We Answer a Question

A READER writes this letter to Mr. Atwood, whom we employ to advise our readers how to make their money earn more money:

"Why do you spend all your time in advising us about bonds, and farm mortgages and gilt edge preferred stocks? No man can get rich by investing his savings in gilt edge stuff. You know that one lucky investment is worth a lifetime of saving. Why don't you help us to find that one lucky investment?"

We have decided to answer this question ourselves.

IN the first place, it is not the purpose of Mr. Atwood's department, nor of this magazine, to help readers get rich. The purpose of this magazine is to help its readers to be more useful men and women. And the most useful men and women in the world have not been the richest.

Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence and added to our country the great area west of the Mississippi, was reduced to poverty in his old age.

Lincoln, who saved the Union, had $10,000 when he was elected President, and said he hoped some day to have $20,000, which was "all the money any man ought to want."

Agassiz, the great scientist, said: "I have not time to get rich"; and most of the men who have rendered the largest service to the world have feel likewise.

IF you want to know the second reason why Mr. Atwood advises you to save instead of speculate, read the inventory of the estate of the next rich man who dies.

See how much junk is in his safe deposit vault.

Notice that the real money he has made has been made by hard work in some enterprise of real service to the world. The worthless stocks and bonds in his strong box, the junk, represent his occasional efforts to get rich quick through what our correspondent calls a "lucky investment."

Insurance men state that most men at the age of forty have saved something; but nine out of every ten men who reach the age of sixty-five are dependent.

Why?

Partly because they have lost the savings which would have made them comfortable, in trying for lucky investments to make them rich.

This is the reason why Mr. Atwood's articles are all in favor of solid investment instead of lucky investment.

Follow his advice. Put your money away at 6 percent. Your friend who puts his money into lucky investments may possibly strike a lucky one after years of trying. But the chances are all against him; even with good luck he will probably not have any more in the end that you have gained through saving and compound interest.

And you will have peace of mind and good digestion long after he is eating toast and tea.

Can Cats and Dogs Communicate Disease?

By EDWIN F. BOWERS, M.D.

CATS and dogs not only can communicate disease, but frequently do. It is quite certain that hydrophobia, smallpox, chickenpox, relapsing fever—a filth disease—typhoid and typhus, cholera, mumps, measles and scarlet fever, ringworm, lockjaw, tapeworm, asthma, common cold, grippe or even pneumonia, and many other germ diseases, have been contracted from animals.

The germs find lodgment in the nostrils, mouths, throats or furs of our pets, especially of those permitted to roam sweet-willed among garbage cans and refuse piles.

Animals may convey diseases to their owners by harboring germ-carrying insects, the bit of which causes disease in man. Or germs may find entrance into our bodies through abrasions in the skin made by the teeth or claws o ill-tempered, or only rough-playing pets.

Of the two great families of pets—or pests, depending upon the viewpoint—which enliven mankind, the canine is infinitely less to be feared than is the feline. Indeed, the chief objection to dogs is that they are sanitary nuisances—especially in the city. Also, that swarms of germs and entire colonies of the eggs of parasites, capable of conveying grace disease if they find lodgment in food or drink, are disturbed broadcast by them.

Yet all that applies objectionably to dogs applies equally to cats, with the additional charge that cats are perfect hosts for diphtheria germs, owning to the excellent mobilizing quarters the microbes find in their rough tongues, as well as on the corrugated roofs of their mouths, and around the soft palate, where the bugs increase and multiply—without harming Mrs. or Mr. Cat.

But from these coigns of vantage the bacilli can be sneezed or expectorated all over the neighborhood, or be most advantageously distributed over the cat's fur during the "cleansing" process. The consequences to a child handling a cat thus infected may be readily surmised.

The Bulletin of the New York Health Department tells us that dogs and cats frequently have been responsible for conveying "foot and Mouth Disease" from one farm to another. Cats, especially have been seen with the blisters and sores characteristic of this disease, on the inside of their mouths and lips. In several instances the disorder was communicated by them to children.

Ringworm is another disease contracted frequently from "patchy" pets. And if a school child gets it, he may contaminate is corralled and before the germs can be killed. Most medical school inspectors will have little or no difficulty in placing their fingers and thumbs upon epidemics that had their triumphant origin in some one's mangy cat.

Indeed, the Veterinary Institute of Berlin, some time ago, found that five and nine-tenths per cent, of cats have cancer—mostly cancer of the skin and, while there is no definite proof that this disease is contagious, it may be just as well to keep on the safe side of anything so dangerous and formidable as cancer.

Be very certain that every bite from either a cat or a dog is properly cleaned and cauterized. If there be the slightest suspicion as to the moral status of the animal, it would be well and eminently sensible to take the Pasteur treatment. If given within a week or ten days, the treatment is uniformly successful in preventing hydrophobia.

In many cities throughout the country a movement is afoot, calculated to fix by license the ownership and responsibility for all pet animals—cats as well as dogs. This is proper and most excellent. Even from the standpoint of the animals themselves, it would be much better to destroy all homeless vagrants of canine or feline extraction.

The Vaudevillists

By HELEN VAN CAMPEN

DINNER in the Maison de Shine. The Mangles Four have just announced that Louisa's great-uncle has died in Greece, leaving her a million.

THE LANDLADY. I s'pose you'll be wishin' to move into the parlor floor soot now, folks, an' the dear knows, while them things is sad, still you kin use the dough.

MRS. MANGLE. Our sphere will be so changed that I am already packing to go to the San Nickus, where we can get a whole floor, though of course we will think kindly of acquaintances, even if we don't see them.

LITTLE MINNIE (the Child Tanguay. Gee, I'm glad I ain't got to learn no more old imitations to do in the act, an' we're goin' to live in a sweller drum'n this, over on Fifth Avenoo!

MR. MANGLE. Say, Louiser, Levy's on the wire in the hall, an' says how 'bout playin' the Chrystal in Brooklyn, an' the Gaiety in Flatbush, if they give us a cab so we kin ride back an' forth to shows all made up? It'd be two salaries for the week. All right, then; I'll tell'm nothin' doin'.

CLARICE DE VOE. I can hardly realize that a few months ago out in Omaha you were begging me to ask my agent to grab you off a few dates!

THE LANDLADY. Which also a gorgeous two rooms an bath gits ditched for one of them hotels where, believe me, they wouldn't never endured Bill Mangle trompin' overhead countless nights an' doin' trick falls while rehearsin'.

GERTIE DE GASHE. Listen, Susy, this is only a bone with gravy over it, an' when my sister an' I dance ourselves weak twice daily we need sustenance! I want meat.

THE GREAT NAPOLEON. I haven't saw a chop served since I came.

MRS. MANGLE. The meals are improperly balanced, chemically. My children can not eat the food. Minerva is positively anemic.

MR. MANGLE. It's queer to me how the old guy knew where we was—m' wife didn't even recollect havin' any Uncle Parkins. But we got a lot of pluggin' in papers for our new turn, an' he likely ketched the name then.

MRS. MANGLE. It seems to me as through a glass darkly, William, I now see an Uncle Parkins; but that he should have dwelt in Greece, that storied land—all file! I shall for a time garb myself and children, also William, in Grecian robes, for respect to the sainted departed demands it.

MR. MANGLE. No, kiddo, no—not for millions I don't breeze round in no make-up like that, an' have some cop slip the come-alongs over my mits. You kin do it.

GERTIE DE GASHE. At least, pass the nips. A person must live, an' the meat she brought was a mere smidge. But I bettcha when they do get into society it won't be so much. Why, those people got troubles exactly like us. I know one lady has to have her husband give the servants secret tips if they got comp'ny due, an' in their swell flat he kep' goin' to the saloon on the corner for ice, unaware that there was refrigeration in their own ice-box. All amateur rich suffer those things.

THE LANDLADY. Money changes people terrible. Susy! Cut them pieces of punkin pie smaller—are you an entire loon? Encore the cake if they're yellin' for more.

THE PROPERTY MAN. Was that all the pie you had out there?

THE GREAT NAPOLEON. We fix a night lunch up in the room, and I'd go to housekeepin' if it wasn't that Anna's folks would come camp with us.

WILLIE NAPOLEON. 'Phone the show-shop when you git settled an' I'll visit you.

LITTLE MINNIE. All right. I'm goin' to wear velvet an' lace every day.

MRS. MANGLE. Minerva, while Willie is a well meaning boy, he must learn that your position will prevent any mingling.

THE GREAT NAPOLEON. If I ketch my kid even noticin' her, I'll wale him!

MRS. MANGLE. Facts are facts, and we headlined the big small time while you performed in Nolan's Carnival Shows, Mrs. Napoleon cooking, and your son handling the reserved seats and candy

butcher privilege! So why feel resentment?

MRS. NAPOLEON. Don't answer, dearie. Though when we were all stuck in the blizzard near Provo, Utah, she burst into grateful tears when Charlie drilled through the drift and got milk and chickens from a farmer. For shame, I say!

THE LANDLADY. Girls, I ast you to keep this bickerin' for your own rooms! You got me unnormalled complete as it is, an' me ailin' from a cold.

GERTIE DE GASHE. Try snuffin' Flannigan's Balm. It cured my mother, an' I began takin' it before the matinee, for I know positively I swallowed a germ on the subway.

THE SLAVEY. Levy the agent's 'phonin' again, an' he says is Mr. Mangle kiddin' him or insane, that he didn't wish the two houses for next week? Tell him you meant it? Yes, mom.

LITTLE MINNIE. Mom, why can't I play with Willie? I like him.

THE GREAT NAPOLEON. She oughter. My kid's spent quarter after quarter on her, an, though I lamped him sneakin' it from his bank, bein' indulgent I left it go.

MRS. MANGLE. Count them up, and I will make out a check for the amount!

MR. MANGLE. Ssh! wait'll we git a few thousands from the lawyer, can't you?

MRS. MANGLE. No, I won't! The friendship ends this second! I, to sit here and be insulted by the Napoleons? And I need all my emotional strength, for I intend playing Carmen later—it has never been correctly presented, for Farrar gives out too much—one feels she has nothing left—while I shall be impassioned yet creating the feeling that great reserves remain.

THE LANDLADY. Well, I always figgered on playin' some of them legit. Niles, pers'nally, until I got so embongpong an' left the business.

GERTIE DE GASHE. You can't play Carmen conservative. Say, dear, I found a manicure who does nails sweet for only twenty cents. No pie, Susy—is there any jam?

MRS. MANGLE. Don't take pie, Minerva. I will command a light refection of terrapin and salade Royale to be brought here later from Beldonico's.

THE LANDLADY. It'll enter here only over my dyin' frame, maddim!

THE GREAT NAPOLEON. You notice they don't invite others to the fancy supper.

MR. MANGLE. We do so invite the whole outfit! Meet me in the lobby of Hector's on Broadway to-night, when everybody's played their show, an' we'll go down the line on the eats! I ain't goin' to quit my pals, money or not. Y' git me, Louiser?

THE LANDLADY. I'm sure nothin' could be done kinder, which all accepts, Bill.

THE GREAT NAPOLEON. Not us—still, I never been in Hector's. We'll go!

MRS. MANGLE. A farewell supper, then! I intend to be known as Mrs. Parkins Mangle, for my darling uncle, and —eh?

THE SLAVEY. There's a gelman from a lawr firm in the half to see you, an' he says sorry, but the party with the million comin' is Lottie Mangle Terwilliger of Yonkers—she was horned in Greece an' the old guy's name was Parkopolous!

MRS. MANGLE. Just heav'n, I swoon! I swoon! My dreams—bright visions, gone for aye!

LITTLE MINNIE. Ain't we rich? But we kin make a new sketch out of the idea, Mom! An' I'll be a star when I'm big!

THE LANDLADY. Cease sobbin', Louisa; you're breakin' my heart. Poor lamb, I know how you feel. Didn't I like a absolute ninny refuse to be the pampered bride of a Mexican party, takin' that whiffet De Shine, an' the very next week found he wasn't the son of wealth like he said—an' then I went to actin'?

THE PROPERTY MAN. They're better off like they are. She ain't a bad feller when she comes down to earth.

MR. MANGLE. Say, listen. Meet Me in Hector's anyway! Just for onct in a way.

THE LANDLADY. I'll wear all my diamonds. Help Louisa to her room, Mist Napoleon; an' for pity's sake leave us quiet ourselves an' not be huntin' no fogs when the blue sky's right overhead!

