; but I had a client in Atlanta, and I was going back to him. That was, of course, before the whistle blew.

It blew about four o'clock in the afternoon. I was alone, walking down Fifth Avenue, content with the world and pleasantly aware of my handsome new bank balance. I had just decided to cross the avenue and continue down the east side, when the traffic policeman at that corner blew his whistle. Instantly the motors dammed up on either side of the crossing dashed forward and drove me back to the sidewalk, and in the haste of my retreat my arm brushed against a girl standing at the curb, halted also apparently by the rush of vehicles.

She was a beauty. I got that fact definitely in the first glance, and with it a confused impression of blue eyes, glowing cheeks, and dark red hair that began under a large black hat and ended in a fur boa. She had on a velvet suit of reddish brown which matched her hair.

I had wheeled instantly with an apology, and she had returned a gracious little nod. Then, as I looked away again, she spoke, the words coming in a little rush of pleased surprise:

"Oh! How do you do?"

She was looking straight at me, and so taken aback was I that I could only open my mouth and gape at her.

"Don't you remember me—Miss Hoyt—Roberta Hoyt?" she asked, with a light, girlish laugh, holding out a white-gloved hand which had emerged from a huge muff.

I stared blankly for a moment. I did not remember her at all, and it did not seem possible to have forgotten a girl as pretty as she was if I had ever seen her before. Roberta Hoyt? The name seemed familiar; I must have met her somewhere. At any rate, as she did not appear to have the slightest doubt of it, there was nothing for me to do except bluff my way along, trusting to some remark of hers to bring enlightenment.

"Oh, of course!" I said, and shook her hand warmly.

But as I spoke she drew her hand away sharply and gave me a startled glance. She must, I decided, have mistaken me for some one whom I resembled in face but not in speech.

A CURIOUS pause followed. I was very uncomfortable, and could think of nothing to say. She had used no name in addressing me, so I had no idea whether she knew who I was or not. Roberta Hoyt? The name was familiar. I had certainly heard it before.

"Lovely day, isn't it?" she surprised me by remarking abruptly and with an obvious attempt to seem at ease.

"Yes—bully," I stammered.

"New York is always wonderful in the fall."

"It's a great little town."

She was sparring for time, I thought, trying to make up her mind about me, probably no surer now than I whether or not she had made a mistake. Meantime, I was wondering where I could have met an English girl, for her pronunciation was decidedly British. So was her voice—deep and rich and lovely.

"It's been a long time since we met, hasn't it?" she asked.

I hesitated. I did not believe the question was as ingenuous as it sounded, and I was not going to show my hand until she showed hers.

"Much too long," I said, smiling.

That put it up to her again. And it had been too long since we had met—if we ever had.

"Whose fault was that?" she questioned, looking away, and her lips twitched.

"It wasn't mine!" I answered.

Then I laughed. The situation was absurd. There we were bluffing each other to a standstill because each was honestly at sea about the other and would not admit it.

She laughed too, but rather nervously, I thought, and I have no idea what would have happened next if at that moment the traffic officer had not again blown his whistle, this time to clear the crossing for pedestrians. We were swept along with the crowd, and were on the other side of the avenue before there was a chance to speak again. Then she said, very composed now and dignified:

"So nice to have seen you. Won't you come in for tea tomorrow? There'll probably be some people you know."

"Thank you; I shall be delighted."

I gave her a sharp look as I spoke. I was puzzled. Was she merely retreating gracefully front an awkward position, or did she still believe she knew me? Roberta Hoyt? Where, oh where, had I heard that name?

"I'll expect you, then," she said, with a cordial smile, and turned away.

The instant for action had come. Unless I could prevent it, in another minute she would have gone out of my sight and my life forever. The thought gave me a queer jolt.

"I wish you'd come to tea with me now," I said suddenly.

It was an inspiration straight from the blue. I did not know I was going to say the words until I heard them, and even then I had no idea I had done more than gain a few seconds of time. But she turned, and it was plain that she was actually considering the invitation. I urged it eagerly.

She wavered, smiling doubtfully. Then: "I will, then—I'd love to," she agreed simply. "Where shall we go?"

Gasping a little at my luck, I mentioned several of the fashionable hotels; but she preferred a quieter place, she said, and there were dozens in that section—just down the side street there was probably one.

We started off. I was walking on air. I

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was sure now that she could have no doubt that we had met before, and her confidence almost convinced me. We found an attractive little place with imitation vines running up the walls and wicker chairs and tables. Only a few of the tables were taken, and we secured one in a corner.

She took off her coat,—the reddish-brown coat that matched her hair,—and in the thin, dainty waist she looked prettier than ever. Then she took off her gloves, and I saw that she wore no rings. Funny, how a man looks at a girl's left hand the first chance he gets!

If I shut my eyes now I can still call up the mental picture of her hands fluttering among the tea-things—small, white, slender, with pretty pink nails. But I never evoke that picture because of the one that always follows and blots it out—the vision of those hands as I was destined to see them next, helplessly stretched out to me in hand-cuffs. God knew his purpose, I reckon, when he veiled the future from our eyes.

THE conversation lagged at first. I was afraid to be anything but impersonal, lest I should say something to start her wondering if she did know me, after all. Then I suddenly saw the folly of the thing. There would have to be an understanding between us sometime. I could not go to her home the next day, even if I found out where she lived, unless I were absolutely sure she had not mistaken me for some one else. The sandwiches were disappearing. In a few minutes the tea-party would be over, leaving me as far as ever from the chance of future acquaintance. I took a long breath and plunged.

"Miss Hoyt," I said, "I'm going to confess. I know we've met before, but for the life of me I can't remember where."

She gave a short, startled. laugh, and stared at me.

"Why—why, we met on the steamer coming from Europe—didn't we?" she faltered after a pause.

I shook my head. "I've never been to Europe."

"Oh!" It was an exclamation of dismay, and she sank back in her seat, her hands meeting in a frightened movement against her breast.

"You seemed so sure about me that I thought we must have met before," I began, defending myself against the reproach in her eyes. "Besides, your name seemed so familiar."

"Oh!" she said again—but with a quite different inflection; and she sat up straight and looked hard at me. And then she added a remark that did not strike me as odd until I had occasion to recall it later. "So it was the name!"

"Yes; I felt sure I had heard it before, and—"

"I dare say," she interrupted a trifle sharply. "Most people have—if they read the papers."

"The papers?" I echoed blankly.

"The newspapers."

I stared at her. "Who—who are you?"

"Ask the first policeman you meet," she answered. "Ask the waitress there."

As she mentioned the waitress she involuntarily turned toward the young woman who had served us and who now stood across the room idly watching us.

"Did you ever see such eyes as that woman has? They bore into you like gimlets."

"I didn't notice," I replied.

I had not, then; my eyes and attention had been focused elsewhere. An idea had flashed into my mind, and now at the first opportunity I blurted out the question: "Are you an actress?" It was the only explanation I could think of for what she had said about the newspapers.

She laughed. "Ask a policeman," she repeated teasingly—"if you are interested."

"Of course I'm interested."

"Well, so am I; but you seem to forget that you owe me an explanation and an apology."

"I have explained, and I don't think I do owe you an apology," was my reply. "I made an honest mistake, just as you did, and I'm sorry—" Breaking off, I corrected myself: "No, I'm not, because if I had not made the mistake I should have missed the pleasure of having tea with you. But, of course, I'll be sorry—if you insist."

She laughed again. She was adorably pretty when she laughed. "No, I won't insist, Mr. " She stopped short. "I don't know your name," she stammered, as if the embarrassing fact had just dawned on her.

"My name is Richard Terrill. I'm from Atlanta, Georgia, a lawyer in New York on business, and I'm stopping at the Cecil Ho—"

I was cut off by the sudden appearance from behind me of the waitress bringing a fresh pitcher of hot water, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that she had overheard me and must think it odd that I found it necessary to tell the young girl with whom I was taking tea what my name was. But, whatever her thoughts were, her lean, sallow face did not betray them. She asked if we wanted anything else, and, being told we did not, she again retired out of ear-shot to the opposite side of the room, where she stood as before, watching us. I knew she watched now, because I glanced over several times, always to find her small, keen black eyes leveled on my guest.

The latter had poured the hot water into the tea-pot, and now refilled the cups.

"Of course, it's very shocking for a girl to go to tea with a man who has not been introduced," she observed. "Still, it's really not a reason for wasting the tea, is it?"

"Certainly not!"

She laughed, and it struck me that her laugh had changed. It was freer, gayer. Indeed, she was in high spirits, and so was I. Since I had spoken out and cleared the air, we were getting on famously. We talked along for a while, saying nothing that I recall, until she remarked suddenly:

"If you were to relate this experience to any one who knows me, do you know what you'd be told? People would shrug their shoulders and say: 'If that isn't Bobbie Hoyt all over!'"

"I see. You're in the habit of shocking the community. Is that why you're so well known to the police?"

She regarded me quizzically. "Don't you honestly remember where you heard of me before?"

"Haven't an idea."

"I wonder, now."

"You mean you don't believe me?"

"I don't know. Will you come to tea to-morrow?"

"Nothing could keep me away."

Her answer was a short, odd laugh.

"The address is 16 East 80th Street. You'd better write it down," she advised.

"I sha'n't forget it."

She wanted to know the time, and I showed her my watch. It was ten minutes to five.

"Dear me, I'm late!" she exclaimed, rising. "I'll have to take a taxi."

We had the luck to pick up a cab just as we reached the corner of Fifth Avenue. I helped her in and gave her address to the chauffeur.

"Remember," she called back to me as the cab got into motion. "You are free to look me up before you come to-morrow. You'll find a policeman at any corner."

I nodded, grinning, and returned her gay wave of farewell. Then I stood on the curb and watched the receding cab until it was lost in the stream of traffic.

AS it was nearly five o'clock, I decided to telephone Talbot Sands and find out if he would dine with me. Looking round for a telephone sign, I remembered noticing a booth in the tea-room, and went back there. I was surprised as I entered to have the sharp-eyed waitress come hurrying to meet me.

"You came back for the vanity-box, didn't you?" she inquired.

"What?" I returned, not understanding.

"Your friend dropped it; I found it under the table." She was feeling in her apron pocket for something, and added: "I thought you'd be coming back for it."

I looked at the object she held out to me. It appeared to be a good-sized gold locket. "Are you sure it's hers?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, sir; I noticed her wearing it when she took her coat off. It was hanging on a gold chain and must have come loose."

Since the woman was so positive about the ownership, I took the locket, gave her some money, and went on to the telephone booth. And there, while waiting for Tal to get on the wire, I examined the ornament.

It was an odd, pear-shaped affair in dull gold, attractive for its quaintness, but of small intrinsic value. On the lid was a crudely executed device of an armored knight on a horse, charging a grotesque dragon whose tail dwindled gracefully into the small end of the pear. Below were the words, in archaic French lettering, considerably worn, but decipherable: "Pour la croix et toi" (For the cross and thee).

Remembering that the waitress had called the thing a vanity-box, I concluded that she had opened it, and that, since it contained no photograph or other secret matter such as lockets are supposed to, it would do no harm to take a peep myself. I found the lid lined with a mirror, and in the shallow bowl a tiny puff which, being raised, brought with it a fragrant cloud of pink powder.

I stood there with the puff between two clumsy fingers, fascinated by the dainty femininity of it, when suddenly Tal's deep tones rumbled in the receiver, and I snapped the locket shut as guiltily as if his amused eyes had been on me.

He would not have time for dinner with me, he said, poor wage-slave that he was. He was rushed with work, and had, among other unpleasant duties, to make the 6:45 train to Riverton, New York, to interview somebody. Would I go along? We could probably beat it back to Broadway in time to see a little life before midnight. I said I would meet him at the train.

I WALKED back to the Cecil, and, thinking Miss Hoyt had by then had ample time to reach home, I decided to call her up and tell her that her lost property was in my possession, and that I would send it up to her at once or bring it myself the following afternoon, as she preferred. Looking through the list of Hoyts in the telephone book, I was surprised to find her own name: "Miss Roberta Hoyt, 16 East 80th Street." Her own telephone! It struck me as odd for a young girl. Who was she?

