“Feel the revivifying forces of youth coursing through your veins — see the pink flush of health in your cheeks when you catch sight of yourself in the bedroom mirror first thing in the morning — no more aches and pains — no more vague feelings of depression — no more hard-earned money thrown away on doctors and quack medicines! For this, ladies and gentlemen, is not a quack medicine, nor is it a drug — it is Nature’s Peerless Herbal Remedy, discovered by myself and prepared after a lifetime of trial and experiment! No other man in the world has the secret of it — no other man in the world can offer you the key of this wonderful gateway to Health, Strength, and Life! One shilling a box I ask you — no, I’ll be even more generous than that — ninepence a box! Ninepence, ladies and gentlemen... Is there any private doctor in this town who would charge you less than half-a-crown for a bottle of his worthless coloured water?... See — I’ll tell you what I’ll do — it’s a special offer and I’ll never make it again as long as I live — sixpence! Sixpence!... Who’s going to be the first?... Thank you, sir. Two shillings? Thank you — here’s your box and here’s your one-and-six change. Are you satisfied?... That’s right. You’re quite sure you’re satisfied?... Good. Then permit me to give you your sixpence back as well. Take this little box of Concentrated Health, my dear sir, as a gift from me to the most sensible person in this crowd... now, ladies and gentlemen, who’s going to be the next?... Thank you, madam...”

The loud, far-carrying voice of the cheap-jack echoed across the market square of the little northern town of Finchingfold. The parish clock showed ten minutes to nine; at nine, by order of the municipal authorities, he would have to pack up. Six times already he had gone through his well-worn patter about the marvellous Life-Giving Herb he had discovered years before on the banks of the Orinoco River, in South America. Captured by a fierce tribe of Indians and left by them to die of malaria, he had managed to crawl a few hundred yards into the trackless forest and there had caught sight of a curious unknown plant. Its pleasant aroma had tempted him to taste it, and lo! — within a quarter of an hour the fever had left him and he was a New Man! Prudently gathering an armful of the precious herb, he had escaped with great difficulty to civilization, there to complete his life work by manufacturing the herb in pill form and selling it in the market places of England.

The story went well as a rule; nor had it ever gone better than in Finchingfold on that warm Saturday in July. Was it that the folk of Finchingfold were more than usually “run down” after a broiling week in workshop and factory; or was it that he himself had been particularly eloquent? He could not make up his mind, but the fact remained — and an exceedingly pleasant one — that he had already sold no fewer than ninety-seven boxes that afternoon and evening. Ninety-seven sixpences — two pounds eight-and-six. Cost of boxes, wrappings and pills — say five shillings. Market fee — one shilling. Net profit — two pounds two-and-six. Not bad at all — oh, decidedly not bad.

Doctor Parker Potterson was therefore in a thundering good humour after his day’s labour. His face beamed with joviality as he exchanged his last dozen boxes for the sixpences of the crowd. They were just the sort of people he liked best — quiet, respectable working men and their wives, a few farm labourers from the neighbouring countryside, perhaps a sprinkling, too, of better class artisans. Sometimes in the bigger towns there were hooligans who tried to make trouble, or even that far greater nuisance — the “superior” person, often a doctor, who asked awkward questions. But Finchingfold seemed full of exactly the right kind. And that quiet little fellow in the front row who had been the first to buy in the final round — he was just the kind to whom it paid to be generous. Most likely he would find that the pills did him a world of good, and for the next few months would be busily advertising Doctor Parker Potterson’s Peerless Herbal Remedy at home, at the workshop, and amongst his friends. Yes, undoubtedly, he was well worth his free box.

By the time that the church clock began the chiming of the hour, Potterson had actually sold out — an event that had happened only once or twice before in his entire experience. He hummed cheerfully to himself as he packed his various impedimenta into the small bag. A stethoscope, a highly-coloured chart of the human body, a fragment of the Life-Giving Herb in its natural state — it was quite easy to transport. Feeling about in his pocket he abstracted another herb, which perhaps in his heart he felt even to be more life-giving; he lit it and puffed with satisfaction. Ah, Life was good. A pocketful of sixpences, a fine cigar, the cool twilight of a summer’s day — what could add to the sweetness of such a mixture? Only one thing, and as he thought of it, he licked his lips in anticipation.

Doctor Parker Potterson was a conspicuous figure as he threaded his way amongst the market crowds towards the Crown and Woolpack. To begin with, he was attired in a top-hat and a frock-coat — a costume that is not greatly in favour with Finchingfold on market day. But, apart from that, he was (and well he knew it) a man who would always command attention wherever he went. He was six foot three in height, and correspondingly broad; he really made a splendid advertisement for his Peerless Herbal Pills, which he consumed in public at the rate of a dozen or so a day. Fortunately they were quite harmless. His eyes were a bright and scintillating blue — the kind that rarely failed to fascinate a woman — and his complexion, tanned by years of open-air life, was all that a health vendor could desire.

The private bar of the Crown and Woolpack seemed smaller and more thronged than ever when Potterson’s huge figure stepped in through the swing doors. Instinctively people made way for him as he approached the counter — instinctively people always had made way for him. He was well known, of course; George, the bartender, knew what he liked and had it ready for him without waiting for an order. “Warm night, George,” he said, enjoying the first exquisite sip of the long-anticipated “double.” His deep baritone carried perfectly across the room full of loud conversation. “ ’Evening, boys,” he added, nodding to the room in general, and a confused murmur of salutations returned to him. Everybody was staring at him, thinking about him, admiring him — and suddenly, as he glanced over the top of his glass, he perceived that among the admirers was an extraordinarily pretty young woman.

Now Potterson was extremely susceptible to pretty young women, and to exercise his charm over them was the keenest of all his vanities. Wherefore, with a deliberation and a confidence born of long practice, he smiled at her.

Faintly, yet with undeniable encouragement, she smiled back. His spirits rose even higher. She found him irresistible, of course, as all women did. But, by Jove, she was a good-looker — red-lipped, dark-eyed, oval-faced — an absolute beauty. From her dress and manner and the hand that rested on the edge of the counter, he reckoned to size her up unerringly... working-class woman — not been married long — husband in a poor job — consequently kept short of money — consequently discontented, rebellious, eager to snatch at what life had denied her... Ay, how well he knew the type, and how well he had profited by its existence!

“Thirsty weather,” he remarked, looking down at her.

“Too thirsty for me,” she answered, perhaps a shade crossly. Her voice, he noted, was pleasantly musical.

“Too thirsty, eh? Well, you’re in the right place for that, anyway.”

“Yes, if my old man would only buy me another drink.”

“And won’t he?”

“Not ’im. He’s scared of me getting drunk. Now, I ask you, do I look like a woman who would get drunk?”

He wondered if she were slightly drunk already. But he replied, rather hoping she were, “Of course you don’t. And have another drink with me if your fellow’s too mean to give you one.”

He had spoken loudly, and the crowd, as he had intended, overheard and began to titter. He liked them to be spectators of his prowess with a woman. In less than a minute he had reached that stage of jeering with her about her husband! Smart work, that!

“Ssh,” she whispered, mockingly. “He might hear you, and then he’d knock you down for sayin’ that! Better take care, young man!” Across the counter she snapped, “Mine’s a gin, George.”

The crowd’s titter became a gathering roar of laughter, and suddenly Potterson glimpsed the reason for it. The woman’s husband was actually standing beside her! Oh, this was really rich — something he would think of and enjoy in retrospect many a time afterwards! A little under-sized hollow-chested man, pale and careworn, shabbily dressed — the sort that is born to say “Sir” to everybody. Then it occurred to him that he had seen the face somewhere before — why — heavens, yes — he was the man to whom he had given the pills that very night, not a quarter of an hour before! What a joke! And how on earth had he managed to net such a splendid creature as that woman? Ah, but life — and especially life as he knew it — was full of such mysteries...

The situation, however, added full spice to his enjoyment. He always took a keen pleasure in emphasising his own power in front of others who lacked it, and nothing gratified him more than to flirt with a pretty woman before the very eyes of a husband who had not the nerve to object. It made him feel “big.”

To the little man he said, with patronizing condescension: “Too bad, my good man, to make myself known to your wife without your permission — but then, that’s your fault for having such a darned pretty wife! Somebody’ll steal her from you some day, you bet — especially if you don’t give her what she asks for. Anyhow you’ll join us both in a drink, won’t you?”

The man smiled sheepishly (how well Potterson knew his type also), and said he would have a “bitter.”

Potterson went on, taking care that all the bar should hear: “Your wife was warning me about you just now — told me I’d better be careful or you’d knock me down. Glad to see you don’t intend to, after all. I should hate to be knocked down.”

Again the man smiled sheepishly. The crowd laughed in derision, and even the woman could not forbear a titter at her husband’s expense. “I won’t let him,” she said, with mock pity in her voice. “He’s a real tiger when he’s roused — you’d never believe... Ain’t you, Bert?” she added, sipping her gin.