Joy Three Flights Up

By GERTRUDE BROOKE HAMILTON

Illustrations by George E. Wolfe

THE taxicab streaking east around the corner of Thirty-fourth and Broadway held an unconscious man and two persons who had not been introduced.

The unconscious man was, even in coma, a perfect gentleman—his slender limbs in shabby evening clothes unobtrusively draped over the taxi interior. White-faced, beside him sat a copper-haired girl with dynamic eyes, sepia lashes and brows, sensitive nostrils, a funny little mouth, and hands that looked alarmingly clever. Opposite, on the portable seat of the motor cab, was I. Tomlinson, Junior—a blooming, blond young man, with the love of life and living sticking out all over him. Eddies of sparkling snow were being driven by a volcanic wind over the island of Manhattan.

"We'll be there in a minute," said I. Tomlinson, rubbing a clear place on the taxi window with his pearl-gray glove.

"Thank God!" The girl's voice was suffocated.

"We're in the nineties," announced I. Tomlinson, eyes on the Thirty-fourth Street house numbers.

"It's the house with the furnished room sign." The girl's hand caught the handle of the taxi door.

I. Tomlinson, hand over hers, opened the door. "Driver!" he shouted through the blinding snow. "This house."

The taxi skidded a bit, and stopped.

"Help me," I. Tomlinson said to the driver as he jumped out.

"Be careful," implored the girl. She got out of the taxi and battled through the wind and snow, up the steps of the house to the door, where she rapidly fitted a latch-key.

The flickering gas-light from the door the girl opened made a murky rainbow through the falling snow. She ran ahead of the two men, to the narrow stairway. "Three flights up," she said over her shoulder.

The halls were musty and half dark.

I. Tomlinson and the taxi driver ascended slowly. The girl had a door open for them at the head of the third flight. Through it came a clean, pungent smell. The girl lighted a gas-jet in the room and switched it out over the couch. She ran into the shadow beyond the circle of light, and returned with a pencil and a scrap of paper.

I. Tomlinson and the taxi driver placed the unconscious man on the couch.

The girl wrote down a name and a telephone number. "Get him for me," she said to I. Tomlinson, handing him the scrap of paper.

I. Tomlinson read the number. "Where's the telephone?" he asked. And, to the taxi driver: "Wait for me outside."

"There's no telephone in the house," the girl said. "'The nearest is the drug store on the corner." She was rubbing the bloodless wrists of the man on the couch. "Hurry!"

I. Tomlinson made for the hall. "Who shall I say wants him?" he asked, from the head of the stairs.

"Mr. Meigs," she answered. "Wait!" She threw him a latch-key. "You'll need this when you come back."

WHEN I. Tomlinson returned from his errand, the girl was bathing the temples of the man on the couch.

"The doctor's coming," said I. Tomlinson.

"Thanks. Will you get me some more water—the spigot is behind the curtains over there."

I. Tomlinson picked up the basin, stepped behind portières at the farther end of the room, and in the dim light saw a hammock made up as a bed swung across the alcove, a white dressing-table, and a stationary washstand with shining spigots. He drew a basin of water, and carried it back to the girl.

"Set it down," she said. "Hush! Is that somebody coming up?"

I. Tomlinson went to the door.

Dr. Truesdell Post came in quickly. He set his medicine-case on a chair and went to work.

"When did it happen?" he asked the girl, as he opened his case for restoratives.

"During the cabaret?"

She nodded. "He would go. Is it—very bad, Doctor?"

"He's in pretty bad shape. Don't worry, though. I'll fix him up."

"Dad's—in danger?"

"I don't say that."

"Please tell me!"

"I'll pull him out. Don't worry. He's coming to now."

The girl stood up—she had been on her knees beside the couch. Her eyes fell on I. Tomlinson, Junior—a well groomed, blundering figure at the end of the couch. The ghost of a smile wavered across her face. She stepped forward and held out her hand. "I haven't thanked you," she said.

"Please don't," I. Tomlinson answered.

"But I must—you've been kind."

I. Tomlinson flushed. "I'm glad it wasn't worse," he said, stepping toward the door. He stopped at the threshold and looked around at her. "Who'll play for you to-morrow night?" he asked impulsively.

"I don't know," she answered.

"May I?"

"You?" Her tone was astounded. He flushed again.

"Won't you let me play for you? My name is I. Tomlinson, Junior. I'm writing a musical comedy. I've been dropping in at Kirkhill's every night this week, just to hear you put across those songs of yours. Let me play for you till your father is all right—please. I'll make your songs go big." A winning smile beautified I. Tomlinson's features.

The copper-colored eyes of the girl lifted to I. Tomlinson, widened, radiated a shaft of amber light, and dropped.

"Joy," called a weak voice.

"Yes, dad." The girl flew back to the couch.

I. Tomlinson firmly addressed the flickering hall gas-drop: "I'm going to play for you!" Settling his high silk hat with both hands, he departed. The taxi driver was waiting stolidly in the snow-storm.

The West Fifty-fourth Street house before which the taxi stopped was a handsome residence in a handsome block. In the perfectly lighted hall a serving-man took I. Tomlinson's hat and coat.

"Anybody up, Jackson?" asked I. Tomlinson, Junior.

"Mr. and Mrs. Tomlinson are at the opera, Mr. Tommy," replied the serving-man.

Whistling, I. Tomlinson strolled up the spacious hall stairway. At an end of the upper corridor a telephone caught his eye. He took down the receiver. The number he asked for brought a maid's voice—then a mellow, golden-toned, unmistakably bored voice. "Theda," said I. Tomlinson, and began to laugh.

"What's the joke, Tommy?" drawled the voice.

"The girl in the cabaret to-night."

"Oh! How did it turn out?"

"Melodrama pure and simple. Taxi dash through the snow-storm—stricken father borne aloft—humble surroundings of anguished heroine—doctor summoned—father will be unable to resume his job of accompanying his daughter's songs in the gay cabaret—heroine aghast—poverty impending—"

"I'm sleepy, Tommy. Bonne nuit."

"Hold on! Theda, I'm going to play that little singer's accompaniment to-morrow night."

"Don't be idiotic, Tommy. Good night."

"Wait, Mrs. Archibald Ogle! Because you've married millions you needn't put on airs! Listen. I'm going to play in a cabaret. Awful Tomlinson scandal impending! To-morrow evening. At Kirkhill's. Come look at me. Good night, honey."

I. Tomlinson shut off the connection, sauntered across the corridor to his quarters, and went to bed.

THE next afternoon I. Tomlinson, Junior, walked down to East Thirty-fourth Street, punched a wabbly bell of the house with the furnished room sign, bestowed a hilarious bow on a wary-eyed landlady, and gaily ascended three flights.

His resonant knock on the door at the head of the stairs was answered by a gentle "Come!"

I. Tomlinson laughed, and opened the door. "Oh," he said. "Mr. Meigs."

The unconscious gentleman of the

night beforeconscious now, and pillow-propped in a faded imitation-leather chair—stared at the intrusive Viking blond, with surprise on his thin, well-bred countenance.

I. Tomlinson flushed. "I'm the fellow who picked you up when you keeled over, last night, and got you home in a taxi," he explained, somewhat lamely.

Mr. Meigs looked enlightened. "Allow me to thank you," he said, with simplicity of manner. "Won't you come in?"

I. Tomlinson entered, laid his hat and stick on the center table, and sat down. "Are you subject to these heart attacks?" he cheerfully inquired of the pillow-propped gentleman.

"Yes," said Mr. Meigs. "Though last night was the first time I have had one in public. My daughter warned me not to go."

"I see," said I. Tomlinson, eyes on the window-ledges of the room. "What nice gardens you have!" he remarked. "May I look at them?"

Meigs' face glowed. "My farms are my hobby," he said delightedly. "I have a knack with vegetables. We have fresh lettuce and onions and parsley and dwarf beans all winter."

"My!" said I. Tomlinson, leaning over the sun-flooded boxes of green growing things.

"Had I been an English squire, my farms might have been famous. I send to the Department of Agriculture in Washington for seeds and pamphlets. They are wonderful reading. We keep close to nature, Joy and I."

"I think that bully," said I. Tomlinson, prowling about the room.

In many ways, it was a remarkable room—calculated to sober slightly a blond blithesome heir to half a million. The growing vegetables lent to it the clean, pungent smell; alarmingly clever little hands had done the rest. The inevitable couch, center table, bureau, and screen of the "furnished" room had been beautified by a sense of color. A shining tea-

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kettle made gay the center table. The time-worn bureau had been turned into a buffet; on it stood two chafing-dishes, several pieces of fine china, and a huge, old-fashioned silver cake-basket; a water-color brush had splashed the dingy baize screen with an orange sun and a flight of swallows.

I. Tomlinson sat down again. "Mr. Meigs," he said, "your daughter is going to sing at Kirkhill's tonight, isn't she? I asked her last night to let me take your place at the piano. I'm I. Tomlinson, Junior—father makes the Tomlinson cravats, you know. I'm writing a musical comedy. Will you let me be your daughter's accompanist while you're laid up?"

A shadow fell on Mr. Meigs' face. "I wish I were stronger," he said in a troubled undertone. He looked earnestly at the blooming young man. "My daughter is not a regular cabaret singer. Mr. Tomlinson. She is studying fashion drawing in the School of Applied Design for Women here in New York. To keep the Pot boiling until she graduates, she does odds and ends of art work, and, occasionally,—a week here and a week there—café singing. Last term, she won the first prize in the pen-and-ink fashion class. Her teachers predict a great success for her in the fashion design field."

"I call that fine," said I. Tomlinson. "She's plucky."

Mr. Meigs' eyes filled. "Excuse me," he apologized gently. "I wish I were stronger."

"That's all right," said I. Tomlinson. Unexpectedly he got up and put an arm about Mr. Meigs' shoulder. "I call you two an O.K. pair," he said sincerely. "I'll consider it a mighty big honor if you'll let me play for Miss Meigs while you're laid up."

I'm afraid I haven't quite recovered from my collapse," murmured Mr. Meigs. "My daughter's engagement at Kirkhill's is only for this week," he went on. "I shall be very glad to have you play for during that time. She will be in from the art school at five. Will you wait, and go over her songs with her then?"

At five o'clock the girl with the copper-colored hair came home. She wore a season-old, brown corduroy Norfolk suit, a boyish round hat with a provocative red feather in it, and childish, square-toed, brown storm shoes. She carried a brown portfolio of drawings under one arm, and a brown paper bag under the other. At the sight of the visitor, her copper-colored eyes flew open.

I. Tomlinson took an impulsive step toward her. "How do you do?" he said.

"How do you do?" replied the girl, straight as an arrow in the doorway.

"Come in, Joy dear, and close the door," said Mr. Meigs.

Joy came in slowly.

"This is Mr. Tomlinson—who aided us last night," continued her father. "You remember him—don't you, daughter? He has kindly offered to play for you at Kirkhill's the rest of the week."

"She knows," intruded I. Tomlinson glibly. "I told her last night."

THE brown paper bag was neatly deposited on the center table. "Thank you," said the funny little mouth sweetly. "I telephoned Kirkhill's this morning that I couldn't sing without my father. The management has substituted my number."

I. Tomlinson flushed. He reached instantly for his hat and stick.

"Don't go," said Mr. Meigs kindly to I. Tomlinson. "Joy,"—he looked with a tinge of reproof at his daughter—"this young man has given a tiresome invalid a very happy hour. We've been talking about garden stuff. Dear, I should like very much to ask Mr. Tomlinson to take dinner with us." Mr. Meigs spoke with simplicity.

"May I?" asked I. Tomlinson delightedly, laying down his hat and stick.

The brown portfolio of drawings joined the paper bag on the center table. "If dad says so—" conceded Joy.

"Thanks!" I. Tomlinson beamed upon her.

Mr. Meigs looked at the brown paper bag. "What's in the cupboard, Mother Hubbard?" he questioned.

"Mushrooms," said Joy. She began to open the bag.

"Mother Hubbard has a knack for cookery," Mr. Meigs said.

I. Tomlinson regarded with interest diverse parcels coming out of the bag. "It's like a Christmas stocking," he commented. "What are they?"

"Butter, rolls, sugar, coffee, and mush—rooms," tabulated Joy. "Mostly five cents' worth—we haven't any pantry." She carried the bundles to the bureau-buffet; then took off her round hat and Norfolk jacket.

