The Lesson of a Failure

DO you want to do some reading that will be intensely interesting as well as profitable? Read the story of some of the great failures of the world. Find out what caused them.

We have recently been reading the story of a colossal failure—the defeat of the Spanish Armada, as told by the historian Froude.

The Armada was the greatest fleet the mediœval world had ever seen. It consisted of 130 ships, and carried more than 30,000 sailors and soldiers.

It was fitted out by Philip II of Spain to conquer England, and was meant to overwhelm all resistance by its size. It carried more than 2500 guns.

Yet this magnificent fleet, the mightiest in the world, was met by a little fleet under Lord Howard and decisively defeated.

Why?

Because the Spanish were not so brave as the English? No. Because their guns were inferior? Not at all. The Spanish Armada failed because its commander had no faith in himself. Read this letter, which he wrote to the King when he was notified of his appointment. It is one of the most shameful letters ever written:

My health is bad [he wrote], and from my small experience of the water I know that I am always seasick. I have no money which I can spare. [As a matter of fact, he was the richest nobleman in Spain.] The expedition is on such a scale and the object of it is of such high importance, that the person at the head of it ought to understand navigation and sea-fighting, and I know nothing of either. I have not one of these essential qualifications. I have no acquaintance among the officers who are to serve under me. Were I competent otherwise, I should have to act in teh dark by the opinion of others, and I can not tell to whom I may trust. The Adelantado of Castile would do better than U. Our Lord would help him, for he is a good Christian and has fought in naval battles. If you send me, depend upon it, I shall have a bad account to render of my trust.

Think of Philip II sending a man to command his fleet who would write a letter like that!

How could such a commander expect 30,000 men to have any faith in him, when he had absolutely none in himself?

Yet the headstrong King did send him; and the result was one of the most monumental disasters of history.

Men fail for many reasons.

Some because they overreach themselves—because they have too much self-confidence.

But there is another kind of failure that is far worse—the failure of those who, as Goethe says, "make no mistakes, because they never wish to do anything worth doing."

For goodness' sake, make mistakes.

If you are going to fail at all, let it be because you believe too much in yourself.

That, at least, is a man's way to fail.

Side-Stepping Stoutness

By EDWIN F. BOWERS, M.D.

"WHAT causes obesity, and how may it be prevented?"

A moderate excess of fat is one of your very best forms of life and health insurance. It is a storehouse of food and energy—a fuel reserve for times of stress. If we are to remain healthy, every tissue of the body, except the nails and teeth, must contain more or less of some form of it.

If we are stricken by fever, or any wasting disease, we have thirty per cent. better chances of recovery if we are comfortably plump than if we are spare and emaciated. Fever burns fuel; physiologically it is cheaper to give it fat to oxidize than it is to let it burn up more vital tissue.

Each ounce increase in the consumptive's weight increases his prospects of ultimate recovery. Many neurasthenics are physically as well as nervously bankrupt, and one of the most successful methods of restoring their nervous balance is to fatten them.

Yet there is a point beyond which fat is excess baggage; for no man who has to rock his abdomen to sleep in his lap is properly qualified for the hurdles of life.

In obesity the heart and lungs must work harder, and fatty degeneration of important internal organs is not unusual. Fat folk are especially liable to heat prostration, hardening of the arteries, dropsy, skin eruptions, diabetes, asthma, apolexy, gallstones, and gout. They stand operations poorly, and lack resistance to acute infection. They are very prone to anemia and conditions resulting from lack of red cells in the blood.

Yet there are some things worse than being too plump. These are the methods sometimes used to eradicate the condition. Remedies and methods that "just make the fat fly" are extremely likely to make the owner of the fat fly also.

The only two internal remedies that have any certain value as "fat reducers" are so uncertain as to what else they may do that they should never be used except on medical advice. Most other remedies are valueless.

This was demonstrated by the Bureau of Chemistry of the United States Department of Agriculture, which recently "tested out" a series of "fat-reducing" nostrums. Two subjects were obliged, after the second week, to stop taking a "favorite specific" of a great obesity specialist. IF they hadn't stopped, the "cure" might have killed them. Another subject gained two and a half pounds on a "guaranteed discovery."

Another method of being swindled getting slim consists in placing Epsom salts. washing soda, or other alkalies in the bath. These and similar innocuous compounds are the basis of most of the external obesity cures—where you simply put a few cents' worth of something for which paid a dollar into the bath water and the fat is "washed away"—vanishing with a chuckling gurgle down the waste-pipe.

But, it will be asked, is there no way of parting amicably with this dangerous surplus? There are ways. But they lie over the rough and arduous paths of self-denial. First, it must be recognized that there are certain diseases in which excessive corpulency is merely a symptom, among which are dropsy and disturbances in the pituitary and other glands. Before fat reduction is attempted these causes must be excluded.

The Cure—Diet and Exercise

FAILING to find such a cause, we may remember that fat is derived from food; and, no matter how little food we may be eating, we are getting either the wrong kind or too much of the right kind. So it requires merely that we reduce the fuel intake of food to a point below that expenditure of bodily activity, or else increase bodily activity until more than the daily intake of food energy is consumed—or both. In short, the cure of obesity is less eating and more exercise.

While the system can make fat our of any food=stuff, it makes it with almost ridiculous ease from starches and sugars. Alcohol also, by unduly hastening the conversion of albumins, sets free fat-producing substances that materially assist in padding the blanket of fat.

Yet it is not necessary to punish one's self dietetically or to risk certain dangers to acquire svelteness. It is merely necessary to eliminate all surplus and to limit the amount of food to that required to maintain strength.

This is accomplished by relying upon lean meats, with liberal amounts of green vegetables. These may include lettuce, celery, tomatoes, onions, parsley, and sour fruits. Also salads without oil.

Pork and all fat meats, oily fish,—such as mackerel and salmon,—potatoes, rice, pie, tapioca and all farinaceous puddings should be avoided. Also beer and malt liquors, rich gravies and sauces, cakes, pastries, ice cream, beets, sweet fruits,—as figs, prunes, dates, grapes, and oranges,—candies and all sugars, so far as possible. Craham bread and gems, or dry toast, may be substituted for white bread.

Fluids should be limited in quantity, but not so limited that the system will suffer from lack of one of its principal sources of elimination. A cup of hot or cold water, with the unsweetened juice of half a lemon, on rising, and another in the afternoon, helps to keep the liver active, and sometimes aids fat reduction.

The use of plain soups, which are filling but not fattening, should be encouraged. Buttermilk or soured milk, if taken slowly, a small mouthful at a time, makes a nourishing and satisfying meal. If the food is thoroughly chewed, much less of it will satisfy the appetite. Masticate each mouthful until swallowing becomes almost an involuntary act.

Cold-water baths, if they do not cause rheumatism or nervous shock, are an excellent aid in fat reduction. It is well to avoid sleeping too much, and it is especially advisable to forgo the doubtful luxury of the afternoon map. We build tissue, faster during sleep than we do while active or awake. Six or seven hours of uninterrupted sleep—provided one feels recuperated—should be enough.

Exercise of all kinds is indispensable. When it can be indulged in, swimming is probably the best form, as it exercises the little-used muscles of the abdomen as well as nearly every other muscle in the body. The cold water also melts away the fat.

All outdoor activities and forms of gymnastics that can be practised in well ventilated rooms, are very beneficial. In fact, all muscular exertion that does not put too much strain upon the heart and circulatory apparatus is helpful.

Other Helpful Exercises

SOME derive benefit from "rolling." Others crawl, bend, stretch, stoop, twist, and turn. Others gallop about on all fours, to the great confusion of fat. Lying upon the back and slowly raising the legs with stiffened knees, then lowering them with equal deliberation, discourages embonpoint. That classic exercise known as "picking pins," in which the devotee stands with stiffened knees and, with outstretched fingers, touches the floor repeatedly, also punishes ponderosity.

Kicking is good for hips and bad for fat. High kicking, à la ballet dancer; front kicking, ostrich fashion; and side and back kicking, mule fashion, are all effective.

Turkish baths will reduce flesh; but people who are strong enough to withstand their debilitating influence are strong enough to get rid of their excess fat in safer ways.

Depend rather upon the tape measure than upon scales for affirmative evidence that you are parting with your too bountiful store. For fat is of a sponge-like texture and very light in weight.

But remember that any method that produces irritability, restlessness, weakness, or an uncomfortable craving for food, is doing far more harm than are the few extra pounds of peaceful adipose.

"War Brides"—and Bridegrooms

By FREEMAN TILDEN

RUNNING a "shoestring" of $312 up to a fortune of $3,000,000 in the course of a few years' speculation comes pretty near being equal to getting possession of the original Aladdin's lamp. Yet that is the story of Jesse L. Livermore, the "boy wonder" who broke into Wall Street in 1906 and set the oldest inhabitants agasp with his successful operations.

Livermore was still in his twenties when he came to New York. He had been a "blackboard boy," marking up quotations in a brokerage house in Boston at a maximum salary of six dollars a week. By dint of saving his tips, he managed to accumulate a little more than three hundred dollars, and with that he started out to conquer the market. In his apprenticeship at the blackboard he had picked up a few salient points, and he quickly developed a keen judgment of market probabilities. After he had accumulated $25,000 in Boston, he came over to Wall Street for bigger game.

In 1907 Livermore was shrewd enough to realize that the over-speculation that had been going on would be followed by heavy liquidations; and he went "short" of Union Pacific, Reading, and copper stocks. In a few months his $25,000 had been stretched to $250,000. He bought a fine house, a yacht, and a string of automobiles, and went to Europe. But Livermore was just resting.

The following year found this young fellow, with his boyish face and manner, back in Wall Street. He looked over the field, and perceived a fact that none of the experienced insiders had observed—the cotton market was over-sold, and nearly every one had sold it short. Livermore poured every cent he could scrape into the market, and sent the bears scurrying. For a few days he actually ran the cotton market to suit himself. When the rise in the price of cotton finally paused, Livermore was credited with having cleaned up at least three millions.

Although nothing quite so spectacular as the rise of Jesse Livermore has happened in the present mad rush of speculation in war stocks,—"war brides," as the Street has nicknamed them,—there has probably never been an instance in the history of the Street when so many outsiders have gone in with little nest-eggs and come out with good-sized fortunes. The lure of quick money has attracted to the stock market in the last few months thousands of accounts of persons who never before took a chance. Stories innumerable have gone the rounds of fortunes made by messenger boys, manicure girls, waiters, chauffeurs, and others of humble occupations. And, in the main, these stories are authentic. In most cases it is impossible to give the names of the lucky speculators, for two reasons: first, the houses through which the profits were made do not make it a practice to divulge them; and second, the lucky ones themselves are never particularly fond of becoming identified with fortunes made in this manner—which fact speaks loudly as to the ethics of speculation, even in the eyes of those who profit by it.

There is the case, for instance, of a former hallman in one of the big office buildings frequented by curb brokers. This man, who had a large and growing family, and a salary not too large to care for them, was forced to listen, day after day, to the stories of easy money that was being made in certain stocks sold only on the curb. Day after day visions of new fortunes were dangled before his eyes, until he fairly lost his head. He had saved a little money—perhaps $800 at most. He drew it out of the savings bank and carried it with him twenty-four hours before he could make up his mind to risk it. Then he confided his plans to one of the curb brokers who had always been generous with tips.

"I wouldn't take any chances with your roll, if I were in your place," replied the broker. "You can't afford to lose. But if you've been bitten by this bug, I suppose you'll do it anyway. This Electric Boat stock looks good. You may as well lose it on that as anything else."

He Knew Enough to Quit

THE hallman bought the stock at 22. At 26 he got frightened and sold it; bought again at 70, took a small profit, then bought again at 85; and kept his nerve till it ran up to over 500. At that last point he went to the friendly broker with tears of excitement in his eyes and asked for advice.

"I don't know a blamed thing more about this crazy market than you do," was the reply, "but you'd better quit." And the hallman quit, a winner

of more than a hundred thousand dollars. If he had kept on he might have made still more money, but he says he is satisfied. He is going back to northern New York and buy a farm.

In fact, this Electric Boat stock has been one of the marvels of the "war bride" speculations. Last year you would have had hard work to find any one that ever heard of such a stock. About the time Von Kluck was approaching the Marne, you could have bought any quantity of it at thirteen dollars a share. And at that period a daring and enthusiastic curb broker named J. Robinson Duff, who was sharing in the lean times that had visited the Street, had a hunch that something might happen to Electric Boat. He bought fifty shares. This was before the war orders had begun to come in.

Mr. Duff traded in and out of the market for a few weeks, and finally Electric Boat began to move upward, very slowly at first. The broker "pyramided" his winnings, sticking to his one pet stock. Then, one day, the stock began to speed ahead. When it reached 500 the broker set aside a cool quarter of a million for his wife, which will give them a tidy income for the rest of their lives, and kept on going right up with the stock till it touched 600, where he figures that he is worth well over half a million dollars.

Another young man was lucky enough to be private secretary to a member of the syndicate that bought the Electric Boat Company and turned it over to the Submarine Corporation. He was not overwhelemd with money of his own, but he went to some friends and told them what he knew of the proposed deal, and suggested a small partnership. To-day the private secretary is still at his old job; but, with fifty thousand dollars laid away, and another fifty thousand profits on paper still in the maelstrom of the market, he no longer trembles as the boss passes by.

Two big winners in the sky-rocket rise of Bethlehem Steel stock were not exactly "shoestring" investors, and yet fortunes were practically showered on them from above.

He Had a Fortune Thrust Upon Him

ONE of these was Samuel Untermyer, the great corporation lawyer. He was one of the counsel in the case when Bethlehem Steel was organized to take over the old United States Shipbuilding Company. He saw reason to believe in the value of the stock, and is said to have invested in (bought outright) 15,000 shares, costing him about $25 a share. He has made several million dollars in the present market.