“Don’t give in to him,” said Potterson, keeping up the banter. “He’s a terrible fighter, I can see, but you’ll win in the end, if you tackle him the right way. Fight and win is my motto in this world.” He relapsed a little into his market-place manner. “If you want health, get it — it’s there for you to have. If you want wealth — same thing — fight and win it! If you want to talk to a pretty woman in a pub — well, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t, is there?”

The woman giggled delightfully.

“Have another drink with me, my dear,” resumed Potterson, well pleased with his rate of progress. “George, another gin for the lady and another double for me. And this gentleman will take another bitter, I daresay... Yes, after a fairly adventurous life all over the world I think I can claim that I’ve won pretty nearly all I ever wanted to win. I’m not grumbling. Life’s a grand thing when you can say that.”

“But a rotten thing when you can’t,” put in a man’s voice from the crowd.

Potterson heard and welcomed the interruption, it made him more the centre of attention than ever. “But you can, sir!” he thundered, fixing the crowd in general with his carefully-practised Napoleonic stare. “To a man who has red blood in his veins, life is bursting with prizes ripe for capture!” (One of his stock phrases, that was.) “You want something — very well, if you’re a man — a Man in the fullest sense of the word — you get it! Fight for it, if need be — but get it — that’s the main thing! Why, if I were to tell you half the things that have happened in my own life—” He drained his tumbler at a gulp, and through the glass he saw the little man looking up at him eagerly, evidently contemplating some remark. “Yes?” he said encouragingly, as a schoolmaster might interrogate a small child.

“Mister,” began the man, with obvious shyness and embarrassment. His voice lacked even the semblance of refinement that his wife’s had. “Mister, you’ll excuse me makin’ bold to ask you a question — but what you says interests me a good deal. Now, I’m a bit of a readin’ man — in my spare time, o’ course — and I’ve heard about the philosophy of that German fellow Nitsky — or whatever ’is name is—”

Potterson’s lip curled. Again he recognized the type — one of those down-at-heels fellows you found in public libraries poring over queer books. “Nitsky my foot!” he cried, winking boldly at the woman. “Never heard of the chap and don’t want to. I have my own philosophy — my own rules of life — just as I have my own rules of health. And my own are quite good enough for me.”

“But Nitsky says—”

“To hell with what Nitsky says. Look here, my good man, it’s not a bit of use your stuffing me with the damfool nonsense of some damned foreigner. What I want — and what I’ll listen to with pleasure — are your own ideas, if you’ve got any.”

The man flushed under the brutality of the sarcasm. “Well, sir,” he resumed, respectfully, “if you’ll let me put it in my own way, mebbe I can explain. It seems to me — not being an eddicated man, o’ course — but it seems to me that it ain’t much use expectin’ to get everythin’ in this world.”

“And why not?”

“Because there ain’t enough of everythin’ to go round.”

“There’s enough for you, my man, if you go in and get it!”

“But some other fellow may get it first.”

“Then take it off him.”

“Fight ’im, you mean, mister?”

Potterson roared as he might have done across a market place. The naïveté of the little fellow went to his brain as intoxicatingly as the whisky; never had he met a more perfect foil to his own self-conceit. “Yes, my good fellow, fight him! Most things worth having have to be fought for! Lord, when I look back and think of the fights I’ve had—”

“You, mister?”

“Well, do you think I’ve never had to put up my fists to a man? Look!” With a sweeping gesture he rolled up his sleeve and bared his arm above the elbow. “Look at that muscle, sir! Feel it! Hard as iron, eh? It’s years since my real fighting days, but I’ll wager tonight I could kill a man with one blow of this arm of mine if I was driven to it!”

He could feel the woman’s admiration on him like a warm glow; how she must contrast his splendid strength and virility with the spongy weakness of her little whelp of a husband! With her eyes so eagerly looking upwards to him, and the whisky fumes pleasantly simmering in his head, he felt a veritable Superman. Was he not a Superman? Could he not dominate a whole multitude by the magic of his voice and personality? Was not this very ordinary little public-house crowd hanging upon his every word? His heart swelled with pride; he would show them all what sort of a fellow he was. “Drinks all round on me, George,” he cried, loudly, and gloried in the respectful murmur of thanks that followed. How easy it was to handle these people! A loud voice and a free drink — or a free box of pills, for that matter — and they were his entirely...

“Kill?” he heard the woman whisper, and the awe with which she spoke the word gave him the most rapturous sensation of power. “Guess I wouldn’t like to quarrel with you, then, young feller.”

He liked the way she called him “young feller”; he was fifty-seven and his hair beneath the dye was an already silvering grey. He laughed loudly and put his huge hand on her shoulder — it always marked a stage when you first touched a woman. And she winced, too — how delightful that was! “My dear, you never need have any fear of me. Never in my life have I raised my hand to a woman. But, by God, if it was a man I was up against—”

“What would you do?” she breathed in an eager whisper, her dark eyes smouldering.

“Do?” He took a gulp of whisky to gain inspiration. “What would I do? I think I’d better not tell you, m’dear. Not nice for a lady to know about.”

Suddenly her attitude changed. She began to laugh at him — mockingly — as formerly she had laughed at her husband. She was drunk, of course — quite drunk. “Go on, young feller — but I don’t believe you! You can brag about all you would do all right — so can anybody. But I’ll bet you never have done anything!”

“Haven’t I?” He leered down at her with a sharp half-angry light in his eyes. He could not endure to be jeered at — but she looked damnably pretty over it, he had to admit. God — she was a fine little creature. If only... But he had to nerve himself for the mental effort of answering her. “That shows how little you know of me,” he said. “I’m not a boaster. I don’t go round telling everybody what I’ve done. I’ve done things, as a matter of fact, that nobody would believe.”

“An’ I’m not surprised, either. We ain’t all fools, even if we do buy your sugar-and-soap pills!”

He was angry then — furiously angry, and the crowd’s laugh, for the first time directed against himself, stung him in his weakest spot. “My good woman,” he said, carefully controlling himself. “Like all women, you’re damned unreasonable. You want to know too much. Nevertheless, I’ll tell you — if you want to know, and if you don’t believe it, I can’t help it — it’s the truth, anyway. I’ve not lived the life of a lounge-lizard. I’ve seen the world. I’ve lived with the raw, naked elementals of life.” (Another of his stock phrases.) “I’ve had to fight. I’ve had to kill. Up the Orinoco River, when I was attacked by Indians with poisoned darts, I put three of them to sleep with my bare fists and nothing else!”

“Oh, out there — that don’t count. Anythin’ can happen in them sort o’ places. It’s over here that matters to most of us. An’ if you was to kill a man in England with nothin’ but your bare fists, you’d be copped by the police the next day and sent to swing within three months.”

“Perhaps,” he answered cautiously. “Perhaps not.” He was glad that the little man was preparing for another of his plaintive interventions. He heard him say: “She’s right, mister — if you don’t mind me sayin’ so. A feller with your strength might easily kill a chap, but the trouble begins afterwards when the cops are out agin you.”

So the little man was turning on him, too? Ah, well, he knew how to deal with him. A little heavy sarcasm. “Cops, eh? So you’re afraid of them, are you?”

“I daresay I might be, mister, if I’d done a murder.”

“Murder! Murder? Who in the name of ten thousand devils was talking about murder?” For the moment his heart stopped beating — then raced on faster than ever as his brain came to the rescue. Murder?... Very well, if they wanted to talk about it, he’d show them. He said, with studied insolence in voice and manner, “Oh, you would be afraid, naturally, whether you’d done a murder or not. You were born that way.”

He waited for the general laugh and then continued, gathering impetus: “But let me tell you, sir, that the Man who is sure of Himself — the Man, that is, who is a Man in the fullest sense of the word” (he had used that phrase before, but no matter) — “that Man, I say, is not afraid of the police or of anything or anybody in the whole world!” He paused impressively, enjoying the echoes of his voice.

“You mean, mister, that a man oughter be able to do a murder an’ not be found out?”

“I mean, sir, that a man ought to be Successful. That’s my creed — my rule of life. If he commits murder, it ought to be a successful murder. And the successful murder isn’t found out.”

“You think it possible, then, mister?”

“Possible? Of course it’s possible. Everything in this world is possible to the Man who knows his job. What do you suppose happens when a fellow pulls off a really well-planned affair?”

“You think the police don’t get him?”

“My good man, the police aren’t even called in. Nobody dreams of ’em. The Verdict is Accident, maybe, or perhaps even Suicide. I tell you, sir, the battle is half lost when the word murder is first mentioned.”

“ ’Alf lost? You mean ’alf won, mister?”

“Won? No — lost, of course. Oh, well, looking at it from the police point of view, naturally...” He signalled for another drink. “Bah — the police — what are they? They ain’t got an idea in their heads, most of ’em.”

“Ah, but mister, they gets ’old of ideas, some’ow. It’s a queer thing, the way they gets ’old of clues an’ things. Now my cousin’s brother-in-law’s at Scotland Yard, and ’e tells me some o’ the things that goes on.”

“And you believe him, of course. You would. Naturally what a policeman says about himself is very pleasant to hear. But all the time they know — they all know from experience — that the well-planned crime is never found out!”