In her short skirt and white blouse, she looked like a pretty boy. Whistling, she got a blue-and-white checked housekeeper's apron from a bureau drawer. From another drawer she took a snowy square of damask and three small hemstitched napkins. She whisked the covers from the chafing-dishes. Movement brought color to her cheeks.

"May I help?" asked I. Tomlinson.

She nodded. "Set the table, and pick the salad from the farms. Get me a head of lettuce, an onion, and some parsley. Do you like potato omelet?"

"I do!"

"Do you like buttered or stewed mushrooms?"

"I do!"

She laughed. "No; I mean which—buttered or stewed?"

I. Tomlinson looked at Mr. Meigs.

"Buttered," said Mr. Meigs helpfully.

"Thanks," said the heir to the Tomlinson cravats. "The devils of indecision are always after me."

He laid Joy's portfolio on the piano, spread the square of damask crookedly on the table, placed the three hemstitched napkins, and looked for approval at his hostess.

"The silver's in the left-hand drawer." Her head bobbed indicatingly. "Put the tomato plant on for a centerpiece."

I. Tomlinson hustled around, gathering crisp greens from the window gardens, laying out the heavy, old-fashioned silver forks, ivory-handled knives, and table—and tea-spoons, all monogramed "J. M." From the shabby arm-chair, Mr. Meigs talked of a pumpkin he had once raised—big enough for a Cinderella to ride in. Joy concentrated on her culinary art.

The dinner was served piping hot from the chafing-dishes—a luscious potato omelet, meaty buttered mushrooms, salad, and eggshell cups of black coffee.

I. Tomlinson, Junior, ate with huge relish. "May I come again?" he asked.

"If dad says so," said Joy demurely.

"Won't you say so?"

She shook her head.

He looked hurt.

"I say so, heartily," said Mr. Meigs.

"Thanks!" I. Tomlinson's hurt was still in evidence. "I wanted your opinion on a musical comedy I'm writing," he airily told Mr. Meigs. He stood up, flushing.

"I'm the musical critic of the family," said Joy. Her eyes lifted, radiated an unexpected shaft of amber light, and dropped.

I. Tomlinson laughed suddenly. "Then you'll let me read it to you?" he shot at her.

"No," she shot back. "To dad."

"All right. You'll be sorry if I star 'dad' in it. Maybe I'll drop in with it to-morrow. Do you go to art school every day?"

"Every other day. Between days, I tramp around getting orders for sketches. Have you seen any of my work?" She ran over to the piano and opened the brown portfolio. The sketches were appallingly good.

"My, you're clever!" admired I. Tomlinson. "Can you do everything?"

She nodded boastfully.

He picked up his hat and stick, and held out his hand to her, and then to Mr. Meigs. "I'll see you again soon," he said.

Out in the frosty night, I. Tomlinson took half a dozen snow-covered blocks

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to a gray stone mansion on Park Avenue—an edifice with wrought-iron doors.

"Theda," he said, strolling into Mrs. Archibald Ogle's ivory-and-violet boudoir, "we Tomlinsons are after the wrong thing. From daddy down, we're all dead wrong!"

"Go away," shrugged Theodora Ogle. "I'm writing a letter." She torpidly dipped a jeweled pen into an ivory ink-well. She was a striking brunette, with blue-black hair, blue eyes with black shadows, dead-white skin, and scornful, scarlet lips. Her mother, Mrs. I. Tomlinson, had succeeded in marrying Theodora to many millions.

But I. Tomlinson, Junior, straddled an ivory chair and crossing his arms on the back of it, demanded: "Are you happy, Theda? Is daddy? Is the mater? Am I? No! We're all off the track. Money, money, money!"

Theodora addressed her letter and used a violet seal. "Touch that button, Tommy," she said.

I. Tomlinson jabbed at the electric call bell.

"Money's useful," said Theodora indifferently.

She gave the violet-sealed letter to a maid. "You can't get along without money—oodles of it," she said tonelessly.

I. Tomlinson went home and read his musical comedy.

JOY MEIGS pronounced I. Tomlinson's musical comedy rambling. The comedy was shelved. To celebrate its uncompromising failure, I. Tomlinson invited himself to dine with the Meigses, bringing with him the first course—a two-quart cardboard bucket of oysters. It was characteristic of I. Tomlinson to bring too much.

As naturally as a healthy duck takes to water, I. Tomlinson plunged into the habit of dining frequently in the back-to-nature, one-room home on East Thirty-fourth Street. Mr. Meigs seemed to find physical warmth in the sunny society of I. Tomlinson; and zealous Joy encouraged the blooming young man to try again at musical comedy, and go deeper.

"Theda," said I. Tomlinson to Mrs. Archibald Ogle, one afternoon in the Ogle limousine, "I've told your chauffeur to turn off the Avenue at Thirty-fourth."

"Why?" inquired Theodora laconically.

"I want you to make a call with me, sis."

"Too tired, Tommy. Another day."

"To-day's the day! Honey, be a sport!" He seized Theodora's hands. "I'm going to introduce you to the girl I love!" he said excitedly.

Theodora frowned. "You're not making a fool of yourself, Tommy?" curtly.

"All kinds of a fool! I'm—she's—" He swung Theodora's hands. His face was beatific.

The Ogle limousine stopped before a faded, brown stone front with a furnished room sign.

"Here we are!" said I. Tomlinson, squeezing his sister's hands. "Theda,"—his voice was suddenly sweet,—"set your hat straight—I want you to make a good impression."

Theodora Ogle wore heliotrope chiffon cloth, huge silver fox furs, and a close-fitting turban of shaded velvet violets. An enigmatical expression on her face, she followed her brother up the steps of the faded brownstone front.

I. Tomlinson, Junior, knocked on the door of the Meigs home.

Mr. Meigs opened the door. Outlined against the light, his thin figure was like a delicate portrait. Behind him in the room, Joy Meigs, in her blue-and-white housekeeper's apron, was pinning some freshly washed dainty linen to a a little clothes-line stretched across a window.

Mr. Meigs widened the door to the unexpected guests. "Won't you come in?" he invited simply.

"Why, yes," blundered I. Tomlinson, flushing. "This is my sister, Mrs. Archibald Ogle. Theda," fervently, "these are my dearest friends."

The ease with which Mr. Meigs placed a chair for Theodora was admirable.

Mrs. Ogle, although she had no courtly ancestors to aid her in appearing unconscious of the fact that in the room a white-faced girl was taking down a window clothes-line, did well. Her smile focused tactfully on Mr. Meigs. "I met a General Meigs at Aiken last year," said she—"a perfectly charming old gentleman."

"My cousin," smiled Mr. Meigs. "Are you fond of country life, Mrs. Ogle?"

Joy Meigs came to her father's side in her white blouse and corduroy skirt. She regarded I. Tomlinson's sister with a dumb look.

Theodora's smile slowly shifted from Mr. Meigs to the girl her brother loved. She seemed to measure Joy, as Joy seemed to measure her.

"Sis and I have been to a matinee of the new war play, 'Torpedoed,'" said I. Tomlinson, gazing happily at Joy.

"Was it good?" asked Joy, in a low voice.

"Atrocious," answered Theodora. "Why can't we have happy drama? Have you seen 'The Half-Emptied Cup' at the Gaiety, Miss Meigs? That's standable."

"Yes, I liked it," said Joy, eyes lighting up. "Father and I had passes—there's a playwright on the floor above us who knows lots of newspaper men."

"I'd like to write plays," droned Theodora. "Some of my thoughts are rather dramatic at times."

"I tried to write a musical comedy once," said I. Tomlinson, eyes upon Joy. "A lady slammed it."

"I imagine so," smiled Theodora. "Heaven protect us from any output of your brain, Tommy."

"It had very good spots," said Joy quickly.

I. Tomlinson gave Joy a radiant look.

"I say, Theda," said I. Tomlinson, "look at these window gardens—lettuce and radishes and all that sort of thing all winter!"

"How interesting," said Theodora. She rose with a graceful sweep of heliotrope and silver fox, holding out her hand to Joy. "Come to see me," she said.

"Thank you." Joy's voice was smothered.

Theodora gave her hand to Mr. Meigs. "If I stop by for you, will you let me motor you out to our country place some day?" she asked. "Mr. Ogle's hobbies are dogs and horses."

"That will be bully!" applauded I. Tomlinson. "We'll make up a party," he was looking at Joy.

Theodora moved to the door. "Coming, Tommy?" she drawled.

IN the limousine, I. Tomlinson took a good look at Theodora. "Well?" he ripped out.

Theodora was looking out of the window. Her eyes came around slowly, brooded, merged to violet black. "Marry her, Tommy," she said, in a voiceless voice. "Maybe you'll get the happiness I've missed."

I. Tomlinson threw both arms about his sister and kissed the scornful scarlet mouth. "Lord love you!" he cried. He caught the knob of the limousine door—the car had turned into the Avenue and had been halted in a fleet of automobiles by the white-gloved hand of a traffic policeman. "I'm going to get out here," he said excitedly.

He stepped from the machine, waved an exhilarated hand to Theodora, and dove, through the starting limousines and touring cars, to the pavement. He landed up in front of a candy shop, and precipitated himself into it. He sent a ten-pound box of bonbons to Joy Meigs. A street flower vender happened to wave a bunch of lilies of the valley under his Roman nose. He bought them, and went on down the Avenue, holding them in his hand. An abounding impulse took him into a hotel writing room, where, big and oblivious, he penned:

Beheading the bunch of lilies of the valley, he stuffed the little white cups into the letter, marked the envelop "Special," and pasted six two-cent stamps on it. He walked back to Thirty-fourth Street and mailed the letter in a box at the corner. His rushing spirits carried him up the Avenue to the Park, through the Park to Riverside, up Riverside to Claremont, past Claremont to—anywhere.

HE went home sometime that night, had something that might be called sleep, and then something that might be called breakfast. The inopportune hour of nine o'clock in the morning found him, with an enormous box of roses under his arm, rap-tapping on the door of the Meigses' room.

Joy opened the door. The ten-pound box of bonbons lay on the center table; brown little lily-of-the-valley heads, and an envelop adorned with a zigzag row of stamps, topped the sweets.

Handing her the roses, I. Tomlinson burst into incoherent speech, the disconnected purport of which boomed that he wanted Joy Meigs to marry him.

Joy put the roses on the piano stool and backed up against the piano.

The fact that her brown eyes had turned cold overnight swung like a suddenly started pendulum through the space of his words. He stopped talking and flushed.

"I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man in the world," said Joy Meigs evenly.

The flush plunged to pallor.

"You are the most tactless, insufferable, under-bred man I have ever met," she said with deadly calm. Her face went scarlet. "How dared you bring your sister to laugh at our poverty?" she flamed.

"Laugh?" he stammered.

"How dared you intrude upon us?" she continued.

"Intrude?" said I. Tomlinson.

Joy was belligerent. "Your sister is Mrs. Archibald Ogle, and you are a—society empty-head. How dared you pose to me as a writer of musical comedies? I thought, of course, you were writing for money. Every man I know works for money!"

He gathered himself together. "I told you my name when I first came here," he said rapidly. "I told your father who I was. Tomlinson cravats."

"Nobody told me 'cravats.' I thought you had to earn your living—someway. Every man I know earns his living. I earn my living. Please take that great box of candy away. Please take the roses back." Her voice quivered. "Roses like that can't belong to me."

Her voice steadied: "I'm—doing things. It's fine to fight. I'm going to be successful. Fine!" The voice suddenly drooped, begging: "Please don't make me—silly." The clever hands, tremulous, went up and covered Joy's face.

I. Tomlinson drew a submerged breath. His eyes seemed to struggle over the hidden face. He spoke uncertainly. "If you'll stand me, in spite of the cravats—I'm a sort, of decent fellow, Joy—" he ended with a humble, despairing slump.

The fatalistic shake of her vivid head denied him.

He took his hat and stick, and the too big box of roses, and the ten-pound box of bonbons. "All right," he whispered.

He went from the room and down-the steep flights of stairs.

I. Tomlinson, Jr., went home. He packed a traveling bag, putting into it his musical comedy. "Jackson," he said to the serving-man, "tell the people I've gone on a hunting trip."

With the look of a sleep-walker, I. Tomlinson went, downtown and purchased a chafing-dish. With this and his bag, he walked through East Thirty-fourth Street and above the drug store around the corner he engaged a "furnished" room. He unpacked his bag, kicked it under the iron bed, placed the script of his comedy before him on an inadequate table, took out his fountain pen, and went to work.

SEVEN doors away, sorrow overtook Joy Meigs. One night Mr. Meigs died.