I called the number, and a man's voice, a servant's probably, answered me.

"Is Miss Hoyt there?" I asked.

"Yes, sir; but she can not come to the 'phone. She's ill, sir."

"Ill!"

"Yes, sir. Any message, sir?"

"It's Miss Hoyt I want—Miss Roberta Hoyt," I repeated, thinking he had misunderstood the name. "Is that her home?"

"This is Miss Roberta Hoyt's home, sir, but she is ill. Any message?"

Astonished, I did not at once reply; then I began tentatively: "Why—no—" And instantly I heard a click; the man had rung off.

What could it mean? She must have been taken ill suddenly on her return home. It was now twenty minutes past five. Less than half an hour ago she had been perfectly well, and now she was ill. I wished I had asked the servant a question or two. Still, if she had been taken ill very suddenly, would he not have said so without being asked?

A possible explanation occurred to me. Perhaps she had discovered the loss of her vanity-box, had learned by telephoning to the tea-room that I had it, and, thinking I might call her up and not wishing to speak to me for fear of betraying to some one her afternoon escapade, had told the servant to say she was ill to any one who called. The theory was not entirely plausible, but I could think of no other.

Roberta Hoyt? I sounded the name again and again for a familiar ring. Had her remark about the newspapers been a jest? Very likely. I did not believe she was an actress; yet in what way could a girl as young as she become so well known? But was she well known? The waitress had watched her intently; yet, if she had known her name, would she not have mentioned it in returning the locket to me? Still, it was not her face, but her name, that she had said was known to newspaper readers. Roberta Hoyt! Where could I have seen it?

I gave up wondering after a while. Whoever she was, she was thoroughbred. Her speech and manner proved that. As for that jest about the policeman—well!

On my way to the restaurant for dinner, an idea popped into my head. Why not have dinner at that tea-room? If Miss Hoyt had called up about the locket the waitress would be sure to tell me.

The place was filled, and at first I could not find the waitress who had served our tea. Suddenly, however, she appeared at my elbow.

"Your friend came back for her vanity-box—but I guess you know," she said.

"Came back—here?"

"Oh, didn't you know? She said she guessed you'd call her up. I told her found it and gave it to you, and she said, that was all right."

"Why—when was this?" I questioned, trying to conceal my wonder.

"About half-past five."

Half-past five! At twenty minutes past I had been told she was too ill to come to the 'phone.

"Are you sure of the time?" I asked.

"Yes, sir, because an extra waitress who comes on at half-past five to help with dinner came in when we were talking."

"I see," I said, feeling her black eyes curiously watching me. "That was how I missed her. I called her up and—missed her."

"Well she was awful glad I'd found the vanity-box and wanted to give me something for it, but I told her you had already done that."

She paused, and I had the sense that something was expected of me. I glanced up. Shrewdness was written large in every line of her thin, unprepossessing face. Unlikely, I thought, that she had refused money from any one. Evidently it was money she expected now.

"I knew you'd like to know she'd been back—if you hadn't heard from her," she remarked.

I nodded shortly, handed her a coin, and left.

My theory was exploded; I was utterly at sea. For, since Miss Hoyt had not known at the time I 'phoned her house that I had the locket, she could not have ordered her servant to say she was ill for any reason connected with the locket or me. The idea occurred to me to call her up again. She had told the waitress she expected me to call. Perhaps now she would answer and explain. But, consulting my watch, I found I had barely time to make the train for Riverton, and was forced to let the 'phoning go until later.

TAL was waiting for me, and we were soon on our way. His mission, he explained, was to interview a stodgy old gink named Martin, who had a place near Riverton, was a stock-holder in the Record, and periodically divulged his political opinions to an inattentive world. The assignment was a chore, and Tal grumbled all the way, which proves that we never recognize good fortune when we stare it in the face.

We got an automobile at the station, and went straight to the Martin home—the show place of the neighborhood, our driver told us. And it is a fine place, but the only features of it that I recall distinctly are the two big lamps at the gate. However, it was not the lamps themselves but the objects their light revealed to us that night which have kept their memory green.

Tal suggested introducing me as a fellow reporter, so that I should not have to wait; but I preferred, I said, to take a spin round the village and return for him.

"Go back to the station," I ordered the chauffeur, as we swung down the drive to the lodge.

At the station I found a telephone booth and called Miss Hoyt's home. After some

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delay I heard voices crossing confusedly, and then a woman's, an operator's, said faintly: "Riverton's calling. Hold the Wire, please." And then more loudly to me: "There's your party."

"Hello," said I. There was no answer. Hello! Hello!"

I waited, and presently caught sounds like hurrying heel-taps on a hard-wood floor; and at last a feminine voice, high and eager, spoke:

"That you, Higgs? What is it? Have You heard anything?"

"Why—you—" I was going to inform her that she had made a mistake, that I was not her Higgs, whoever he was. But she cut me off impatiently.

"Don't stammer like that, for heaven's sake," she snapped. "You'll drive me mad. Is there any news?"

I wondered who the speaker was. That high-pitched, thin-toned voice was not Miss Hoyt's, nor was it a servant's.

"You've made a mistake," I said.

"What! What's that you said, Higgs?"

"I'm not Higgs," I shouted.

"Oh!" She had evidently heard me. There was a pause. "Who are you? They said it was Riverton calling."

"I wish to speak to Miss Roberta Hoyt," I said loudly and distinctly.

Another pause; then: "Miss Hoyt is ill. Who is this?"

"I'm very sorry to hear that," I replied, ignoring the question. "Has she been ill long?"

"She has not been able to leave her room since last Friday. Who is this?"

I hesitated. Under the circumstances it seemed better not to give my name; yet, in my surprise at her reply, I could not at once think of an evasion.

"Who is this?" she repeated, and on my again failing to answer the receiver clicked on the hook.

I was left staring into the transmitter. I had hoped for enlightenment, and instead was more mystified than ever.

We loafed back to the Martins', and I encouraged the chauffeur to talk, just to keep myself from asking myself questions I could not answer. He was a cheerful, expansive boy, nineteen or twenty, ready enough to talk, and full of information and gossip of the people who lived in the houses we passed. We had a short wait for Tal, and as soon as he rejoined us we started again for the station.

IT was a fine night, remarkably warm for late October, and the moonlight lent a glamour to an otherwise monotonous landscape. We had rolled along for a quarter of a mile or so without meeting any cars, when suddenly, on turning a corner, we came upon a large limousine at a standstill in the middle of the road.

It was facing toward us, and our driver, veering a trifle, brought up alongside, calling out pleasantly: "Need any help?"

"Thanks, no," came back politely from a man in a long ulster, who was bending over the engine with his back to us. Opposite, helping him, was a woman who, the instant we stopped,—unexpectedly to her, as it seemed,—turned and disappeared on the other side of the car. She was too quick for me to get an impression of her face, but she wore no hat, and I could see that her hair was very light.

"Just thought you might. I'm a pretty fair mechanic," returned our driver good-humoredly, and put his hands back on his wheel preparatory to starting us on our way again.

"Thanks, I'm a pretty fair one myself."

At the words, spoken with an unmistakable British intonation, our boy jerked his head round sharply and, leaning forward, stared at the speaker's back. And the next moment there came from within the car a sound that caused all three of us to start and stare: for it was the moan of a human being in great pain or grief.

As it broke the stillness, the shoulders of the stooping man twitched and he raised his head a little. Then there came the noise of the closing of the car door on the other side.

"We're taking a sick chap to the hospital over at South Eden, remarked the man, and again lowered his head over the engine.

"Anything we can do?" asked Tal. "We're making the nine-twenty to New York, and have time to spare, and if our chauffeur can be of assistance we'll be glad to wait."

"Thanks, I'll not trouble you," the stranger replied courteously, but still without showing us his face.

Now, it chanced that I was seated on the side of our car near the limousine, and unthinkingly let my eyes rest on the windows. I had no idea of spying, and indeed could see nothing, for the body of the big car was shadowed from the moonlight by a tree. Consequently I felt the sting of unmerited rebuke when a woman's hand appeared at the window nearest me and drew down the shade. The act, coupled with the man's reply to Tal, was proof enough that we were not wanted.

"Go ahead," I ordered.

The minute we were out of ear-shot, our chauffeur looked round.

"Know who that was?" he asked eagerly. "Herbert Farnham, the Englishman that's supposed to be engaged to Miss Hoyt—Miss Bobbie Hoyt."

I reckon I jumped at the name, but Tal didn't notice it. He himself had moved with quick interest.

"Are you sure?" he demanded. "You couldn't see his face."

"But I know his voice. He was up here all summer, visiting Miss Hoyt. She's got a place up here, you know."

"Was that she with him, do you think?"

"Oh, no. This woman had light hair—didn't you notice? Miss Hoyt's hair is dark—dark red. Besides, she'd 'a' never dodged out of the way like that. That ain't her style. When she does a thing the whole world's welcome to know about it."

"Yes; she likes the lime-light."

"I didn't mean it that way," protested the boy quickly. "It ain't her fault that the papers are always printing things about her. She's a live wire and loves action, but she can't help it if a reporter takes her picture every time she stands still long enough."

Tal laughed. "You're evidently an admirer."

"Everybody likes Miss Bobbie. She's all right," answered the boy simply.

"And she's going to marry this Farnham, you say?"

"Well, looks like. They got a license up here awhile ago, and everybody was looking for the wedding to happen any day. Then all of a sudden she closed up the house and went back to the city. So I guess they'll get married there. There'll be a good many fellows disappointed; there was a lot of 'em after her."

"After her money, you mean."

"Yes, some of 'em, maybe; but it's not the money with Mr. Farnham. He's crazy about her. And I guess she's crazy about him, too. Only she sure did like to get him going, taking off the way he talks. She could do it down to the ground, too—have everybody laughing."

AS I listened, back to my mind came the memory of those deep tones which I had thought so English and so lovely.

"Any idea who the woman with him to-night was?" Tal asked. "She didn't wish to be recognized, that's sure."

"No; I don't know who she could have been. He never went round up here with anybody but Miss Hoyt."

"Queer for him to be driving a limousine. I'm inclined to think you're mistaken about it being Farnham."

"Oh, it was him all right. Guess the chauffeur was off and they had to get to the hospital quick. I can't make out, though, where they could have been coming from. I never saw that car around here—it's an English make."

"The Hoyt place is closed, you say?"

"Yes. Nobody there but the caretakers. Besides, it's in the direction the car was headed for—just beyond the Martin place, where we came from. Funny, Mr. Farnham not turning round, and the way that woman dodged, wasn't it?"

"I guess it wasn't Farnham at all," said Tal.

There was a pause; then the chauffeur replied:

Well, I've got a good memory for

Continued on page 18

Why You Are Robbed

An Interview with Arthur Woods, the Police Commissioner of New York City

By ANNE HERENDEEN

WHEN you wildly call up Police Headquarters to report a robbery in your home or the loss of your hand-bag on the way to the matinée, it surprises you that the man at the end of the wire isn't more excited about it. The fact is, the operations of sneak thieves and pickpockets do not astonish experienced detectives. The thing that is a constant source of surprise to Headquarters is that so many happy-go-lucky folk get off month in and month out without being molested at all.

Women, probably owing to the fact that their lives are less regulated by office routine than men, become exceedingly careless about safeguarding the house, and thus extend many a tacit invitation to the people who live by their wits.

Ways to Help the Burglar

FOR example, there are the chance open windows and keys under mats. Then, there are the women who stay for long periods in the front part of the house, leaving the back part unlocked. When doing this they usually sit by the window or talk to a neighbor out of it, and the burglar thus knows just exactly where they are, and how liable they are to move.

Apartment-house dwellers seem very insistent upon the sneak thief's making himself at home. They take a corner of the paper that came around the bread and write long notes telling just what their plans are, how long they will be out, where they have gone and why, and of course where the key is. They really mean all this information for, say, an aunt or a cousin, in case she drops in from out of town; but it's all one to the thief. He informally drops in, and when they return they find fewer things than when they left.