But another lawyer fell into a fortune against his will. A few years before he had done some work for a man who was not able to pay the counsel fee in real money. The best he could do was to turn over, at a value of little more than $20 a share, a quantity of Bethlehem Steel stock. The lawyer, figuring that he couldn't do any better, reluctantly took the stock as part-payment. The other day this stock was quoted at 445, and was still going up, and the attorney woke up to the fact that the despised stock had made for him more than a million dollars while it lay in his desk.

Of course, all the money has not been made by the "shoestring" element. About the biggest killing has come, and properly enough, to Charles M. Schwab, who may he said to be the foundation of the present extraordinary market, since it was his comings and goings to and from Europe, and his ceaseless energy in getting war orders, that started the business. There is no means of knowing the extent of the enormous fortune that Mr. Schwab has gathered from the market. It would not be surprising if the close of the war found him among the very richest men in the country. And this is the man whose services the Steel Trust carelessly dispensed with only a few years ago. At the close of September Mr. Schwab owned 38,541 shares of Bethlehem preferred, worth at that date about $5,000,000. But the amount of common stock held for him must be tremendous, and his total fortune beyond imagination.

Similarly, such experienced operators as William E. Corey, E. C. Converse, and Allan Ryan have cleaned up big fortunes in the present market; and Isaac L. Rice, who was president of the Electric Boat Company, quit it midway in its rise with several millions profit. But the stories of their successes do not seize the imagination nearly so strongly as a real "shoestring" incident like this:

An artist who had been employed in a New York advertising agency asked for an advance in salary,

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and, failing to realize on this ambition, threw up his job. He had saved a little money, and, being endowed with a predilection for taking chances, decided to go into the market, in which the war stocks were just then beginning their big upward swerve. Not being familiar with the Street, he had recourse to his own judgment, which ninety times out of a hundred, in a sane condition of the stock market, would have been his ruin. But what impelled him was the simple printed statement that the American Locomotive Company was going to get a contract for war material of $75,000,000.

Now, the peculiar thing about the present war-stock rush has been that most rumors have been true, most tips have been good, and the silly sheep have for once in their lives made money, when the cautious operators, satisfied with small profits, have guessed wrong and lost money.

The young artist bought American Locomotive at 51, sold at 67, and with his winnings plunged wildly into the curb stocks that were going up. He says he had just $1800 when he started, and he figures that if he should quit now he would be able to bank nearly $85,000. At the time of writing he had been just four weeks in the market.

An elevator "boy"—he is really a middle-aged man—who ordinarily leads an up-and-down life in an office building on Nassau Street overheard two well known financiers speaking of a war order for $50,000,000 that was being quietly negotiated. He scraped together every cent he could muster, found that he had enough for a margin on 1000 shares, and plunged. News of the consummation of the war order got out on the Street, and the stock began to rise rapidly. When it had made a gain of seventy-five points, the "boy" sold out, and at once plunged with his whole winnings into two other stocks that were jumping. At the present time the original thousand dollars has grown to at least $100,000, and the elevator has faded into the dim background of the past. The new magnate has waded deep into the mysteries of the Street, and declares that he will be worth a million or will quit dead broke. Judging by past performances, the latter contingency is the one the speculator has to fear.

A $500,000 Baby

ABOUT the time Bethlehem Steel was selling at 18, which was before Mr. Schwab had shown his managing skill, a thoughtful father of a two-months-old infant bought 1000 shares of the stock and presented it to the baby. The baby would have preferred a rattle, and there was no means of knowing, at the time, that a rattle wouldn't have turned out to be about as substantial a gift. But the father, who took occasional chances in the Street himself, believed in Schwab. At the present price of Bethlehem Steel the thousand-share bundle makes the baby worth about $500,000.

A young doctor who has an elite practice in the best residential section of Manhattan Island received a tip from a broker client who was grateful beyond the mere practitioner's fee. Acting on the tip, the physician put all his spare money into Crucible Steel, Electric Boat, and Westinghouse. These three stocks began to climb, and the physician's fortune grew at such a rate that he let his regular work go by the board and glued his eyes to the ticker. And now, it is said, though the man is worth considerably more than a million dollars, he is so far from quitting the game that he is being watched by friends who suspect that his enormous winnings have unbalanced his mind.

Then, there is the old lady in the Middle West who has been a small long-distance client of a certain Stock Exchange house for years. Perhaps, in all the years of her petty speculation, she has dreamed of this one big year when she would "clean up" overnight. Well, she has wished a huge fortune on herself. As the stocks in which she was concerned have risen higher and higher, her orders have been bigger and bigger and more peremptory. One day she telegraphed an order to buy 300 shares of Bethlehem Steel at 170. The brokers, thinking the profits might have gone to her head and that she was coming too strong, wired back a friendly warning, and intimated that they would hold the order for a sober second thought. Back came a tart message: "I did not ask for advice; I want an order executed." She got the 300 shares at 170, and on the afternoon of the following day she had made $8500 on the stock.

They Won't Stop

OF course, in a great many of the present cases, the fortunes made are on paper. They would be real fortunes if the winners could make up their minds to close out, wrap their killings in a bundle, and take the first train out of the Stock Exchange atmosphere. But that is just what they will not do. It will be the story of the 1901 madness all over again. At that time Northern Pacific was hoisted to $1000 a share, and two or three million shares of stocks were being churned over in the market every twenty-four hours. And then—the bubble burst. Then the newly made fortunes disappeared like mist, and the whole mob of office-boys and manicure girls and boy wonders and poor deluded rural plungers who had mortgaged their goods to make their ever-lasting fortunes overnight, came back to earth.

One case is enough to cover the whole situation. In 1900 there was a young fellow getting $12 a week for marking up quotations on a board in a broker's office. He bought Reading Railroad at $15 a share, and "pyramided" his winnings as the stock advanced. At the beginning of May, 1901, he was "long" 6000 shares Reading, and it was then $45 a share, and still giving no signs of weakness. With a pencil you can figure what he was worth at that moment. There seemed to be nothing that could keep him from becoming a millionaire. On May 9 the market was shot to pieces. The insiders, who were fighting like hyenas over their prey, suddenly came to terms like gentlemen; and this prospective magnate was cleaned out in half an hour. In the latter part of that summer he was arrested as a hobo while sleeping in an uptown park.

Billy Fortune and the Besetting Sin

By WILLIAM R. LEIGHTON

Illustrations by Douglas Duer

YOU can set down and study on it and sort of figure out the difference between goodness and badness; but you can't tell, to save your life, what makes the difference between a good man and a bad one. No, you can't! It gets too complicated. Yes, I know there's folks that'll give you a mess of easy little rules for it; but the trouble with the rules is that they won't work. There ain't any rules for the kind of goodness that makes a good man.

I'm thinkin' about Sid Foster and a couple of others. When Sid was around, a body didn't seem to need to bother about the rules. Sid was plumb good. He must have been born that way, or else he'd learned it awful young. He'd been a good boy when he come to the Lusk country, and he'd been gettin' better and better for as much as ten years. If you've ever tried it, you know mighty well that ten years is a terrible long time for a man to stay respectable and nice; but Sid had worked it. He'd never done a single thing you could put your finger on that wasn't perfectly proper. You didn't have to stretch things a bit when you called him good.

He'd been good at gettin' ahead, too. When he'd come to the range country he hadn't been nothin' but a green gawk of a hand, workin' for old Clay Burke. His pay wasn't hardly enough to be noticed; but every time he'd draw it down he'd pinch off just the least little mite he just had to have for clothes, and then he'd take the rest and buy a few head of ewe sheep and turn 'em with one of old Clay's bunches. He didn't ever do another blessed thing with his money but that. You know how ewe sheep will sort of accumulate on you if you're lucky. It wasn't but a little while till Sid had a band of his own; and then he quit old Clay and went to work with 'em. After that they just piled up. By the time he was twenty-five or so he had 'em scattered all over. They said he'd done it fair too, without anybody boostin' him. It comes sort of natural to some people.

He was gettin' ahead steady, and he was holdin' himself steady. Steady—that's the very word for him. It was in the way he acted, and it was in his looks. He was real well built, and he had one of these steady chins and a couple of steady eyes, and a steady way of goin' after what he wanted. After a while, when he took to ridin' over pretty steady on Sundays to see old Clay's girl, you could hear the women sayin' what a real good, safe kind of a man he was, and just the one to sort of steady Molly down.

SHE wasn't needin' it, far as I could see. She suited me just the way she was. She'd have suited 'most any man. That was nothin' but the women's way of talkin' about her. You let the women see a girl like her behavin' the way they'd all like to behave if they could, and they'll say she needs tonin' down. There wasn't a thing the matter with her, only she stepped high and held her head high. That was the youngness of her, and old Clay's proudness in havin' a girl that could show class. He hadn't been aimin' to tone her down; he'd been keepin' her keyed up and givin' her all the chance there was in the world for showin' what there was in her. He'd had a lot of class himself in his time, and he relished it a heap in other folks. The women would say that he'd been takin' long chances with the girl since he'd had all her bringin' up to look after—her mother had been dead for years and years; but they couldn't make him take any stock in that.

"A blooded girl," he'd say, "is just like any other kind of a blooded critter. Their spirit has got to be nourished if they're goin' to turn out a credit to you."

There wasn't anybody that seemed able to find out what Clay thought about the Sid Foster proposition. He wasn't sayin'. I tried it myself once, but I didn't get very far. That was one time when I happened to be with old Clay, and Sid and Molly happened to be goin' by on horseback.

"Them two make a plumb nice-lookin' couple, don't they?" I says. "I should think it must content a man fine to know his daughter was liable to do as well as that."

Old Clay took a solemn, comical sort of a sideways squint at me, and then he give a slow chuckle. You always had to make two or three remarks to him, if it was anything important, before he'd start to answer the first one.

"He's a perfectly nice man, Sid is," I says.

Clay stuffed the ashes down in his pipe with the end of his finger and felt for a match to get a new light.

"He's always had a good reputation," I says.

"Yes," says Clay; "they're a nicelookin' couple."

"And Sid must be pretty well fixed by now," I says. "That ought to help some. And he's steady, too." I wasn't sayin' it to help Sid along; I was just pryin'.

Old Clay grunted.

"There's one thing that mebbe you've noticed about lightning," he says. "It mostly picks out its own place to strike."

That's as much as he ever would say. Nor it didn't look as if he was ever goin' to do a thing but just stand back and keep out of the way and give Sid a fair show.

Sid wasn't the only one, though—not by several. That girl could have had her pick any time out of a right fair bunch. Just the same, it was Sid that looked like the best bet till Paul Strang come along.

PAUL set the women to talkin' some more. It wasn't about his steadiness, either. You could have hunted all the way through a great big dictionary without findin' a word that fitted him worse than that one. I don't know what you could have called him. He was big, and dark, and rollicky, and as full of the Old Nick as he could hold. He'd go anywhere with you, and do anything. No, it was worse than that. Most of the time he'd be leadin' the way. He acted just like a man that couldn't ever get weary of seein' and feelin' and tastin' anything there was in the livin' world. The funny thing about it was that you couldn't say he was goin' over the limits, because there didn't seem to be any limits when he was around.

I don't know what he was there for. Maybe he didn't, either. Most likely it just happened that way. He wasn't huntin' a job, because he seemed to have a plenty. I guess he was just siftin' round without aimin' to be anywhere in particular. But there he was.

The first I knew about him was one night at Lusk when he got mixed up with some of us at draw. That's what made me first take to likin' him. That boy could take a hand and clear forget what he was holdin', and then just absorb your chips away from you somehow. It takes a good man to do that. I was likin' him fine by the time he'd done it to me once or twice, and after that I couldn't quit likin' him. It wasn't his goodness I was so fond of, either. I expect it would have bothered a person to locate his goodness—the sort of goodness Sid Foster had. Nor you wouldn't have wanted to call him a wicked man, either. That's what makes it so interestin'. That's the very thing I'm aimin' to tell you. Sid Foster was keepin' every blessed one of the rules for goodness, far as we knew, and Paul wasn't seemin' to pay a speck of attention to any of 'em. That sounds as if it would be awful easy to pick out which was the good man, don't it? All right; but you just wait till I tell you.

Paul hadn't been in Lusk a week till he knew just where all the nice girls were, thirty miles round. That was another thing that made me strong for him. There ain't anything that shows better judgment in a man. And, of course, he found out about Molly Burke.

I was over at Burke's place one Sunday mornin', headin' out towards the Platte to help his men with some horses. I got there in the cool of the day, before things had taken a fair start; but I wasn't there

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soon enough to beat Sid Foster. The folks had had their breakfast, and there was Sid settin' on the front porch in the shade with old Clay. He wasn't payin' much attention to Clay though, only just enough to be polite. He had his eye out for the girl, takin' an uneasy look back in the house every little bit. She was in there, all right; I could hear her goin' round and fussin' with things and hummin' a little song; but she hadn't come to the door yet, nor she didn't appear to be in any rush about it.

By and by Sid got up and stood fidgetin' on his feet.

"I'll find Miss Molly inside?" he says.

Old Clay didn't answer him. He was squintin' at a cloud of dust down the trail.

"Who's that a-comin'?" he says. "Rides like somebody I don't know."

Well, it was Paul. When he got to the gate he tied his pony and come on in, he up the path with that easy way he had. He wasn't rigged up like Sid

was, with snug ridin' breeches and silk and new fifteen-dollar boots. He'd been too wise. He was wearin' gray corduroys, with a gray handkerchief saggin' round his throat. It don't sound like much, but the woman don't live that the have let her attention go slack right then, with him comin' towards the house, unless she was stone blind.

MOLLY had real good eyesight. Back in the house she'd stopped her singin', and then she come and stood in the door. It fooled Sid. He thought he was the one. She wasn't overlookin' him. That wasn't her way. She smiled at him, and said somethin' to him, and let him shake hands with her; but her pretty eyes were watchin' Paul. What's more, Paul was lookin at her. You know how it happens sometimes that your eyes will get acquainted with a person before anybody says a word. That's the way it seemed to be with them two. He hadn't got to the foot of the steps till Molly was blushin' with pleasure, as if she'd just met up with a good old friend.

Paul's hat come off. He'd noticed me, and he gave me a nod and a couple of words before he picked out old Clay.