The house with the furnished room sign mourned for the moment with Joy. The wary-eyed landlady brought her cups of beef broth and asked no payment. The pert little milliner on the second floor came up and took the red feather out of Joy's boyish round hat and covered the hat with crape. The house clubbed together for a wreath of wheat and immortelles. After it was all over, and the house had forgotten, Joy tried hard to cry. Then she called up the Tomlinson residence on West Fifty-fourth Street and asked in a faint voice for I. Tomlinson, Junior. A serving-man informed her that "Mr. Tommy" had gone away on a hunting trip. It was then that Joy looked at a bottle of denatured alcohol marked "poison."

I. TOMLINSON, JUNIOR, had written a crackerjack musical comedy. With the bulky, blue-backed script under his arm, he did what he had not done for weeks—turned down Thirty-fourth Street toward the house with the furnished room sign.

It was eight o'clock in the evening, a rainy night. As I. Tomlinson, under a big umbrella, approached the faded brown-stone front, Joy Meigs came out. She opened an umbrella, walked rapidly down the steps, and turned west.

I. Tomlinson started impetuously forward. His glimpse of her face had shocked him. As he plunged to overtake her, he became confused, mystified. One minute he was sure that the umbrella ahead sheltered Joy, and the next minute it seemed to him to cover a wild, running thing. For some intangible reason, his forehead turned clammy. It would have been easy to overtake the umbrella, peer under and make sure. But something held him back.

Westward, through the driving rain, he followed, dark block after dark block—to the river. Here, Joy lowered her umbrella and lifted her face to the sky.

I. Tomlinson's heart seemed to burst with a mighty sob in his breast. He ran to her side. "I thought it was you," he said.

Joy smiled strangely, as if he were part of a vision.

He took her hand. "It's raining," he said, without meaning. He straightened her hat, as if she were a runaway child. "What's the matter, Joy?" he got out.

Her eyes never left his face. She shook her head.

"Never mind," he said. "We'll go home and ask Mr. Meigs."

Eyes clinging to him, she fainted.

He ran with her in his arms along the pier to the place where the Hudson boats come in and the taxicabs are lined up. He lifted her into one. In the taxi he stared at the fresh crape on her hat.

With his comedy script stuffed in his overcoat pocket, he carried her up three flights. The room was in silence and darkness. He laid her on the couch and lighted a gas-jet. With the step of one in familiar surroundings, he went to the alcove and drew a basin of water. On his knees, he bathed her temples. With a fluttering breath, she opened her eyes.

"Don't try to tell me," he said. "I know."

Her eyes drank of his. Her words were just a breath: "Where have you been?"

"In deep water, Joy."

Her dazed eyes, finding reason in his, filled. The tears brimmed over at last. She struggled up, wringing her hands.

"I was going to kill myself," she stammered. "I'm a coward! I thought I was strong." She hid her face on his shoulder.

His hand on her hair vibrated mute protection. He was looking at the untended window gardens.

Her gaze followed his, and went blank. She moistened her lips; they formed aridly: "Dad!"

His hands closed about her face. "Joy" look at me," he commanded.

Her glance wavered back to him.

"Joy, girl, I love you!" he whispered. "Look at me—look! You're not going to suffer any more. You're never going to be lonely again. Poor little plucky fighter! I'm going to take care of you. You're mine. Sweetheart, I love you! Joy, give me your eyes again."

Her sepia lashes lifted; slowly her lips parted with the ghost of a smile; and then as he bent over her a rush of color swept across her face and trembling, she lifted her mouth to his.

The Compact

By FREDERICK STUART GREENE

Illustrations by O. Howard

"HERE'S a telegram for you." Mr. Rochester, bell-boy, clerk, and proprietor of the Eagle House, laid the yellow envelop upon the young man's drawing-table.

"The Chief is certainly in a rush."

Thornton's voice gave the instant impression of a native refinement. He continued plotting.

Rochester lingered, interested apparently in the irregular saw-tooth line of a railway profile growing behind the young engineer's pencil. But it was the earnest face that held him. The frank eyes, the set of the jaw, the straight line of the firm mouth, made men like the young civil engineer, at first sight.

"Seems to me you keep at it pretty steady; most folks quit when night comes."

Thornton continued to draw, his shock of copper-colored hair glowing beneath the lamp.

"If I stopped when the whistle blew, with the old man burning the wires for this report, he'd have me hunting a new job in jig time."

Thornton, smiling, looked up from his work and tore open the envelop of the neglected telegram.

Instantly he rose, the paper shaking in his hand.

"Why, Mr. Thornton, is anything wrong?"

The young man pressed his lips hard together, and sat down before trying to answer.

"I'm afraid there is." His voice was unsteady. "If I hurry I can just make the ten-thirty south."

But he remained seated, the open message still in his hand.

"I hope you ain't lost your job!"

Thornton steadied himself.

"No; someone I'm fond of—my grandfather—is dying."

"Well, now, that's too bad!" Rochester's plain face was kind. "But old folks has to go some time," he ended, with awkward sympathy.

"But this is different. There never was a—a grandfather like mine."

The boy's voice broke on the last word. He rose hastily and crossed to the window— The lights in the village streets blurred to many-pointed stars before his eyes.

His mother's telegram, "Come immediately, your grandfather is dying," foreshadowed the greatest loss the boy could be called upon to bear. Stronger than the reverence of a son for his father, greater even than his devotion to his mother, was the intimate love that bound Francis to his grandfather. And now this man, idolized through all his twenty-four years, was to go from his life.

Their unique relationship had started with the boy's birth. Colonel Thornton at that time had been in Egypt, considering an offered position in the Khedive's army. The first cry of the little Francis, sounding across four thousand miles, had abruptly terminated negotiations. The Colonel had at once set sail to greet his only grandson.

After that first early meeting, the two had been seldom apart. Francis had hardly tired of his ninth birthday presents when affair's had again called Colonel Thornton abroad. The boy could not be reconciled to the threatened separation. His persistent pleadings wore down his mother's resistance; in the end he had packed his small belongings, and in happy excitement had begun his great adventure. Together they crossed the seas, the Colonel proud of his manly young grandson, the boy idolizing the stately old soldier.

Wherever they went, on shipboard or ashore interested eyes had followed the kindly gray Colonel and the little red-headed boy, forced now and again to

take an extra skip to bring his small legs into step with the military stride of his senior officer.

Upon their return the intimate bond between them increased with each passing day. They now, at Francis' earnest demand, shared always the same room; for the boy, with thoughtfulness beyond his years, found many small services within his power a comfort to his aging grandfather. An explosive bullet at Seven Pines had damaged the Colonel's arm, leaving a reminder in torn ligaments which drew more taut with the years. To fasten his grandfather's obstinate collar had become but one of Francis' daily privileges.

When the time came for the boy to be sent to college, the old Colonel, his head now white, but his shoulders still erect, had gone with his grandson to the station.

"Until June my boy!" he cried in a husky voice as the train began to move, and just two weeks later he had turned up in the college town, where he had taken rooms and stayed throughout Thornton's college years.

Only three years had passed since the pair had, as the Colonel phrased it, graduated together.

THORNTON managed to catch the night train. As the miles ran back along the rails, he lay sleepless in his berth thinking.

So buoyant, so vital, had been the older life that as yet Francis could not bring himself to believe death was come, at last, to end it.

As the wheels beneath him clicked off the lagging miles, he strove to recall, word by word, his last intimate talk with his grandfather.

"Mine has been an interesting life, my son," the old man had said. "I'm ready now for the silent call."

"You'll live to be a hundred, grandfather," Francis had assured him.

"No, my son; the machinery is wearing out."

Francis had looked into the undimmed eyes. "Give me your hand," he said quietly.

The Colonel reached out a steady hand.

"Now grip."

The strong old fingers and the young ones closed.

"Ah, I hold you yet!" his grandfather cried. "I can outgrip my boy even now."

Francis smiled and patted his grandfather's shoulder.

"Then no more talk about worn-out machinery!" But he was troubled. For the first time in all their long companionship, he had not played the game fair.

They were silent for some minutes before Francis spoke again:

"Grandfather, you have not forgotten our compact?"

"No, my son," the Colonel laughed. "But are you sure you would not be afraid?"

"Afraid!" Francis answered earnestly. "If I should be afraid I would die the next moment from shame."

"Ah! That is all very fine now, my boy. But if I should come back in the dead of night,"—one of his charming smiles lighted the Colonel's face,—"all ghosts seem to choose that time—are you sure you would want me?"

Francis took his grandfather's hand.

"Seven years ago—my freshman year at college—we first made our compact. We promised then that if one of us should die he would come back to the other. Haven't I made you renew that promise again and again?"

For answer the old Colonel closed his fingers about his grandson's hand.

"Promise me again! Now, while you are well and strong, promise me!"

"Yes, my boy, I give my promise. If it is possible to return, I shall come when you need me."

And the two had gripped hard to close the compact.

A FLAMING red glow above the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains was all that remained of the afternoon, the next day, when Thornton reached home. He rushed up the steps to the broad veranda. At the door his mother waited.

Her face told him what he dreaded.

"I'm too late." He looked away; he did not wish even her then to see his eyes.

"Sit here with me, mother; I have something to ask before I go to him."

Together they watched the flame-shot sky slowly burn out as she told of the Colonel's last moments.

"He died as he had lived, Francis: brave and cheerful to the end."

"Did he leave any message for me?"

"No, no message. Some days ago he wrapped up his old portfolio and said, 'This is for my boy; nothing of value, just some old papers.' He also spoke of his seal-ring. 'Give it to Francis and tell him that his great-grandfather wore it until he died. I have had it for more than fifty years. I wish my boy to wear it in turn.'"

"But at the end, mother, didn't he ask you to tell me something—something about a compact between us?"

"No," he talked constantly of you, but he left no definite word.

The boy took his mother's hand. "Mother, tell me everything."

"Well, near the end he wandered. He was back in Europe, I think, with you; for he spoke long French sentences. I'm sorry I could not understand, but he called your name several times among the words. And just at the end he said in English, very distinctly: 'Yes, little Sorrel-Top, I'll hear—I'll hear you when you call.'"

Francis looked away quickly. The mountains had turned from blue to black.

At the door of the room his mother left him. Francis went to the bed with a silent step. Before him death lay in its gentlest form; every line of his grandfather's face was relaxed in rest.

Francis placed his hand upon the forehead, and quickly drew it away. Then he touched the wood of the bed, the porcelain shade of the lamp. Again he laid his hand on the still brow.

"It isn't fair," he thought. "He is colder than the things about him."

After long minutes his mother knocked gently.

"No, mother, not yet—not yet!"

Quietly she went from the room.

The night was advanced when he was again disturbed. The door opened, and something struck against a chair, sending a hollow sound through the room.

Francis turned quickly. His sleepless night on the train, followed by the counting of slow mile-posts through the long day, had drawn his nerves to their last tension. He leaped to his feet and faced the door.

"Take that thing out of here!"

"But, Francis, this must be done." His mother spoke in a troubled voice from the hall.

"Not now! Not to-night, mother. Then, 'to the men: "Take it out. Go away, I tell you!"

The carriers stood uncertain with their burden.

"Take it out, I say!" he cried in rising tones. "Get out, all of you!" He advanced threateningly toward the men. Hurriedly they backed from the room.

"Now leave us alone together!" he called through the closed door.

SLOWLY in the quiet room calm returned. Gradually the sounds of life within the house became still; only the hushed noises of a summer night sounded about him. The air grew cooler; through the open window crept the faint rays of the waning moon, to fall around the white face upon the bed.

"Grandfather!" The boy whispered his call. "Grandfather, I am here—waiting!"

He placed a warm hand on the chill one lying across the still breast.

"Grandfather!" He gently shook the hand he held.

"Give me some sign—I am not afraid!"

But the dead face relaxed no line of its marble calm.

"Show me that this is not the end!" he pleaded. "Save me from the thought that this is all!"

He waited.

"Show me! Show me now!"

He waited again. Then he stood erect.

"You have answered," he cried, his arms thrown wide. "Living or dead, there is nothing you would deny me. You can not come."

ON Thornton's return to the Eagle House after the funeral, his work fairly ran to meet him. A kindly worded message from his Chief had been followed by another urging a hasty completion of the report. After two days in the field he had secured the last necessary notes, and had drafted and practically finished the report. Half an hour's work would finish the business.