He stopped, rather wondering what he had been talking about. He was being pretty eloquent, anyhow — he could see how closely he had seized on the attention of the whole room. Ah, yes, the question of crime and being found out — funny sort of argument to have, but taproom conversations did lead up to queer things. He took a gulp of neat whisky and added, “Yes, sir, there are men walking the streets of this country to-day, respected and worthy citizens, who, if the truth were known, would be queuing up for the scaffold. If the truth were known, mark you. But it isn’t. And it never will be. The affair was well planned.”

“Though they say, mister, that somethin’ always gives you away.”

“Not if you’ve a ha’porth of brains,” he snapped, contemptuously. “Of course, if you haven’t, you’d better lead a respectable life.” He laughed loudly and finished his glass. Strange how he had been driven to lecture a barparlour on such a topic! “Same again, George,” he muttered.

The woman was smiling at him provokingly. “Seems to me, then, young fellow, that if I ever want to kill anybody I’d better come to you for advice?”

She was still half-mocking him, but he could see the light of admiration winning through again. It exhilarated him, made him want to renew his conquest to the full. “Well, m’dear, it’s not for me to say — but I guess I can give most people good advice about most things.”

“Still,” continued the little man, with naive seriousness, “I don’t think I’d ever kill anybody, even if I knew ’ow. Not that there ain’t some folks as deserve to be put out. My brother, f’rinstance. Lives up at Millport in a swell ’ouse — servants, motor-cars — all that. Rollin’ in money — did me out o’ my share when my father died. Made ’is fortune doing other people since — wouldn’t gimme a penny, not if I was starvin’, ’e wouldn’t. Sometimes I sees ’im at the station of an evenin’ — ’e ’as a factory ’ere — I sees ’im steppin’ into ’is first-class kerridge on the Millport train — and I could kill ’im with my own ’ands, straight, I could.”

Potterson stared at him with a certain interest; it was extraordinary that such a mild little fellow should nourish such a hatred. Hardly what one would expect — hardly even what he, Potterson, the student of human nature, would have expected. “Well, why don’t you kill him?” he said, with a wink at the crowd.

“I ain’t got the courage, that I ’aven’t,” replied the other. His frankness was so amusing. Potterson began to struggle with whiskified laughter. “Besides, mister, come to think of it, I dunno as there’d be any way. ’E’s so scared of burglars nobody’d ever get in ’is ’ouse.”

“Better kill him in the street, then,” said Potterson, almost hysterically. Really, the fellow was as good as a music-hall.

“No, mister — that wouldn’t do, either, with everybody lookin’ on.”

“Oh, don’t... don’t,” Potterson cried, holding his sides with merriment. “Oh, Lord — you make me laugh more than I’ve laughed for months! I think I know now why your wife married you — she thought you were the damn funniest thing she’d ever seen!” He laughed till the tears streamed from his eyes and mingled with the perspiration on his nose and cheeks. “Besides,” he added, pulling himself together, “you’re wrong. There is a way. There always is.”

“No, mister. Not with ’im. Even you couldn’t find one.”

“Couldn’t I?” Reaction, after the hysteria of laughing so much, gave him a tone that was curt and almost angry. “Couldn’t I, my little fellow? Don’t you be too sure what I could do and couldn’t do!”

He felt the woman’s hand on his arm like a bar of fire — another stage, when the woman first did the touching. “I suppose you think you could, eh?” she whispered.

“M’dear” — he began, thickly; he wondered if he might dare to put an encircling arm round her waist. He was almost doing so when she turned on him fiercely, “None of that!” What a little spitfire she was! Hopelessly drunk, of course... He heard her continuing, “All talk — brag — boast — no proof — that’s the sort he is!”

One or two of the crowd tittered and chuckled; he felt a dull angry flush mounting to his cheeks and stabbing his eyes from the inside. Making fun of him, was she? He’d show her — and the rest, too. “Look here!” he shouted, moving as if to take off his coat. “If there’s any man here who thinks I’m nothing but a boaster, let him come up and tell me so — man to man! And if there’s any woman thinks so, let her keep her damned mouth shut!”

“Rot!” retorted the woman. “I dare you to prove what you say. You say there was always a way of killin’ a chap if you wanted to. Well, to prove that, you gotter take a test case. Take my ’usband’s brother — ’e’ll do as good as any. ’Ow would you work the trick with ’im?”

He felt the crowd veering away from him in sympathy — a thing he could never endure. “Aye, that’s a fair question,” he heard someone say. Other voices came to his ears — eager, critical, derisive voices. And at the same time, looking down at the woman’s face so close to his own, he was filled with an overmastering, intolerable longing to subdue her, to justify himself before her, to make himself forever memorable in her life. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. That woman at Portsmouth — nothing to her. Nor the little French girl. Nor even Maudie Raines — Maudie who years before had driven him to such madness that...

“Same again, George,” he muttered. Then he gritted his teeth and fortified himself for a new struggle. “You’re a fine pack of fools,” he cried irritably at last. “How the hell can I tell what the best plan would be when I don’t know the man or his ways or anything about him?”

“I’ll tell you,” whispered the woman. “I’ll answer anything you want to know about ’im.”

Her eyes, lustrous and burning, seemed to swim into his seething brain. She would tell him. Could it be that she wanted him to succeed before her husband, before the crowd? Was she on his side? Extraordinary — there was something in her eyes — in the way she looked at him — that reminded him of Maudie Raines... He began to speak loudly, in something of his market-place manner, yet with greater emphasis than he usually employed. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he cried, “I accept the challenge. I’m a man of my word and I mean every single word that I say. No nonsense about Parker Potterson. He’s straight — he delivers the goods. Mind you — in my opinion, this is an entirely abshurd — absurd argument — discussing how to kill a man who is living a few miles away at this preshent moment — and who, despite our friend here, is probably a very decent and respectable member of the community. It is, I repeat, an absurd business altogether — and, if I may say so, in very bad taste. It was that, and that alone, that made me reluctant at first to enter into it. But” — and here his voice acquired a rich cathedral tone — “but having had my word doubted, ladish — ladies and gentlemen — having had foul ashpershions cast upon my good faith — what can I do but take up the challenge, good tashte or bad tashte?”

“Get to the point, mister,” cried a voice in the crowd, and Potterson turned upon it savagely. “I’ll get to the point in my time, shir, and not in yours! And if you dare to interrupt me again I’ll knock your damned head off!”

He paused to appreciate the silence; but, by God, he was getting them — calming them — thrilling them with his words — how marvellous it was to be able to do that! The old sense of power was on him again, but more than ever before — more than ever before in his life; a Berserker fierceness hammered at his temples. He would show them — never in Finchingfold would that night at the Crown and Woolpack be forgotten. “Ladies and gentlemen — where wash I? Ah, I remember... Thish gentleman — unknown to me — who lives at Millport... Very well, I accept the challenge. But” — and he leered down at the woman — “but you must always bear in mind that because I could do a thing, it doesn’t follow that anybody else could!”

“Never mind. Tell us how you would do it.”

“I’m going to. I’m going to make you realize that Parker Potterson is a man of his word. If Parker Potterson saysh he can do a thing, then he can do it. Now then...” He turned to the little man. “Did I, shir, or did I not — hear you remark a moment or so ago that you often saw your brother at Finchingfold Shtation — shtepping into a firsht-class carriage on the train for Millport?”

“That’s right, mister. ’E travels every day back’ards and for’ards.”

“Good. That givesh me an idea. He musht be killed on the train.”

“But ’ow, mister?”

“Ah, that’sh jusht where the brains comesh in. But it’sh ver’ simple. Get into the next carriage when hish train leavesh in an evening. Make sure hish carriage and yoursh are empty — mosht likely they are, ash he travelsh firsht. Then...” He stopped, caught his breath rather wildly, and added: “Ishn’t there a long tunnel between Finchingfold and Millport?”

“That’s right, mister. You know the line, then?”

“Never you mind what I know — it’sh a deal more’n you ever will, anyway... Ver’ good — the tunnel, then. All you gotter do is to wait till the train entersh the tunnel, slip out of your compartment along the footboard and get in hish compartment, then kill your man—”

“Kill ’im?”

“Yesh — kill him — you can’t get out of that!”

“But ’ow?”

“How th’hell d’you think? Heapsh of waysh... Throttle him if y’like. Or a hammer. Know how t’ushe a hammer?”

“Tidy-sized mallet might do,” said the man, with fatuous simplicity. “I’m a carpenter by trade, I am, an’ I’m pretty well used to a mallet.”

Potterson’s eyes lit up with a hectic gleam. “Shplendid! Glad to hear y’can do shomething. An’ a mallet’sh all right — jusht as good as a hammer — perhapsh better.”

“But what abart after that, mister? My cousin’s brother-in-law, what I was tellin’ you of, ’e ses to me that the real trouble abart these things is gettin’ rid o’ the body arterwards.”

“Cousin’sh brother-in-law’sh a fool. Dishpose of the body — eashy to any man of brainsh!”

“Well, ’ow abart it?”

“Eashy, I tell you.”

“But — in this ’ere case, mister — on a train?”