"Mr. Burke?" he says. "My name's Strang, and this is a friendly call."

Old Clay was squintin' at him, and he begun to give a slow grin while he was shakin' hands; he didn't say anything.

"I've heard a lot about you," says Paul, "and I don't like to miss any chances for meeting the men who count, wherever I happen to be."

CLAY was lookin' him over, takin' his time to it. That way he had would mostly make a stranger nervous; but Paul only laughed.

"I wanted to have a look at this part of the valley too," he says.

"Burke is right," says Clay. "Henry Clay Burke. But I've dropped the Henry."

Paul's eyes was gettin' wishful, but he give another little laugh, and then stood waitin' for old Clay to catch up with him.

"Strang?" says Clay. "Yes; you're the man they tell me can play 'em. And this is a friendly call. Well, you're welcome. Mr. Foster, here, is makin' a friendly call too. Meet Mr. Foster. It does beat all how popular I'm gettin' to be."

I hadn't been noticin' Sid; but I had to then. He didn't appear to be pleased. He was settin' right still in his chair, without offerin' to get up, just starin' at Paul with his mouth open, and not seemin' to notice that Paul was holdin' out his hand. In a minute he made a hard try for it, and struggled up on his feet, with his face gettin' fire-red. It tickled me. A jealous man always seems comical, don't he? Wouldn't that have been the way it would have struck you? It seemed to strike Paul, because he give a short little laugh. He didn't wait, though, for Sid to get hold of himself; nor he didn't wait any longer on old Clay. He just went straight over to Molly, smilin' down at her.

"Of course you can't be anybody but Miss Burke," he says to her.

"I was gettin' to that," says Clay. "Molly, meet Mr. Strang. My daughter."

It was too late then. They'd met already. Neither one of 'em heard him. Old Clay grinned at me and Sid, and then he tipped his chair back against the wall and started smokin', and I went down to tend to Paul's horse for him.

By the time I got back Paul had sure made headway. He was right in the middle of tellin' 'em a funny tale, all on fire with it himself. Old Clay was settin' there, waggin' his whiskers and holdin' his eyes tight shut with the fun of it. Molly didn't have her eyes shut, though; they were wide open and shinin'. Sid was the only one that wasn't enjoyin' himself. Sid couldn't tell a comical tale without makin' a person feel sad. Nor he wasn't appreciatin' Paul's. He was just settin' back in his corner, holdin' himself up stiff and straight and lookin' grim. It didn't appear to matter, because nobody was noticin' him then, except me. He didn't say as much as a word for quite a spell; and then when he did talk he said the wrong thing.

"Miss Molly," he says, "I'd like to walk down to the cottonwoods. Would you care to go with me?"

Molly smiled at him, but she shook her head. "It's too hot," says she; "it's so much pleasanter here."

Paul stayed to dinner, and then he located Molly's piano in the parlor. That rascal certainly could sing. He was at it for an hour with his boomin' bass voice, and sometimes he'd make Molly join in with him. Her singin' sounded like the way a meadow-lark's does the first thing in the spring, before he's begun to feel responsible. Singing was another thing Sid couldn't do. Stayin' steady at the sheep business kind of cramps a man. The only thing he could do was to sit back with his lips tight and his eyes scowlin'.

BY and by old Clay got up and went stragglin' outdoors, with me trailin' him. Down by the horse-lot, he leaned his arms on the top of the fence and stood smokin' and squintin' off across the hills. I could see he was real amused, and I figured that for once mebbe he'd start the talk himself. But he didn't; I had to do that same as usual.

"He's an awful nice man, ain't he?" I says; and then, in a minute, when he didn't let on as if he'd heard me: "I reckon it's natural for a healthy girl to sort of like variety in men-folks," I says.

He didn't give a sign of hearin'.

"Liveliness like his and steadiness like Sid's are a long ways apart, ain't they?"

Even then I didn't get what I was fishin' for. Old Clay commenced to knock his pipe against the fence-post and blew through the stem a few times.

"Yes, Billy," he says. "If everybody in the world was all just alike, it would be horrible humdrum."

IF it was variety we was wantin', it begun to look pretty soon as if we'd have a plenty of it. You couldn't have been prepared for the thing that come next. I sure wasn't.

It was gettin' along past the middle of the afternoon, and I'd gone down to the bunch of cottonwoods beside the creek to loaf a while with myself on the soft grass in the shade. I'd had a couple of cigarettes, and I guess I must have been startin' to snooze, because I never heard Sid and Paul comin' till they got just a little ways from me and stopped. What waked me up was the sound of Sid's voice. It wasn't much like his voice, either: it wasn't a bit steady—it was shrill and hard and excited. I wasn't sure it was his till I'd took a little peek through the grass. There couldn't be any mistake about his bein' excited. He was white and shakin', with his eyes blazin' hot.

"For God's sake!" he says. "What are you goin' to do?"

There wasn't any excitement about Paul. His voice was away down deep, with a kind of a lazy drone in it.

"Do?" he says. "I? I don't understand you."

"Yes, you do!" says Sid. "What are you here for? You're the only man on earth that can harm me here, and you know it! Is that what you're up to?"

Paul looked at him a minute before he answered.

"Oh!" he says, velvet-soft. "I'm the only man on earth who knows? You must be thinking of the little affair with the Albright girl. Is that it?"

"You know that's it!" says Sid. He was gettin' shriller and shriller. "I had your word that no one should ever know."

Paul give a deep, quiet kind of a laugh, but it didn't sound as if he was enjoyin' the fun of it.

"Oh!" he says again. "I fancied you would have forgotten that. That was all

---

settled, wasn't it, when you provided for her? I believe she thought so. I've looked after her a bit occasionally, when it was convenient. I saw her in Chicago a few weeks ago. She appeared to be quite comfortable. Your name wasn't mentioned; I thought that was all past."

"Past!" says Sid. He was pretty near screamin'. "How can a thing like that ever be past?"

He stepped up close to Paul and caught hold of his arm.

"Listen!" he says. "I told you the absolute truth when it happened. That's the only thing I've done in my life that I've been ashamed of. I told you that then."

"Yes," Paul says, perfectly quiet. "You told me. I remember admiring your high standards. That didn't keep me from being a little severe with you, on the girl's account. One must look after his friends, even if his own standards are not of the highest."

Sid's face was the color of a big piece of chalk, and his lips were twistin' so he couldn't talk.

"She'll keep her bargain with you," Paul says. "She's rather light-minded, you know—one of the sort that likes to forget unpleasant things. Women of her type can do it rather easily. I think we may say she's forgotten."

Sid gave Paul's arm a shake.

"It's you!" he says. "I'm not afraid of the girl. It's you!"

Somehow, Paul could say a lot of things by laughin'. It didn't sound so pleasant to me that time. He pulled his arm away from Sid's hold and stepped back.

"Go on," he says. "What's your idea?"

"I wasn't expecting ever to see you again," says Sid. "And now, having you turn up this way— You can find out what my reputation is here. It's clean, I tell you. I want to keep it that way. If these people knew—"

Paul stopped him short.

"That's enough! I don't want to hear any more of that. I know what you're driving at. Now let me tell you something. My reputation isn't so stainless as yours. I've left a plain trail by the careless things I've done. Your one poor little sin, that frightens you so, seems to me just shabby and contemptible. That's because of the way you take it. You didn't take it like a man then. It was your own immaculate soul you were concerned about, and not what would happen to the girl. That's true now. You haven't asked after the girl at all. I despised you for that then. It struck me that your sin was a lot more decent than your atonement—just bargaining for silence, so your reputation wouldn't be hurt. I'd despise myself if my strongest passion was the fear of being found out. If you want to know it, I'd rather live with my reputation than with yours."

He stopped himself with that, as if he'd been sayin' more than he meant to.

"That doesn't matter! What you're afraid of now is that I may tell on you. I sha'n't. My own besetting sin won't let me. I'm a great liar. I've always been ready to go to any length in lying anybody out of scrapes, and I've never in my life said anything to get anybody into one. It's a passion with me. My record's black with the lies I've told, trying to save folks from what they've done. I don't stop at any sort of lie, when I'm in the notion. I've never tried it for a man like you. I shouldn't like it; but I'd sooner do that than the thing you're afraid of."

I guess Sid hadn't heard all of it. It seemed as if his mind had caught just one thing that Paul was sayin'—the thing he was thinkin' most about himself. If he'd heard it all, he wouldn't hardly have done what he did. He wouldn't hardly have put out his hand for a shake, would he?

"I have your word, then?" he says.

Paul didn't answer that. "I've said enough," he says; and he stuck his hands down in his pockets and turned round and walked away.

IT got plumb interestin' after that. It would have been interestin' even if I hadn't heard about Sid. There was one thing that Paul hadn't give his word for. He hadn't promised he'd go away and keep out of Sid's road and let Molly alone. Nor he didn't do it. He stayed right there. It got so pretty soon that he was at Burke's place a heap oftener than Sid. Sometimes he'd show up in the middle of the week with a bunch of music for a sing; or else he'd go ridin' with her for the whole of an afternoon, off through the hills; or else mebbe he'd just be hangin' round. He sure wasn't losin' any time.

Everybody in the country knew about it. Then was when the real talkin' started. Pretty near wherever you happened to be in the country, you could hear 'em talkin' and wonderin' and guessin', all nervous and worked up.

Molly and old Clay seemed to be the only ones of 'em all that wasn't excited. You could tell, though, that the girl was certainly enjoyin' herself fine. She wasn't playin' any favorite between 'em. Far as anybody could see, she was just relishin' both of 'em and kind of bidin' her time. Do you understand how a woman can do that? A man can't, can he? A man's mind is built for just one at a time. Mebbe he'll change real often; but he ain't able to keep two goin' at once without gettin' confused.

WE had to wait as much as a month or so for the beginnin' of the showdown. It was another Sunday when it commenced. Paul and Sid was both there, same as usual; and then, in the middle of the mornin', Clay told me to put a team to the mountain wagon, and we'd all take our dinner with us and eat it in Muskrat Canon.

Wouldn't you have thought Molly would be bound to have trouble with the two of 'em like that? Well, she didn't. She'd go gatherin' flowers with Paul for a while; and then she'd let Sid take her down the canon a little ways, to shoot at a mark; and then after that she'd be admirin' a moss agate Paul had found for her, or listenin' to Sid tellin' her about the old minin' town that used to be there—first one and then the other, without either one of 'em seemin' to get ahead any. It was amusin' to me till it got tedious. By noon I wasn't watchin' 'em any more. And then, after we'd had our dinner, and Paul took her with him scrambling up the high rocks for a look at the view, I went off by myself over to the old shaft they'd put down when they'd been huntin' for copper.

They'd never found anything but little streaks and pockets, but they'd made a plumb deep hole. I set on the edge of it for a while, lettin' my feet dangle over, droppin' little stones down and listenin' to 'em go bouncin' to the bottom.

"Billy," I says to myself, "don't you wish you had the money they've blew in here? They must have spent a sight." I threw in another stone and set listenin'. "Mebbe they just missed it," says I. "Mebbe there's somethin' down there. Mebbe you and me might have blind luck enough to locate it." So that's how it come that pretty soon I swung over the edge and started down the rough old ladder that was hung to the side of the wall.

The hole was deeper than I'd figured. After I'd got part way down there wasn't but just the least little bit of dim daylight to see by. I quit then and climbed off the ladder and crawled into a hole that went sideways, where they'd tried prospectin'. It was darker yet in there. I set and smoked a cigarette till my eyes would sort of get used to it, and then I begun pickin' round with my jack-knife, where the copper stain was showin'. It was nothin' but foolishness, but I didn't have anything else to do.

I guess I'd been at it half an hour or so before here come Clay and Paul and Sid down the ladder. The old man always had believed there was copper down there; he'd put some of his money in the hole, and he was explainin' it to the other two. I kept still and let 'em pass on.

They didn't stay so very long after they'd got to the bottom. Old Clay come back first, ahead of the other two. He got out before they'd any more than started. Sid was the next one, with Paul behind him. They didn't appear to be in any hurry, because every little bit they'd stop on the ladder and I'd hear one or the other of 'em speakin'. I couldn't get what they was sayin' till they got right in front of my hole. Then I could see Sid stop and turn his head to look down.

"You gave me your word," he says. "Is that all your word's worth? What affair is it of yours, anyway?"

Paul was talkin' pretty grim. I guess he'd said most of what he wanted to say.

"I'll not argue that with you," he says. "This is another matter now. It's very much my affair now. It's more than your safety I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about the girl. You've got to come clean with that girl before we go any further."

SID wasn't so very quick with answerin'. He hung on to the ladder a minute just the way he was, starin' down, before he could think of what to say.

"Then you're going to tell?"' he says.

"I'm going to make you tell," says Paul. "If you were a man I shouldn't have to. If you were a man, you'd do it on your own account. I've told her father everything about myself. He says it's for her to choose. But you'll not get her by hiding what you've done. I'm going to make you come clean too."

He'd crawled up close till he was grippin' the ladder by Sid's feet. I'll never tell you if Sid studied it out till he meant to do it. Mebbe it was somethin' that

---

just blazed up sudden in his mind. He lifted his foot and kicked Paul's hand, stampin' on it twice, puttin' all his weight on it. He was a real heavy man. It was awful sudden, and it must have hurt a heap. Paul didn't have time to do a thing but just cry out once, sharp, and then turn loose of the ladder and go tumblin' backwards down the hole.

It looked as if Sid was as much surprised as anybody. He hung there, without makin' a sound, lookin' and listenin'; and then he started scramblin' up towards the top, hard as he could go, screamin' and yellin' for help.

I was down with Paul quite a while before Sid and old Clay come. It was so dark I couldn't tell a thing about how bad Paul was hurt. He'd had his senses all knocked out of him.

"He's livin', though," I says; "I can feel his heart. It's goin' to be a sweet job gettin' him out of here. It must be as much as a hundred feet or better to the top. We'll have to hitch ourselves to him with a rope and drag him up the ladder."