Other housekeepers only leave a notice on the dumb-waiter explaining to the grocer's boy that they are out shopping for the afternoon. This kind of invitation isn't quite so handy for the burglar. It necessitates his prowling down the areaway and perhaps bumping up against the janitor. Still, a thief is not in business for his health, and he can afford to put up with a few minor inconveniences. The main thing is that he learns the housewife is out.

It wouldn't be so bad—there wouldn't be the need of so many taxes for salaries of policemen and detectives—if it were only the things left behind that tempted the thief. But women abroad are apt to be walking invitations to pickpockets. Women with children, especially, are gilt-edged propositions to the light-fingered gentry. The reason for this is that the shopper is so much more concerned about the safety of the small daughter or son than about the family budget that is dangling from her wrist in the shopping-bag. No thief alive can separate a woman's purse from her if her mind is on the purse. It is when she is not thinking of it—for instance getting on and off a street-car with a child or two—that he gets in his clever work. I am not urging mothers to take less thought for their children. I am only wishing they might hold the two ideas in their minds at the same time.

And the way in which the average woman carries her money! It is an exception when it isn't hanging loosely on her arm or in her hand, dangling temptingly before the eyes of the thief. And all the ordinary hand-bags are, I believe, made to open at the slightest pressure!

Speaking of shopping-bags and shopping, here is Mrs. A. It happened that Mrs. A. wanted a dinner dress in a hurry. So she posted off to her favorite department store. After a few minutes of looking, she found just what she wanted. Would it need much alteration? Mrs. A. dropped her rain-coat and umbrella and pocketbook upon the nearest chair and followed the clerk into the fitting-room. That pocket-book, valued at $50, and containing $50, a ring of house-keys, and four theater tickets, never was seen again. I will refrain from pointing out the moral of this sad, true story.

Not long ago the house of an assistant to a prominent New York clergyman was robbed, and the burglars got in through the skylight. The minister then had the skylight fixed so the burglars could not get in that way again. One night a few days ago, however, his wife went out and left the following note tacked to the door:

Leave dress at the corner drug-store; nobody home for the evening.

When she came back the house had been carefully looted.

Again, take Mrs. B. She doesn't know Mrs. A. or the minister's wife, but they are sisters in misfortune. Mrs. B. was fond of dancing, and one evening last

summer she joined a party of friends on an excursion to one of the beaches near New York City. After a shore dinner, she went to the wash-room to wash her hands, and laid the two very beautiful rings she was wearing on the marble stand. One was her engagement ring, valued at $400 in money and at how much more in association a bachelor Police Commissioner can not venture upon saying. The other was a gold band set with sixteen small diamonds, valued at $350. Poor Mrs. B. She missed the rings, and returned for them almost at once. But they were gone, and have not been found up to the present time, in spite of the great amount of money and time and patience that has gone into the search for them. Can you wonder that when this was reported to Headquarters we felt just a bit—?

But listen to the case of Mrs. C.

Mrs. C. is the wife of a successful New York business man, and she is greatly interested in curious jewelry. In common with a surprisingly large number of people she distrusted safes and safety deposit boxes, and slept with her jewel collection under her pillow. In the daytime she wore them in a chamois bag around her neck. They were never out of her reach.

But one morning she was called from bed by the telephone. The message she received caused her to decide to remain up and dress. In the meantime the maid made her bed, sending the pillow slip containing the jewels to the laundry.

That is where the police enter upon the scene. After a search of many weeks, we have succeeded in finding one piece in an uptown pawn-shop. And we have hopes of locating the rest. But why—

What One Busy Thief Can Do

JUST the other day a robbery was effected in New Rochelle by thieves plus a ladder and an open bedroom window while the family was at dinner. People say to me, "But I can't bear to leave the windows all locked and come home to a hot, stuffy house." To which I reply, "Which do you prefer, the fresh air or your property?"

Are there such thousands of burglars?

No; but an active thief in an automobile can cover a thousand and more windows a day, and your window might be one in that thousand.

And day after day people lose rugs, coats, and packages from the tonneaus of cars left in front of houses where the owner is calling or shopping.

I made up my mind that I wouldn't adorn these tales with any morals, and I won't. But here are the morals—just a few of them—all by themselves in a box not adorning anything. I must give them to you, for they are the answer to the question I am asked every day: "Please, Mr. Commissioner, why are we robbed?"

Two Women and the Goat They Got

IT all came about by the milkman's refusing to stumble down a rough hillside to deliver them milk. Miss Annie and Miss Hattie Wood had come there from New York City, and with money saved from keeping a few boarders in their home in Central Park West had bought three lots on a slope of the hill. Miss Hattie had had a nervous collapse and wanted to live outdoors as much as possible, so they bought some Pekinese ducks. When the milkman refused to come down with milk, they traded a pair of ducks for a goat, so that they might have their own milk supply.

It was just a plain, ordinary every-day Nannies but on the suggestion of a neighbor, they bred her to a fine Taggenburg, and they soon had much more milk than they could use. This led to the selling of it, and that led to the raising of more goats, the selling of more milk, the gradual breeding up to a higher standard by the purchase of a full-blood Taggenburg buck and the selling off of grades.

"All we knew of goats when we began was seeing those tethered out on the Harlem flats," said Miss Wood, when asked about their start. "Like other people, we believed they ate tin cans; but the fact is that Taggenburgs are the most fastidious animals imaginable. They won't touch a bit of hay that has fallen on the ground and become soiled. And so for two hours twice a day we put them all in stanchions and let them have a good feed, then turn them out on our slope to lie about in the sun. A good goat, after the first kidding, will give from two to four quarts a day, and as goat milk brings twenty-five cents a quart, you can figure the income from a dozen goats, our present herd, or twenty, as we have sometimes had."

These two women do practically all the work of the dairy. Miss Hattie is really the proprietor, but Miss Annie helps her out by doing the milking. With the aid of a boy, and her pony cart of a quaint and ancient vintage, Miss Hattie delivers the milk, and attends to correspondence from all parts of the country.

The Sole Survivor

By CHARLES SAXBY

Illustrations by W. T. Benda

AS Carroll entered Trent's room, there was an instant in which each man waited for the other to speak—to utter the first tone that, like the note of a scale, would set the pitch for the entire interview.

Carroll had in his pocket the personal diary of Hawke, the only authentic account of the great explorer's final and disastrous expedition. Of that expedition Trent was the sole survivor.

"Thank God, you have come," said Trent. "I couldn't have held out much longer."

He spoke like a man besieged, waiting for succor against hope. The presence of those waiting reporters downstairs, congregated in the boarding-house parlor, under a cloud of cigarette smoke and mutual boredom, told Carroll something of what that siege had been. As the bearer of Hawke's diary he was distinctly "news"; but Trent, the sole survivor, had been "news" for nearly a month now. That so little of that news had leaked out testified to Trent's powers of resistance.

Carroll remembered the words of the impressive person from the Megaphone who had taken him in charge at the pier as he landed:

"We haven't been able to get a statement from Mr. Trent as yet."

The failure had not been from lack of trying. Carroll's own difficulty in retaining Hawke's manuscript until he had first seen Trent showed him that. The Megaphone nor its proprietor, Bart Maynard— the one was practically the other—did not take kindly to refusals of any sort.

CARROLL flung his overcoat across a chair near the fire, the bulging pocket containing Hawke's diary uppermost.

"You got my telegram?" he asked, noting that Trent, though ill,

was not so ill as he expected. It seemed more the man's mind that was sick, a haunting, driving something that looked from the eyes, wide and bright with the lingering fever.

"Yes," answered Trent. "A day north of Madeira, relayed by wireless." He spoke with mechanical precision. "Poor Hawke—"

"It must have been a great disappointment to you," said Carroll. "I mean Hawke's dying like that after all your efforts to bring him out of the bush."

"Oh, but I knew all the time he couldn't live!" exclaimed Trent. "That's why I drove so; it was just a question of getting him to one of the Kongo stations in time."

Carroll stared in surprise, checking the question, "In time for what?" that trembled on his tongue. He made himself say:

"I thought you thought he would recover if given a chance, and that was why, as you put it, 'you drove so.' Hawke thought so, too. He was tremendously touched."

"He talked, then?" There was surprise and something more in Trent's tone.

"At the last. Hawke recovered consciousness after you went down the river. Oh, he was greatly touched by what you had done."

"Why do you insist so upon that?" Trent demanded.

"Because it explains what follows."

"There is more, then?"

"Quite a lot," said Carroll drily. "For one thing, Hawke left his diary in my keeping to bring back to New York and deliver to Mr. Maynard of the Megaphone."

Carroll drew out the worn water-proof case, stained with the blue-mold of the tropics.

"Yes—that is it," Trent said sharply.

"Then you knew he had it with him after the accident?" asked Carroll.

"How should I not know?" answered Trent simply. "There he was, helpless on my hands all those weeks as we came down the river."

Carroll's lips ached with another question, the same that had tormented Hawke's last days. How much more had Trent known in those weeks? But Trent, with a twisted smile, answered it unspoken:

"I am only human, Carroll. I suspected what he might have written of me—and there it was, right under my hand; so—"

He broke off with a gesture, and Carroll breathed in relief; at least, he would not have to tell Trent.

"Shall I tell you why you have come to see me?" Trent was saying. "I can do it. The principal reason is on page 205 of that diary, beginning with the third line from the top—the line with a blot on the sixth word. Shall I quote it for you?"

Then, in a hard, utterly unmagnetic tone that, to Carroll, seemed subtly to portray the personality of the man who had written them, he quoted the words that, back in their minds, had been the real basis of all their thought and speech:

"The real strength of an expedition lies in the self-sacrificing devotion of its members to the central cause, and to the personality who embodies that cause. No chain is stronger than its weakest link, and, if this expedition should fail, then its failure will lie on the hands of the young wireless operator we picked up in Loanda—Mr. Victor Trent."

While Trent was speaking, Carroll was wondering again at the strange chance that made this interview in a cheap boarding-house bedroom the final scene of the great Hawke expedition to Sulimao. He remembered the accounts of the starting of that expedition that had reached him at his dreary station at Ngombe, hemmed in between the black-green wall of the bush and the yellow Kongo. He turned again the pages of the months-old copies of the Megaphone, looking at the staring head-lines, a deft interweaving of the names of the famous explorer, of the Megaphone and its proprietor, Bart Maynard, until one could hardly tell which was the real hero of the occasion.

It had been Bart Maynard who had financed Hawke's expedition. There came another flash of recollection— Hawke, gray-faced, fighting for breath, and his words, spoken with a grim humor:

"Maynard won't like my dying. He hates to have people fail him. He'll want a victim—"

AND the only possible victim would be Trent: there is always something suspicious about those who live when others die.

"Isn't that why you are here?" Trent demanded.

"Yes—yes," said Carroll, collecting himself. "But there is more. At the last Hawke was doubtful. He saw that that sentence, from him,—and all the more after his death,—would be enough to—to—"

"To ruin me," concluded Trent wearily. "Do you imagine I haven't thought that? Maynard has no mercy on those who cross him. Look at what he did to that fellow who claimed to have discovered that island near the Pole that Maynard had sent out an expedition to find. The paper hounded the poor devil half across the world, until he committed suicide. Do you think I don't see all that?"

"This diary is Maynard's property," Carroll went on. "I am merely Hawke's messenger. I was to bring it back to New York and place it in the hands of Maynard's representatives, and I have had a hard time keeping it even the hour since I landed. But at the last Hawke separated that sheet—page 205—and those other pages on which your name occurs,—you probably know them,—and handed them to me. I was to see you first, and then I was to do with those pages as I pleased."

"Then my fate lies in your hands."

Carroll flung the manuscript down upon the chair by the fire.

"Who made me a judge over you?" he exclaimed. "Why couldn't. Hawke have torn those pages himself?"