“Eashy. Ain’t there a river to crosh — an’ a big bridge — jusht before the train getsh to Millport?”

“That’s right, mister. Three-arch bridge over the River Fayle.”

“Dammit, then — can’t y’shee? Eashy to any man of brainsh. Ash train crashes bridge, open door an’ throw body over par — parapet into river! Heh? Ain’t that a good plan? Now would you — would you have thought of that, hey? Or you, m’dear?” He turned to the woman, eager to taste the reward of his triumph.

She laughed. “Somebody’d see you from the tow-path, most likely.”

“Ah!.. that’sh clever of you, m’dear. Thish li’l plan o’ mine worksh besht in winter. Nobody on tow-path in winter — choosh nice rainy night in December — November — Chrishmash... An’ lishen to me — it’sh a damn good plan, I tell you — becosh — becosh when the body comesh ashore — they’ll shay — poor feller — shad accshident — fell backwardsh — mark on hish head where he hit par — parapet. An’ thoshe who don’t believe that’ll shay — ’coursh it’sh shuicide really, on’y relativesh tryin’ t’hush thingsh up...” God — what was he talking about — what had he been saying? Who, anyway, had begun this fool argument? He was mad; the room was whirling round and round; his brain was on fire.

The woman was still laughing. “Yes, it’s a plan all right, I’ll grant that. Only I’d like to see my Bert throwin’ the body out, that’s all! Why, ’e couldn’t ’ardly throw a dead cat over a fence!”

For the second time that night Potterson laughed till the tears ran down from his whisky-sodden eyes. Triumph! He had scored over them all. She was laughing with him now, not at him; he could feel her yielding to him — realizing his power and strength as he had willed her to. Lord — what a grand world it was for those who were born to be natural lords over their fellows!

“Mebbe he couldn’t!” he cried hoarsely. “But I never guar-guaranteed he could, did I? It’sh a job for a man of shtrength, not for a weakling! All th’world ish open to th’man of shtrength — shtrength and brainsh — both t’gether — an’ the weakesht goesh to th’wall!” It was the eternal saga of his dreams.

“Well, mister,” said the little man, “you’ve give me a fair answer, I’ll say that. An’ now p’rhaps you’ll ’ave just a last drink with me?”

“Dummind. ’Nother one, Georsh.”

He knew he was perfectly drunk — too drunk to know what he was doing or saying. Yet a blind insensate pride in himself made him believe that never, never had he triumphed so mightily. And all because of the woman. But for her a little idle boasting, might have been — but nothing else. It was she who had driven him to claim this strange and utmost triumph. She was the sort he would do anything for — just as he had done for Maudie Raines so many years ago. Always women had been his weakness — his weakness by making him feel so strong. There was nothing he would not have done for a woman he fancied. And there was nothing still that he would not do. At fifty-seven the same fire was in him — the same as at twenty-seven...

While he was drinking he made to put his arm round the woman’s waist and this time she did not repulse him. His head throbbed and sang with exhilaration. He was winning her! His arm closed round her, and again he felt that entrancing delicate shrinking of her body away from him. She shrank, but somehow diffidently, almost invitingly.

“Satishfied I’m a man of my word, m’dear?” he hiccupped, and she replied:

“I’ll certainly say you are if you’ll answer me just one more question. You know, they always do say that it’s the little things as gets a man down, as often as not. Now take that mallet, f’rinstance. What’d you do with it afterwards? If you was to throw it into the river with the body it’d float and be washed ashore somewhere, and then, mebbe, with the bloodstains on it, it’d give you away — quite likely, anyhow. So you see, young feller, that looks to me the weak spot in your plan — that mallet. Couldn’t you get rid of it some way or another?”

“Yes, mister,” the little man echoed in his plaintive whine. “I ’adn’t thought o’ that, I admit — but my old gel — she’s a regl’lar smart ’un — trust ’er for not missin’ anythin’.”

A murmur went round the bystanders. “Yes, I reckon ’e’s got you there, mister! Tell us what you’d do with the mallet!”

The mallet... What would he do with it? Potterson fought for coherence — for coherence to think as well as to speak. The Mallet... extraordinary that anyone should be asking him questions about a mallet!

He glanced down and saw the woman’s eyes fixed on him. His brain reeled with joy; he began to tremble. She was his; she no longer shrank away from his touch or even tried to — he could feel her breath rising and falling like a livid ache in his own body. It was his moment — the moment for which he had always lived.

“The mallet — the mallet — tell me!” she whispered, and he knew then that he would answer even that last question — that last question and answer that would remove the final barrier between himself and her! “Mallet?” he roared, in a voice that made passers-by in the market place outside stop to wonder what was happening. “Yesh — ’course you oughter deshtroy th’mallet! Think Parker Pottershon’sh fool enough t’forget important thin’ li’ that? Yesh... gotter deshtroy mallet — altogether — shomehow...”

“But, ’ow, that’s the question, mister?” queried the little man, with that strange, half-pathetic, half-exasperating patience.

Potterson smiled then — a wide, uncanny smile from which all the light had gone out except the hideous light of evil. “That’sh right. Lemme think. How deshtroy mallet? Ah... Idea. Idea o’ mine — brainsh full o’good ideash — heh? Ain’t there a slag-heap jusht outshide Millport Shtation — one o’ them burnin’ shlag-heapsh near gashworksh?”

“That’s right, mister.”

“Then, by God, ain’t it eashy — eashy as kishin’ a pretty woman like yo’ wife — throw mallet on shlag-heap — an’ in a minute — two minitsh — all burned to shinder!”

And with a strange weakness in all his limbs he reeled towards the face that at that final moment sharply eluded his.

Inspector Jessup of the Washington Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been expecting the call. He smiled slightly as he listened to the telephone report:

“Agent Benson speaking from the first floor. The subject just got out of his car as a sight-seeing bus arrived for a tour of the bureau. He immediately mingled with a bunch of sight-seers, and is headed upstairs on one of the first elevator loads. Agent Torner is trailing him, subject to your orders, sir.”

“Rejoin Agent Torner and continue the surveillance,” commanded the inspector and hung up. A big man, sandy-haired, pleasant-featured, he shifted in his chair with a certain air of lumbering boyishness, and eyed for an instant the intercommunicating system. For once he could give thanks that he was head of the Washington office.

At other times, he had been not too delighted with his assignment. This was a “spot” job, constantly under the eye of the director; the distance between Inspector Jessup’s office and the nerve center of the entire F.B.I. was only the difference between the fourth and fifth floors of the big marble building of the United States Department of Justice. Under ordinary conditions the proximity meant that the inspector’s activities were subject to far greater scrutiny than those of any other like officer in the organization. But at a time like this—

He flipped a button on the interoffice system, marked: “Director.” Instantly, a crisp voice answered:

“Yes, Jessup.”

The inspector leaned close to the transmitter:

“Hello, Boss. The suspect in the Tilliver murder case just came into the building for another tour of the bureau.”

“Good! That makes the third trip in three days.”

“And that either makes me dead right on him or dead wrong. He must figure he’s got that job covered up pretty well, and wants to be sure of it. After all, once he leaves Washington, he can’t run and hide like the average fugitive. He’s a prominent man. He’s got to stay in the open, and that takes a lot of nerve — unless a person knows that there isn’t a chance of being caught. So what happens? He remembers his crook training: to stick in with officers after a crime and try to hear or see something that will tip him off as to how they’re progressing with the case. That’s my theory — I’ll stand or fall on it.”

“All right, Jessup. Go ahead with your plans.”

“On the lines we talked over yesterday afternoon?”

“Definitely.”

“There’s a point, Boss. To do that, I’ll have to divulge a certain amount of information about the case. How far shall I go?”

There was a pause. Then: “That’s up to your judgment, Jessup. Your job is to place him actually at the scene of the crime. If you can do that, all our other evidence dovetails. We know he was seen in the neighborhood both before and after the murder. The witnesses we had hidden here yesterday when he went through were fairly certain on that point. We know too that Tilliver and a man who looked a lot like this fellow served a term in California together some twenty years ago on a charge of extortion by mail.”

“But there’s no fingerprint record to prove it.”

“That’s the tough part; the fingerprint files on that prison don’t date back that far. So you’ve got to work carefully. As I see it, you figure that he and Tilliver were once crooked pals. After they got out of prison, they went different ways. Tilliver seemingly reformed. So did this fellow. You believe that neither of them did anything of the sort. Tilliver was still a blackmailer at heart, and this — what’s his name?”

“Manton Kent.”

“That’s right, Kent. This Kent got into a small concern — handling all sorts of things — and apparently built it up to a big business—”

“But we can show by evidence that it’s a house of cards. That’s my idea of the motive, Boss. On the surface, it looks as if he killed Tilliver rather than pay him blackmail. But I think he did it because he figured that Tilliver knew what Kent was doing in this firm: juggling its stock, selling off its assets for his personal account, padding pay rolls — it’ll take a dozen auditors to chase down the crooked things this fellow’s done. Tilliver must have found this out, tried to get some blackmail as a result of what he knew — but got killed instead.”