IT was Sid that went after the rope. I was squattin' on the ground, easin' Paul up against my knees so as to get him up out of the wet ooze, with old Clay standin' over me.

"Billy," says Clay, "how do you reckon it happened?"

That was one time when he started a Conversation by himself, and it was just when it wasn't convenient. I hadn't been studyin' any about explainin' how it happened, and it caught me up pretty short.

"I guess he must have fell," I says.

Old Clay snorted. "How did you happen to get here so quick?" he says. "Where were you?"

I wasn't goin' to tell him anything. "Oh," I says, "I was just ramblin' round. I've always been spry on my feet." I expect that wasn't so very satisfactory. It just as good as told him I knew somethin' was hidin'. But it was the only thing I could think of so quick. He didn't push me any more, though. He stood the way he was till Sid come back, bringin' a couple of ropes and some straps off the harness, and then we set to work.

It must have been a mercy that Paul didn't know anything about how bad we was hurtin' him, gettin' him out of there, lettin' him dangle and bump against the rocks. It took us a good while till we'd pulled him out and laid him down at the top of the shaft. He wasn't so very nice to look at, all muddy and marked up and kind of sagged together in a pile, without much shape to him. Molly was waitin', but old Clay sent her away.

"Go fix a bed in the wagon," he says to her, "while I'm gettin' the horses put in."

And then, when we'd got Paul loaded up, Clay made her set on the front seat with him. She sure wouldn't have enjoyed herself, back behind with us. Sid wasn't enjoyin' himself, either. He was seared white and sick. He couldn't hardly take his eyes off of Paul, except to give me a dazed look once in a while; and he didn't hardly speak for the whole of the way in.

WHEN we got him home, you couldn't have told a thing about him except that he wasn't dead yet. Old Clay and me got him on a bed, and washed him off the best we could. After that there wasn't a thing to do but wait till the doctor got there, along towards night. It wasn't much better then, because the doctor said he was goin' to make a die of it sure before mornin'.

He didn't, though. It don't matter what you do to a man, you can't kill him till his time comes. If Paul had got killed fallin' down that hole, it would have been awful incomplete, wouldn't it? It took him a good while—days and days—but he pulled through, with old Clay and me takin' turns settin' with him, and with Molly hangin round the door. Sid didn't come in at all. 'Most every day I'd see him ride up to the house, and in between whiles he'd be telephonin'; but he didn't come in where Paul was.

It took Paul as much as three weeks to get where he could talk. He was doin' pretty well at that; but he was one of the kind that's got lots of bounce in 'em. By and by, one mornin' when I was with him, he fidgeted for a while, in bed, and then pretty soon he made me prop him up with a bunch of pillows. It did look terrible good to see him settle back and give a crooked kind of a grin at me. He grinned at Clay too, when he come in.

"Well," he says, "I'm all right now. I'll be better than ever in a few days."

Old Clay come up close to the edge of the bed and stood squintin' down at him.

"That's good," he says, real blunt. "Now I want you to tell me how this thing happened."

He didn't catch Paul so sudden as he'd caught me. Paul had had time to think about it; lyin' there.

"How it happened?" he says. "Why, don't you know? One of the rounds of the old ladder gave way under me. I suppose you and Foster must have weakened it."

"Oh!" says Clay. "The ladder broke! That was it. Of course! But the ladder was all right when we carried you up it."

I hated to see a good lie go to waste like that.

"It was me that fixed the ladder," I says. "I took a rock and drove the piece back on. I expect you didn't notice, you bein' so kind of excited."

"Yeh!" says Clay, real deliberate. "I expect that must have been it. I ain't much of a hand to notice things, anyway. The ladder broke. But you don't remember, do you, about steppin' on your hand with your own foot while you was comin' up?"

He made a quick move and caught Paul's free hand, holdin' it up where we could see. I swear I hadn't noticed it particular till right then; but there was the blue bruised mark of a boot-heel, plain as print. Paul certainly wasn't bein' good enough with it.

"I expect I must have done that," I says. "It was so dark down there, a body was pretty near bound to be clumsy."

Old Clay took a squint at me. "You're clumsy yet, Billy," he says. "Stick up your boot."

What would have been the use of that? I could see as well as he could that the mark had been cut by a brand-new boot-heel, and my heels were all run over and bulged out of shape. I kept my feet down.

"You're a couple of liars," Clay says; "it's easy enough to see that. But it's hard to tell what you're doing it for."

Paul spoke real gentle. "No; that's easy too," he says. "It's merely habit. If I'm lying to you, it's merely because I'm a liar."

Old Clay wasn't suited. "I'm goin' to get the straight of this," he says, and he went and jerked open the door. "Foster!" he calls. "Come in here!"

It wasn't Sid that come; it was Molly. Her pretty cheeks were hot with color, and she was holdin' her head up high.

"Mr. Foster isn't here," says she. "He'll not come here any more."

It made old Clay catch his breath. "Well!" says he. "I'll be—jiggered!"

HE could have made it stronger than that if he'd wanted to, without her hearin' him. She didn't hardly know he was there. She was lookin' past him, over at the bed; and the next minute she come on in with that proud step of hers, and straight over to Paul, standin' and lookin' down at him—lookin' and lookin'. There wasn't anybody sayin' a word. I didn't even have the gumption to get up and go out. It didn't matter; she didn't know I was there, either. There wasn't anybody in the room right then but just her and Paul—there wasn't anybody in the world but them two. I could see it comin'. It didn't surprise me a mite when she stooped over pretty soon and took Paul's hand, and then dropped on her knees, cuddlin' his hand against her cheek.

Paul could see it comin', too. It was in his eyes. He was fightin' hard against it and givin' up to it, both at once.

"Oh, little girl!" he says, away down under his breath. "I'm a great sinner! You know that. There's no sin that's forbidden that hasn't got the best of me, one time or another. I've sinned them all. One time or another, every sin on the list has been my besetting sin. You know!"

She lifted her head and looked at him again. He wasn't what you'd call pretty, all streaked and marked and tied up; but she seemed to find somethin' worth lookin' at.

"I know!" she says. "I do know! But there's something you've kept through it all—something no sin has touched—something fine and clean and strong. I love it!"

I reckon I'd be settin' there yet if I hadn't caught sight of old Clay, over by the door, makin' motions at me. I got up and sneaked outside with him. We didn't stop till we got down to the horse-lot. He wasn't sayin' a word.

"Well, gee whiz!" I says. "It sure does look as if besettin' sins are a good thing to have, don't it?"

He was pickin' little pieces of bark off a post, like he was givin' his whole mind to it. I had to try again.

"The man-and-woman business is sure funny, ain't it?" I says.

Even yet he wasn't noticin' me.

"If you was goin' to pick out just one besettin' sin for yourself," I says, "which one would it be? It would bother me."

He straightened up.

"Man, many" he says. "If it wasn't for the sins that beset us, what would we ever have knew about the grace of God?"

"The grace of God?" I says. "It's the grace of women, I'd say."

"It's all the same," says he. "It's the grace of God that's in 'em that makes 'em what they are to us."

I wouldn't ever have thought of sayin' it that way; but I wouldn't wonder if he was sort of right about it.

Behind the Bolted Door?

By ARTHUR E. McFARLANE

Illustration by Henry Raleigh

"A TINY pellet of fused white metal, somewhere near, or in, the swimming-pool," Dr. Laneham had said. Not a bullet, obviously. But, if not, what could it be?

Laneham offered no explanation. McGloyne did not know. Willings could not. And yet, as he stood there looking straight before him, one might have said that already, at the bottom of his soul, Willings half suspected.

Meanwhile he waited in the Casa Grande till the Doctor had taken Glasbury to a temporary sanatorium at 390. In half an hour Laneham was back again.

"Jacobs can take care of him quite well now," he said. "Judge Bishop is down there too—with D. Hope and Jimmy. I've told them, if they'll wait, we may be able to report on this."

And again they went up to that big, murder-haunted swimming-pool room.

Once more they had only to throw on the electrics in the great alabaster bell hanging above the pool to have light enough. But the Doctor had also brought along a pocket flash.

He closed and locked both doors, so that they would not be interrupted. On one of the dusty green flower benches lay a long-handled brush. He picked it up and handed it to Willings.

"I want you to sweep around the edge of the pool with this," he said. "But wait a minute; I think we can make our first verification from the water itself."

He stepped back to the pool, bent far over its barrier-like brim, and took up some water in his palm.

"If what I believe to be true is true," he said, "this water should be salt."

Wonderingly they stooped, each in turn dipping a finger in the water and tasting it.

It was salt.

"But mightn't it—isn't it just sea salt?" Willings asked.

"No; this is common salt," the Doctor answered. "And there's all the difference in life—or death. Well, now to our real work."

Willings followed him, and took up his brush again.

THE Doctor explained roughly.

According to McGloyne, no matter what might have been done in Fisher's own rooms, no cleaning work of any sort had been done about the pool since the hour of the crime. Therefore, whatever had been on the floor then, if not so small that it could be carried out on some one's shoes, should be there still.

"It may be only the minutest globule," he said, "like a droplet from a plumber's iron. But we must try to find it. Go over every inch of the floor; my own work will be higher up."

"How do you mean?" Willings asked him.

"I'm going to look first for some place where a file, a very small file, has been in use."

And, crossing to the other side of the room, he began to examine the walls minutely. It was evident that he was working according to some definite plan. Starting at the wall, his eyes moved rapidly to the ceiling, then along it to that great, whitely radiant, moonlike bell. But there he looked again at Willings, and the younger man took up his brush and turned away to his own work. He saw only that Laneham had mounted the flower stand. And the next moment there came from him a triumphant cry.

"I've found it!" he cried. "Oh, no, never mind about the details now. I'll just go to work again with you, and maybe we'll get everything!"

There was no second brush. But, dropping almost face down, Laneham stretched his flash in front of him upon the tiles, and began to sweep them levelly with its little searching beam.

"It's an even chance that it's in the water. But, at least, we must make sure outside first. Up there near the faucets and the nickel work—"

He got no further. A second time his search was ended before it really had begun. To the right of the faucets was a small marble step. In the little corner between it and the side of the pool, some dust and fluff had gathered; and there, in the midst, was something that glittered faintly.

The Doctor picked it up. It looked exactly as he had said it might look. One would have said it was some little solder globule left by plumbing work. But, handing it to Willings, "What do you notice first?" he asked.

"Why, its weight! The thing's heavier than gold."

"Yes; it's platinum."

"Platinum! Platinum?" And then, into the face of Willings came a fixed look never brought to it by any mere droplet of heavy metal. "Doctor," he said, "I want to tell you something."

"Yes?" At his tone Laneham quickly turned.

"It's the evidence—the Zancray stuff—that I've been holding out. I believed implicitly till this minute that it couldn't matter, and my only idea was to protect the innocent. But I've got to tell you now."

And he did....

"Willings!"

"It's true, none the less."

"Well—well, at least you know now how important it was, and now you've got to help me to have one more talk with the others."

In another five minutes they were on their way back to Seventy-second Street.

The Judge, Daphne Hope, and Jimmy were still waiting for them. Laneham went to his point directly:

"Willings has just been telling me something, and something to the last degree important. No, I won't say what it was; but it was his 'Zancray evidence,' the thing he felt justified in holding back at the beginning. And all three of you have confessed to doing the same thing; You have your hold-backs, too. Now, once again, to prevent the martyring of those who may be innocent, I ask you to speak before it is too late. In a few hours Glasbury may confess; but until he does—"

A LOOK that seemed to ache in the eyes of D. Hope turned Dr. Laneham's attention first to her.

"You told us you were keeping silent because of a promise given Mrs. Fisher. If in these last hours you feel, for any reason, that morally you are now released from it—?"

"Oh, I do! I do!" she cried. "But, Doctor, may I—just for the present—can't you let me tell it just to you?"

"By all means. It would be better so." And he drew her with him into his office.

Minute after minute passed; they could hear her sobbing. Then for a long time the Doctor seemed to be asking questions. And when he opened the door

Continued on page 16

They Could Buy the Theaters They Used to Play In

Kings and Queens of America

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Women Who Worry

The Popcorn Man

By MARY SYNON

Illustrations by J. C. Coll

OCTOBER, lifting banners of purple and scarlet and gold, met the Popcorn Man as he drove into the North Shore Road. Hildegard Hadley, swinging along toward the Country Club, met him in front of the eagled gate of the university. October, knowing him for one of her vagabond children, gave to the Popcorn Man gracious greeting. Hildegarde Hadley, slim and circumspect would have passed him by, had he not whistled to her.

Hearing the call, she scanned the pavement and the flat fronts of the fraternity houses that faced her college world with the impenetrability of ancient Egypt. Neither pavement nor walls betrayed human presence. Hildegarde strode on. Again the whistle sounded, too melodious for bluejay, too impertinent for robin. Hildegarde turned, and saw at the edge of the parkway a white wagon, drawn by a sturdy brown horse and driven by a white-jacketed, brown-haired young man. The young man's eyes were twinkling, and his lips were curved in a friendly smile. As Hildegarde paused, he flung the reins out of the front window of the popcorn wagon.

"Halloa!" he caroled to her.

"You!" she cried. With her feet planted and her hands deep down in her pockets, she looked as if she were bracing herself to withstand a shock.

"I," said the Popcorn Man, bringing his hand to his forehead in salute. He came out of the wagon as Hildegarde crossed the parkway, and stepped forward to meet her with a jauntiness of bearing that betokened some Gallic strain in his blood. "And very much at your service," he laughed. He studied Hildegarde with brown eyes that softened as they rested upon her radiant young fairness "Will you have some of my popcorn? Or do you prefer peanuts—fresh, hot roasted peanuts?"

"How did you lose the wager?" Hildegarde demanded, letting her hand lie in his eager clasp for a moment.

"I didn't lose it. I won it."

"What's it all about?"

"This?" He waved to the wagon with pride. "Did you ever hear of economic independence?" he inquired.

"Hear of it?" Hildegarde's laugh had all the joy of the outdoor world in its notes. "Doesn't my father preach it, in his books, from dewy dawn to dewy eve?"