"Perhaps because he was—Hawke," suggested Trent.

THE door opened, without the preliminary of a knock, and there entered the Megaphone reporter who had taken Carroll in charge at the dock and accompanied him ever since.

"Sorry to interrupt," he said, with a negligence that made of his words the merest formality. "Just had a message from Mr. Maynard. The diary must be delivered to me without delay. We are going to issue an extra, and the presses are waiting."

The reporter, with what to Carroll seemed a deliberate insolence, had left the door open. There was an open window out there on the stairs, and from it came the sound of driving rain and a sharp draft that rustled the pages lying on the chair. Carroll placed his hand on them.

"One minute," he said. "As I told you, I promised Mr. Hawke that before giving up this manuscript I would go over certain passages with Mr. Trent."

"But Mr. Maynard—"

"It was Mr. Hawke's last wish."

"Oh—ah—Mr. Hawke's last wish," murmured the reporter. "In that case, I will 'phone Mr. Maynard. Perhaps I can arrange it."

"In half an hour," said Carroll cheerfully. "We shall be through then."

"I will see what I can do," the man nodded, pausing at the door with an air of gracious concession. "Half an hour?"

The door closed behind him, and Carroll turned to Trent. "Well?"

"Where shall I begin?" asked Trent, from his chair before the fire, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.

"Why not at the beginning?"

"Where was the beginning?" Trent asked. "In Loanda, where they picked me up? We had known for months that Hawke was coming. The Megaphone hardly kept those things secret, you know. Hawke was coming. Once I knew that, I could think of nothing else. I had read his books over and over again.

"That was why I was there in Loanda, living in a sort of romantic illusion. It was really Hawke who had sent me there with those books of his. It seemed marvelous to me: I in Africa at last, sitting in a tin-roofed shack, receiving invisible wireless messages that came clicking out of nowhere, like telegrams in a dream. Those messages came faster as Hawke drew near. His coming seemed to put Loanda tremendously on the map, and the names attached to those messages thrilled me by their importance—especially Bart Maynard's.

"Then, at last, Hawke landed. It was a great day for us. The steamer lay outside for hours while the lighters plied to and fro, and his baggage piled up on the beach.

"I did not go down to watch it. I even closed the shutters of the wireless station that looked down on the bay. My illusion was shattered and my romance had become too small for me. I Saw all Africa right there at my elbow, spread out in

---

mystery. They were going into that mystery; they would come out of it again with another wonderful story, while I was chained to my key.

"All I could do was to send their return messages for them. I remember Hawke's first despatch, sent within ten minutes of his landing, and addressed to Bart Maynard:

Have arrived Loanda—all well.

"I could see it, within an hour of leaving my fingers, spread across the front page of an evening edition, with the newsboys yelling it amid the dusk and clamor of streets five thousand miles away. Hawke was taking a wireless installation with him for the first time, intending to send daily messages to Loanda, to be relayed to the Megaphone, so that all America might keep in touch with their progress.

"That night I heard that their operator had slipped on some steps and broken his leg. I knew then—absolutely knew. They had to come to me, or wait a month for another man to be sent via Southampton: there was no one else in all Loanda at all possible. But I made no move, not even to open these shutters. All I was able to do was to wait; and the certainty did not relieve the suspense.

"It was the next night that they sent for me. I was in my room at the hotel. It was a hot, still night. There came a step in the courtyard and on the stairs: a white man's step with the ring of leather.

"He came along the gallery and stopped at my door—just the tip of a cigar, a shape silhouetted against that blue-white light outside. I almost stopped breathing as he spoke, with a tinge of patronage:

"'Mr. Hawke would like to see you at once.'"

Trent's fingers took a fresh grip on his chair and his tone sharpened as he burst out:

"Good God! what is it brings things about? Why did that wireless chap slip on just those steps? Why was I there, waiting to be picked up? Another week and I should have been off to Cape Town on my vacation. They didn't need me along with them, after all, for their wireless was useless. We ditched it the third week out, just two days after the Loanda porters left us to return to the coast—just two days too late for me to return with them.

"We were still in the dry country then—a nightmare of a land, all baked rocks, thorns, and baobab trees, their naked limbs like masses of squirming brown flesh. We were rearranging the baggage, and waiting for Hawke's old head-man, Quasi, to arrive from the Kongo with his train of porters.

"It was not my fault that that wireless was no good. The Loanda natives were a miserable lot, and some of them had thrown away half their loads to lighten them. But Hawke could not blame me for that, either: that part of the transportation was under Warde and Banning, and both of them were inexperienced men.

"IT was that night, just after my discovery of the loss and my report of it to Hawke, that it occurred to me that all of us were inexperienced men.

"Hawke had retired to his tent,—we became accustomed afterward to those tremendous silent retirements of his,— and it loomed silent and dark, but with an atmosphere about it. In ours shone a light, and I could hear a mumble of voices that told me that the others—Warde, Banning, and Doctor O'Shea—were talking it over. I was still outside by the camp-fire; I hardly belonged, as yet; I was just 'the chap we picked up in Loanda.'

"But at least I was with Hawke, bound for the truth of Sulimao, the fabled mountain of snow. I hugged that fact to me, rejoicing that I should have my place, no matter how small, in the written history of Africa. Then, as I ran my mind over Hawke's books, it flashed upon me that no one had ever accompanied him twice. He had an entirely new white personnel for each expedition—a fact strangely unnoticed by his readers.

"I looked again at those two tents, and lay there a long time that night.

"The next day Quasi and his two hundred porters arrived, marching in with the beat of drums and much acclamation of Hawke—'Luala Ntaka,' as they called him, 'Lord of the Waters,' from his discovery of the inland seas. A day's delay, and we were off.

"Perhaps that time at the wireless station, listening to those messages clicking out of nowhere, had made me imaginative; but there were hours when I seemed to feel the very spirit of the land itself. Africa has never parted easily with her secrets, and I could understand her desire to keep one last place of mystery.

"Oh—I am talking nonsense, I know!" Trent cried. "But Sulimao still remains undiscovered, and sometimes I wonder—did the land find that unguarded door in my mind, steal in its mysterious fingers, and —use me?"

In Trent's voice was the desperate appeal of one who feels his rationality slipping from him; but Carroll found himself unable to answer it. He knew those African nights, pits of silent blackness. It was sheer imagination, of course, but—

THEY had forgotten the city, the tide of civilization, and those waiting presses. They were back together in that land they both knew so well, their minds mingling in a complete comprehension. Perhaps that was why Hawke had so insisted on this interview, Carroll thought. Hawke had known he would understand.

"Hawke was right," Trent went on. "I was the weakest link. But it was not as he thought. There was none really more devoted to him than I was. But he suspected something.

"I won't bore you with the journey— you will find it all in any one of Hawke's books, even to the illustrations. You know them—'Our Camp on the Wanzami'—river, tents, baggage, natives, and Hawke. The rest of us in the background. They are rather significant, those illustrations; but then, everything becomes significant when one looks back on it.

"I had been keeping a diary also. I was open about it,—I knew no reason for not being so,—but it happened that none of the others had seen it. We were so busy or tired all the time; then again, there was that barrier between us. I didn't really belong.

"Then Hawke came upon me one day, during the noon rest, as I was writing. He was so furious that I was aghast. He took the stand that I had been deliberately concealing it from all the party, and he launched at me my contract and its iron-clad clause of not a word in writing, then or thereafter, not a photograph, not even a sketch by any other hand than his own. I had never heard of it—my hasty engagement had been verbal only, 'The same terms as the others'—and I had been so eager to go that I would have agreed to anything.

"I explained, and he seemed satisfied. But I could not help thinking it over, and I found that, for all my reading of his accounts of his previous journeys, I could not recall the names of any of his associates except the one who, on each occasion, had seemed to incur his displeasure.

"We were nearing our goal then, in the midst of a sodden, broken country that we thought must lead up to the hidden snows of Sulimao. But things had been going badly. Hawke's marvelous luck seemed to have deserted him, and we were all worn out with fever and frayed nerves. The negroes had mutinied that day, and we had been forced to shoot a couple of them; and we sat round the fire at night, discussing it.

"Hawke was not there; he had retired to his tent again, after blaming Banning for the whole affair. It was unjust, and Banning felt it keenly. He was a sensitive fellow, and I remember how he went over and over it again, explaining, expostulating in a sort of ache for our sanction. 'I put it up to you chaps'—that was his term, and he repeated and repeated it. 'I put it up to you fellows—' As if we could do anything about it!

"I was tired of it all, and my nerves gave way in a sudden realization of the futility of so much talk.

"Never mind, Banning," I said—the words are bitten into my memory with the acid of regret. "Never mind—think what a splendid chapter it will make. Besides, you may get your picture in the book—now.'

"Oh, I can see it still!" Trent groaned. "Those beastly trees, all black against the stars, the gleam of the white tents, the dull glow of the fire of damp wood.

"And ourselves—O'Shea with one boot off, nursing an ugly bare foot; Warde, blond and smooth, his teeth chattering softly with fever; Banning, plaintively appealing for our sympathy, his eyes like a hurt child's. Remember, we had been four months out; we were utterly tired. Looking back, I can see that that was the black night—there is one in nearly everything, you know: a time when it is touch and go. If we had been pulled through that night we might— But, as it was—

"I can see the look on their faces as I spoke: blank question, then the break as they caught the meaning of that bitter little 'now,' the irresistible laugh that betrayed what had been back in their minds, a laugh of utter understanding. For that moment I was one of them, their, equal and their comrade.

"Then the laugh stopped as if cut with a knife. I looked up and—there stood Hawke."

Carroll could see it too. The room was gone, and he was smelling the acrid smoke of that fire, looking at the man himself, stocky, gray-haired, commanding, the glint of the red embers in his cold eyes—a man who would have been so immeasurably greater had he, not insisted on being, all the time, just as great as he was.

HAWKE had told Carroll of that night in those last days at Ngombe: how he had gone to that fire with the intention of apologizing to Banning; it had dawned on him, for perhaps the first time in his life, that he had been unjust. And that break in his shell of self-sufficiency seemed the very thing that had destroyed him. Carroll wondered if that were because it had not broken enough? A smash will sometimes set free, where a crack will only squeeze.

"If he had only said something!" cried Trent from between his hands. "Even though I had only spoken the truth, I was ready to crawl to his feet—he was so splendid in other ways, he could have so well afforded to unbend a little. But no; he just looked, then turned and walked back in silence to his tent.

"It was my nerves again; they were beyond my control. They snapped, and I laughed again. I couldn't help it, and it rang out among the trees, so that one could almost taste the bitterness of it in the air—probably the first time any one had ever laughed in that place, and God knows there was no mirth in it.

"But there was Hawke, back in his tent, listening. That was the night he wrote those lines on page 205—the last he ever wrote; for that was the night before—before—"

Trent stopped with a groan; then, laying mental hands on himself, plunged on:

"We none of us spoke any more that night. Too much had been said already. That instant of comradeship had gone, and we sat there, four separate beings, each cased in himself. Then, without a word being said, the others drew together again under the surface, and I know that I was tried and condemned— 'the fellow we picked up in Loanda,' without status, without voucher. And there was none who condemned so bitterly as myself.

"We turned in without speaking, rousing each other for our watches by a shake of the arm, pulling on our clothes in silence and stumbling out of the tent—and Hawke's was lit all night.

"My watch was the last, and I crouched over the fire in the chill of the dawn, listening to the sound of the falls—the Maynard Falls of the upper Katembe, Hawke's last great discovery; and a fitting one for Luala Ntaka'!

"The crossing of the river would be difficult there, we knew, but there were rapids above as well as below. Besides, we were following one of those age-old bush paths, so we knew that that must be the easiest place to get over.

"The river was scarcely two hundred feet wide there, but deep and swift, gathering itself for its tremendous leap over the falls. We made a raft; then a couple of negroes swam across, starting upstream, and made a landing, carrying the end of a cable with them.

"That cable was part of my duties. I knew every inch of it, and when I saw it being stretched across that stream—but I had no duties that morning, I found.