“It’s a great theory — if you can prove it.”

Inspector Jessup’s lips tightened.

“Yes, that’s the trouble — to prove it. To put him smack into the middle of the murder scene, or get some sort of record on him through fingerprints.”

“There were none at the scene of the crime.”

“And no record from the penitentiary. I didn’t mean that. I was hoping that I might find he’d served time somewhere else. Or been arrested for investigation, or mixed up in some bankrupt racket — anything to break through his armor. Otherwise, I haven’t a leg to stand on.”

“Especially since all the tangible evidence points directly away from him. Well, use your head on that, Jessup. And good luck to you.”

A clicking sound was followed by silence. Inspector Jessup raised a big hand to his forehead and brought it away, the palm beaded with sweat. He wished now that he had not been so eager to work personally on the solution of this murder, that he had not been so enthusiastic in the belief that Man ton Kent, following a crook’s logic, was attempting to spy on those who were spying on him.

Suddenly, however, he straightened. In quick succession, he flipped the levers of the interoffice system to a half-dozen departments, and gave crisp orders. Then he glanced at his watch. It was twelve minutes past ten o’clock. The morning tour of the building had begun promptly at ten. By now, the inspector knew, the guide had explained the wide-flung activities of the bureau; he should be finishing up the tour’s beginning in the Exhibit Room with a few words on the machine guns captured from gangsters, Dillinger’s death mask, the red wig worn by Katherine Kelly, the kidnaper, and the vacuum jar in which her husband had hidden ransom money. The inspector pressed a button. A special agent answered.

“I’ll begin at the multigraphing room,” said Inspector Jessup. “See that someone is always accidentally available if I should need him.”

“Yes, sir.”

The inspector left the room. After a time, special agents followed.

It was five minutes later that, crowding and gawking, the morning tour of Department of Justice sightseers followed their F.B.I. guide down a wide hall on the seventh floor, toward a long room, where presses whirred, multigraphs pounded noisily, and binding machinery clattered. The guide entered the door, walking backward that he might address the variegated group that had followed him. Here were men and women from throughout America who tonight would send home post cards saying they knew all about crime. There were small boys and girls, goggle-eyed at the thought of being in the same building with G-men. There was a sprinkling of newspapermen and women from out of town, and not a few who appeared to be business executives, or persons of responsibility interested in law enforcement. At one side, somewhat apart from the throng, was a keen-featured man of about forty-five, who bore a frank air of interest in everything about him. The guide, still walking backward, now raised his voice above the roar of machinery.

“In this room,” he began, “are all the reproductive processes by which reward sheets are multigraphed, pamphlets bound, and the F.B.I.’s Law Enforcement Bulletin assembled and shipped to more than ten thousand police bodies, sheriffs, and other enforcement agencies. In a kidnaping, the lists of ransom notes are reproduced here; in one case, this room turned out a job in thirty-six hours of continuous effort that would have required three weeks of work in a regulation printing plant. Now if you will follow me—”

“Look out!” came a sharp voice. The warning was too late. The guide collided heavily with the hurrying form of Inspector Jessup, striking him against an elbow. The inspector winced; his right hand flew open, releasing a number of sheets of paper that evidently had just come from a multigraphing machine, and scattering them wildly across the smooth cement floor.

“That’s all right; that’s all right!” the inspector announced hastily to the guide’s apologies, bending swiftly meanwhile in an effort to gather up the papers. Here and there a visitor, seeking to aid, bent also. The inspector apparently took no notice. His eyes, however, were not still.

At last he saw that the keen-eyed man, also a volunteer in the job of reclamation, was covertly peering at each sheet as he picked it from the floor. The inspector waited only a moment more, then, as with sudden realization, whirled.

“Please don’t touch those papers, anyone!” he commanded. A passing agent suddenly moved in upon the scene, joining with the guide in collecting the multigraphed matter from the hands of volunteers. The inspector nodded to the guide.

“If you will move on with your party.”

“Yes, sir. Please follow me.” The group obeyed, and the inspector stood facing the subject of his investigation, who stood extending a sheaf of the papers with one hand, while with the other he fumbled at a hip pocket for his wallet.

“I’m afraid that my curiosity got the better of me,” he announced. “I was so terribly interested that I did not realize this might be a confidential matter.”

The inspector’s brow creased.

“You mean you were reading that announcement?”

“I glanced at it.” His hands now free, he dug into his wallet for a card. “I do hope that my position will guarantee my ability to keep secrets. Kent is my name, sir. Manton Kent. I am president of Superior Products.”

The inspector lost his worried look, extending a pawlike hand in greeting. The main group had passed out of the room now. The guide’s voice echoed from down the hall:

“We are now entering the Identification Unit, where are assembled a total of more than ten million fingerprints from every part of the United States and numerous foreign countries—”

“I suppose I should catch up with that group,” said Manton Kent. “Although,” he laughed, “I almost know that lecture by heart.”

“Oh, you’ve been here before?”

“This is my third trip in three days.”

“Interested in law enforcement?”

Manton Kent smiled.

“I didn’t realize it until I came through here the other day. Then I began to see how many features could be applied to my business. Fingerprinting, for instance, and scientific apparatus. Although, of course,” he added slowly, “one only gets the barest sort of a glimpse on one of these tours.”

The inspector agreed.

“I’m sorry you didn’t make yourself known at the director’s office. He’d have arranged for a special guide.”

“You really think so?”

“Oh, yes. Persons like yourself, heads of corporations and the like, are the real ones he wants interested in the things we are doing here—”

Manton Kent shrugged.

“So what do I do? I play the boob and look at what turns out to be a confidential matter.”

Inspector Jessup grinned.

“Oh, it isn’t that bad. Fact is, what’s on this sheet is not so terribly secret.”

“I’m glad of that.”

“It’s a bureau matter, of course. Naturally, we don’t want any investigative information to fall into the wrong hands. This just happens to be some multigraphs of reports on evidence we’ve picked up in a murder case here in Washington a few days ago. A man named James Tilliver was killed in his home. Ordinarily that would be a case for the Washington police, except that the government had purchased the place a few days before; Tilliver was to move out the next day. Thus he was on government soil, and that put the case in our jurisdiction.”

“I noticed the report was headed ‘Suspect Unknown,’ or something like that.”

“Yes. We always do that until we have narrowed a case down to its essentials.”

Jessup glanced at his watch.

“I’ve a few free minutes. Perhaps I could show you around.”

“That would be a great privilege.”

They walked together down the long hall. The inspector folded the sheaf of multigraphed reports.

“A queer affair, the Tilliver case. We’ll all be glad to get it cleared up.”

“I suppose you have to chase down every tiny lead.”

“Everything. For instance, you perhaps know about the finding of a woman’s shoe near the curbing, and a pair of gloves, with blood on them, a half block away. Naturally, we have to prove or disprove any connection between this evidence and the identity of the murderer.”

“Then you know the killer?”

Jessup shook his head.

“Oh, I didn’t say that. I said we’re running down these clues. The investigation isn’t completed. I’ll let you watch an experiment or two in the laboratory if you’re interested. I don’t see how it could harm the case.”

“I’d be delighted.”

“First we’d better dip into the Identification Unit if you want to see it again — the fingerprint section, you know.” He opened a large pair of doors leading to a huge room, set with many metal filing cases. “Of course, you’ve been told how we classify the thousands of fingerprints received daily. Which reminds me — have you thought about introducing civil fingerprinting into your business? For identification, in case of illness, accident, amnesia, anything of that sort?”

“I’ve been thinking seriously about it,” said Manton Kent.

“And of course, your own fingerprints are on file here?”

“You mean in the file reserved for civil fingerprints? I’m sorry to say they’re not.”

“Well, of course, we never urge anyone to—”

“But I’d be delighted.”

“Good. If you’ll just step over this way.” Then at a table where stood a moist pad and a large card, clipped in a holder: “Now your right hand first — just relax; I’ll roll your fingers on this pad, then on the paper; it’s really quite painless, unless, of course, a person has a criminal background — just relax again, Mr. Kent. Thank you. Now, the other hand.”

Manton Kent glanced at his fingers.

“I’ve always heard they’d be dirty from lampblack.”

“No. This is a special pad, and sensitized paper. It leaves no marks on the hands. Now, if you’ll just fill out this card: your name, address, whom to notify in case of accident.”

Manton Kent sat at a desk.

“It gives you a feeling of security, doesn’t it?” he queried. Then as he wrote:

“I’ve been wondering why you haven’t been able to learn something by fingerprints about that murder case.”

“You mean the Tilliver affair. Evidently the murderer wore gloves.”

“Oh, of course.”

Manton Kent finished the writing of his description and handed the completed card to the inspector. An agent happened to be passing. Jessup called him:

“File this for Mr. Kent, please. Civil fingerprints.”

The agent took the card and hurried away. Inspector Jessup turned to a dissertation on the fingerprint division. At last:

“Suppose now we step into the Technical Division — the Crime Laboratory, as it is known.” From a near-by corridor of filing cases, a machine began to whir. It caught the inspector’s attention. “Before we leave the fingerprint section,” he said hastily, “I want to show you how law enforcement has borrowed ideas from the business world.”