"He does," conceded the Popcorn Man; "and I practise it every day from noon until midnight."

"What's the joke?"

"It's not a joke. It's stern reality. I am earning my daily bread by making and selling popcorn to the youth of the North Shore. It's very good popcorn, really."

"David Ross, do you mean to tell me you've given up a college professorship to drive a popcorn wagon?”

"I've taken a leave of absence to make the experiment."

"You're mad—mad as a March hare!"

"On the contrary, I'm beginning to believe myself the only sane man who has ever escaped in time from yon gray walls." He waved blithely in the direction of the stately buildings of the university.

"Whatever made you think of it?"

"If I were to analyze my inspirations," The Popcorn Man said, "I believe I should have to give the credit of the impelling idea to your father."

"To my father?" Amazement lifted Hildegarde's voice.

"I read his last novel, a charming story of a countess who went through Brittany in a gypsy van. I didn't want to go to Brittany, but liked the idea of the van. I've some Scotch in me, though, and I disliked the notion of aimless and underprofitable wanderings; so I bought this wagon. Rather nice, isn't it? Did you ever ride in a popcorn wagon?"

"Of course not!"

"You might find it enjoyable, as well as unique. Won't you try?"

He smiled as he saw her quick glance scan the roadway, the campus, and the flat fronts of the scarabic fraternity houses before she gave answer. The answer was as feminine as the curls that clustered at the back of her neck. "Where are you going?"

"Anywhere—nowhere. Mornings hold my leisure hours. Popcorn is not a matitudinal food. The demand for it begins when the school gong clangs out the information that hungry little children are about to emerge from their afternoon tasks to a brighter world. Where are you bound?"

"The Country Club."

"On the Ridge?"

"Yes."

"Let me drive you there."

"Oh, I—"

"I dare you!"

"Well, then—"

WHEN he had found a place for her at his side on the cushioned seat back of the counter, he took up the reins. The big white van jogged along the road, brushing against the low branches of trees as it took its way past the yellowing lawns and big houses of the Shore Road. As it passed a spacious house of white frame, still adorned with summery awnings of red and white, Hildegarde laughed.

"What do you suppose father would say if he saw me?"

"He'd say, 'My child has profited by my philosophy of life. She is bound by none of the silly, snobbish ideas that hold in slavery the maidens of this intellectually enlightened but emotionally benighted town.' Isn't that what he'd say?"

"Perhaps you think it is." Hildegarde dimpled as she cautiously peeped at the verandas of the white house. "You see, you only know my father through his books. Father's very unconventional in his novels. He talks about Sapphiras as if he had gone to school with them; but he wouldn't let mother call on Mrs.—oh, I mustn't say her name, but she's the woman father chose for one of his heroines, although he'd never met her."

"And your mother didn't call?"

"No; but I did. She sounded interesting in father's story."

"Was she?"

"Not a bit. She talked about her clothes for twenty minutes before I could get away."

"What did your father say?"

"He said he feared that I'd inherited his imagination plus a quality of dramatic creativeness that drove me to elaborate in action what he devised in plot. If you know what he meant, you're welcome to think it of me."

"I should like to believe it of you."

"Why?"

"Because one of your father's heroines would choose to go to the end of the world—in a popcorn wagon." His side-long glance, as well as his intonation, sent the blood to Hildegarde's face.

"You—you mustn't talk about that again, David," she said earnestly.

"Never before in my life did I suggest that you ride in a popcorn wagon."

"You—you know what I mean."

"I'm not quite sure that I do know what you meant. That's why I whistled to you. You see, you were a little vague in the last conversation we had."

"You mean—in June?"

"The seventeenth of June, to be exact. We had walked along the shore on the campus up to the life-saving station. It was, you may remember, a very beautiful night, the sort of night when even college professors on incredibly small salaries lose their heads and propose to the daughters of rich, famous, and popular authors. Why don't girls ever lose their heads, Hildegarde?"

"They do, sometimes."

"In your father's books?"

"Out of them once in a while, David. But can't you see that—? Oh, why do we have to talk about it again? And here—and now?" Her wide-eyed gaze wandered furtively out over the wide lawns and the hospitably broad verandas, with frightened consciousness that a popcorn wagon may focus the attention of scores of eyes.

"Well, we have to talk about it sometime, don't we?"

"Oh, David, you know that I meant what I said before I went away!"

"I know you meant part of what you said. That's why I'm selling popcorn."

"I don't see how—?"

"It's quite simple. You said you believed your father was right when he advised you never to marry a man on a salary. You said you simply couldn't or wouldn't settle down into a professor's wife. You said it firmly. Then you went away to Bar Harbor to visit the Hastings, who have five million dollars and a good-looking son who likes you. I went up in the Rainy Lake country, and watched the northern stars, and read Swinburne, and told myself that I should 'never again be friends with roses.' I mooned around up there for a month. Then I woke up with a start, and I looked life in the face. I saw myself as you saw me, and I came back to work over the job. I asked for a leave of absence from the Romance Department, and I bought this wagon, and painted it white. Don't you like it?"

"No, I don't." Her eyes blazed fire. "I think you're making fun of me. I meant what I said about your being a professor. I hate professors. I hated myself for not hating you for being a professor. I thought you ought to go into business. But I didn't mean that I wanted you to go on a popcorn wagon. It's too humiliating!"

"It's perfectly honest, legitimate business, Hildegarde." The laughter went out of his voice. "I'm supplying a real need, even though I'm not a producer. It's on a small scale, I'll admit, at present; but it's not going to stay small. I'm making more money now than I earned in the university, and I'm going to make more than this. And the money I make is more honest than most of the money that built all this!"

He pointed to the big houses along the road. "Incidentally, I'm enjoying life. Instead of teaching the elements of the French language to eighteen young men and seventeen young women, who are thinking about the football championship and the fall styles, I'm teaching myself that there's a great big, glorious world right out here in front of us. Look!"

THE brown horse had ambled along past the Gross Point Lighthouse and up toward the Ridge, drawing the white wagon to a high point of vantage over the fields and woods and lake of the North Shore. To the east the lake rippled to the horizon in a splendor of amethyst and turquoise and jade. To the south flamed October woods, the oaks rusty red, the elms Franciscan brown, the maples amber yellow. A little brown house set in a thicket of flaming salvia, of pale asters, of regal purple and crimson dahlias, of late orange marigolds, of tall, delicately tinted cosmos, peeped at them like some shy thrush. To west and north rolled the October fields, brown and gold with the stubble of wheat and corn, purple and gold with wild asters and goldenrod. Over all rested the blue haze of autumn. "There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir," quoted the Popcorn Man. "Let us rise and follow her," he went on, reaching with his own free hand for Hildegarde's. But Hildegarde drew back; and he ended, a little sadly: "When with her skies of blue and hills of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name."

He gazed out over the upland shore with eyes that softened upon the lingering loveliness of the departed summer-time. "I hoped you'd see it my way," he said. "I'm sorry, dear, that you can't."

"Oh, it's lovely!" Hildegarde sighed. "But, David—"

"Yes?"

"We aren't story-book people."

"Why can't we be? Story-book people are the ones who do the right things, aren't they? They're the people with the truer vision. They know the fundamental things of life, and they don't bother with the non-essentials. The trouble with us is that we run around in circles, snatching petty toys from other chasing

---

children, till sometimes we don't even see the great gift life's trying to offer us. The story-book people never miss that. For love's the great gift, isn't it? That's why they're wise—and happy."

"You talk just like one of father's heroes." Her voice trembled a little as she began, but it gained decision as she went on. "And act like one. You're making yourself and me ridiculous, David. And I won't be made ridiculous. I'm going to walk the rest of the way." She stood up in the wagon, her hands in the pockets of her coat. The Popcorn Man appraised her power of determination, and drove the brown-horse to the edge of the road. "Shall I bring back the carriage at five, my lady?" he asked as he helped her descend.

"It isn't funny, David," she said.

"It is very funny, Hildegarde," he contradicted.

But, as he drove back toward the town, the glory of October had gone from sky and lake, from woods and fields. A great wind rose from the water, whirling the waves to foam and scattering dead leaves over the fallow fields. The brown horse ambled along stumblingly, feeling no guiding hand upon the reins. The Popcorn Man was thinking.

HE was still thinking, when he reached the North Shore Road. He had just come abreast of the white house with red and white awnings when a man came down the brick walk to the hedge. He lifted a commanding finger in the direction of the Popcorn Man.

David, recognizing Hildegarde's father, halted the brown horse. "Popcorn, sir?" he inquired, shaking the popper over the gasolene light.

"I'll take a bag or two." Hadley came beside the wagon and eyed the Popcorn Man gravely, although there was a twinkle in his eyes behind his spectacles.

David handed two bags of popcorn to Hildegarde's father.

"Do you like to sell popcorn?" asked Mr. Hadley.

"I do." David smiled down at him from the superior height of the wagon.

"You haven't been doing it long?"

"Two months."

"Didn't I hear that you had been a professor at the university?"

"Probably."

"Were you?"

"Yes."

"I'm a writer," Hildegarde's father explained. "My name is Hadley, Warren Phillips Hadley. I'm really very much interested in your experiment, and I thought—"

"I'm grateful to you for the interest," said the Popcorn Man. "My name's David Ross, and I've read every book you wrote. It was your last one, 'The Romany Rose,' that sent me gypsying." He met Hadley's beaming regard with cordial friendliness. "Won't you come in?" he invited the older man.

The Popcorn Man had the gift of hospitality and a boyish charm that had been capital in the co-educational enrolment for the Romance Department of the university. Hadley accepted his invitation, settling himself comfortably in the place where Hildegarde had been. "I wonder," he ventured, "if there isn't a story back of your resolve?"

"There is," said the Popcorn Man. He turned his horse in the direction away from the Ridge Road, going into more frequented highways, now filling with throngs of students from morning classes.

"There's a girl," he told Hildegarde's father,—"a very wonderful, beautiful girl, and I care for her, and I'm hoping she'll come to care for me, and I'm trying to make enough money for us both to live on."

"Splendid!"

"No, it's not. She doesn't like the idea of having me run a popcorn perambulator."

"She hasn't the right idea." Hadley waxed warm. "Are you sure that she understands how really epochal this venture of yours may be? Why, it's interested me tremendously. It seems to me the solution of many of our urgent economic problems. We have too many professional and semi-professional men on pauper salaries—too few cultured young men in buccaneer business. Why, my dear Ross, you're a pioneer! Doesn't she see that?"

"I've tried to make her, but she doesn't."

"I should like to meet her."

"I hope you will."

At Fountain Square Warren Phillips Hadley emerged from the popcorn wagon, triumphant possessor of two bags of popcorn and a hundred mental notes upon the delightful personality of David Ross. The Popcorn Man watched him enter the bank, then chuckled as he drove the white wagon back toward the university grounds.

DAVID cooked luncheon on the gasolene burner while the wagon stood in front of the eagled gate, sharing the repast with two divinity students who looked hungry. In the afternoon he drove along the shore, letting the reins droop while he wove dreams out of the blue October haze.

A troop of children, loitering homeward from school, met him before he reached the Country Club. There were a dozen riding in his wagon, plaid-ginghamed girls and flannel-shirted boys, when they passed the club-house. Hildegarde was just entering the Hastings' motor as the white wagon went by. The fun of his frolic suddenly ended.

He met her again, however, on the next afternoon. She was walking down the road, and he routed the children out of the wagon to make room for her. "I shouldn't do this," she said, "but I must talk with you. It was perfectly absurd for you to tell father what you did."

"About you?"

"Well, he doesn't know, of course, that it's about me, and he thinks that the girl is some silly, money-mad little fool who can't appreciate a real hero. You see, father looks at it just from a novelist's point of view. He talked about you so long at dinner last night that I almost told him that I was the girl."

"Why didn't you?"

"Don't you see, David,"—she tried to be patient,—"that it will be altogether different when he knows I'm the girl? Oh, David, why don't you go back to the university?"

"But you don't like professors."

"I like them better than peddlers."

"I've made one sacrifice for you, Hildegarde, and I can't go back now."

They were silent as he drove through the twilight past the little brown house at the edge of the wood. They were strangely quiet when they came to the place of the wide lawn. Only when he halted the wagon for her at the corner near her home did he speak.

"I suppose this is the end?" he asked her.

"It's the end," she said, and went away through the purple twilight.

The Popcorn Man did not sing on the days that followed. The children, feeling, as children do, his friendliness, did not heed his distemper, but played

in his wagon in the afternoons. The divinity students kept coming to him for his sympathy as much as for his more material hospitality. One by one the students in his last year's classes found him out and made little coteries in the evenings around his wagon, talking with him, sometimes seriously, sometimes banteringly, of his vocation. Hadley came often, choosing to ride with him around town. But he never saw Hildegarde.

One night he left the wagon with one of the divinity students. It was a moon-light night. The Popcorn Man strolled near to Hadley's house, stopping almost beneath the open windows of a rose-lighted room. Some one was playing softly. Then some one began to sing, and he knew Hildegarde's voice. She was singing, to music he had never before heard, a song of Housman's he had taught her:

"Into the heart an air that kills
From you far country blows;
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms, are those?"

A memory of the day on the shore, a day of white clouds and of distant sails, when she had said the words after him, rushed over him. The thrill of life, of love, welled up in him as Hildegarde sang:

"That is time land of lost content,
I see it shining plain;
The happy highways where I went,
And can not go again."

The happy highways—how far they stretched to lands of yesterday! What dreams had paved them, what flowers had blossomed in their fields! Even now they summoned him, calling by the memory of Hildegarde's half-confession. If he went back to the university, would she come to him then?

The memory of his pleas to her on that June night when they had looked upon the lake together came back to him as he stood listening to her clear voice faltering a little on the last words of the song. But with the memory of that night came the thought of another night—the midnight in the far Canadian woods, when he had awakened to the decision of his manhood. He had chosen his road—and he would stay upon his road. With a last look at the lighted window, he went back.