"There had been a conference in Hawke's tent at dawn, with myself outside, shivering over the fire in the dripping grayness. I heard the murmur of voices, that was all; but I knew what it was about, and as they came out I read my fate from their eyes.

"I warned Banning about that cable first; but Hawke was looking our way, and Banning literally ran from me, anxious only to retrain his new-found favor. Then I tried Warde; but he, soldier's son as he was, merely smiled a 'Sorry, but I can't speak to you. Nothing personal, you know—Chief's orders.'

"Then I went to Hawke himself. But there was no sign that I had spoken. His eyes just went through me, wiping me out of existence. I had touched him on the raw, you see.

"Then came recklessness—bitterness—revolt. Let them go their own way, I thought, as I sat watching the preparations; I had done my best; they wouldn't listen—and all the rest of it. A glance, a touch would have broken it; but they did not come. And, curiously enough, I was glad they did not, even though I was hungry for them.

"The porters crossed first with their loads, ten trips back and forth for the raft, twenty terrific strains on that cable, pulling the clumsy affair along hand over hand, the rope taut and humming with the tension.

"Then Hawke, Warde, Banning, and O'Shea, with the instruments, the ammunition, and six negroes to help pull the raft. I was left behind with Quasi and his son Atchoa to bring up the rear. That was to be my place in future, I saw. Since I could not be turned adrift, I might follow: that was all.

"I shall always see that place: the strip of sky above the river; the mist from the falls drifting upstream, shot through with rainbows; the matted wall of trees and creepers on the other side, with the little round hole that marked the opening of that immemorial bush path; the natives already wading out into the stream to help catch the raft and pull it in; and the raft itself, tipping and edging foot by foot across the current that strove to tear it from under their feet.

"They were already more than half across, over the worst of it. I could see the strain smoothing out from their faces, caught the flash of Warde's teeth at some remark of O'Shea's. Banning even took one hand from the rope and stretched his fingers, working the stiffness from the knuckles.

"Then—the rope broke."

THE cable had snapped, and to Carroll, as he listened, it seemed merely the belated dramatization of the snapping of that other invisible cable of cohesion. It had all really happened the night before, to the sound of a high-pitched, mirthless laugh. There was no need for Trent to tell him the rest. He could picture the lurch of that raft downstream, the recoil of the rope that threw the men on it in a heap. Then the hands that grasped desperately at it, the tear of the flesh as it slid through their fingers. Then the shock as the mass of logs struck that submerged rock and hung there, tilting in the smooth embrace of the stream.

He was back on the bank with Trent now; breaking his nails as he tore at the iron knots in the rope, hauling it in and coiling it as he ran. A turn of it about a tree, a desperate cast as the raft tilted and went under; a few beads being inex-

Continued on page 13

Which Will Redecorate the Blue Room?

Beautiful Women of Fifty

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The Busiest Man in the United States

Photographs from O.R. Geyer.

The Sole Survivor

Continued from page 8

orably whirled down toward the falls. Then Hawke's figure, limp and battered, clinging to the rope.

"Cut all that," he said harshly, as if Trent had still been speaking. "Go on to—afterward."

"There we were, you see," Trent answered simply.

There they were—Hawke, Trent, and the two negroes—eight hundred miles from anywhere, the ammunition gone, and the porters and baggage on the unreachable opposite shore. And Hawke, the compelling faith and force of the whole expedition, lay hurt to death. Carroll could solve the groping simplicities of the natives' minds. Of course those porters, safe on the other bank from pursuit, non-calculating and covetous as children, took each what came to his hands and scattered, to meet God alone knew what fates behind the veil of the bush.

"THE rest was simple, really," Trent went on. "The worst was those first two weeks, carrying Hawke. After we got to the lower river, past the rapids, it was easy. Just make a raft and paddle—paddle, night and day, and keep Hawke alive."

Carroll's mind stiffened to attention; he was on the trail of the real puzzle now.

"Ah—yes; keep Hawke alive," he said. "He told me of that night."

"That came later on," Trent replied. "We were well down in the Kongo territory then, somewhere near the Lualaba confluence. I remember, it was a full moon, and we were creeping slowly along through a maze of wooded islets. Hawke was lying under the shelter of palm fans in the middle of the raft. He had not moved nor spoken all day, and Quasi and Atchoa were already singing the death chant. He was practically gone, mind you. There was hardly the flicker of a pulse. His coat was beside him with that manuscript in it, and I knew perfectly well it was there. I had never cared before, but there swept over me a desire to see what he had written that night in his tent above the falls.

"I knew I was going to get out. I knew, too, that my fate, once I got out, depended on what was on that sheet of paper, Hawke's last written words. My own story would not weigh a feather against that.

"There was a fog about three feet deep over the river, and we were poling along up to our knees in it, the hidden water lip-lapping under the raft. I remember how the naked bodies of the natives seemed to float on the moon-sheen over the mist as they dipped their poles in rhythm to their chant.

"As I listened to the moaning song, I wondered what they were feeling, or if they were feeling anything really. But the words they improvised pierced, the situation with an uncanny directness. 'Luala Ntaka' had come back to the waters once too often.

"I remember how, as I crept out of the palm shack and opened the manuscript case, Quasi's eyes turned on me, yellow white, slightly bloodshot even in the moonlight, filled with animal indifference. In that moment I envied him. What did he know of what that page meant to me? What did he know of the problems I should have to face when I came out?—I, the sole survivor of the Hawke expedition, concerning the fate of which the whole civilized world would be inflamed with curiosity under Bart Maynard's manipulations. I envied Quasi because he would not have to go out. He would simply lift a corner of that curtain of concealment of the bush, duck under it, and be lost forever. But I—

"Oh—I read it. Read just that last page—205—read it gliding along there betwixt mist and moon over that ghostly river."

"So it was after that that you—" Carroll began, his voice softening perceptibly.

"Wait," cried Trent. "I haven't done yet. I am going to tell you all, but give me time. Don't imagine I didn't think of things as I read those lines and realized what they would mean to me if they ever reached those they were intended to reach. And you must picture the situation. There we were—wherever that was. We were safely lost that night; not even I could ever hope to find that place again. There was no place to find—

just mist and moon and those ghastly, spectral trees gliding by, with the crows roosting on their dead limbs. Anything once buried there would be safely lost forever.

"I crept back to Hawke's side and laid my hand on his heart. I could feel him, still dimly there, but ready at any moment to float out and off on those waves of wailing sound from the negroes.

"OH—I thought of it all, I tell you. It would be so easy—so much easier for him, came the argument—to let him just drift away over the fog. Just let him go: that was all I had to do. No one could blame me, not even myself. I had already done all, even more, than seemed humanly possible. Why keep him chained there in that broken body? Let him go; then bury that body on one of those islets and bury that diary with him—or tear off that page and any others that—that spoke of me.

"He was bound to go anyhow, you see. It was merely a matter of days, at the most. While I—I was twenty-six, with a good two thirds of my life to come. Besides, I had not meant it—it was merely a matter of accident and nerves; and if Hawke had only been different—

"I thought—thought of everything. It is wonderful what things one's mind will bring up if one just gives it its head. But at last, after I had thought myself out, I saw something. I saw that I could not let him go, that I must take him out, even though it meant taking that diary with him, and in its entirety.

"I flung myself down beside him, huddling him to the warmth of my body, calling his name: just 'Hawke—Hawke—' over and over again, with a dogged persistence. He felt it; I could feel him struggling against it. He wanted to go— it was so much easier for him to drift out over that drugged night. It was a subjective struggle between us; but by sheer persistence I kept him there until the dawn came up with its returning tide of vitality."

"Hawke told me all that," said Carroll, as Trent stopped. "He knew what you were doing that night even while you were doing it. Listen—he wanted to tear those pages; that he could not quite do it was simply, as you said, because he was —Hawke. But—"

He stooped, reaching for the sheets that lay on the top of the pile of manuscript; but before he could take them Trent was on his feet.

"One moment," he said, with a detaining hand on the other's arm. "I said I would tell you all, and I haven't told you yet what it was I saw that night that made it so necessary for me to bring Hawke out of the bush with me, and alive."

"To me the main thing is that you did bring him out."

"To me the main thing is that it was through me that there was any necessity of bringing him out," Trent answered. "I thought of that, too, that night. I thought of everything, I tell you, and at last I thought of Maynard. I knew I was going to get out, you see, and I thought of that poor polar chap and half a dozen others whom Maynard had ground under the wheels of his tremendous engine of publicity. Then I thought of myself—sooner or later one always thinks of oneself, it seems. I saw myself, the sole survivor of that expedition that had started in such a blaze of glorious anticipation; I, the least of them all, returning with that tale of disaster; I—'Victor Trent, the young man we picked up in Loanda' —coming out of that bush, alone."

TO Carroll they seemed back exactly where they had been at the beginning of the interview, with the same question asked and unanswered. The only difference was that it seemed Trent who was asking it now, and himself who could not give the answer. His mind gripped on to the one solid fact that stood up out of the mush of perplexities.

"But you did bring him out," he persisted.

"Having first, as one might say, put him in," Trent answered.

"The fact remains—you brought him out."

"And now you know exactly why I did so."

"Why couldn't you have let it go?" demanded Carroll impatiently. "What have I to do with your thoughts and your self-accusations? All I know are the facts— and so—"

HIS hand went again toward those sheets, but before he touched them the door burst open, and, as if blown by that sharp gust of air from the open window outside, the Megaphone's representative entered. His coming reminded them how dark the room had grown in the gathering dusk, their faces, marked by the pallor of the tropics, looming dimly at each other in the glow of the fire.

"Time is up," said the man in brisk importance. "No further delay will be tolerated. I must insist that you deliver—"

He stopped as he saw that neither of them was looking at him, and his gaze followed theirs. Impelled by the draft from the door that he held open, the fateful sheets were rustling off the top of the pile of manuscript and over the edge of the chair.

A touch, a wave of the hand, would have stopped them; but Carroll was held by a spell of wonder as to what they would do. If the fellow were to close that door—but he still held it open, and the sheets were half way to the floor. Then, caught by the swirl from the chimney, they darted toward it, catching fire as they went up and out of sight. He could imagine them shooting above the roof, five glowing sparks against the darkening sky, then falling under the lash of the rain, five smears of soot upon the pavement.

Their going seemed to leave a hole, as if they had never been. They were just a memory now, shared by himself and Trent alone, and all proof had been snatched away by that intrusion of rain and wind that so reminded him of Africa.

"Here—look out!" cried the reporter, springing forward an instant too late. "What was that?"

"Mr. Hawke's last wish," Carroll answered smoothly. "It has just been fulfilled."

They Look Funny Now

How a Yankee Made the First Submarine

ONE hundred and thirty-nine years before the sinking of the Lusitania, the British fleet dropped anchor in New York Harbor. And a lone Yankee, in a queer-looking tub which he propelled by turning a crank, set out to attack them. The Yankee was Lieutenant Ezra Lee, and the dauntless little tub was the Turtle, the first real submarine. Farnham Bishop tells about the inventor in "The Story of the Submarine" (Century Company):

MR. DAVID BUSHNELL, later Captain Bushnell of the corps of sappers and miners, and in the opinion of his Excellency General Washington "a man of great mechanical powers, fertile in invention and master of execution," was born in Saybrook and educated at Yale, where he graduated with the class of 1775. During his four years as an undergraduate he spent most of his spare time solving the problem of exploding gunpowder under water. A water-tight case would keep his powder dry, but how could he get a spark inside to explode it? Percussion caps had not yet been invented, but Bushnell took the flintlock from a musket and had it snapped by clockwork that could be wound up and set for any time.

"The first experiment I made," wrote Bushnell to Thomas Jefferson in 1789, "was with about two ounces of powder, which I exploded four feet under water, to prove to some of the first personages in Connecticut that powder would take fire under water."

Governor Trumbull of Connecticut was among the "first personages" present at these experiments, which so impressed him and his council that they appropriated money for Bushnell to build the Turtle.