As he entered the dining-room after the day's work, Mr. Rochester called him over to the desk and introduced a Mr. Hoffman, who, he said, "wanted to make his acquaintance." Hoffman was a man somewhere in the fifties, well dressed and undoubtedly well fed. As Francis noticed the short legs that supported the thick body of the stranger, an old saying of his grandfather's came to him:

"Be careful, my boy, of the man whose coat-tails are too close to the ground." But it was Hoffman's head and face that held attention—a large head, so round that it just missed being a sphere. Round too was the face, and smooth with the pink glow of a sixteen-year-old lad. Beneath a bulging forehead blue eyes looked out with an innocent stare.

Francis and his new acquaintance sat together through the hotel supper.

---

Hoffman talked in an interesting manner and in a cheerful vein.

"I wonder why it is impossible to get a cup of real coffee in small towns," Francis said, looking at the pale brown liquid of the Eagle House.

"You know coffee, then?" Hoffman beamed up at him.

"Good coffee and good cigars are the things I miss most up here."

"I'm a regular coffee crank myself," the stout man smiled. "I never rely on hotels. Won't you come up to my room and see how I manage it?"

Francis hesitated, but, remembering that in any event his report could not go off till morning, he accepted, and after supper they went to Hoffman's room.

Soon the aroma of strong coffee pleasantly filled the air.

"Now, I do hope you'll like these." The genial gentleman handed cigars to Francis. He lifted one to his own ear and squeezed the wrapper. "Just right—not too dry, not the trace of a crackle." He oozed satisfaction.

"Corona Coronas," Francis said, lighting his cigar. "'They were my grand-father's favorite smoke."

Hoffman, glowing with good fellowship, sipped his coffee and talked. He seemed to the boy a man of large affairs. Francis was soon giving close attention to his flow of words.

"Now, your profession—engineering has always interested me," his host said, with a sudden change of topic.

"It is a good way to make a living." There was a note of pride in Thornton's voice.

"And a poor way to make money," Hoffman took him up quickly. "It is the worst paid of all professions. Not even preaching, from a business man's stand-point, is as bad."

"Why, surely you are wrong, sir; many country parsons do not get more than five hundred a year."

"Yes; but they do not carry five hundred dollars' worth of responsibility. It's responsibility that counts, or should count, in fixing a salary."

Hoffman paused, sending slow puffs of smoke into the air.

"Take your own case," he continued. "This road you are locating will cost at the least thirty-five thousand to the mile. You are in responsible charge of thirty miles of it—a million-dollar proposition. If you will excuse me, I presume you are getting about two hundred and fifty a month?"

FROM Hoffman's manner of putting this question, no one would have supposed that, before coming to the Eagle House, he had learned not only the amount of the engineer's salary, but his entire history. Even the young man's taste in coffee and cigars had not been overlooked.

"Not so much as that." Francis smiled frankly. "I get one seventy-five."

"Why, it's an outrage! Think of the years of study, the years of hard work, that were necessary to fit you for this position." Then, more softly: "But I suppose they take into consideration your chances to make large sums indirectly."

The round eyes of his host looked side-wise at Thornton.

"Well, if there are any such chances I have never flushed one up," Francis replied, with a short laugh.

"That's because you are so engrossed in your profession that you never look beyond the mathematics of the proposition you are engaged on. Now, take this railroad of yours." Hoffman's words flowed with greased smoothness, his pink face beamed benevolence. "What an opportunity! What a great opportunity!" He sighed, and blew more smoke from his pursed lips.

"Well, sir, if you can see any golden opportunities hanging around this job, it's more than I can."

Hoffman's second sigh sounded a world of regret.

"You engineers—you engineers will never look at a business proposition until it comes right up and bites you!"

Apparently he addressed the entire membership of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Then, turning his gaze full on Thornton, he began speaking rapidly:

"You have surveyed four different routes between this town and Hendersonville, two to the east and two to the west of Cedar Mountain, haven't you?"

Francis nodded, his face showing surprise at Hoffman's knowledge.

"You can make a pretty close guess as to which line will be selected for construction, can't you?"

"It's no guess now," Francis answered impulsively. "My report will show a saving of $125,000 in one of the lines. The data I got to-day put an end to that question."

Hoffman's widening smile made the boy wish vaguely that he had kept this information to himself.

"Now, just see how simple it all is!" Hoffman purred. "There are certain interests I know of willing to pay a big sum for that information.

"Now! Now! Sit down. Don't let us get excited!"

Francis had sprung to his feet. "Of course you know that what you are hinting at is bribery!" He stood over Hoffman; his tone was not pleasant.

The round eyes of the stout gentleman grew rounder and wider; innocent surprise flooded every feature.

"Nothing of the kind, I assure you. Do I look like an unscrupulous man?"

Hoffman's voice softened to a dove's coo. Francis, in spite of himself, smiled faintly.

"Do I look like a man who would invite you up here to listen to a dishonest proposition? Please answer frankly."

"Well, I didn't think so a moment ago. Until then you seemed to me like a man who wanted to be kind."

"You were right the first time, Mr. Thornton. Now I ask you to let me . What I suggested is just a plain, every-day business proposition."

Francis had returned to his chair, to sit uneasily on the edge. At the word "proposition" he rose again. "But perhaps you don't know," he interrupted, "that I have been warned not to reveal to any one which line I shall recommend."

"Ah, that's it—that's the point. Why?" Hoffman was beaming again. His "why" came like the crack of a whip.

"For business reasons, of course," Francis answered, puzzled by the man's excited manner.

"Yes; for business reasons, right enough. But let me tell you that by your keeping that secret the gentlemen who so generously pay you $175 a month expect to make not less than $300,000 through your silence."

He watched narrowly the surprise his words aroused.

Francis turned to him with all the frankness of twenty-four years.

"Please tell me what you are driving at, sir."

"In the thirty miles between here and Hendersonville there are no towns, but the country is thickly populated. Very well. When your road is finished, somewhere about the middle there will be, not only a station, but in a short time a small city. It will be the business center for the country on both sides of the mountain, thanks to Kraft's Gap. Eventually another railroad will run through that gap, from Jackson to the West. Then our new city will be the meeting-point of two railroads. Now, the gentlemen who pay you $175 a month will buy the land near that gap, or whichever line your report recommends. After they have paid you one more $175, for laying out streets, and told you that your valued services are no longer required, they will sell off town lots at front-foot prices."

Hoffman paused, satisfied. Thornton had followed every word.

"The railroad will do this, you think?" Francis asked.

"The railroad? Not much!" This with fine scorn. "This trick will be pulled off by a little syndicate made up of the directors and a few chosen friends. They're not going to share this juicy melon with the dear stockholders. Why, even your chief will not be let in on it—it's far too good for an engineer. That's the kind of honorable men you are working for." Hoffman puffed out indignation. "I represent," he went on, his voice smooth again, "a group of gentlemen, some of them stockholders in this road,—men from whom you really draw your pay,—who are interested in this country and want to see it go ahead; men who don't want to hog all the profits. These men know of you and appreciate what you have done up here." He hurried to cover this last sentence; his listener's incredulous smile told him that he had overshot. "If you will help my people sidetrack the dishonest intention of that syndicate, you will be handsomely rewarded."

Francis started to rise, but this time troubled doubt had displaced anger. He wanted to get quickly from the room and his smoothly talking host.

"Just a moment," Hoffman waved a fat hand. "What they ask is done every day in business; it is absolutely legal. I would be the last person to ask a young man to do anything wrong. I merely want you to tell me—to show me that report. In consideration of your services,"—here he reached into his pocket, "I am to hand this over to you."

Thornton blinked. "Twenty thousand dollars!" he gasped.

"Twenty thousand," answered the smooth Hoffman. "And you will notice this check is certified and drawn to the order of cash."

Francis was too blinded to see the hard glitter that had come into the artless eyes watching intently his frightened face.

"Just figure what that sum represents," the fat man urged gently.

"I can't do what you wish!" Francis cried out, the words, and turned toward the door.

"Wait a moment longer." Hoffman tone was oily, persuasive. "You can hold the check as security and I'll cash it for you after the business is settled. Your signature need not appear."

"I tell you, no!" Francis' voice was hoarse.

"It's ten long years of work at your salary."

"I can not consider the proposition." The boy's face was white, drawn.

"Some of my people are stockholders in your road," Hoffman persisted gently, and pushed the cheek across the table.

Francis tried not to see it.

"How do you know they won't change the line after you people buy up the land?" he asked, hoping to end the temptation.

"We can prevent that after the directors have once voted," Hoffman said decisively. "Come, now, my young friend, act as any experienced business man in your place would. Close with me."

"What, to-night—now?" The words came in a whisper.

"Certainly, the sooner I turn this twenty thousand dollars"—Hoffman dwelt on the sum—"over to you, the better."

"Will—will to-morrow do?" As Francis dragged out the question his face went from white to red.

"Ye-es," answered Hoffman, hesitating, "if I have the information early."

"I'll give you my answer before breakfast." Sweat stood thick on the boy's forehead. He hurried to the door. He was half out of the room when Hoffman, hoping to clinch his persuasions, called after him:

"This twenty thousand will make things pretty snug down in Virginia for your mother."

His mother! Francis came to a dead stop. He went back to Hoffman.

"I've decided to give you my answer now," he said, his voice steady.

"Good! Good!" Hoffman rubbed his fat hands together.

"I will not tell you which line my report recommends."

Each word came slowly, distinctly.

The round eyes of the fat man stared. Amazement overspread his full-moon face. For on his smooth flow of words was checked.

As Francis turned to go, Hoffman cried out:

"You'll not throw away twenty thousand dollars?"

No answer came. Francis was at the door.

"But, my boy—"

The young man turned, his face white with rage.

"Don't you dare—you—you hired briber, call me 'my boy'!" His voice shook, and disgust rang in every tone.

The insult left no dent in the smooth face of Hoffman.

"Don't be rash," he persisted; "take time to think it over."

"I am ashamed that I over thought of it for an instant!" Francis shot out the words.

Hoffman placed his hand on the boy's arm.

"Don't touch me!" Thornton's voice

Continued on page 18

The Woman with Million-Dollar Feet

Men Who Started Wrong

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Lost Cities

The Cheerful Deadhead

By EDWARD HUNGERFORD

IN a newspaper office in which I once worked—it was not a hundred miles from the shores of the Hudson River—June was the month in which the staff planned its summer vacations. From the Old Man, who sat in the inner sanctum, down to the cubbiest of young reporters, the entire staff was tinkering with timetables and the highly colored literature issued by the railroad and steamship companies across the land. The Old Man would generally take his family to Newfoundland or Alaska; the managing editor allowed that he had not missed a summer in Colorado in fifteen years; the city editor Preferred Coronado. It was a poor shake of a reporter who could not cover at least a thousand miles of land and water trails.

The Honorable Old System of Not Paying Carfare

To-DAY things are different in that office. The Old Man has not been west of Detroit or north of Boston in a decade. He takes his family each summer to a small lake near Binghamton. The managing editor says that he likes the Catskills quite as well as the Rockies; the city editor has discovered Lake George; and the rest of the staff find vacation points in Sullivan County or up in Connecticut or out upon Long Island. Things have indeed changed, not only in that newspaper shop, but in almost every other one in the land. A dozen years ago there was hardly a self-respecting newspaper man who did not carry at least one annual pass entitling him to unlimited riding for a twelvemonth on some more or less important railroad. Steamboat passes were easier, but railroad passes, particularly of the trip variety, were not difficult. Sometimes they were issued ostensibly in return for advertising, but even these were not hard to secure.

As a last resort, a reporter who was really travel hungry might turn to his political friends. There were big politicians in New York and Philadelphia and Chicago who had whole pads of blank trip-pass forms of prominent railroads, all signed and real merely to be filled in with the name of the user and the points between which he wished to travel. And there were trains that ran in the legislative season between these cities and their respective State capitals that showed an astonishing number of deadheads. When the returns would come in the traffic managers of the roads would groan. Yet they seemed helplessly bound to an established but horrible custom.

One Newspaper Man's Story

THE rules and restrictions of the railroads in regard to the lending of passes have been and still are very strict. But in the case of the passes that used to be issued to the newspapers, conductors were sometimes liberal in their rulings—to put the matter mildly. Still, a newspaper man always ran a risk when he used another man's pass. There is a man still at a copy desk in Park Row who knows that very well, and sometimes he tells his own experience.