TWO days later the was summoned to appear before the faculty council. The council, by a considerable majority, demanded his resignation from their membership. "You have brought unpleasant notoriety and opprobrium upon our institution," the president told him. He made no defense. In the next morning's newspapers he read the story of his expulsion from the staff, noting with amusement how the newspaper men had taken the opportunity for clubbing the institution. The afternoon newspapers printed Warren Phillips Hadley's defense of the point of view of the Popcorn Man.

For the first time in his life, Hildegarde's father had found a genuine cause, a real romance, at his very door. He made David's cause a burning issue, using the newspapers as a medium. The university was wrong, fatally, irremediably, stupidly wrong. David Ross had the true vision of life when he became the Popcorn Man. If the university failed to appreciate his high resolves and splendid visions, he, Warren Phillips Hadley, was not so blind. He decided to show his appreciation of David's courage by entertaining in his honor at the Country Club.

"Wouldn't you like to have me invite the young lady?" he asked the Popcorn Man, when he managed to find him alone in the wagon.

"If she wants to come," replied David, "she'll come."

Hildegarde's father held a flame to cigarette. "My daughter's quite interested in your romance," he said, "and she's asked herself to our little party. You won't mind her coming?"

"Not at all," said the Popcorn Man. "And I wish," he added, "you'd ask some of the divinity students who are friends of mine. They don't get very much to eat," he explained, "and they love parties."

"We'll have everybody in town but the faculty," said Hadley. "My daughter's bringing young Hastings and some of his friends."

For a moment the sparkle went out of David's face. But, after all, Hildegarde was coming to his party!

IF he failed to have every one in town he had as many as the Country Club would hold in comfort for his reception. Phillips Hadley stood at the doorway of the big reception-room, introducing to his guest of honor a long line of men and women. Ross, in the white jacket that his host had insisted upon, gave to them the greetings of old friendship; but he kept one eye toward the door through which Hildegarde must come.

She came at last, in a white tulle dancing frock, very demure beneath her father's look of pride, and explaining young Hastings' absence speedily. To her father's "Do you know my daughter?" and David Ross's murmur of "Delighted," she dimpled radiantly. She gave David one long look, then floated out to a veranda that hung above the golf links.

David found her there as soon as he could escape.

"Well?" he demanded, when they were settled in a corner.

"Well?" she retorted.

Then he kissed her.

"Oh, David," she murmured, "why didn't you do that last June?"

"Because I had a lot to learn," he said.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked her after a long silence that was bright with star gleams and glory. "Do you really want me to go back to teaching?" His voice faltered a little.

"I want you to stay the Popcorn Man," she said. "I too have had a lot to learn."

They went back together to the big room, where Hildegarde's father was telling three bankers, a senator, and a newspaper publisher how he had discovered David Ross. "Great experiment," he was saying, "and, like so many great experiments, it's the outgrowth of a romance."

"Yes," remarked Hildegarde; "I'm the romance."

Warren Phillips Hadley gasped. "It can't—" he started to say, then caught the gleam in the eyes of the five men facing him. He saw too the little curving smile around David Ross's mouth. And being an American gentleman with twinkle of mirth in his soul, he grinned.

"Boys," he said, "the drinks are on me."

While the others were availing themselves of this invitation, Hildegarde and David Ross slipped away from the clubhouse. "I want to go riding in your wagon," she told him. "I've been so lonely for you, David!" She climbed up beside him to the seat he had fixed for her on the October morning when they had met, on the North Shore road. And through a night of stars, while the house lights twinkled behind them like a thousand kindly eyes, they rode out in the soul of October.

Backing Baxy in a Split

By SEWELL FORD

Illustrations by F. Vaux Wilson

I EXPECT I should have breezed righy by and not noticed him at all. But when you see one of your reg'lars sittin' humped over in a railroad waitin' room, starin' troubled at the floor and blowin' absent-minded through his fingers, it's only human, ain't it, to stop and ask whether some one's violated his neutrality, or if he has a pain somewhere?

Besides, the Baxter Prices are neighbor of ours, in a way, livin' down on the Point not more'n a couple of miles from us; and Sadie's been more or less interested in 'em for quite a spell. So I pulls up just opposite the news-stand and walks back to where this husky, moon-faced young gent is givin' a public exhibit of mental distress.

"Is it as bad as you advertise," says I, "or worse?"

He lifts his head lifeless and gazes at me sort of vague and puzzled.

"Oh, it's you, is it, Shorty?" says he. "What—what's the time?"

"Judgin' by the clock just over your head," says I, "it's goin' on for five-thirty."

At which he lets out a groan and blows through first one hand and then the other,—a nutty little trick of his that I'd noticed before. He makes a kind of funnel out of his fingers, thumb up, and breathes through 'em hard, like he was tryin' to muffle his exhaust.

"Only six minutes more," says he. "Six minutes! Good heavens!"

"Fine!" says I. "You listen as tragic as you look. If it's something you're enjoyin' all by yourself, though, perhaps I'd better be—"

"No, no!" he breaks in. "Don't go away and leave me like this, McCabe. Don't! I'll tell you all. Why not? By to-morrow the whole world will know."

"Eh?" says I, gawpin' at him.

"It's about Marje and me," says he. "We—we've gone our ways."

"You've what?" says I. "Bust up, you mean?"

He nods. "Absolutely," says he. "Forever."

I WHISTLES. Course, it's common enough in 'most any set, this makin' a slip-noose the hymeneal knot; but you don't often get right up against it. And, while I'd never had any inside views of their affairs, I'd always classed the Baxter Prices among the permanent lovey-doveys. Why, they'd seemed chummy enough, floatin' around together. You never can tell though, can you? Such a pity, too, With their swell little place and all!

"Well, well!" says I. "Come kind of sudden, didn't it?"

"We've been drifting apart," says he, "for months. I've seen it."

"But the final smash?" says I.

"This afternoon," says he.

He announces it gloomy and solemn, which is only proper, I expect. But then, Baxter is always bein' gloomy about something or other; or else he's just the opposite, treadin' on air and chucklin' over nothin' at all. An odd mixture.

"I suppose Mrs. Price has—er—left home to go to mother, eh?" I suggests.

"No," says he. "I've just left for—for mine."

"Huh!" says I. "Quit first, did you?"

"I thought it would be easier for Marjorie," says he. "You see, her folks are out on the Coast this summer. It would be a long, hot trip. Besides, she's entered of Ladies' Metropolitan series, and I understand she's playing her best golf— splendid form, for her. Then there's another thing. She's just got her old cook back, the one that makes such wonderful waffles. And so— well, you understand?"

"Oh, sure!" says I. "You're willin' to separate her from anything but her waffles."

"We-e-ell." says he, "Marje is very fond of waffles, you know. Then I thought, too, that nothing need come out for a while; she could say I'd gone on a business trip—anything! But now—"

A bell starts ringin', and out from the wall back of us booms a canned mega-phone voice:

"Train number For-ty-five—Chi-ca-go Lim-i-ted. Track Nine-teen. Chi-ca-go Lim-i-ted!"

Baxter jumps up. "There she is!" he gasps husky.

"Who?" says I. "Mrs. Price?"

"No," he says. "It's that meddlesome old relative of hers, Aunt Linnie. I—I've got to meet her."

"In that case," says I, "excuse me."

"Please, Shorty," says he, grabbin' me by the sleeve. "I—I'm too much unstrung to face her alone. You see, I'm sure she suspects that something is wrong; some of Marjorie's folks must have sent word to her. She—she's always called in at such times, I understand."

"Sort of an Old Lady Fix-it, eh?" I says.

"Exactly," says he. "I've heard a lot about Aunt Linnie, although I've seen her only once—for just a moment, at our wedding reception. But you can imagine the sort of person. She's past sixty, and rheumatic—gets around in a wheel-chair. That's why I had to wait and take her home. Marjorie is over at Short Hills, I think. Anyway, she's in the semi-finals, second flight. One of the morning papers had her picture on the sporting page today. Fancy that! So, when the telegram came that Aunt Linnie would arrive on this train, I simply had to meet it and get her out there. I sha'n't mind so much, once she's in the house. And if you go along, you know, she'll not dare open up on me. You see how it is! Come, McCabe—as a friend, now?"

He has a winnin' way with him, at times—more like a big, overgrown kid teasin' you to do something. Then, there's that helpless, pleadin' look in his eyes. They come mighty near bein' what you'd call pop-eyes, and as a rule they're kind of starey and wanderin', as if he was seein' things beyond you and over your head; but when he steadies 'em down they're different—friendly and chummy, you know. Anyway, I falls for the help-wanted signal.

"Baxter," says I, "anybody who wouldn't stand by a friend threatened by his wife's aunt ought to be shot at sunrise. I'll stay."

SO we hustles along, to the gate of Track 19, gets in line with the rest of the reception committee, and braces ourselves for the worst. Which shows just how foolish a stunt you can let yourself in for by not payin' strict attention to your own affairs. Here I am actin' as body-guard to a 180-pound husk who's been votin' ever since the Subway was opened. He's about, the last one, too, I'd ever expect to get such a hail from.

But he's made up queer—Baxter. One of these sluggish-movin', slow-spoken gents who generally acts like he was walkin' in his sleep. Yet I hear he's general manager of a big concern downtown—some

Standard Oil side line with half a dozen smelly factories over in Jersey. And the S. O. people don't have somnambulists on their staff as a rule, you know.

"That must be Aunt Linnie," says he, nudgin' me and pointin' down to the end of the line, where a red-capped porter is pushin' a wheel-chair along.

COURSE, what I'm expectin' is a hatchet-faced old dame with corkscrew curls and a funny lid. But this placid-faced old party in the gray dust-coat and the perky little lavender bonnet seems to be beamin' around mild and friendly, as if she might be real folksy with half a chance.

"Must be one of the smooth kind," I whispers to Baxter.

"I've no doubt she is," says he, and steps out to claim her.

She comes right back at him, too, with the pleasant greetin'.

"Gra-shus!" says she, holdin' on to his hand and pattin' it. "I wasn't looking for you here, or you wouldn't have caught me being pushed around like a sack of flour. I'm not really such a cripple as all this! But John would insist on wiring ahead for a chair to meet me. How big and distinguished you look, Baxter!"

Nothing real savage about that! In fact, there's a mild, gentle look on her deep-lined old face that couldn't very well be just put on. She talks sort of deliberate, and with a catchy little break to her voice that's kind of comic.

"How is Marjorie?' she goes on.

"She—she's all right, I guess," says Baxter, a bit fussed. "She'll be a little late getting home to-night, I think. I—that is—we'll take you out. My friend, Professor McCabe."

"Oh!" says Auntie. "A professor?"

"Of boxing," adds Baxter.

"Gra-shus!" says Auntie, lookin' me over curious, but shakin' hands cordial.

Well, we had her wheeled around to the local and loaded her in. On the trip out she never mentions fam'ly troubles, but gives us an entertainin' account of her last six weeks' stay at some mud-bath sanitarium, and hints how she was just startin' to visit a friend up in the mountains when she got this note from John's wife suggestin' that she ought to stop off and see Marjorie for a while first.

"Huh!" grunts Baxter. "John's wife, eh?"

"Yes," says Aunt Linnie, foldin' her hands placid.

There's a twinkle in her eye that Baxter don't seem to see, for he keeps on gettin' nervous and restless, and starts blowin' through his fingers again. He don't say another word, though, until we gets to the house. Then, the first thing he does is to pike into the dinin'-room and grab a decanter off the sideboard. Aunt Linnie stands watchin' him through the door.

"Hope you don't mind," says he. "My nerves, you know."

"Not at all," says Auntie. "I'll take a little hot water and sugar with mine."

And, say, the minute I saw her start stirrin' up that toddy I begun to suspicion she was a good old sport. Baxter, the boob, though, can't seem to think of anything but his own troubles.

"It's no good, you know, Jane's sending you here now," he breaks out. "Things have gone too far. I'm sorry, Aunt Linnie, but this is one affair you can't straighten out."

She stares at him innocent and astonished.

"What!" says she. "Me straighten anything? Why, that's just plain foolish. I never could keep my own affairs untangled, and as for other folks'—lawzee me!"

"But you came here because you thought you could patch things up between Marjorie and me, didn't you?" he demands.

SHE'S a cool, steady old girl. She knew when she'd caught with the goods on. But she never bats an eye.

"If I did," says she, "I've changed my mind. In fact, I never was much in favor of patching things up. If two young people find they can't live happily together they ought to quit trying, and the sooner the better."

Baxter gasps. "Precisely what I decided this afternoon," says he. "It's been simply awful."

"I don't doubt it a bit," agrees Aunt Linnie, fishin' for the last bit of sugar in the bottom of her glass.

"We—we've barely spoken to each other for a week," he goes on.

"I don't blame you—either of you," says she enthusiastic.

"Eh?" says Baxter, his eyes poppin'.

"You've each seen a lawyer, I suppose?" says Auntie.

"Why—er—not yet," says he. "You see, I'd only just made up my mind that—"

"If I were you," says she, "I would bring suit at once; and put down in writing all the mean, horrid things she has said and done to you, before you forget any. Get them all in. There is a lot of satisfaction in telling such things to a lawyer. You are going to turn her out of the house, of course."

"Why, no," says Baxter, actin' sort of dazed. "I—I was leaving myself. I had my things all packed when—"

"That is the next best thing," breaks in Auntie. "Leave her. And I presume you have written a note denouncing her for a cruel, treacherous, wicked woman?"

"Wha-a-at?" gasps Baxter. "See here, Aunt, Linnie, you're speaking, of my wife, you know."

"And my niece, Baxter," she fires back at him.

"But she's neither wicked nor cruel nor treacherous," he insists.

Aunt Linnie glances over at me and shrugs her shoulders. Maybe she winked.

"Oh, very well," says she. "Of course, I've seen very little of her since she was a slip of a girl. I suppose, then, it's on account of her vicious temper?"

"Temper!" says Baxter. "Marje! Nothing of the sort. Its merely that we're not congenial, that we—well, we don't get along. We squabble, sulk, nag at each

---

other. Oh, it's been something terrible! I can't stand it, that's all. And I'm going to clear out. I'm going now—forever."