The hull of the Turtle was not made of copper, as is sometimes stated, but was built of oak, caulked and tarred. The conning-tower was of brass and also served as a hatch-cover. The hatchway was barely big enough for the one man who made up the entire crew to squeeze through. Once inside, the operator could screw the cover down tight, and look out through "three round doors, one directly in front and one on each side, large enough to put the hand through. When open they admitted fresh air." On top of the conning-tower were two air-pipes "so constructed that they shut themselves whenever the water rose near their tops, and opened themselves immediately after they rose above the water."

The operator must have been as busy as a cathedral organist on Easter morning. With one foot he opened a brass valve that let water into the ballast tanks, with the other he worked a force pump to drive it out. He could move the submarine up or down by cranking a small vertical-acting propeller placed just forward of the conning-tower on the deck above. Before him was the crank of another propeller, or rather tractor, for it drew, not pushed, the vessel forward. Behind him was the rudder, which the operator controlled with a curved tiller stuck under one arm.

With hard labor, the machine might be impelled at the rate of "3 nots" an hour.

Sergeant Ezra Lee volunteered "to learn the ways and mystery of this new machine" because the original operator, Bushnell's brother, "was taken sick in the

campaign of 1776 at New York before he had an opportunity to make use of his skill, and never recovered his health sufficiently afterward." While Lee was struggling with the "mystery" in practice trips on Long Island Sound, the British fleet entered New York Harbor. The submarine was at once hurried to New Rochelle, carted overland to the Hudson, and towed down to the city.

At slack tide on the first calm night after his arrival, Lee screwed down the conning-tower of the Turtle above his head, and set out to attack the British fleet. Two whaleboats towed him as near as they dared and then cast off. Running awash, with not more than six or seven inches of the conning-tower exposed, the submarine crept, silent and unseen, down the bay and up under the towering stern of his Britannic Majesty's 64-gun frigate Eagle.

Up through the top of the submarine ran a long, sharp gimlet, not for boring a hole through the bottom of a ship, but to be screwed into the wooden hull and left there, to serve as an anchor for a mine. Tied to the screw and carried on the after-deck of the Turtle was an egg-shaped "magazine," made of two hollowed-out pieces of oak and containing 150 pounds of gunpowder, with a clockwork time-fuse that would begin to run as soon as the operator cast off the magazine after making fast the screw.

But no matter how hard the strong-wristed sergeant turned the handle, he could not drive the screw into the frigate's hull. The Eagle was copper-sheathed!

"I pulled along to try another place," said Lee, "but deviated a little to one side and immediately rose with great velocity and came above the surface two or three feet, between the ship and the daylight, then sunk again like a porpoise. I hove about to try again, but on further thought I gave out, knowing that as soon as it was light the ships' boats would be rowing in all directions, and I thought the best generalship was to retreat as fast as I could.

"While on my passage up to the city, my course was very crooked and zigzag, and the enemy's attention was drawn toward me from Governor's Island. When I was abreast of the fort on the island, 300 or 400 men got upon the parapet to observe me; at length a number came down to the shore, shoved off a 12 oar'd barge with 5 or 6 sitters and pulled for me. I eyed them, and when they had got within 50 or 60 yards of me I let loose the magazine, in hopes that if they should take me they would likewise pick up the magazine, and then we should all be blown up together. But, as kind Providence would have it, they took fright and returned to the island, to my infinite joy. I then weathered the island, and our people seeing me, came off with a whaleboat and towed me in. The magazine, after getting a little past the island, went off with a tremendous explosion, throwing up large bodies of water to an immense height."

The Turtle was launched several times against the invading fleet, but each time fell just short of success. Nevertheless, it so impressed Washington that he said: "I thought and still think that it was an effort of genius, but that too many things were necessary to be combined to expect much against an enemy always on guard."

The Wall Street Girl

By FREDERICK ORIN BARTLETT

Illustration by George E. Wolfe

IT seemed that, in spite of her business training and the unsentimental outlook on life upon which she had rather prided herself, Sally Winthrop did not differ greatly from other women. Shut up in her room, a deep sense of humiliation overwhelmed her. He had asked this other girl to marry him, and when she refused he had come to her! He thought as lightly of her as that—a mere second choice when the first was made impossible. He had no justification for that. This other had sent him to her—doubtless with a smile of scorn upon her pretty lips.

But what was she crying about and making her nose all red? She should have answered him with another smile and sent him back again. Then he would have understood how little she cared—would have understood that she did not care enough even to feel the sting of such an insult as this. For the two days she had been here awaiting the announcement of his marriage she had said over and over again that she did not care—said it the first thing upon waking and the last thing upon retiring. Even when she woke up in the night, as she did many times, she said it to herself. It had been a great comfort to her, for it was a full and complete answer to any wayward thoughts that took her unaware.

She did not care about him, so what was she sniveling about and making her nose all red? She dabbed her handkerchief into her eyes and sought her powder-box. If he had only kept away from her everything would have been all right. Within the next ten or eleven days she would have readjusted herself and been ready to take up her work again, with another lesson learned. She would have gone back to her room wiser and with still more confidence in herself. And now he was downstairs waiting for her. There was no way she could escape him. She must do all those things without the help of seclusion. She must not care, with him right before her eyes.

She began to cry again. It was not fair. It was the sense of injustice that now broke her down. She was doing her best, and no one would help her. Even he made it as hard for her as possible. On top of that he had added this new insult. He wished a wife, and if he could not have this one he would take that one—as Farnsworth selected his stenographers. He had come to her because she had allowed herself to lunch with him and dine with him and walk with him. He had presumed upon what she had allowed herself to say to him. Because she had interested herself in him and tried to help him, he thought she was to be as lightly considered as this. He had not waited even a decent interval, but had come to her direct from Frances—she of the scornful smile.

Once again Sally stopped crying. If only she could hold that smile before her, all might yet be well. Whenever she looked into his eyes and thought them tender, she must remember that smile. Whenever his voice tempted her against her reason, she must remember that—for tonight, anyhow; and to-morrow he must go back. Either that or she would leave.

She could not endure this very long— certainly not for eleven days.

"Sally—where are you?"

It was Mrs. Halliday's voice from downstairs.

"I'm coming," she answered.

THE supper was more of an epicurean than a social success. Mrs. Halliday had made hot biscuit, and opened a jar of strawberry preserves, and sliced a cold chicken which she had originally intended for to-morrow's dinner; but, in spite of that, she was forced to sit by and watch her two guests do scarcely more than nibble.

"I declare, I don't think young folks eat as much as they useter in my days," she commented.

Don tried to excuse himself by referring to a late dinner at Portland; but Sally, as usual, had no excuse whatever. She was forced to endure in silence the

searching inquiry of Mrs. Halliday's eyes as well as Don's. For the half hour they were at table she heartily wished she was back again in her own room in New York. There, at least, she would have been free to shut herself up, away from all eyes but her own. Moreover, she had to look forward to what she should do at the end of the meal. For all she saw, she was going to be then in even a worse plight than she was now. For he would be able to talk, and she must needs answer and keep from crying. Above all things else, she must keep from crying. She did not wish him to think her a little fool as well as other things.

She was forced to confess that after the first five minutes Don did his best to relieve the tension. He talked to Mrs. Halliday about one thing and another, and kept on talking. And, though it was quite evident to her that he had no appetite, he managed to consume three of the hot biscuit. After supper, when she rose to help her cousin in the kitchen, he wished also to help. But Mrs. Halliday would have neither of them. That made it bad for her again, for it left her with no alternative but to sit again upon the front porch with him. So there they were again, right back where they started.

"What did you run into the house for?" he demanded.

"Please let's not talk any more of that," she pleaded.

"But it's the nub of the whole matter," he insisted.

"I went in because I did not want to talk any more."

"Very well. Then you needn't talk. But you can listen, can't you?"

"That's the same thing."

"It's exactly the opposite thing. You can listen, and just nod or shake your head. Then you won't have to speak a word. Will you do that?"

It was an absurd proposition, but she was forced either to accept it or to run away again. Somehow, it did not appear especially dignified to keep on running away, when in the end she must needs come back again. So she nodded.

"Let's go back to the beginning," he suggested. "That's somewhere toward the middle of my senior year. I'd known Frances before that, but about that time she came on to Boston, and we went to a whole lot of dances and things together."

He paused a moment.

"I wish I'd brought a picture of her with me," he resumed thoughtfully, "because she's really a peach."

Miss Winthrop looked up quickly. He was apparently serious.

"She's tall and dark and slender," he went on, "and when she's all togged up she certainly looks like a queen. She had a lot of friends in town, and we kept going about four nights a week. Then came the ball games, and then Class Day. You ever been to Class Day?"

Miss Winthrop shook her head with a quick little jerk.

"It's all music and Japanese lanterns, and if you're sure of your degree it's a sort of fairyland where nothing is quite real. You just feel at the time that it's always going to be like that. It was then I asked her to marry me."

Miss Winthrop was sitting with her chin in her hands, looking intently at the brick path leading to the house.

"You listening?"

She nodded jerkily.

"It seemed all right then. And it seemed all right after that. Stuyvesant was agreeable enough, and so I came on to New York. Then followed dad's death. Dad was a queer sort, but he was square as a die. I'm sorry he went before he had a chance to meet you. I didn't realize what good pals we were until afterward. But, anyway, he died, and he tied the property all up as I've told you. Maybe he thought if he didn't I'd blow it in, because I see now I'd been getting rid of a good many dollars. I went to Frances and told her all about it, and offered to cancel the engagement. But she was a good sport and said she'd wait until I earned ten thousand a year. You listening?"

She nodded.

"Because it's right here you come in. I was going to get it inside a year, and you know just about how much chance I stood. But it looked easy to her, because her father was pulling down about that much a month, and not killing himself either. I didn't know any more about it than she did; but the difference between us was that as soon as I was on the inside I learned a lot she didn't learn. I learned how hard it is to get ten thousand a year; more than that, I learned how unnecessary it is to get it. That's what you taught me."

"I—I didn't mean to," she interrupted.

"You're talking," he reminded her.

She closed her lips firmly together.

"Whether you meant to or not isn't the point. You did teach me that and a lot of other things. I didn't know it at the time, and went plugging ahead, thinking everything was just the same when it wasn't at all. Frances was headed one way and I was headed another. Then she went abroad, and after that I learned faster than ever. I learned what a home can be made to mean, and work can be made to mean, and life can be made to mean. All those things you were teaching me. I didn't know it, and you didn't know it, and Frances didn't know it. That ten thousand grew less and less important to me, and all the while I thought it must be growing less and less important to her. I thought that way after the walks in the park and the walks in the country and that night at Coney."

She shuddered.

"I thought it even after she came back—even after my talk with Stuyvesant. He told me I was a fool and that Frances wouldn't listen to me. I didn't believe him and put it up to her. And then—for the first time—I saw that what I had been learning she had not been learning."

DON turned and looked at the girl by his side. It was growing dark now, so that he could not see her very well; but he saw that she was huddled up as he had found her that day in the little restaurant.

"Frances didn't have the nerve to come with me," he said. "Her father stood in the way, and she couldn't get by him. I want to be fair about this. At the beginning, if she'd come with me I'd have married her—though Lord knows how it would have worked out. But she didn't dare—and she's a pretty good sport, too. There's a lot in her she doesn't know anything about. It would do her good to know you."

Again he paused. It was as if he were trying hard to keep his balance.

"I want her to know you," he went on. "Because, after all, it was she who made me see you. There, in a second, in the park, she pointed you out to me, until you stood before me as clear as the star by the

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Big Dipper. She said, 'It's some other girl you're seeing in me—a girl who would dare to go hungry with you.' Then I knew. So I came right to you."

She was still huddled up.

"And here I am," he concluded.

THERE he was. He did not need to remind her of that. Even when she closed her eyes so that she might not see him, she was aware of it. Even when he was through talking and she did not hear his voice, she was aware of it. And, though she was miserable about it, she would have been more miserable had he been anywhere else.

"I'm here, little girl," he said patiently.