It was the open season for railroad deadheads—more than a decade ago,—and he had to go to Buffalo. The necessity was imminent, but the railroad fare up and back was something more than sixteen dollars. The newspaper for which this man worked—let's call him Brown, for that was the name under which he finally traveled to Buffalo—made it a matter of principle not only not to ask for passes, but also not to permit its staff to accept them. But a clerical card entitling the Rev. X.Y.Z. Brown to half-fare rates over a certain big railroad was different. That was not a pass—oh no; and "Brown" went out and bought a white necktie with an inward feeling that he was quite within the law.

It was when he was well outside New York that the conductor came around and

accepted the clerical half-rate transportation without question. A few minutes later he returned.

"By the way, Dr. Brown," said he, "you have a brother of the cloth back in this next car. I told him about you and he is anxious to meet you."

There was no way out of it. The space-grabber rose wearily from ins seat and followed the conductor. In another minute he was being introduced to a venerable white-whiskered minister, who, plainly enough, was no newspaper man in disguise.

Brown hesitated. It had been some time since he had been to church, but he had been reared in a Presbyterian family. That seemed a good guess, and he made it.

"How fortunate," beamed the old gentleman over the tops of his gold-rimmed spectacles. "I am a Presbyterian myself. What a fine old talk we can have."

They talked. They talked theology. They talked doctrine. They discussed the last General Assembly and the trend of the recent assemblies toward the Westminster Confession of Faith. That is, the old gentleman talked. Brown replied in monosyllables, all the time trying to recall whether Zoroaster came in the Old Testament or the New. Finally the old gentleman turned the tide of the talk.

"By the way," he said quickly, "you haven't told me where you are located."

The newspaper man hesitated—and lost. He might have said that he was without a charge at that particular moment. He might have said many things. But he mentioned a pretty well known New Jersey town—the first one that popped into his head—and said that the was located there.

"In the First Church?"

"The First Church," he repeated in his mental confusion.

"But my dear friend Dr. Simpson? He had that pulpit since 1868."

After that Brown was in for it. He rose to the problem like a masterful and resourceful space-writer. He buried Dr. Simpson. He told of that eminent divine's sudden stroke at the death-bier of a wealthy parishioner. He described the great grief of the congregation. Brown might have been short of theology, but he was long on local color. And long before Buffalo was reached, he had exchanged pulpits with his elderly friend.

But it was a changed Brown that came back from Buffalo. He came under his own name, and he paid full fare.

The railroads decided the pass was a curse more than a decade ago. And in the fall of 1905, when various radical legislation affecting their regulation and control was being passed down at Washington, they saw to it that the general distribution of passes was ended by Federal statute. No man outside of a railroad headquarters or immediately conversant with the passenger returns could imagine the limits to which the abuse had spread. The books in which the list of holders of annual and trip passes were kept, and zealously guarded, were bulky affairs. And if your eyes were ever permitted to glance within their guarded covers, you probably would have read a list that began something after this fashion:

Of course, it was not every family that was privileged to hold ten annual passes on the same railroad—the average man was glad enough to hold one. But a few families owning or dominating the property were permitted to have unusual privileges upon it. In the ease of one large railroad, orders went out that any sort of a pass signed by its president was to be accepted by its conductors. After that the president developed an interesting habit of writing trip and annual passes on his calling cards or upon the backs of envelops—any scraps of paper that happened to be handy. Another railroad issued life passes in the form of silver medals.

The so-called Hepburn Bill, which became a law on New Year's Day, 1906, changed all this. Thereafter the railroads were forbidden to issue free transportation except to their employees and the members of their dependent families, or the employees and members of their dependent families of other common carriers. The various States quickly followed the lead of the Interstate Commerce Commission in this regard. In fact, Pennsylvania has gone much further. In that State a railroad may carry only its own employees free.

He Didn't Need a Pass

THE story of the railroad man who wrote to J. J. Hill and asked him to exchange a Great Northern annual with one that was good on a line ten miles in length, but which was "just as wide," is a classic, but here is another that has never crept into print:

Up in Western New York an enterprising young railroader had a modest transportation property of his own. It consisted of a small railroad that connected with two or three steamboats running upon a little lake. The railroader had a joint annual pass made for the combined routes. He called it the "Kinka Lake System," and the pass was an impressive affair, with a steel engraving of a tremendous train in one corner and a floating palace of a steamboat in the other.

It so happened that this same railroader owned a farm out in Oconomowoc or some other Wisconsin town, and that he wished to go out to it. One of the big "granger roads" leading down from Chicago reached the farm, and to the general manager of that road the president of the Kinka Lake System addressed a request for an annual pass, inclosing one of his own exquisitely engraved affairs as a return courtesy. He did not wait long for a reply. It came in four days, but no annual pass on the big trunk-line came with it. Instead his own was returned, accompanied by this memorandum, written by the G. M. himself:

...I have looked up your system in the Official Guide and found it—with some difficulty. I note that your rail route is ten miles long and your water route sixteen. I do not think I need your pass. If ever I do come to your neck o'woods I can walk your d—d railroad and swim the lake. However, I am enclosing a trip pass for yourself from Chicago to Oconomowoc and return.

Why Theaters Give Passes

IN the big cities, particularly in New York, the theater pass oft-times is a valuable asset for the manager, because he can use it to create the appearance of success in one of his attractions.

That is where the cheerful deadhead is in clover—or should be. The manager comes running to him with whole sheaves of passes in his chubby fingers, shrieking:

"Come. Come and bring your well dressed friends. Act pleased. Applaud. We've got to get this thing across."

Such a little thing to ask! No wonder that the tickets go out through every possible channel: to newspaper men and the friends of newspaper men; to the members of the seventeen lodges in which the house treasurer is enrolled; to the man who prints the theater's programs and the prominent advertisers therein.

There is a New York manager who can, if he will, show you the record of one memorable night when his apparently well filled house had less than twenty dollars in real money inside its doors—how the entire week netted him less than three hundred dollars. Yet the show staggered through eight weeks close to Broadway, and its "run," slightly amplified and well advertised, helped to carry it at least halfway across the theatrical continent. The cheerful deadhead was the oxygen stimulant that did the trick.

"Cheerful deadhead," did we say? The railroad manager and the theater manager wish to record their protest.

"Never that," they say. "Never cheerful. There are plenty of varieties of deadhead—professional deadheads, amateur deadheads, occasional deadheads, perpetual deadheads, but cheerful deadheads—no! There are deadheads who will pay ten dollars cab fare to use a free pair of tickets at a show, and then probably sit in the fourth row and exclaim loudly, 'This is a sad party,' just as there used to be deadheads that complained that their railroad passes would not let them ride on the fastest limited trains.

"The cheerful deadhead has become extinct?" you venture.

"No, not that," is the reply. "The dodo and the high-wheeled bicycle have become extinct. The cheerful deadhead has not become extinct. He simply never was."

And there is the last word on it.

Who Killed Mrs. Fisher?

BY OUR READERS

Could Willings Have Found This Use for a Jewel Box?

DEAR EDITOR: This story ends with Walter Willings' escape, carrying Mrs. Fisher's beautiful azure pearls and her other jewelry.

He gets $100,000—what he asked Mrs. Fisher to give him to pay for the Hudson Street settlement, and for D. Hope, to go on with his work as ever.

Walter Willings called on Mrs. Fisher on important business. She invited him into her house. When Willings asked her for the $100,000, she said she didn't have it unless she parted with her jewels.

Willings got angry when she gave him this answer, so he seized the jewelry box, which was locked, and tried to get her jewels. He asked her for the key, but she would not give it to him. He took the jewelry box and beat her brains out with it. He had choked her too, as there were finger-marks of purple and blue around her neck. Walter Willings was the murderer of Mrs. Fisher.

Was Maddalina a Trained Diver?

DEAR EDITOR: The reasons why Professor Fisher wished to get rid of his wife are immaterial, and may be many, arising from facts not as yet revealed; but he did wish to get rid of her. For instance: his management of the estate might have been bad and he might have been in need of money, and as a result in need of the azure pearls. That is probably what he had been quarreling with her about. He is the only man or person in the story with a motive. Grant my premise,—that he is the murderer,—here is his method:

First, Professor Fisher subjected Maddalina, the maid, to hypnosis, and forced her, by methods that he well understood, to be his somewhat unwilling tool. He needed her as the most promising suspect the police could find, and he forced her to pack up and prepare to leave on the day the crime was to be committed. And, more, he needed her to do the job. She murdered Mrs. Fisher at Professor Fisher's command. The deed was accomplished with a small cane, or perhaps only with a blow dealt by hitting Mrs. Fisher's head on the side of the tank. It had been planned to murder her by drowning, but Maddalina had not the strength to hold her under water long enough. This accounts for the finger-marks on the throat, etc. The deed done, the maid went after the pearls, and had great trouble in getting the safe open, accounting for the time lost at this point. While she was after them, Jimmy, the butler, came and saw the body, unbeknownst to Maddalina. The latter came back, having failed to open the safe, and to her consternation, saw that the body was slipping back into the pool, and for this reason she hauled it on to the couch. As she started to do so, Dr. Laneham and Judge Bishop had arrived and begun to rap on the doors. She dropped the body, and had just time to skip along and lock the doors ahead of

the Judge. Having locked the last one, she again seized the body and hauled it away from the pool and on to the rattan couch. As she placed it on the couch the scraping of the legs on the tile floor made the raps the Judge heard. Then she slipped into the bathing-pool.

Below, in the dark water, was an oxygen helmet and a hand-rail, placed there by Fisher, and there she stayed while the search was made, the oxygen helmet keeping her alive. Before making the dive, her exclamations had been heard as she dragged the body to the couch, explaining the "My God!" heard by the Judge. In the night she managed to slip into the Professor's apartment. (The details of this are unimportant, since there were many ways and doors and the place was exceedingly dark at night.) He gave her means to leave, and a suit of men's clothes. But, since she had not obtained the jewels, and since the Professor needed them at once, she came back and repeated the performance of the first day, at Fisher's orders. So Maddalina did the physical act, although Fisher was the real murderer.

As to Laneham's solution—it was arrived at in different. ways, even as was this one, but it would require elaboration for which there is not space here. The work of no two psychanalysts on the same case would necessarily follow the same pathways, even though the results of each were the same. Sherlock Holmes would have drained the water from the pool. As to the burned magazine, Mund, it is a German one which tells of scientific discoveries, and contained an account of a new form of oxygen helmet, or perhaps told of the method of staying under water by using a rubber hose floated on the surface by a small cork. Maddalina's exclamations may have been due to her dropping the hose and being unable to find it temporarily.

Or Did Dr. Fisher Send Her a Trained Serpent?

DEAR EDITOR: Mrs. Fisher was killed by a poisonous snake which was concealed in the pool by her husband. She had entered the pool to bathe, and the snake fastened on her throat. She managed to drag herself to the brim, but there fell, crushing in her temple. Her husband then ran in, and lifted her to the couch in a moment of regret. His patent-medicine business had made him acquainted with various poisons and reptiles, and this one was a sort of pet over which he had hypnotic control. At the entrance of the police, etc., the snake was coiled up in the electric globe. The flight of the servants was due to their fear of the snake; they knew nothing of the murder. Mr. Fisher locked the doors and made his escape by means of a parachute through the window.

Ha! Laneham, You Villain!

DEAR EDITOR: Disguised as a plumber, Laneham gained access to the Fisher apartment, his purpose being to steal the wonderful necklace of azure pearls. While going through the bedroom bureau drawers, searching for the jewel box, he is heard by Mrs. Fisher, who is in the dressing-room, preparing for a plunge in the swimming-pool. She passes into the bedroom, and encounters Laneharn, whom she immediately recognizes, in spite of his disguise. She calls him by name, and he, realizing that ruin stares him in the face, attempts to hypnotize her, pointing to an object on the bureau and repeating, "See! see! see!" Laneharn had employed hypnotism in treating Mrs. Fisher previously, and feeling now his power over her, she exerted her will power to the utmost in resisting him, saying over and over again, "No! no! no!" as heard by the lady in the adjoining apartment. Failing in his endeavor to hypnotize her, he grabbed her by the throat to prevent an outcry, dragged her through the dressing-room, along the edge of the swimming pool, and killed her with a hammer.

He then locked the doors and windows and left, locking the door behind him as he went. Before leaving he called up Judge Bishop and asked him to call at the Fisher apartment. and also called up his own office. He also took time to open a letter lying on the table in the reception hall addressed to Mr. Walter Willings.

Passing out of the building as he had entered, without attracting any special notice, he hurried home, bathed and changed his clothes, and went in his machine to meet the Judge.