“Yes?”

“By using an ordinary mechanical card sorter to catch crooks.” He led the way to the machine, where a special agent and a fingerprint clerk were busily feeding it large stacks of cards, each punctured with many holes.

“An indexing machine,” said Manton Kent. “We have a dozen of them in my organization.”

“Of course. We merely adapted it to crooks. Instead of names or addresses, the prongs of that machine are set to fit into the holes in a card which designate one certain man’s fingerprint classification. That big pile of cards the men are feeding it represents a search for a certain criminal. They are the records of every crook who has a classification resembling that of the wanted man in any manner whatever. And if the crook we want is among them, this machine will find him.” Manton Kent looked toward the side of the sorter, where two large slots appeared. One was rapidly filling with cards, representing rejections. The other was empty. The inspector said:

“Let’s stay and see if they find the fellow.”

“Certainly.”

A minute passed. The machine stopped, its piles of cards exhausted. The inspector turned away without waiting for the eye signal of the special agent to tell him that a search of the entire Identification Unit in the hope of finding some criminal reference to Manton Kent had been in vain.

“I suppose that machine is infallible,” said Kent.

“If a record exists in the bureau,” the inspector answered. “Unfortunately, some of our enforcement bodies and prisons did not keep complete files prior to ten years ago. So, in old cases, we are always at a disadvantage.”

“Unfortunate,” answered Mr. Kent.

“Very. Shall we take a look at the Crime Laboratory?”

He led the way to another double door, and held it wide for his guest. They entered an anteroom, filled with exhibits of guns, an X-ray machine for looking into packages without unwrapping them, pictured histories of scientific crime detection in widely known cases.

“You’ve seen all this on the tours you’ve taken,” said the inspector. “Let’s go behind the scenes.”

“Wonderful.”

The inspector did not answer. He led the way into a big room that reeked with chemicals and stepped swiftly to a laboratory table where a sober-faced man in a white smock had apparently just completed a microscopic examination of a sheer silk stocking. Near by, on the table, lay a woman’s suède shoe.

“What experiment is this?” the inspector queried.

“The shoe is part of the Tilliver evidence,” answered the scientist. “The stocking came from the room of Mrs. Bradford Bowen, in the May town Hotel.”

Kent stepped closer.

“Oh, a suspect?”

The inspector smiled.

“Be patient now. I’ll show you how scientific detection works out. This, as you have guessed, is the woman’s shoe that was found outside the Tilliver house after the murder. The next morning, Mrs. Bowen reported to the hotel management that a shoe and a pair of gloves had been stolen from her room — that someone must have taken them while she was out.”

“Easy enough,” said Mr. Kent.

“Yes, of course. But we can’t accept the palpable. So we conducted experiments to prove or dispose her story. You will notice that this stocking, which we obtained from her for experimental purposes, is of an extremely odd shade. We have determined that she never wears any other type. Therefore, microscopic examinations were made, both of the shoe and the stocking. The shoe revealed many tiny shreds of silk that match the fibers of this hose exactly. But the scientist could find no other fibers.” He faced the besmocked laboratory man. “Is that correct, Mr. Moberton?”

“That is correct, sir, indicating that the shoe has not recently been on any other foot than that of this particular woman.”

Manton Kent exhibited interest:

“Then you do have a suspect?”

“It begins to look that way. This experiment points suspicion either toward Mrs. Bowen or some person who may have stolen that shoe from her room, in an attempt to divert suspicion toward her.”

“That makes it a woman’s deal all the way round, doesn’t it?” asked Kent. “I see your deduction now. Two women are possibly in love with this Tilliver. One decides to kill him. So she steals a shoe and pair of gloves from her rival and leaves them at the scene of the crime.”

Jessup laughed, and slapped his man on the shoulder.

“The first thing you know, we’ll be giving you an examination for the job of special agent. That’s a very good deduction, except for the motive, which appears to have been blackmail — on Tilliver’s part, not on that of the murderer.”

Kent’s eyes had widened.

“Oh, you’ve established that?”

“Is the evidence handy, Mr. Moberton?” asked the inspector; then, following the scientist’s glance, he moved toward a few pieces of charred paper under a glass cover. “This was found in the fireplace.”

“But I don’t see anything on it — merely some black ashes.”

“Photography, under the ultraviolet ray, brought out the writing. Evidently Tilliver was in tight circumstances, and knew somebody who was rich. Have you the photostatic copy of your experiment on this charred document, Mr. Moberton?”

Silently the scientist opened a drawer and brought out the photograph, while Kent stared as with disbelief.

“It seems impossible!”

“Oh, we do lots of impossible things,” Jessup said.

“You say that this letter was sent from Tilliver to someone else?”

“Yes. It has been determined to be Tilliver’s writing.” He referred to the photograph. “You will notice that this fragment of the letter says: ‘I need a hundred thousand dollars and you have got it to give me. And unless you do give it to me, Old Pal, the reputation you have built up over all these years will not be worth five cents.’ ”

Manton Kent cleared his throat. “Is that all the writing you were able to recover?”

“Unfortunately, that is all. Except for the beginning of the letter.”

“You mean the name of the person to whom it was sent?”

“It was only ‘Dear Pal.’ ”

“Unfortunate,” exclaimed Manton Kent, and gave his attention to the woman’s shoe. The inspector eyed him closely; Kent’s demeanor was that of enthusiastic interest, and nothing more. Jessup turned.

“Suppose we see what experiments are being made with the gloves,” he suggested, and led the way with a pawlike hand on the suspect’s shoulders. Again he sought to break through possible armor. “Perhaps I shouldn’t dismiss that letter so lightly, because it really did aid us to some extent. It showed us the motive was a quarrel over blackmail. Tilliver had sent it to an old friend, apparently. That person evidently became wild with anger, rushed to Tilliver’s house, stealing the shoe and gloves on the way. There was a fight, or quarrel, at least a struggle—”

“I suppose you found chairs overturned and things like that?”

“No, nothing of the sort,” the officer answered blandly and explained no further. “As I say, there was a struggle, and the murderer drew a pistol, killed Tilliver, remembered that the letter might be incriminating evidence, threw it in the fireplace, ran from the house, dropped the shoe at the curb and threw away the gloves.”

“And after that?” asked Kent.

Jessup shrugged.

“You know as much about that as I do,” he answered with a grin. “Oh, here we are.” He nodded to another besmocked man, who was busily dousing a pair of kid gloves in a laboratory tray filled with slightly discolored water. Jessup asked, in routine fashion: “This is an experiment with Tilliver evidence, Mr. Graves?”

The scientist, tall, freckled, sandy-haired, turned quietly.

“Yes, sir.”

“Would you mind explaining it?”

“Not at all, sir. The object is to determine whether the murderer left his fingerprints on these gloves.” He raised one from the tray with a rubber-shielded hand. “As you see, I have immersed the evidence in a solution of three per cent nitrate of silver. I now place it upon this large blotter and put it under this lamp—”

“Which is?”

“Ultraviolet rays, sir.”

“And if there are fingerprints?”

“They will appear in a very few moments, of a brownish color, but perfectly detectable. Oh, by the way, a messenger asked me to give you this memorandum.”

The inspector took it, cupping it in his hand.

“Thank you,” came briefly. Then as the ultraviolet ray poured its weird light upon the saturated leather, Jessup glanced again at the memorandum:

To Inspector Jessup these numbers became ridges and lines and whorls and deltas, assembling themselves into a mental picture of the fingerprints of this dapper, coldly calm man beside him. If once, during this well-planned murder, there had been a slip, if, for instance, there had been no protective covering for Manton Kent’s fingers when these gloves were stolen, then the story would now be told.

Second after second the inspector waited. Twice he leaned forward as something brownish began to appear upon the white texture, only to draw back again.

“Only smudges,” said the scientist, “from grease or a like substance.”

“Yes, I see,” answered Jessup. “And that was our big chance to nail him.”

Kent turned swiftly.

“Him?” he asked. “Then you don’t think it was a woman?”

“Suppose we go over to the comparison microscope,” replied the inspector. “I’ll show you something interesting.”

Again a besmocked man awaited them. Jessup asked for the murder gun. It was forthcoming; an automatic, blue-steeled, ugly, with the serial number filed off, to prevent tracing. The inspector held it out to Kent, who looked at it intently.

“This was found in a trash can some ten blocks from the murder scene,” said Jessup. “You will note that it is a forty-five caliber. That is an extremely heavy gun for a woman to handle.”

“Yes, I suppose so. But how do you know it is the murder gun?”

“If you’ll come this way.” He moved a few feet to what appeared to be a double-barreled microscope, fitted with a single eyepiece. “The comparison microscope,” he said. “If you will remember, my theory is that there was a quarrel. Then Tilliver was shot. After the gun was found, a bullet was fired from it into a box of cotton, so that it might be recovered. Then the lethal bullet was extracted from the body of the murdered man.