"Even after I told you to go away," she choked.

"Even after you told me to go away."

"If you only hadn't come at all!"

"What else was there for me to do?"

"You—you could have gone to that camp with her. She wanted you to go."

"I told her I couldn't go there—long before I knew why."

"You could have gone—oh, there are so many other places you could go! And this is the only place I could go."

"It's the only place I could go, too. Honest, it was. I'd have been miserable anywhere else, and—well, you aren't making it very comfortable for me here."

It seemed natural to have him blame her for his discomfort when it was all his own fault. It seemed so natural, in the midst of the confusion of all the rest of the tangle, that it was restful.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"That's something," he nodded.

"I—I guess the only thing for me to do is to go away myself."

"Where?"

"Back to New York. Oh, I wish I hadn't taken a vacation!"

"We'll go back if you say so," he agreed. "Only it seems foolish after having traveled all this distance."

"I meant to go back alone," she hastened to correct him.

"And leave me with Mrs. Halliday?"

"Please don't mix things all up!"

"It's you who are mixing things all up," he said earnestly. "And that isn't like you, little girl. It's more like you to straighten things out. There's a straight road ahead of us now, and if you'll only take it we'll never leave it again. All we've got to do is to hunt up a parson and get married, and then we'll go anywhere you say, or not go anywhere at all. It's as simple as that. Then, when our vacation is up, I'll go back to Carter, Rand & Seagraves, and I'll tell Farnsworth he'll have to get a new stenographer. Maybe he'll discharge me for that, but if he doesn't I'll tell him I want to get out and sell. And then there's nothing more to it. With you to help—"

He tried to find her hands, but she had them pressed over her eyes.

"With you back home to help," he repeated—"there's not anything in the world we won't get."

And the dream woman in Sally answered to the woman on the steps:

"There's not anything more in the world we'll want when we're home."

But Don did not hear that. All he heard was a sigh. To the dream woman what he said sounded like music; but the woman on the steps answered cynically:

"All that he is saying to you now he said to that other. There, where the music was playing and the Japanese lanterns were bobbing, he said it to her. That was a fairy world, as this is a fairy night; but back in New York it will all be different. There are no fairies in New York. Every time you have thought there were, you have been disappointed."

She rose swiftly to her feet.

"Oh, we mustn't talk about it!" she exclaimed.

He too rose, and he placed both his hands upon her shoulders.

"I don't understand," he said quickly. "What is it you don't believe?"

"I don't believe in fairies," she answered bitterly.

"Don't you believe that I love you?" he demanded.

"To-night—perhaps," she answered.

Her eyes were not meeting his.

"You don't believe my love will last?"

"I—I don't know."

"Because of Frances?"

"Everything is so different in New York," she answered.

"Because of Frances?"

She was not sure enough herself to answer that. She did not wish to be unfair. He removed his hands from her shoulders and stood back a little.

"I thought you'd understand about her. I thought you were the one woman in the world who'd understand."

She looked up quickly.

"Perhaps it's easier for men to understand those things than women," she said.

"There's so little to understand."

As he spoke, truly it seemed so. But it was always that way when she was with him. Always, if she was not very careful, he made her see exactly as he saw. It was so at Jacques'; it was so at Coney. But her whole life was at stake now. If she made a mistake, one way or the other, she must live it out—in New York. She must be by herself when she reached her decision.

"In the morning," she gasped.

"All right," he answered.

He took her hand—catching her unawares.

"See," he said. "Up there is the star I gave you. It will always be there—always be yours. And, if you can, I want you to think of me as like that star."

UPSTAIRS in her room that night, Miss Winthrop sat by her window and tried to place herself back in New York— back in the office of Carter, Rand & Seagraves. It was there, after all, and not up among the stars, that she had gained her experience of men.

From behind her typewriter she had watched them come and go, or if they stayed had watched them in the making. It was from behind her typewriter she had met Don. She remembered every detail of that first day: how he stood at the ticker like a boy with a new toy, waiting for Farnsworth; how he came from Farnsworth's office and took a seat near her, and for the next half hour watched her fingers until she became nervous. At first she thought he was going to be "fresh." Her mind was made up to squelch him at the first opportunity. Yet, when it had come lunch-time and he sat on, not knowing what to do, she had taken pity on him. She knew he would sit on there until night unless some one showed an interest in him. And she was glad now that she had, because he had been hungry. Had it not been for her, he would not have had anything to eat all day—possibly not all that week. She would never cease being glad that she had discovered this fact in time.

But she had intended that her interest should cease, once she had made sure that he was fed and in receipt of his first week's salary. That much she would do for any man, good, bad, or indifferent. That was all she had intended. She could say that honestly. When he had appeared at her luncheon place the second and third time, she had resented it. But she had also welcomed his coming. And, when she had bidden him not to come, she had missed him.

Right here she marked a distinction between him and the others. She missed him outside the office—not only at noon, but at night. When she had opened that absurd box of flowers, she brought him into her room with her. She saw now that at the precise moment she opened that box she had lost her point of view. If she had wished to maintain it, she should have promptly done the box up again and sent it back to him.

After this their relations had changed. There could be no doubt about that. However, except for the initial fault of not returning the roses, she could not see where it was distinctly her fault. She had gone on day after day, unaware that any significant change was taking place. There had been the dinner at Jacques', and then—

With her chin in her hands, she sat by the open window and lived over again those days. Her eyes grew afire and her cheeks grew rosy and a great happiness thrilled her. So—until they reached that night at Coney and Frances smiled through the dark at her.

Then she sprang to her feet and paced the floor, with the color gone from her cheeks. During all those glorious days this other girl had been in the background of his thoughts. It was for her he had been working—of her he had been thinking. She clenched her bands and faced the girl.

"Why didn't you stay home with him, then?" she cried. "You left him to me and I took care of him. He'd have lost his position if it hadn't been for me.

"I kept after him until he made good," she went on. "I saw that he came to work on time. I showed him what to learn. It was I, not you, that made him."

She was speaking out loud—fiercely. Suddenly she stopped. She raised her eyes to the window—to the little star by the Big Dipper. Gently, as a mother speaks, she said again:

"I made him—not you."

Sally Winthrop sank into a chair. She began to cry—but softly now.

"You're mine, Don," she whispered. "You're mine because I took care of you."

A keen breeze from the mountains swept in upon her. She rose and stole across the hall to Mrs. Halliday's room. That good woman awoke with a start.

"What is it?" she exclaimed.

"Oh, I'm sorry if I woke you," answered the girl. "But it's turned cold, and I wondered if Don—if Mr. Pendleton had enough bed-clothes."

"Laws sake," answered Mrs. Halliday. "I gave him two extra comforters, and if that ain't enough he deserves to freeze."

IN December of the following year Frances came into her mother's room one afternoon, drawing on her gloves.

"Your new gown is very pretty," her mother said. "Where are you calling?"

"I have bridge at the Warrens' at four," she answered. "But I thought I might have time before that to drop in at Don's. He has telephoned me half a dozen times to call and see his baby, and I suppose he'll keep on until I go."

"You really ought to go."

Frances became petulant. "Oh, I know it, but—after all, a baby isn't interesting."

"They say it's a pretty baby. It's a boy, isn't it?"

"I don't know. Why don't you come along with me?"

"I'm not dressed, dear; but please to extend my congratulations."

"Yes, mother."

As John started to close the door of the limousine, Frances glanced at her watch.

"I wish to call at Mr. Pendleton's, but I must be at the Warrens' at four promptly. How much time must I allow?"

"A half hour, Miss."

"Very well, John."

Nora took her card, and came back with the request that she follow upstairs. "The baby's just waked up," Nora said.

Frances was disappointed. If she had to see a baby, she preferred, on the whole, seeing it asleep.

Mrs. Pendleton came to the nursery door with the baby in her arms—or rather a bundle presumably containing a baby.

"It's good of you to come," she smiled, "I think he must have waked up just to see you."

She spoke unaffectedly and with no trace of embarrassment, although when Nora presented the card she had for a second become confused. She had hoped that Don would be at home when this moment came.

"You're sure it's convenient for me to stay?" questioned Frances uneasily.

"Quite," answered Mrs. Pendleton. "I —I want you to see him when he's good-natured."

She crossed the room to the window, and removed a layer of swaddling clothes very gently. And there, revealed, lay Don, Jr. His face was still rather red, and his nose pudgy; but when he opened his eyes Frances saw Don's eyes. It gave her a start.

"He has his father's eyes," said the mother.

"There's no doubt of that," exclaimed Frances.

"And his nose—well, he hasn't much of any nose yet," she smiled.

"He seems very small—all over."

"He weighed ten pounds this morning," said the mother.

Don, Jr., was waving his arms about, rather feebly, but with determination.

"He is very strong," the mother informed her. "Don declares that he has all the ear-marks of a football player."

It seemed odd to hear this other speak so familiarly of Don. Frances glanced up quickly—and met Mrs. Pendleton's eyes. It was as if the two challenged each other. But Frances was the first to turn away.

"Would you like to hold him a minute?" asked Mrs. Pendleton.

Frances felt her breath coming fast.

"I'm afraid I'd be clumsy."

"Hold out your arms and I'll put him in them."

Frances held out her arms, and Mrs. Pendleton gently laid the baby across them.

"Now hold him up to you," she said.

Frances obeyed. The sweet, subtle aroma of his hair reached her. The subtle warmth of his body met hers. As the mystic eyes of blue opened below her eyes; a crooning lullaby hidden somewhere within her found its way to her throat and there stuck. She grew dizzy and her throat ached. Don, Jr., moved uneasily.

"He wants to come back now," said the mother as she took him.

"Good-by," whispered Frances. "I may come again?"

"Come often," smiled Mrs. Pendleton.

Frances tiptoed from the room, and tip-toed all the way downstairs and through the hall.

As she stepped into the limousine, she said to John: "Home, please."

"But you said you must be at the Warrens' at four," John respectfully reminded her.

She sank back wearily in the seat.

"Home, John, please," she repeated.

The End

The Iron Maiden

"EVERY little movement has a meaning all its own"—especially when you're shut up in the Iron Maiden. Back in the seventeen hundreds there weren't any Osbornes and Salvation Armies to pat the convicts on the back and see that their lemonade was well iced. In those days, when a prisoner sulked a little, they ensconced him in the Iron Maiden—a coffin-shaped wooden box lined with iron splices. When the prisoner was shut in, he had to stand absolutely still or else be pierced with the spikes. The more obnoxious prisoners, were kept there till they dropped from exhaustion and impaled themselves.

This delicate trophy of the pleasantries of our forefathers has just been on exhibition in San Francisco on board an old convict ship—the only convict ship left of the fleet that sailed the Seven Seas in 1790. It is aptly named Success.

$5 a Day from His Junkmobile

AFTER ransacking the junk-pile and investing a few dollars in odds and ends and several hours in labor, L.S. Murdock secured a cement-mixer that would have cost him a couple of hundred dollars if bought from a dealer. His trusty home-made junkmobile is easily worth $5 a day to him in his business as contractor, says Mr. Murdock.

The cylinder in which the cement, sand, and water are mixed was once part of a smokestack used in a small steamboat. The wheels and frame that carry it are parts of a little automobile, and another wheel, minus the tire, is attached below the cylinder, and kept rotating by a twelve-foot belt of old manila rope. The wheel turns a shaft carrying a small cogwheel, and the latter engages the gear that surrounds the cylinder.

The motive power is applied by jacking up a rear wheel of the contractor's runabout and running a belt from its axle to the mixer. The small car is used to trail the device to the place where it is needed, and once at the job the invention is set in place, steadied with a saw-horse, and connected with the handy power plant in a few minutes' time. It is a simple matter to arrange the water supply for the mixer by attaching a second-hand faucet to the frame leading to a spray within the cylinder. To this faucet is connected a length of hose from the nearest hydrant, and the amount needed for the proper mixture is regulated by turning on the right flow. Mr. Murdock says that his invention puts five dollars into his pocket every day, since it does two shifts in eight hours and works overtime for nothing.