"Naturally. Just what you should do," chimes in Aunt Linnie. "Don't endure it for another moment. That is, you might stay long enough to see that dinner has been ordered."

"Dinner will be served at seven, as usual," says Baxter, stiffenin'. "The servants know nothing of this, not a word. I'll simply take my bag and—"

"Who packed it, Baxter?" says she.

"Why, I did, of course," says he.

"Humph!" says she. "Sure you have everything you need until Marjorie sends your trunks? Your pajamas, evening clothes, studs for your dress-shirt—"

"By George!" says Baxter, openin' the kit-bag and pawin' through it panicky. "I—I believe I did forget those blamed studs, after all. I think Marje keeps them in her jewel-case."

"Better make a note of the studs," says Aunt Linnie. "Then, there are your shaving things—soap, mirror, strop—"

"Hang that razor-strop!" cuts in Baxter. "If I haven't left it on the hook in the bath-room!"

"One can't go away forever," says Aunt Linnie, rollin' her eyes tragic, "without one's razor-strop. Now, how about shoes?"

With my help, he'd just discovered that he'd packed two left pumps, when the front door opens sudden, and in blows the other half of this domestic sketch.

SHE's a plump, high-colored little party, Mrs. Baxter Price, got up snappy in a pongee golf suit with a half-masted skirt, green-and-white side-laced hoots, and one of these freak lids that looks like a puddin'-mold explodin' through the top.

Her big, lively eyes opens a bit wider at sight of me and Baxter on our knees in the middle of the livin'-room rug, with the kit-bag between us, and Aunt Linnie holdin' a dress-shirt in one hand and a pair of shoes in the other.

"How interesting!" says she. "May I ask what this is all about?"

Aunt Linnie she just smiles and waves at Baxter. I expect I only gawps. As for Mr. Price, he tries to look cold and dignified, but it ain't much of a success. Maybe he'd done better if he was standin' up.

"Aunt Linnie, what is going on here?" demands Mrs. Price.

"My dear," says Auntie, "why not ask your husband?"

"Oh, Baxter!" says she. "It would take him a week to explain anything. Besides, he's grouchy about something or other. Mr. McCabe, you seem to be helping. Why the traveling-bag?"

"Tell her," says Baxter.

Nice job, wa'n't it? Like breakin' the news to a new-made widow. But I states the proposition as gentle as I could.

"It's a case of his goin' his way and lettin' you go yours," says I.

"Forever," adds Baxter solemn.

"Pooh!" says Mrs. Price. "Is that all? I was afraid some one had been taken ill."

"Marjorie," calls out Baxter, gettin' on his feet and glarin' at her, "don't you dare be frivolous at such a crisis. I tell you that I—"

"Big baby!" says Mrs. Price, pokin' her finger at him. "Now, I am going to tell Aunt Linnie and Mr. McCabe just what is the matter with you."

"Majorie!" he warns her.

"I will," says she, runnin' out her tongue. "It's all because I dozed off the other night while he was reading a lot of reviews of that book of poems he's got out."

"Poems!" echoes Aunt Linnie. "Does Baxter—"

"He does," says Mrs. Price. "He's been at it ever since he was a boy. I've tried to keep it quiet, but I'm not going to any longer. He is Rowland Rice."

"Really!" says Auntie. "Why, not the one who—"

"Uh-huh," says Marjorie. "Those sweet, slushy things, mostly in the women's magazines, fashion periodicals, and so on. That was bad enough. But when he paid three hundred dollars to have them published in a book,—a white-and-gold book,—and expected me to listen to them all over again, and those silly reviews as well—"

"Now, see here!" breaks in Baxter. "Don't I have to listen while you tell me all about your golf matches?"

"Why not?" says Mrs. Price. "That's different."

"Is it?" growls Baxter. "Remember, Aunt Linnie, I'm not a golfer—don't know one stick from another. But all through dinner, night after night, I must hear how she played each stroke; how she sliced into the rough off the first, got bunkered on third, holed out with a mashie approach on the twelfth, and laid her opponent a stymie that won the game on the home green. That sort of thing, by George!"

"But you never half listen," protests Marjorie.

"At least," comes back Mr. Price, "I don't go to sleep."

"As if I could help it that once," pouts Marjorie. "After I'd been thirty-six holes, too. Just think, Aunt Linnie—a whole batch of reviews at once!"

Aunt Linnie sighs and shakes her head.

"I'm afraid it's hopeless," says she. "But I don't know just what to advise. Of course, you might each bring suit and see which would win. I suppose either of you could claim cruel and unusual treatment. The courts here might grant a decree on those grounds, but I doubt it. It would be much simpler for one of you to go to some place like South Dpageakota. Now, if Baxter could leave his business long enough to—"

"He could not," says Mrs. Price, decided. "He has already had his vacation. We took a motor tour."

"Then you must go, Marjorie," says Aunt Linnie. "You might like it our there and—"

"I sha'n't go a step," announces Marjorie. "I'm not going to divorce Baxter. I think it's horrid, being divorced. It would get in the papers. And it—it would put me off my game, thinking about it. Besides, for all Baxter's such a silly, I—I've got used to having him around."

"But," says Aunt Linnie, "if you no longer love each other—"

"We do, though; we do!" protests Marjorie. "Don't we, Baxy dear?"

With that she makes a sudden rush at him, gives him the fond tackle around the belt, and snuggles her head against his vest, regardless of the puddin'-mold lid.

As for Baxter, after one sheepish glance at us, he folds her in tender.

"I guess we do, after all," says he.

"Gra-shus, not to say allemanastrous!" says Aunt Linnie, tippin' me the humorous wink. "In that case—"

"I beg pardon, ma'am," says a neat maid, edgin' in shy, "but dinner is served, ma'am."

"Thank goodness for that," says Marjorie, pattin' her hubby on the cheek. "I'm nearly starved. Come on, everybody! No, wait a minute. Just to show how good I'm going to be, Baxy— Here! Give me a match."

At which she produces a golf score, touches it off, and throws it into the fireplace.

Does that get Baxter? It does. This time it's him starts the clinch.

"I guess I can make a burnt offering too," says he.

And what he adds to the blaze is a bunch of them precious book reviews that he digs out of his bag. We forms a touchin' little group, I expect, as we stands round the grate.

"WELL," says I, breakin' the silence, "it ain't every fam'ly scrap you can end with a bonfire."

"Maybe more of them could be ended that way," says Aunt Linnie, "if folks could only get together and find out what to burn."

"We knew—eh, Marje?" says Baxter' waggin' his head cocky and leadin' wifey towards the soup.

But, say, I got a hunch that, spite of all her pretendin' she was no fixer, it was Aunt Linnie who really split the kindlin'.

Behind the Bolted Door?

Continued from page 8

again D. Hope was still crying, but with a sort of happiness.

Laneham asked his last question in the doorway:

"And you'd never suspected that?"

"No. Oh, I knew she was ambitious. I could feel that marriage hadn't satisfied her—"

"No."

"And that she wanted to lead some sort of bigger life. I felt at times that she'd begun. But—even then—I didn't suspect that it was that!"

"No; I suppose that no one could have." The Doctor himself was greatly moved. "Poor woman! Poor, dear woman!"

He turned to the Judge.

"And now, Bishy, I've had three contributions, and put them together. All that is lacking is the fourth."

"Laneham!" Bishop backed into the corner. "I—I—I—I give you my professional word!"

"Yes; and, in a way, so did all the rest of them. Come on."

They entered the other room together.

When they emerged ten minutes later one might have thought from the look on the judge's face that he had pronounced a death sentence.

"Well," he said, like a man in awe, "the devil himself is in this. But, at any rate, I know now why she sent for me. But I would never have believed it—never believed it!"

But Laneham had no time to waste on soliloquies.

"Bishy, old man," he interrupted, "do you remember what we were talking about on the afternoon of the murder?"

"Very well indeed. You were speaking of the various ways in which your modern psychologist's science ought to aid in the detection of crime."

"I was. And in many ways during this last week I've been putting my methods into practice. There is one thing I have still to try."

"And that is?"

"The possibilities, if you like, of trance and medium."

"Trance and medium?" Again the Judge could only repeat it.

"I am going to McGloyne in the morning to ask if tomorrow night he will let me hold, in Mrs. Fisher's rooms, and if possible midway between the rooms where the two murders took place, something that you could call a spiritualist seance."

"I TOLD you, Inspector, that you'd say again that I'd lost my senses."

"But, hell, Doctor, hell! And what do you expect to get out of it?"

Laneham had found McGloyne Mrs. Fisher's library, where Hooley had been

---

killed. They were standing almost on the spot itself.

"Perhaps we may hear the voice again, or be able to produce some further knocking."

"Voice an' knockin'! Dr. Laneham, You've got a long way beyond that. Now tell me your idear. What is any seance goin' to do? Come, now—speakin' man to man?"

And with frankness Laneham told him:

"This: I hope it may give us Mrs. Fisher's murderer. I hope it may even furnish the evidence for his conviction. In fact, there's such a thing, you know, as making your murderer convict himself."

"All right—go ahead. I give you my blessin'. An' who do you want to have there? Glasbury, first of all?"

"If he's physically up to it by to-night."

"An' if he's not? You'll postpone it?"

"Yes, for a day or two."

"Good. You'll be wantin' those elevator-boys, too?"

"Both of them. Will you see to that?"

"They'll be there!"

"And I'd like to have Grogan—your patrolman who was with poor Hooley when they got him. Then, of course, there will be yourself and Willings and Judge Bishop and myself."

"What about Fisher? Oh, I don't want him. He's sure the original blighter. No more mercy to him than the chair itself! I've been fightin' him off Glasbury ever since he heard of him. But it's his right, you know. An' when you're holdin' it in his apartment?"

"Very well; have him also."

HE decided, in the end, to use the "morning-room," the room between Mrs. Fisher's bedroom and the library. But in practically every room there was something to be done.

First of all, Laneham had brought in half a dozen full-length mirrors.

"We shall sit here, in the morning-room," he said; "but we must be able to command the whole apartment, from one end to the other. And, if we leave the doors open and arrange these mirrors properly, we can do it easily enough. You'll have noticed that in the door to the pool there's already one to start with."

He had got some black velvet, and was making every window absolutely dark.

"It's necessary," he explained; "and I believe the medium will also wish to control all inside lights."

Nobody saw the medium, except Laneham, until the night when they were taking their places for the seance itself. In a sense, they did not see her then. For she was still in her cabinet—the right-hand corner of the room, cut off from them by another velvet curtain. The Doctor assigned them to their places. He did it without comment or explanation. But already, even upon the Judge, there was the feeling of the weird and the impending.

To the last, he kept Glasbury outside.

"Laneham," he said, "once more, you yourself see the shape he's in; and, if he were a thousand times guilty—"

"I know it, I know it," the Doctor answered. "But I've never said that he was guilty. The thing must go on now; and he must take a part in it."

So Glasbury was brought in. And he could see or feel for himself what was preparing.

For, in the first place, in that middle room only light enough had been left to see them to their chairs. And in the other rooms the darkness was absolute. The chairs had been arranged in a circle around a table, or a circle completed by the cabinet. And the Doctor still went and came between them and the door.

Fisher was the next to arrive. He appeared not to take his eyes from Glasbury from the first. He chose a chair directly opposite him; and, dim though the light was, one could see the young playwright shrink and sicken beneath his gaze.

Then Patrolman Grogan, very white, was led in. And after him, in McGloyne's keeping, were the two West Indian elevator-men. It would be absurd to say that they were white; but their eyes showed white. And they rolled them from side to side in deadly fear.

For another moment Laneham waited. Then he closed the door, found his way to his own chair,—the one nearest the cabinet,—and the last light went out. There was a sort of rustle of the sable curtain. One could feel, rather than see, that the medium come forth. And next moment she was lighting some kind of dim and tiny lamp.

IT merely made the darkness visible. It did not even let them see her face. Apparently she was wholly covered by a kind of gray-white cowl, pierced at the eyes. But even of that Willings could not be certain. He only knew that she was motioning them to place their hands upon the table. Then, when they had done it, as if with the mere passing of her own hand that little light began gradually to die down. It died and died, so slowly that they did not really know when it was wholly gone. And, while the darkness seemed tangibly to creep upon them, all sat silent, rigid and unmoving.

For a minute they sat so—for two, for three; ten minutes, indeed, it might have been. And then—

Slowly at first, then more quickly, the table itself was moving.

It was not rising from the floor, as tables are supposed to do at seances. It was not "turning," or moving from side to side. It was as if its surface had become charged and wavelike, as if it were rising and pushing itself against their palms in waves of living power. Willings knew, from the little outbreathed gasps of those about him, that the others felt it also. And he looked again at the medium. In one sense, he could not see her. In another he could see her with a distinctness more than earthly. For the outline of her head and shoulders seemed pricked out in a species of wavering, shifting phosphorescence. And, at the same moment, from the direction of the library and the little writing-room, he heard a sound, a sound of rapping.

It was precisely that same rapping that had followed the murder, and, even as then, it seemed to stop his heart. He knew, too, that the same shudder was going through the circle from end to end.

He looked back at the medium. That phosphorescence was gone. Save for a moving grayness, one could no longer have said that the woman was even there.

And then the next thing followed. Dr. Laneham, after placing his mirrors, had closed all the doors and locked them. But now—there could be no doubt of it—slowly, without the help apparently either of hand or key, one of those doors was opening.

From the nearest mulatto elevator-man came a long, shuddering whine of terror.

"Oh, h'avens above, boss." he said, "h'avens above! I kain't stand this! My Lawd, let me out!"

"If you go out now," breathed Laneham, "you go alone."

At the same moment the rapping had come again. And the fellow dropped back-into his chair in a new reaction of fear. "Boss," he began, "I—I—I—"

"Gawd!"

It was Grogan who spoke then.

For something was moving and swelling out the curtain of the cabinet. It was more like an emanation than an actual presence. The medium was still there. But next moment they all felt that the door from the library was opening. And Willings, his skin lifting like fur, knew that someone, or something, was passing through the room.