Being an expert in psychic research, Dr. Laneham was thoroughly familiar with the tricks of spiritualistic mediums, and had no trouble in producing the sound of closing doors, clicking latches, and the voice within the room.

It May Have Been D. Hope's Jealousy, After All

DEAR EDITOR: Miss D. Hope was jealous of Willings' attentions to Mrs. Fisher, and sent her some plants which were of a peculiar tropical brand with poisonous fumes. Mrs. Fisher was overcome by the fumes on coming from her bath, and fell, crushing her temple on the marble rim. The maid finds her there, and tells Mr. Willings when he comes for the money. He recognizes the plants as coming from D. Hope, and runs off, hoping that suspicion will he laid on the servants. The maid is herself almost overcome by the fumes, and calls the butler. Seizing the opportunity for the robbery, they are just about to clear out when the others come. The butler escapes. The maid, made faint by the plants, is just able to lock the doors and hide herself in a secret closet under the tank where Mrs. Fisher had hidden the pearls.

DEAR EDITOR: Mrs. Fisher was murdered by the Italian maid, She gets out of the rooms through the fireplace and up the chimney to the roof, and then down a fire-escape, and disappears as if she had never existed. The butler, the Englishman, also disappears, and they have a hard time finding him. He and Mr. Willings and Miss D. Hope are arrested for the murder and held. Miss D. Hope's father comes to her rescue with his money, and he has his hands full, all his money, to save her. He hires a lot of good detectives to find the Italian. After a year or more she is found sick and dying. Then she makes a confession before she dies that she killed Mrs. Fisher, which clears Miss D. Hope and Mr.Willings. And Miss D. Hope and Mr. Willing, get married, with her father's consent.

Behind the Bolted Door?

By ARTHUR E. McFARLANE

Illustration by Henry Raleigh

AS Willings looked back upon that night, it seemed to divide itself into scenes or chapters. There was the capture of Maddalina, and the Doctor's hypnotic experiment upon her. That had proved one thing, at least—it was Maddalina's fingers that had made those long red scratches on Mrs. Fisher's arms. That was one clue they could depend upon. But what did it signify? Where did it lead them? At the very moment when they discovered it, there had come this new alarm from the Casa Grande. Somebody or something had penetrated the Fisher apartment again, through the lines of policemen or in spite of them. Whatever it was—person or thing,—it was no newcomer: it had been there before. Their own ears had heard the same dreadful rappings: again those heart-rending cries. And, last of all, they had found this tiny blood-flecked handkerchief with Mrs. Fisher's initials in the corner, and on the handkerchief a bit of palm and a white rose.

For a long moment they stood gazing upon that transfixing wordless message, which looked for all the world as if it had been lifted from Mrs. Fisher's coffin, each man of them silent with his own thoughts. Whose hand had laid that rose and bit of palm so carefully upon her blood-stained handkerchief? Was it the same hand that struck her down? The hand that hurled the jagged knife at the E.P. man the night before? The hand that had locked those doors against their entrance on the murder day?

Of all the group, McGloyne was most overwhelmed.

"Boys," he said, "you'll take those things to Headquarters an' have them marked as exhibits. But don't ask me to touch them. An' no more talkin' to the reporters, either, till all this is cleared up, someway."

Then, turning away weakly with Laneham: "But that'll be never—that'll be never! Doctor, what opened them doors will open them again, an' keep on openin' them, if we had them chained and barred."

THE big man was scared—plainly, unashamedly scared. All his boy-hood memories of banshees and fairies and disembodied spirits had come surging through his brain to harass him. He gulped as he talked; his hands shook. All of the group had unnerved, Willings almost as badly as McGloyne—and the Professor worst of all. They found him half crouched half hanging over the arm of one of the great oak chairs in the reception-room, and helped him to the elevator. As they waited for the car, the Doctor turned to McGloyne.

"Inspector," he asked, "can you tell me this? How was it that the Casa Grande servants were allowed to get into the apartment after the crime and do their regular cleaning work?"

"What? What's that?" The nerves of the big man appeared to jump. "I don't know as I get you!"

The Doctor repeated it. "At any rate," he added, "it's evident that cleaners were allowed to work in the rooms of the Professor, here."

"Nothin' to it"; McGloyne disputed earnestly. "No, no; you've got that wrong."

"I'm right," said Laneham again, "and they took their cleanings with them."

"The deuce you say! An' you mean that they took away—somethin' that might count?"

"If nothing else, they took some ashes from the fireplace in Professor Fisher's study."

McGloyne turned to Fisher.

"How about it, Professor? Was it while you was in?"

Apparently Fisher had not heard them.

He was holding and supporting himself by the metal-work of the elevator shaft, even as a few minutes before he had been holding to the door-jamb at the threshold of Mrs. Fisher's haunted rooms.

Laneham raised his voice.

"It appeared to be the ashes of a burned magazine—probably a German one, because I make out the word 'mund' in big letters on what had been the back of it."

"H'm!" And the big Inspector seemed to be considerably reassured. "Well," he said, "a little ashes—it wouldn't be so much, would it, Professor?"

He dropped his big hand upon the Professor's houlder.

"What iss it?" Fisher started, with the jerk of nerves now shaken to their center. "What iss it?" And, when McGloyne had explained,—"Ashes?" he cried. "I know nothing of ashes. And if anybody hass been in my rooms, it iss your men, Mr. Inspector, who should know it."

AT this moment the elevator stopped, and they all stepped in. The Doctor waited only for the door to close.

"Another thing, McGloyne. How was it that these elevator boys could make it appear that they had seen Mr. Willings as he went out just after the murder, when, as a matter of fact, none of them was in the lower hall at all, and at least two of them were up on the roof?"

For a moment Willings thought that the Doctor must have taken leave of his senses. Then instantly it flashed upon him that the speech addressed to McGloyne was really made for another purpose. And all of them were immediately aware that it had had its effect. The color of the young West Indian whose hand was on the lever sickened to a sort of café-au-lait. His hand fell away from the safety clutch. The car stopped, staggered, and then began to drop again. The boy's hand fumbled badly as he reached for the catch to let them out, and when, finally, the door did open on to the rotunda floor, when they had made their way out, he waited neither for passengers nor for the starter's signal, but closed the door to and ran up empty.

Fisher seemed to have noticed nothing. He was groping at the front of his waistcoat.

"I haf left my glasses behind," he said thickly, "and I must go up again."

McGloyne let him go alone. The door of the elevator had hardly closed behind him before the big fellow wheeled upon the Doctor, all the detective in him seeming to cry aloud.

"Doctor," he hissed, "say! What's it all about?"

He pushed him ahead into the little alcove room behind the telephone-desk, turned out the big plain-clothes man there on post, and closed the door. Then he burst forth:

"Why—why—" he choked. "My heavens, Doctor, have you gone dead out of your senses?"

Laneham merely shook his head.

"No. I wanted him to hear."

"Well, he sure did all right! An' now what's the answer?"

"For the present, I'm afraid there isn't any."

"There what?"

"I'm not half sure of what I know myself."

"Then why did you need to go tippin' the mutt your hand like that?"

Again Laneham would not answer.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but I sha'n't be able to tell even Mr. Willings, here."

"Look here—look here!" The big detective was obviously putting a restraint upon himself. "You know, don't you, that them Jamaica chocolates are just goin' to run for it now?"

"I don't think so. But, if you want, you can put a spotter on them."

"Put a spotter on them! Say, you tell me you ain't got all the information yet you want yourself. Let me take hold of them an' put 'em through at Headquarters for about three hours!"

"No,"—and the Doctor spread his hands,—"that's exactly what I don't want. It'd lose us everything."

He opened the door and looked out.

"Don't think any more about that to-night," he said. "I'm going home, too, in a minute now. But first I'd like to look about again for a bit upstairs."

He let Willings and McGloyne go with

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him. They had another elevator-man. Nothing was said in his hearing. And Laneham himself did not speak again till they stood in the Fisher inner hall. Then he explained that he only wished to dig about a little by himself on the floors above and below.

"I'd like to get the stair and elevator connections clearer in my mind," he said. "There seems to be some irregularity on the tenth, at any rate."

He insisted, too, on being allowed to go alone; what was there that could harm him?

IN the modern skyscraper apartment-house, one common stairway is called for under the law. But it is not to be confused with the little private flights of stairs which, inside the big duplex apartments, connect the first and second floors. In a bare fire-proof "well" of its own, this necessary legal stairway mounts from floor to floor beside the elevator-shaft. And its own ever-closed smoke-tight doors give it access to every floor. But it is only an emergency exit; and, save by the house service, it is practically never used.

But the Doctor used it now. He descended first to the floor below.

Under the law, a stair-well light should have been burning at every floor. Far beneath him in that narrow shaft one was glimmering, even as another glimmered far above. But about him all was shadow.

He found the door to the eighth-floor corridor, opened it, and looked out. On the other side an elevator shot smoothly up, with its lubricated tick-a-lick. But whatever he looked for, obviously he did not find it there. He shut the door, turned back, and started to mount again.

About him on all sides there was almost the same dark and creeping silence of those shadowy Fisher rooms. His nerves were still sufficiently shaken to make him believe, at times, that the echo of his footsteps on the slaty treads was the sound of other footsteps following him. He would not have owned it, but he was glad enough when, at the tenth floor, he could once more feel for the door and let himself out into the good hallway light again.

Here, in fact, he found at least the irregularity of corridor arrangement that he had been looking for. The very fact that the Fisher apartment was duplex—that is, having rooms on two floors,—and the fact that it had access to the elevators only on the ninth floor, left this end of that tenth-floor corridor a blind or "dead" hallway. Two elevators passed it, but they could have nothing to stop for. And their indicators had been removed. Indeed, so little attention had of late been given to that unused cul-de-sac by the Casa Grande management that a section of wired glass that had been broken out of one of the elevator doors was left hanging and unmended.

The hole allowed Laneham to put his hand through and open the gate. And, not knowing himself what he expected to find, he did it. Leaning far over the shaft, he looked down. Nothing to he learned there, though a descending car stopped in the other shaft as if to observe him wonderingly, stopped again on the floor below, and their dropped on to the bottom.

Raising his head, he looked upward.

Merely from the light of the wind-chased moon, a thin, flickering line showed the position of the roof scuttle. It was this elevator, then—

FROM behind him came the sound of a swiftly opened door. With a snap of the switch button, the little hallway was in absolute darkness. And through it, behind Laneham, while he still struggled to regain his balance, came a rush of leaping feet. A clutching hand spread itself upon his mouth. Another broke the grip of his own left hand upon the upright of the shaft. And then the whole weight of that unknown, silent, furious attacker fell upon him and heaved him outward.

He had no time to turn, to resist, to catch himself. He threw his left arm back. It touched clothing of some sort, which instantly was torn away. Then it struck the other upright, tried to hold to it, slipped down, slipped more, and slipped, again, as his feet vainly plunged and fought to catch the edge of the floor again. Through it all, as he hung there, his ears caught a kind of panting, crying laugh. He heard that stairway door close again. He even heard an unknown hand deftly putting the inside latch upon it.

The sharp metal was now cutting him to the finger joints. His body had come to have a weight of tons. His wrist seemed twisting off. Yet, with the clutch of desperation, he held on for another moment, while once more he threw himself jerkingly upward. And at that last moment his left foot found the floor again. Then his right heel caught. He pulled himself gradually, dizzily up, rolled himself inward, and was safe.

And in that night's story one more chapter, the last at the Casa Grande, had come to an end.

Laneham found Willings at the Fisher outer hall; and, still gasping, he told him all that was necessary to tell.

The young man's nerves, strained to the breaking-point, seemed ready to snap. He was for immediate action.

"Let's get McGloyne—have him jail the whole lot—the black devils—gad! to think you might be crumpled up at the bottom of that shaft this minute! It's horrible!"

But the Doctor laid a restraining hand on his arm.

"Not a word to McGloyne," he said "I'm not even going to see him. I don't want him to know about this, under any circumstances. I'm all in and ready for bed, and so are you. Come on."

AT 390 they found McGloyne's two patrolmen, the two who had been sent for Jimmy, still on guard. But a message from the big detective reached them a moment later, and they tramped out of the house, leaving Willings and D. Hope and the Doctor alone again. Briefly they told her what had happened, and her indignation, like Willings', mounted to the bolting-point.

"And you aren't going to have them arrested?'" she cried, "even when they try to murder you?"