Any Girl Could Do This

NELLIE WASHBURN was not making enough money clerking to support both her invalid mother and herself, so she began to look about for something different.

This is the story of how Nellie "made her own job." One afternoon a neighbor happened to say that she had a lot of "clipped" recipes, and wished she could "get up ambition enough" to paste them in a scrap-book. "Let me fix your book for you," said Nellie.

The woman agreed, and told Nellie that she would pay her five dollars for her work. She was so pleased with the tasteful arrangement that characterized the scrap-book upon its completion that she showed the book to her neighbors, and they began bringing their recipes and other clippings to Nellie "to be put in book form." Almost immediately Nellie had enough pasting and arranging to do to keep her busy for several weeks.

Nellie advertises in various papers, stating that she will arrange scrap-books, etc., for so much per hundred inches. She now has more than enough to keep her busy, and makes from fifteen to eighteen dollars a week on an average.

When surprise was expressed as to the volume of her work, she said: "I, too, was amazed at first to find that so many people had the clipping habit; but, really, it is nice for me that they have, isn't it? I'm not afraid that my job is going to run out, either, for people are coming back to me a third and fourth time to arrange scrap-books for them."

This Frog Weighs Three Pounds

JUMBO of the frog tribe, lately of the Buffalo Creek, Tennessee, now graces a pond in the yard of Mr. Lovic Meredith, of Waynesboro, except when he is reclining in an arm-chair for the edification of Meredith's friends. He daily proves that a frog, properly trained, is almost as graceful a trickster as a sea-lion or an elephant.

Jumbo weighs exactly three pounds. When his hind legs are stretched out to their fullest extent, he measures twenty-eight inches from the tip of his nose to his toes. Yet, notwithstanding his tremendous bulk and reach, and the fact that he can jump twenty feet and nail a fly with unerring accuracy every time, he is a very gentle creature in his master's hands.

Awhile ago Mr. Meredith put him in the pond with another frog almost his equal in size. When the supply of fish got low, Jumbo absent-mindedly attempted to swallow his younger friend whole, and was prevented from doing so only by the timely arrival of Mr. Meredith, who seized the suffering creature by the legs and yanked him to safety.

After this occurrence, Mr. Meredith carried Jumbo to the basement of his house, and soon he got so tame that he would take meat from his master's hand. He was next tied in a small chair which was built especially for him, and fed there, and now he goes to the chair alone whenever he feels that it is dinner-time.

Occasionally Jumbo is taken down to the pond for a swim; but after an hour or so he may be seen taking his way back to the house in tremendous leaps. Evidently he thinks it is a much easier life to be fed by the hand of his master than to have to rustle for his own living.

All the Comforts of Home

WHY pay rent and keep an automobile besides? And which will you give up? The house, of course. What on earth can you do with a house these days, when you can have a home anywhere you want it, when all you have to do to get rid of your neighbors is crank up and clear out, when the spring cleaning means dusting the tonneau and buying a new horn? And don't worry that some of the modern conveniences will be missing. Look at Miss Bessie Eyton's car.

Miss Bessie Eyton is a moving-picture star, as she must be to have a limousine; but even stars have their problems. Miss Eyton's problem was her complexion.

Like all the others in the company, Miss Eyton made up in her dressing-room in the studio, and then motored out to wherever she was to be thrown over the cliff or into the hero's arms, returning several hours later to wash off the powder and paint. This worried Miss Eyton extremely until she had an inspiration. She planned to fix up her limousine into a real little dressing-room itself. Every inch of space was considered and planned before she let the contract for the transformation. First the car was curtained, so that it can be made as private as a star's dressing-room should be. Then a dressing-table, that hangs down out of the way when not in use, was rigged up. The real miracle of the apartment is the hot water. Miss Eyton can have her warm water by a pipe attachment to the exhaust by merely starting the engine.

Fooling the Fool-Killer

THERE is a woman in Brooklyn whose business it is to keep folk, and particularly young folk, out of the hands of the fool-killer. Her name is Mrs. Jessica R. McCall—and she has her hands full.

Accidents are costly, not merely in health and lives: they are costly in money too. From seven to fifteen per cent. of the revenue of some public service corporations is eaten up in paying damages and defending suits. So Mrs. McCall had the cordial cooperation of the street railway companies in Brooklyn.

The way she set about it was to organize the older school-boys of the borough into something like "father" clubs, instilling in them a sense of their responsibility for the "kids." If one of the older boys sees a kid "hookin' a ride" on the rear end of a street car, instead of joining in the sport, it is his business, Mrs. McCall has taught him, to show that youngster that he is risking his life.

Thus, by getting the older boys on her side, and by distributing thousands of illustrated cards and blotters, by talks in the schools and by "safety first" picture films, Mrs. McCall has cut down the business of the fool-killer in Brooklyn considerably. Other cities could well afford to look around for their own private Mrs. Jessica R. McCall.

Missing — Roberta Hoyt!

Continued from page 5

voices, and I heard his every day all summer. I was driving for a lady stopping at the inn, a friend of Miss Hoyt's, and I used to take her over there every morning for polo. Mr. Farnham was teaching some of 'em to play. Guess you saw the picture of Miss Bobbie on her pony in one of the Sunday papers not long ago? Swell, wasn't it?"

I did not hear Tal's answer, for I had suddenly hit the trail of memory for which I had been searching for hours. I had seen that picture in polo costume—that was where I had seen Roberta Hoyt's name. The photograph I still recalled distinctly. It had been stunning in effect, as if she had ridden her mount straight through the middle of the full-page article about herself, her whole being alive with the movement and thrill of the game.

"Oh, she'll marry him all right," I heard the chauffeur saying, when I began to listen again. "She ain't the sort to go part way and then back out. Besides, she's got to marry by the seventh of next month or she'll lose her money. You know about that, don't you? She has to be married before she's twenty-one—it's in her grandfather's will; and her birthday's November eighth. She's just got about ten days left."

"Running it pretty close."

"She'll make it all right, though, I guess."

"Make it! You can bet she'll make it. With two millions at stake?"

"Yes, and not a red cent if she doesn't marry. The old man wanted to make her marry and settle down. He didn't like the way she was carrying on, always get-

---

ting into the papers—though she couldn't help that. But what got his goat was this suffrage business, parading the streets and making speeches and going on those 'hikes' they had. And what finished him was her mixing up in that shirt-waist strike two years ago. She was doing picket duty for the girls, and got arrested for resisting an officer." He laughed. "They say the old man was so mad he never spike to her for nearly a week."

We had reached the station. Tal paid the fare and we went to the waiting-room.

"WHAT did you think of that limousine affair?" Tal asked me as soon as we were seated. "If we had had time I'd have waited round a while to see where those people went. That groan, for instance—did it sound to you like a man's?"

"Why, he said it was a man's!" I answered. "I'd call it a moan, not a groan, though."

"I know he said so, but my impression before he said so was that it was a woman's." He frowned thoughtfully. "Wonder if that man could have been Farnham? I couldn't shake that boy, you noticed. However, I'd better get to work on my story. I want to finish it by the time we get to town. But I've sure got a funny hunch about that limousine."

He settled himself, and I went outside and paced the platform. I had plenty to think of. Curiously, in all my conjectures about Miss Hoyt I had not thought of her as either engaged or very rich. The discovery that she was both was a jolt.

Tal's story was finished on the train, and I went round to the Record with him to turn it in. We had planned to go from there to some lively place for supper; but in about ten minutes he came rushing over to where I was waiting for him.

"Sorry, but I'll have to shake you," he announced breathlessly. "There's a big story on. Remember that girl we were talking about—Bobbie Hoyt? She's disappeared."

"Disappeared!" I just had breath left for it.

"Yes. Now, listen! Whatever you do, don't on your life breathe a word about that car we met to-night. Gee!" Hr broke off impatiently. "Why in thunder didn't I follow my hunch and go after those people? There was luck handed to me on a silver tray, and I couldn't see it. Remember what I said about that moan being a woman's? Well!"

I stared at him. "Surely you don't think that was Miss Hoyt?"

"I don't know yet. I told Ferry about it,—he's got the assignment,—and he's asked to have me on the case with him, and we're going right back up there and see what we can get. We want to muzzle that chauffeur the first thing to keep him from talking, as he's sure to do when he hears about Miss Hoyt. You see, it'll be a big thing for the Record if we can beat the police and the other papers to it."

"What time to-night did she disappear?" I asked.

"To-night! It wasn't to-night. Didn't I tell you? That's the devil of it. She's been gone four days."

To be continued next week

A Million Dollars from Nothing

By Albert W. Atwood

I HAVE head considerable talk about the fortunes made in Bethlehem Steel. It is stated that with a skilful broker a million dollars, or at least half a million, might be made by manipulating $200 or $300 to the best advantage in Bethlehem Steel stocks. If this is true, or one tenth true, in a year's time, will you kindly explain how it can be done? E. P. J., Buffalo.

PERHAPS the writer of this letter has heard the expression "running a shoestring up to a tannery"; perhaps he knows what "pyramiding" is; and maybe he has heard of "paper profits." It would be necessary for him to work all these to the limit of their capabilities to make half a million dollars on $200 in one year.

To say whether it is possible theoretically to make $200 turn out $500,000 in Bethlehem Steel would require a rather long but simple process in ordinary multiplication. However, I am inclined to doubt whether arithmetic is much help in solving the problem. What are its elements?

In January, 1914, Bethlehem Steel common sold as low as 29 1/2, and rose until October 22, 1915, when it sold at 600. Now, suppose when the stock was at 29 1/2 a broker was willing to take a five-point "margin," that is $5 a share in payment. This means that by paying $5 a share a person could have bought 40 shares with $200. Let us say he sold out when the stock reached 40. He would be entitled to all the profits, minus commissions and interest on the money the broker lent him to complete the purchase. This would mean a profit of $400, roughly, which, with the original sum, would make $600.

Theoretically it would be possible to continue this process all the way up to 600. Whether the exact "paper profit would be $500,000 or less, there is no way of telling without figuring it all the way up, and that is a waste of time, for the simple reason that, practically speaking, no human being would have the self-control and calculating wisdom to speculate in this way.

To begin with, there is a practical difficulty in that, as the stock reached very high prices, brokers were extremely reluctant to buy it on margin at all. But far more important than that is the indisputable fact that, with a stock rising from 29 1/2 to 600, it would be humanly impossible to buy and sell at exactly regular intervals or steps on the way up. One man would become excited and think that the stock, after touching 600, would go to $1000 a share before it dropped to 500, and would hold on. Which was wrong, because the stock, after touching 600, fell to nearly 400 (early November). So of course that man would lose heavily.

Another man would take the view when the stock was selling, let us say, at 100, that, considering the fact it had never paid a dividend, it was too high; and he would sell out, thereby of course failing to make half a million dollars. Only a mechanical toy or an automation could have worked the speculative "game" the way my correspondent suggests, and an automation would probably have lost—because, while the stock did rise from 29 1/2 to 600, it had occasional sever setbacks in price, and the machine could not have allowed for these and might have been "wiped out" as a result.

Some Shoestring Speculators

A YOUNG speculator, one Jesse Livermore, in his twenties or early thirties, was once credited with making a million dollars from a shoestring, but later lost it. Two clerks, Abraham White and Samuel Byerly, with no means whatever, on different occasions bid successfully for large issues of government bonds. Byerly got $20,000,000 of them, and he was lucky to sell out his successful bid to a large bank, which could pay for the bonds, at a profit of a few thousand dollars.

Even James R. Keene, the greatest of all speculators, did not leave a large estate. When Keene first arrived in New York, a prominent financier said:

"He came in a private car. We will send him back in a box-car."

It was almost true.

Of course large profits are made in a "bull" stock market such as we have been having, in Bethlehem Steel and in many other stocks. Men with $4000 or $5000 have in many cases run that sum up to $30,000. There are a few cases where men with a few hundreds have made $15,000 or even more; but I seriously doubt whether the most diligent search would find a man who has magically converted $200 into half a million.