“These two bullets were put on those prongs you see projecting beneath the lenses of the comparison microscope. Now, if you will look down through that eyepiece, you will see that the rifling of the gun barrel made distinctive marks on each of those bullets so that they exactly match.” Kent bent forward. “You can see better if you’ll take off your hat,” added the inspector.

Manton Kent obeyed.

“I don’t believe I quite get what you mean,” he said, staring through the eyepiece.

“Perhaps the bullets are not in alignment. Just move that thumb set either forward or backward until the bullets come together—”

“Oh, this little gadget here?”

“Yes.”

“Of course! I see the bullets begin to move, coming closer together—” Suddenly, with an ejaculation, he straightened, looking about him in surprised fashion. A hand went to the top of his head. “No bees around here?” he asked queerly.

“Bees? Why?”

“The queerest little jabbing pain hit me for an instant in the top of the head.” He rubbed his scalp. “It’s gone now.”

“Neuralgia?”

“Probably, although I never had it before.” Kent bent again to the microscope, moving the adjustment knobs until at last the two bullets seemed as one. “Remarkable!” he exclaimed.

Inspector Jessup touched him on an arm.

“Not half as remarkable as this final experiment,” he said. “You will remember that I mentioned one piece of evidence as pointing to a struggle. Let’s see how it is turning out in the hands of science.”

With a hand on Manton Kent’s arm, he led the way to another of the be-smocked clan that peopled this big room. This time the scientist was a squat, pale man with a flat voice. He was surrounded by test tubes, and chemical vials; a microscope stood before him.

Inspector Jessup went through his usual preliminary:

“May I inquire, Mr. Caruth, what experiment you are conducting, and if it is the Tilliver case?”

“It is in the Tilliver case,” came the toneless, precise voice, as the scientist raised a cellophane container. “I have here two human hairs, each alike in size, color, thickness, texture, chemical analyses and other characteristics both as to the fiber itself and to the follicles and adhering epithelia. One of these was found in the clutched hand of the murdered man, indicating that it had been torn from the head of the killer during a struggle. The other” — he looked up — “was, as you know, Inspector, just taken from the head of your guest as he bent over the comparison microscope.”

Manton Kent gasped. He whirled, hands outstretched. Wildly his eyes sought the doorway — but two special agents stood there. Then Inspector Jessup’s voice sounded, chilling in its cold courtesy:

“Will you please complete Mr. Kent’s tour — by showing him to the detention quarters?”

The plan lay before Bassil, outlined in his fine, precise writing. It was part of his scientific training to diagram as an aid to the elimination of possible error. This is what would confront the authorities:

Positive Data — Professor Adrian Gohl, the chemist, found dead in his private laboratory at 9 A.M. Sunday. Cause of death, chloroform. Time of attack, 6.49, as established by victim’s watch, broken in his fall. Small cabinet containing papers showed evidence of tampering. One of two cars kept in garage beneath laboratory, gone.

Negative Data — No papers nor equipment missing. No fingerprints other than those of the dead man. No tire marks except those of missing coupe.

Place and Circumstances — Owner’s laboratory at the Gohl house, five miles from the Gohl Chemical Works at Nutley, New Jersey. On Saturdays, Gohl worked all night there, interruptions being strictly prohibited until he was called for breakfast. The body was found by the servant who went to call him.

Probable Sequel — The missing car might later be found, empty, at the bottom of the Hudson River, off an abandoned junk yard near Yonkers.

The erosion of the water would have removed all marks identifying the driver.

Bassil sealed his plan in an envelope and locked it in his safe. It would be an intellectual satisfaction afterward to check it off, step by step, against the developments. Grant that there was one chance in a million against him. He could meet it. It was his sincere conviction that he was one man in a million. His supereminent talents he had forged into a weapon for fighting his way to merited but inexplicably delayed rewards.

And now to be put to the door by old Gohl after years of faithful, valuable, and meagerly compensated service! What if a copy of some of his chief’s precious formulas had been found among his papers? They couldn’t prove anything against him. Not legally.

In those “borrowed” records the assistant had struck pay ore. Dovetailed with certain subsidiary formulas to which he had been assigned and upon which he had done invaluable work, this information for which he had risked so much gave him almost all that he needed. Almost; not quite all. The missing link could be nowhere but in the old man’s private laboratory. For the completed formula and working process any rubber company in the world would pay a fortune. Bassil meant to have that fortune.

Five o’clock. Time to make the first strategic move.

In the office of Dr. Dorman, beneath his apartment, he described a sudden attack of vertigo, shortness of breath. Making note of his gaunt and sallow face, his bony, twitching fingers, the physician diagnosed nervous indigestion, wrote a prescription.

“Thank you, doctor. I feared it was my heart.” (Perfect!)

He was able to get a front seat on the bus. At the New Jersey end of the great river bridge workmen were stringing colored bulbs.

“Tonight?” Bassil heard the driver ask.

“Surest thing you know,” replied the ticket taker.

Bassil got off at Newark. He took a late train for Passaic. It was almost two o’clock when he reached the Gohl place on foot. The laboratory was lighted up. The sliding door to the garage was open on the side where stood the coupe. This was luck! He could push the car noiselessly out, coast down the slope to the road, and turn on the engine only when out of earshot.

He mounted the stairs and knocked.

“It’s Bassil, professor.”

The old man opened. “What brings you here?”

“I have no job. Isn’t there a chance for me?”

Professor Gohl said sternly: “This is not the time. I bid you good night.”

He turned away. Bassil struck.

Putting on his gloves, he soaked the cloth and bound it over the limp figure’s mouth and nostrils. After anxious search he located the formula and copied it in a concentrated fury of toil. When it was finished he took out the dead man’s watch, set it forward to 6.49, and crushed in the crystal.

One final inspection, and he closed the door upon his carefully fabricated mystery. Now the car slid out under his impulsion. He turned into the highway.

When he had crossed the bridge, he would turn north on the New York side to the deserted junk yard, which he had thoroughly explored, and let the empty coup£ glide into the river. Then home. At seven o’clock call up the physician.

“My heart again... It’s very bad. Please come at once.”

Seven o’clock; eleven minutes after and twenty-six miles from the murder as the police would reconstitute it. A perfect alibi.

The glare of the bridge confronted him. There were colored lights giving a weird effect to a group of people at the entrance: bridge policemen, a state trooper, several civilians. Braking down, he held out the exact toll. His hand was seized and shaken. There were shouts and handclapping. A flashlight exploded, almost blinding him. Another. A third. Men crowded about him.

“Name and address, please.” A smiling official, having taken down the car number, made the request. What did it all mean? What could it mean? Was that his voice, that dry clack, asking?

Friendly replies came from all sides, confusing his tortured mind. The millionth? The millionth? What had a million to do with him? The official explained. His was the millionth toll ticket issued on the bridge. Tomorrow there would be a presentation, a memorial gold watch.

Yes; and tomorrow there would be the newspaper flashlights of him, the murderer, in the murdered man’s car. The millionth car. The one chance in a million!

The murder was a commonplace, vulgar one. Only the profession of the victim gave it a public interest. The Farmer appeared first at the local police court, before a bench of magistrates, then before an Assize Court. £3,000 in the bank gave him the right to the best legal advice, and his case was argued with great eloquence by a brilliant leader of the Bar. The value of such assistance was that it prolonged the trial from one to two days, but the result was inevitable. The reporters sharpened their pencils, the bored ushers leaning against the wall, the morbid sightseers — even the stolid jury knew it was inevitable before the curtain rose on the last act of the drama. Only the judge and the counsel for the defense offered a similitude of conscientious doubt. And when sentence was promulgated, and he was taken to Wandsworth Prison, handcuffs on his wrists and three warders in attendance, there was, felt the Farmer, still hope.

He had not seen his wife since his arrest. She had come up once at his earnest request, but since he was not allowed to interview her except in the presence of a prison official, he could not give her instructions as to certain rather incriminating articles which must be done away with (such as two full boxes of ammunition in the right hand side of the chest of drawers); she wasn’t of much use to him, and the sight of her white, drawn face exasperated him to such an extent that when she came again he declined to see her.

The Court of Appeal dismissed his case summarily. And then it was he bethought him of sending for the Orator. Mr. Rater saw him in his cell, a growth of red beard on his redder face, and the Farmer grinned his greeting.

“You’ve got me to rights, Rater — why did you let ‘Higgy’ off with a three?”

“Higgy” had certainly escaped with three years’ penal servitude.

“And that fellow Smith — he thinks I’ll be leaving that woman of mine a bit of money and that he’ll marry her. Now I’m telling you, Rater, she’s not my wife. I was married before. She’s not entitled to a farthing — she won’t get it either.”

He gave particulars of his early marriage. It was not in a spirit of contrition, but rather, as he explained, with satisfaction, “to put her in her place.”

“My point is that I don’t want that woman to go claiming anything from me. She’s been a curse to me,” he added, but did not explain how. Nor, thought Rater, could a logical explanation be forthcoming.

It was out of sheer malice that he had sent for the Orator, who suggested as much, and the condemned man nodded and grinned.

“She’s not going to marry Smith — not on my money.”

“You needn’t worry about Smith—” began the Orator, but stopped. He was on delicate ground.