The Doctor smiled on her as a father might smile at an impetuous child. "Not yet, at any rate, D. Hope. We'll wait and see what happens."

She shook her head as if completely unable to understand.

"Well, at least, we know that we've taken another step," she said. "First it was Jimmy; then Maddalina; and now these elevator beasts. Doctor, could it have been they who—"

But the Doctor put up a protesting hand.

"It's eleven o'clock," he said. "Nothing more can happen to-night; and you're both too wrought up to sleep. As your physician as well as your boss, I prescribe a ride in the limousine for all of us together."

And a few minutes later they were on their way to the park, Collet, the Doctor's chauffeur, driving them.

"Nothing more can happen to-night." The Doctor was destined to remember that remark later.

THEY talked very little. It was enough simply to sit quietly and try to forget things. The wind was again snow-laden. And as it swirled about them, gust on gust, it seemed gradually to carry away obsessions of the day as on cooling the streams. They would sleep now—the Doctor's prescription had been good. And, coming out at the Fifty-ninth Street gate, they started homeward.

They had reached the Circle when they found themselves stalled in a crush of after-theater traffic. There was the usual starting-and-stopping tangle of other limousines and taxis and landaulets. D. Hope was looking out of one window, and Willings out of the other. But he, at least, was hardly conscious of looking at

---

anything in particular, until suddenly his eyes were really halted. They had fallen upon the face of a young man in the landaulet drawn alongside of him. His first thought was that he had seen that face somewhere before, his next that in any case he would remember it for a long time to come.

It was a fine face, a good face, a face palely and aquilinely and slenderly intellectual. But in every feature there was a kind of haggardness, and in the eyes a seared hollowness that sent Willings' hand to the Doctor's knee to draw his attention too. But just then the landaulet shot ahead again.

"What was it?"

"Oh, nothing. Only a poor devil that I guess has had his smash, all right."

"In the gray car?"

"Yes; I was thinking he'd make a case for you."

And then, next moment, their own car came abreast again.

"Why," the Doctor whispered, "it's Glasbury."

"Glasbury?"

"The playwright, one of the tenants who moved out of the Casa Reale after the murder. And he has had his smash, no doubt of that!"

At that instant Miss Hope caught their voices and turned. They could see at once that she too had recognized the occupant of the gray car, and into her face came a look which, had it been any one but D. Hope, they would have sworn was a look of fear.

"Who—who is it?" she asked. Her voice was barely audible.

"Why," said the Doctor, "you know him, don't you?"

The landaulet was moving on again, and their car with it.

"I—I don't know his name." And now that fear graying her face seemed every moment spreading. "And he didn't look like that—before."

The two men could only look at each other bewilderedly.

"What is his name?" she asked, with a little catch in her voice.

"It's Glasbury the playwright," Laneham repeated quietly. "And until two days ago he was living at the Casa Reale, the annex of the Casa Grande. You didn't know, that?"

"No." Her lips had fallen apart, and she appeared unable to bring them together again. "But—but I know it can't matter—can't—can't have any connection with anything, no matter where he lived."

Again they could only look their bewilderment.

"D. Hope," said the Doctor, "tell us. We don't understand. You mean that there's no connection whatever between your knowing him and—and poor Mrs. Fisher?"

"Oh, I didn't say that. I meant no connection with her death. There couldn't have been. It would be perfectly frantic! Oh, won't you believe me that there couldn't?"

But in her very tone there was that which made Laneham bend quietly forward to the chauffeur's speaking-tube: "Collet," he commanded, "please keep that gray landaulet in sight."

Both men looked compassionately at the girl—she was struggling so hard to control herself, her agitation was so keen. Willings spoke first:

"If you'd rather not tell us, Daphne—if you'd rather not speak about it—"

"But I will," she cried, "I will, if it's only for her sake! I have seen him before—I saw him at her home—but—oh, Doctor!" She turned imploringly to the older man. "Most of us you can't tell about: maybe we're good and maybe we're not. But some people you know are good, from your first look at them. I think Mrs. Fisher was romantic. I think she'd do crazy things and take crazy chances. But that she was ever anything but—but—" Again she could not finish. "And if there's one little thing I'm holding back from you, it isn't because it matters,—I've told you it couldn't,—but because it was a promise to her—just a sort of joke at the time, but it was a promise. And it was the last word she had from me on earth! And now if, just because her death did come so soon—"

The gray landaulet had turned west again. They saw the street number, and they knew instinctively that Glasbury was on his way back to the Casa Reale or the Casa Grande now. Two minutes more, indeed, and he was dropping out at the Casa Reale entrance.

At which D. Dope broke out again: "Oh, and isn't his face enough? Could a man who looks like that have anything, even remotely, to do with such a thing?"

"I'm with you there," said Willings.

"And I," said the Doctor. "And I! But, you see, his car is waiting for him: and, if only in justice to him, and to others who are innocent, you must let me follow this a little further. More than that I know something of him. And he's not only one of the finest and wholesomest dramatists of the younger school,—Harvard, New Theater, all that sort of thing,—but he's fine, too, as a man. I've heard a dozen speak of him."

"Everybody knows he is," Willings once more took it up.

At that moment Glasbury came out again, and got into the landaulet, and it started back to where, in the shadow of the corner electric, Collet had stopped their own car. "He's had something to trouble him," the Doctor broke in. "Anybody might have. Most likely it's just plain overwork. And if every man who looked a bit played and drawn—"

He stopped, because at that moment Glasbury's car flashed by. As the young fellow's face, pale and slightly upturned, came full under the white electric, again all three of them could see it clearly. And, as if it had been the hour after the murder itself, each of them started, and drew in their breath as if to stifle a cry. What was in Glasbury's face now was something that no one could possibly mistake for overwork, or for any other of earth's minor troubles. His lips were parted, his eyes wide with newly encountered or newly remembered horror—and horror still so close as to abide both in the light of day and in the nightmare of dreams.

D. Hope shuddered and shrank back. The Doctor, throwing at her a professional glance, reached for her hands and took them firmly in his own.

"Willings," he said quietly, "I want you to take the first taxi we see and get D. Hope home. I'll follow you. And if he's still at the St. Hilaire, where he went at first, I ought not to be long."

A cab was soon in sight. He put them into it; and again, running up his speed, Collet caught that gray landaulet. It stopped at the St. Hilaire, one of the smaller bachelor-apartment hotels off Longaere Square. And when Glasbury had had ample time to take his elevator, Laneham followed him as far as the desk.

He spoke to the night clerk.

"I want to send a note up to Mr. Glasbury."

"He's just come in. You can telephone."

"No, a note will do." And, picking up a card and envelop, he was stepping aside to write it, when the clerk spoke again:

"Oh, I say, maybe this is meant for you. I remember him saying some one was to come in."

He slid a letter across the glass.

It was addressed to a Courtney Jones, "to be called for." But the name was of no account. It mattered neither then nor later. It was the writing which, from the first instant, held the Doctor's eyes. If six words could offer any proof, he had that night, when little expecting to, taken his third step. For the writing on that envelop was, line for line, the writing of "the murder note!"

To be continued next week

The Compact

Continued from page 8

quivered menace. "Take your hand off me!" He raised a clenched fist.

Hoffman drew quickly back. "But look! Look!" From a safe distance he waved the cheek.

Francis closed the door behind him.

LONG the boy sat motionless in his room, the report before him, untouched. The knuckles of his tightly closed fists pressed hard against his head. Over and over he asked himself, "Have I been a fool?" And ever through his distracted thoughts Hoffman's crafty arguments wove their subtle snare in answer.

Would it have been so wrong to disclose his recommendation, if thereby his act served to upset the plans of men intent on fraud, directors who schemed against the very stockholders who had placed them in trust?

But could he be sure that this was true? Might not all the smooth arguments of the innocent-looking fat man be but lies contrived to blind him to dishonor?

And the money! Every written word, each clearly penned figure, on that luring check stood out clearly to stir his over-wrought imagination. By one word he could have acquired the earnings of years of work. What could he not do with $20,000? Above all, had he the right to throw away this chance to place his mother beyond the risk of want?

The longer Francis thought of what such a sum could accomplish, the nearer he came to believing he had acted like an inexperienced boy.

Perhaps even now it was not too late. And yet—and yet—what would his grandfather have advised?

But he would not let his thoughts stray down that path. His doubts were enough; memories of the dead added only sadness to uncertainty. Yet—if he could only hear his voice for a minute,—an instant,—as long as it would take to cry out "Yes" or "No."

He walked restlessly about the room. Then, sitting at his table, he worked in frantic haste until the report was finished.

Francis folded the papers; his irresolute hand long held the document. Once the envelop was nearly sealed, but at the end he threw it to the table, an open temptation still.

MIDNIGHT had dragged slowly past before sleep came to him. And then, as the night air grew chill, some bit of shrinking woodwork cracked loudly through the still room. He sat up, instantly awake

"Grandfather!" he called into the darkness, "Grandfather, are you here?"

Slow seconds crept by.

"Grandfather!" he cried eagerly, "if ever I needed you, it is now—now!"

Silence deeper than before followed the cry. Still he waited—waited until anger grew where yearning hope had been.

"Fool! Fool!"

He threw himself back upon the bed, but sleep was driven now too far for return. His problems came back, bringing their indecision. All the unanswered questions, all the doubts, whirled in circles behind his aching eyes.

Then, as from a great distance a new thought called—his grandfather's papers! He sat up quickly. He had had no time as yet to look them over. He would get up now and read them. At this time of night? No!

He lay down again. But the longing for his grandfather, the wish to see his written words, was too strong. A second time he half rose. Then he told himself he must have rest, and fell back among the pillows. But his longing to see and touch the papers his grandfather had written came back to him more strongly.

At last he leaped from the bed.

It was not a large package he held beneath the lighted lamp. On its wrapping, in the old-fashioned penmanship of his grandfather, was his own name. He removed the paper. Within the old portfolio he found a diary, its leather cover of some long gone pattern, its pages softened to the yellow tint of age.

On the fly-leaf were lines addressed to himself. As he looked, calm fell upon him. The mere writing brought some measure of peace. He read:

Francis saw from the date that the lines had been written only three days before his grandfather's death. Quickly he turned to page 39.

With growing interest Francis turned the page.

Francis stared at the page. Across the years his grandfather was telling of his trial, his own moral struggle. The words gripped the boy's filling heart. The following page would show how this temptation had been met. Francis did not fear to turn the leaf.

Francis had to blink hard to make these closing lines come clear. Swiftly he turned to the last written page.

With no uncertain hand Francis reached for the report and closed the envelop. He started to rise, paused, then struck a match. One by one he watched the drops of falling wax. Into the soft surface he pressed his grandfather's seal ring.

Francis rose and crossed to the window. The first breezes of the coming day stirred the air. As he drew in the freshness of the dawn, Francis held out his arms to the new morning and whispered:

"'I'll hear,' you said. 'I'll hear you, Sorrel-Top, when you call.'"

John Smith—Silence Expert

By WALT MASON

At Kansas City lives John Smith; like other men he has a voice, but never does a thing therewith, to cheer, to grumble or rejoice. 'Twas three and thirty years ago that he, a thoughtful lad of eight, concluded words were cheap and slow, and conversation out of date. And so he registered a vow no more on earth to talk or sing, and from that moment until now, he hasn't said a single thing. He hasn't made a vocal sound to any man or child or maid; the silence 'round him is profound, and you could cut it with a spade. You cannot trick him into speech, you cannot bribe him to discourse; his larynx doubtless is a peach, for it was never strained or hoarse.

Upon a time he fell in love; the damsel was a charming girl, with eyes like strips of sky above, and golden hair, and teeth of pearl. He popped the question with his pen; his written note the maiden eyed, and then she smiled and smiled again, and said, "Sure, John, I'll he your bride; but you must drop this silence fad, and turn some elocution free; I will not marry any lad who won't exchange some words with me."

Then John got up and took his hat, and in his anguish ground his teeth; but never to the maiden's flat did he return, with ring or wreath.

Perhaps this trial made him sore, for ever since that evening sad he seems to find the girls a bore, and "Woman Suffrage" makes him mad. Against that cause he works with zeal, ne'er does he falter or grow weak; in fact, so deeply does he feel, he'll do most anything but speak.

He has a handsome modern home, that would command a heap of pelf, and from the basement to the dome he built and painted it himself; and if a beam fell on his toe, or if a splinter hurt his shank, he never paused to voice his woe, to blank the blinky blanky blank.