The thing, whatever it was, was passing through to the doors that led to the bedroom and dressing-room and swimming-pool. But at the first door it stopped. It rapped again—with the very hand of death—and, "Oh, God! Oh, my God, my God!" it cried.

They were Glasbury's words, and it was Glasbury's voice. And yet, beside him, Willings could feel the man himself. He put out his hands and touched him—a touch that came back to him in an answering shudder.

But the medium now was speaking:

"Whom do you seek?"

"Him who knows," the answer came.

"And how will you know him?" she asked again.

"By what he will know—the signs of death and the things of death."

For a moment there was silence again, silence almost more unnerving than that horrid dialogue itself. Then:

"And what are the things of death," the medium asked.

Again one of the elevator-men tried to get to his feet.

"Sit down," whispered the Doctor, "or it will be the worse for you."

"What are the things of death?" the cowled figure asked again.

The tiny lamp was apparently alight again, and in her hand threw a disk of light upon the table.

Again the answer came:

"The first is this."

Willings put out his hand as if to guard himself. But there was no need. What was falling from nowhere upon the center of that table was nothing that could harm. At first—in that half darkness—it seemed a liquid. Then, as it piled itself up, they could see that it was merely common salt.

Yet, at that same moment, there was a sound as of someone getting jerkily up from his place, and than forcing himself back to his seat again.

"And the second is this."

Again from nowhere there dropped into that disk of light a tiny wire. It was not gold. It did not seem to be silver. In a curling, dancing spiral it danced before them elfishly, then was gone.

"And the third is this."

Once more the table was clear. Then, where the salt had been, there appeared first a green-covered magazine, and then—in its place—a little pile of gray-brown, breath-blown ashes.

Again someone had started to rise, with the gasp of one who tries to breathe through a throat dried gaggingly.

BUT, at the moment, no one gave heed. For—all could hear it plainly—the door began to open to those rooms behind then, to the bedroom and the dressing-room. There remained only the door of the swimming-pool itself. And then, from the other side of it came a second sound of rapping.

"Hell!" choked McGloyne. "Hell!"

"She must come out! She must come out!"

The thing in that middle room was peaking again: "The woman who is dead is seeking someone. He, and only he, must open to her."

Again came the rapping. Yet still no one stirred.

"Then—then I must open to her!"

But it went no further.

"Let me out! Let me out!"

The cry was bursting from someone in endless shrieks. A chair had fallen, too—another and another. A whole group of figures, indeed, seemed to reach the door together. And a moment later pursuers were mingling with pursued. Willings saw only that one figure had disappeared into the central stairway—the stairway up which the Doctor had all but gone to his death two nights before. And, like Laneham, that figure too burst through the fire-door that led to the elevator landing on the floor above.

The hole where the wire-glass had been broken out was still there. And therefore it was still possible to reach in through it and open the elevator door. It was what the Doctor had done. It was what that figure was doing. But, having done it, with one more shriek, ending only in eternity, it was plunging to the bottom of he shaft!

To be continued next week

He Hunts Among the Wild Taxicabs

MANY men with sporting proclivities would like the job that earns Arthur Hassler his living. He is the official hunter of Central Park, New York, his work being to keep the park clear of stray cats and dogs, hawks, and rats. Hassler is a sharpshooter of the National Guard, and a marksman of national repute. He has no fixed beat. In the early morning he is likely to be prowling around the upper part of the park, stalking cats. In the afternoon he will probably be seen silently watching the rocky sides of the lake, waiting for a chance to put a bullet into one of the numerous rats that make life miserable for the swans and ducks. Or you may come upon him watching the sky for the appearance of one of the great hawks that come soaring from the New Jersey mountains.

"Cats are the worst of my troubles," said Hassler, in speaking of his work. "They are more cautious than dogs, and better able to climb into out-of-the-way hiding-places. Dogs are easier to find. The rule is that no dogs are allowed in the park, and I am at liberty to kill any dog I see; but of course I exercise discretion. But listen!"

From the little lake below came the frightened cries of ducks and swans. Nearby, the leader of the buffalo herd roared an angry challenge, which was answered by the snarl of a lion. A jarring note in the chorus was the honk of a taxicab's horn on Fifth Avenue.

"It's old Broadway Bill again," murmured the hunter, turning his gaze skyward.

Although the big black eagle was flying more than a mile high, Hassler had spotted him, and his gun was ready as the eagle swung in a circle and prepared to swoop down on a fat black swan that huddled near the edge of the lake.

But just then a fire engine came dashing up Sixth Avenue, its bell ringing furiously. The eagle took fright and flew away.

"But I'll get him yet!" said the hunter as he regretfully put up his rifle.

A Baby Who Lives in a Cage

LITTLE Margaret Isabel MacDonald is a thirteen-months-old baby who lives in a cage. She was bundled into it the first warm day of early spring, and spent the entire summer vacationing there, to the amusement of all Manhattanites who happened to pass along Amsterdam Avenue between 124th and 125th streets. The cage is suspended in hammock fashion from the window- casings of one of the front windows of the baby's home.

At first it was placed on a fire-escape in the rear of the building; but other tenants objected, on account of the fire ordinance, and the cage was moved to its present position over the street. Shady in the mornings, in the stifling summer afternoons it caught every whiff of New Jersey air that found its way across the Hudson.

All winter long, while Margaret lay in her crib and did nothing but eat and breathe and sleep, her father hammered at the framework of her summer home. With a roll of wire netting and some twenty feet of the wooden planks littering the kitchen, he utilized every spare moment designing, cutting, and finishing the little cage. It is shaped like a dog-kennel, the sides and roof are of screening, and the floor is of wood.

When the cage itself was finished canvas hammock was stretched from hooks on either side, and then—since it was not allowed on the fire-escape, the father made a trip to a hardware store for heavy pegs, and Baby Margaret Donald found herself swinging joyfully over the awning of an Amsterdam Avenue butcher shop.

You Can Buy This Town

"WHO wants to buy a town? Somebody start it off at something. A nice, homelike town, accommodating 1300 residents; a town sixty-five years old; four churches, high school, all kinds of stores, a bank, hotel, two grist-mills, a grain elevator, water-works, electric light plant, shady streets, beautiful lawns. Somebody make a bid. The only condition is that the purchaser, after paying for the town, shall destroy it."

Osborn, Ohio, whose importance conforms to this description, has been knocked down bodily at a price of $700,000, and will be scrapped.

Every one will recall that in the spring of 1913, Dayton, Ohio, was the scene of a terrible flood. Ever since that time plans have been under way to prevent a recurrence of such a disaster. These involved a large engineering problem. After it had been worked out it had to be fought through the State Legislature. There was opposition; it was urged that what might protect Dayton would increase the menace, in case of high waters, to other communities in the same section.

Finally the Dayton scheme received, with certain modifications, the sanction of the law-making powers. It creates what is known as the "Miami Valley conservancy district." When streams go mad, their surplus waters are to be diverted and stored.

The town of Osborn stands at a vulnerable point with respect to the proposed storage area. It has a little river of its own which behaves badly at times. If augmented at flood stage by water escaping from the conservancy district almost anything might happen. It became incumbent upon those responsible for the new project to furnish protection to Osborn. The idea in mind for this has been the building of a big dam. But every good dams are sometimes carried away and Osborn remained nervous over the prospect.

Recently Mr. M. L. Finnell, a leading capitalist of Osborn, broached the unique proposal that Osborn people should on their own initiative pick up and go while the going was good, rather than run even the remote risk of being unceremoniously hurried off in their beds some night. This met with the approval of Mayor Hebbe. The citizens were won over to the idea and the town became for sale.

As a matter of course, the conservance district was the one logical purchaser. The district officials responded promptly. The expense of buying the town, it was estimated, would be less than that of building the dam, not to mention the elimination of a possible danger of sometime drowning a whole community. The deal was closed the first week in August. The amount of outlay involved is approximate, but is not expected to be far from $700,000. The terms, as arranged through the town officials, provide that each property-owner is to receive individually full value for his or her holding. The vacating of premises by everybody within a reasonable length of time is to be compulsory after which the town will be wrecked.

Swatting the High Cost of Living

OUR national bugaboo, the high cost of living, has not nearly so many terrors for many persons in the big cities of the country as it used to have. The buying clubs of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and scores of other densely populated towns, will tell you that. By joining hands in filling their markets direct from the farmers' fields and from big creameries of the Middle West, thousands of city consumers are now buying fresh eggs, sound red apples, sweet butter, and vegetables with the bloom still on, at prices twenty per cent. lower than ever before. Coöperation, pure and simple, has done the trick.

Neighborhood Clubs One Solution

Take the case of the neighborhood club in a certain prominent New York suburb. Its hustling housewife members have managed to reduce their butter bills practically one fourth by dealing with producers direct. Although the club started with only three members, it has now grown to immense size, and to-day purchases butter in 200-pound lots, eggs by the 30-dozen case (often 1,000 dozen a month), and poultry by the hundred-weight. The Christmas turkey order of the club last December was nearly 900 pounds. Orders are placed with the producers through the local express agent, and shipments are made direct to the home of the secretary of the organization.

In Chicago there is a buying club even larger than this. Its four hundred members—all employees of a nationally famous mercantile firm—purchase more than $1,000 worth of country produce each week. A paid secretary is employed to attend to the immense supplies of provisions shipped in. He divides according to the order of each employee, and wraps the package ready to be taken home. Honey, maple syrup, frogs' legs, cherries, crab-meat, and other delicacies have proved popular, besides staples like eggs, butter, and dressed poultry. The heads of the firm strongly encourage the idea, allowing the accounts of the club to be carried on the books of the firm. They reason that it is worth something to them as an efficiency step toward the increased welfare of their men.

Go to Fort Wayne, Indiana, though, if you want to see the buying club idea in its brightest glory. There are nearly fifty clubs in the town, representing some 300 families, or 1,500 persons. In a single day one of the express agents was showered with orders for lake fish to the extent of a ton and a half. The fishermen up on Lake Erie, who were trying to sell their catches through some of the transportation companies, were swamped with a surplus of orders several times during the season. But Fort Wayne's clubs did not stop at fish and butter and eggs—they reached out into California's fruit valleys and imported prunes, peaches, cherries, oranges, and all kinds of nuts freshly packed by the producers' own hands. Even ripe olives and sun-dried California figs and raisins traveled the transcontinental route to the door-steps of the Indiana club members.

Fifth Avenue Has Its Club

PERHAPS you think Fifth Avenue is too snobbish to lift a finger toward cutting its living expenses. Decidedly not. One of New York's largest buying clubs is located on the fashionable promenade.

One day last spring three large express wagon-loads of country produce were delivered at the headquarters of this organization. Its members, most of them workers in one of the city's most famous shops, were simply receiving their week's rations. Here is a sample of what they ordered in one week:

The "Combination Shipment"

SOME of the farmers and growers who cater to the buying club trade have made a great deal of money in the last year. A man in Cattaraugus, New York, who had been selling his few eggs to local markets, got wind of the willingness of the transportation companies to find markets for country producers' crops, and shipped a trial order to a lower Broadway club. These city folk had never tasted such eggs at anything like the price the up-State man had quoted. "Keep us supplied with your eggs every week," several big clubs wrote him. To do which the Cattaraugus man was hard pushed. But finally, without dropping his standard of quality at all, he began to gather in the best eggs of his neighbors, and thus was able to supply the demand. In a few months his business grew to $4,000 a month.

Other keen producers have specialized in what is called the "combination shipment." You and your neighbors want apples and potatoes, or tomatoes and berries, but you don't want to buy a lot at once. The farmers of Long Island lay plans for such people. They get up neat hampers of assorted vegetables, suitable for a small buying club, or even for a large family, and ship direct to your door-step for a stated price. One successful Maryland farmer sells soft-shell crabs, eggs, an fresh vegetables in a 15-pound package; another in New York State has worked up a humming trade in maple syrup and buckwheat flour—a gallon of the first with ten pounds of the latter. There is more than one way to "swat the high cost of living."

He Has Lived 103 Years—in Kansas

By WALT MASON

At Howard, Kansas, in the fall, they hang the banners on the wall, and make a lound and cheerful noise, inviting all the girls and boys, who've wandered from the town afar to hitch their wagons to a star, to come back home and see the folks, and swap some helpful yarns and jokes.

Home-coming Week's the big affair to all the loyal people there. They get together and arrange a program that is weird and strange: they've an imported tattooed man, and wondrous jugglers from Japan, and side-show barkers raise their yells, and Swiss bell-ringers ring their bells, and rockets soar and whistles screech—and John Munsinger makes a speech.

A blithe and active man in he, although his years—fivescore and three—have bleached his whiskers and his hair, and made him like an easy-chair. You'd think him only half his age when he steps forth upon the stage, his cheerful ittle spiel to speak in honor of the festive Week. He talks a while of divers things; some reminiscences he springs; and then brings forth a round of cheers by daring men of equal years to run a foot-race for a prize—he'll take on any one his size. A fiddler now begins to saw the strains of "Turkey in the Straw," and John Munsinger steps a jig—say, isn't that achievement big When youths of eighty totter round all tremblingly, as though they found the burden of their years too great to let the bearers stand up straight, what think you of this ancient man whose merry feet go rat-a-plan?

Descendents of old John abound in all the fertile country round. When last we made a census close, those scions numbered just a gross, and all of them are good as wheat—the men are strong, the damsels sweet.

"I have no theories cut and dried concerning living," John replied, when I blew in with balmy smile and asked him questions by the mile. "I think that worry is to blame for making people quit the game and seek the bone-yard ere their time; and worry is a useless crime.

"I've always tried to do my best, and worry ne'er disturbed my rest. Care sidesteps one who thus has tried; what can't be helped I just let slide. When I have done my evening chores, and kicked the tom-cat out of doors, and wound the clock and banked the fire, I calmly to my couch retire, without a care or fear on hand, and sleep all night to beat the band."

Don't worry, if you wish to be like John when aged fivescore and three!