“That man’s a crook,” said the Farmer. “I’ve had him ‘taped’ for a long time. He’s always going out at nights, and staying away a couple of days. He lives alone, and I’ll bet if you ‘fanned’ his house you’d find lashings of stuff.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said the Orator, who was glad to leave his victim.

The man next door was a sore point with the Farmer. He discussed him with his custodians, the warders who watched him night and day. He did almost all the talking, and they the listening; but they were good listeners.

“I wish I’d knocked his brains out,” he said, amiably. “They can only hang you once, even for fifty thousand murders. I’ll bet he carries that mark I gave him to his grave! I caught him here...” He illustrated the blow, and the warders were only faintly interested.

And then came the morning of mornings, and Mr. J. Giles submitted patiently to being prayed over. He was still red of face, hardly moved by the horror which awaited him in the little cell that opens immediately opposite the one in which he was confined. When the parson had finished, he rose from his knees with a grunt of satisfaction.

“Now let’s see your—”

And then the man next door walked swiftly into the cell, and he had a black strap in his hand. Giles stared at him open-mouthed. There was a livid scar on his forehead. No doubt at all, it was Smith... the man next door!

“Good Gawd!” he gasped. “That’s what you meant, was it? We’d meet again and you’d be the fellow that brought it off!”

Smith, the hangman, did not answer. He never spoke in business hours.

Detective Lieutenant Donald MacDonald, L.A.P.D., was newly commissioned and inexperienced. He had never been inside a priest’s study before. For the matter of that, he had never seen a murdered priest.

While he listened to the housekeeper, he tried to keep his eye on the diocesan map of parishes, on the unfinished poster announcing a Baked Ham Dinner with Bingo, on the glaring chromo of the Sacred Heart; but his gaze kept shifting back to the body.

“The poor dear old man all alone in the house,” the woman was saying. “Father Guerrero off on a sick call, and me hurrying out to the Safeway because we was that near out of flour and he did love his coffee-cake of a morning, the saint that he was.”

There was no point in staring at the body. The photographer had taken it from half a dozen angles. The surgeon hadn’t got there yet. The body was their business between them. But a black cassock with a stiff white collar, a thin peaceful old face with a fringe of gray hair — these didn’t go with murder.

“I’ll never forgive myself, that I never will. To leave him alone with the world full of Nazzies and Kingdom People and suchlike!”

MacDonald brought his eyes back to the witness. “And you were gone how long?”

“That I can’t tell you, Officer, not to the minute. That nice young man at the Safeway, the blond one, he was showing me snapshots of his youngest and—”

“But roughly?”

“Well, say ten minutes. Fifteen maybe.”

“And what time was this?”

“I’m not one to look at the clock day in and day out, Officer, like my poor sister’s husband that never held a job six months in his life, God rest his soul, but it was before dinner, that I know, because it was all in the oven and a good half-hour to go yet.”

“And dinner was at what time?”

“Six o’clock sharp, and Father Guerrero gets his sick call five minutes before I left, and he’ll come home without a bite in his stomach, the poor lamb, to find his pastor...”

The woman had wept before, and it had taken ten minutes to bring her back to the questions. MacDonald hastily interposed, “That would make it about five-thirty you left?”

She gulped a little. “Yes, Officer.”

“You got back some time around quarter of six?”

The gulp was stronger. “Yes, Officer.”

“And found Father Halloran...?”

The gulp won. She nodded silently and turned her streaming face away.

MacDonald damned the surgeon’s delay and doubly damned the fascination of that hassocked corpse. The housekeeper was huddled in silent sorrow. MacDonald could catch the dry clicking of her lips as the beads of a rosary slipped through her fingers. He forced himself to stare at the body with what he tried to make an impartial and experienced eye, and lined up the facts.

Entrance of bullet below heart to the right. Exit in left shoulder blade. Bullet found in back of chair. Priest had been sitting. Murderer then must have been kneeling to achieve angle of shot. Query: false pretense of confession? Memo: find out mechanics of confessional positions. Time of death: 5:30 to 5:45, pending surgeon’s report. Memo: check time with blond Safeway clerk. Time...

Lieutenant MacDonald bent over the corpse and pushed back the black sleeve on the left arm. Wristwatch. A bare chance...

MacDonald rose and looked at the praying woman. There was a new and speculative quality in his stare. The broken wristwatch had registered exactly 7:06.

Rabelais, or his wild illustrator, Gustave Doré, must have had something to do with the designing of the things called flats in England and America. There is something entirely Gargantuan in the idea of economizing space by piling houses on top of each other, front doors and all. And in the chaos and complexity of those perpendicular streets anything may dwell or happen, and it is in one of them, I believe, that the inquirer may find the offices of the Club of Queer Trades. It may be thought at the first glance that the name would attract and startle the passer-by, but nothing attracts or startles in these dim, immense hives. The passer-by is only looking for his own melancholy destination of the Montenegro Shipping Agency or the London office of the Rutland Sentinel, and passes through the twilight passages as one passes through the twilight corridors of a dream. If the thugs set up a Strangers’ Assassination Company in one of the great buildings in Norfolk Street, and sent in a mild man in spectacles to answer inquiries, no inquiries would be made. And the Club of Queer Trades reigns in a great edifice hidden like a fossil in a mighty cliff of fossils.

The nature of this society, such as we afterwards discovered it to be, is soon and simply told. It is an eccentric and Bohemian club, of which the absolute condition of membership lies in this, that the candidate must have invented the method by which he earns his living. It must be an entirely new trade. The exact definition of this requirement is given in the two principal rules. First, it must not be a mere application or variation of an existing trade. Thus, for instance, the club would not admit an insurance agent simply because, instead of insuring men’s furniture against being burned in a fire, he insured, let us say, their trousers against being torn by a mad dog. The principle (as Sir Bradcock Burnaby-Bradcock, in the extraordinarily eloquent and soaring speech to the club on the occasion of the question being raised in the Stormby Smith affair, said wittily and keenly) is the same. Secondly, the trade must be a genuine commercial source of income, the support of its inventor. Thus the club would not receive a man simply because he chose to pass his days collecting broken sardine tins, unless he could drive a roaring trade in them. Professor Chick made that quite clear. And when one remembers what Professor Chick’s own new trade was, one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

The discovery of this strange society was a curiously refreshing thing; to realize that there were ten new trades in the world was like looking at the first ship or the first plough. It made a man feel what he should feel, that he was still in the childhood of the world. That I should have come at last upon so singular a body was, I may say without vanity, not altogether singular, for I have a mania for belonging to as many societies as possible. I may be said to collect clubs, and I have accumulated a vast and fantastic variety of specimens ever since. In my audacious youth I collected the Athenaeum. At some future day, perhaps, I may tell tales of some of the other bodies to which I have belonged. I will recount the doings of the Dead Man’s Shoes Society (that superficially immoral, but darkly justifiable communion); I will explain the curious origin of the Cat and Christian, the name of which has been so shamefully misinterpreted; and the world shall know at least why the Institute of Typewriters coalesced with the Red Tulip League. Of the Ten Teacups, of course, I dare not say a word. The first of my revelations, at any rate, shall be concerned with the Club of Queer Trades, which, as I have said, was one of this class, one which I was almost bound to come across sooner or later, because of my singular hobby. The wild youth of the metropolis call me facetiously “The King of Clubs.” They also call me “The Cherub,” in allusion to the roseate and youthful appearance I have presented in my declining years. I only hope the spirits in the better world have as good dinners as I have. But the finding of the Club of Queer Trades has one very curious thing about it. The most curious thing about it is that it was not discovered by me; it was discovered by my friend Basil Grant, a stargazer, a mystic, and a man who scarcely stirred out of his attic.

Very few people knew anything of Basil; not because he was in the least unsociable, for if a man out of the street had walked into his rooms he would have kept him talking till morning. Few people knew him, because, like all poets, he could do without them; he welcomed a human face as he might welcome a sudden blend of color in a sunset; but he no more felt the need of going out to parties than he felt the need of altering the sunset clouds. He lived in a queer and comfortable garret in the roofs of Lambeth. He was surrounded by a chaos of things that were in odd contrast to the slums around him: old, fantastic books, swords, armor — the whole dust-hole of romanticism. But his face, amid all these quixotic relics, appeared curiously keen and modern — a powerful, legal face. And no one but I knew who he was.

Long ago as it is, every one remembers the terrible and grotesque scene that occurred in—, when one of the most acute and forcible of the English judges suddenly went mad on the bench. I had my own view of that occurrence; but about the facts themselves there is no question at all. For some months, indeed for some years, people had detected something curious in the judge’s conduct. He seemed to have lost interest in the law, in which he had been, beyond expression, brilliant and terrible as a K. C., and to be occupied in giving personal and moral advice to the people concerned. He talked more like a priest or a doctor, and a very outspoken one at that. The first thrill was probably given when he said to a man who had attempted a crime of passion: “I sentence you to three years’ imprisonment, under the firm, and solemn, and God-given conviction that what you require is three months at the sea-side.” He accused criminals from the bench, not so much of their obvious legal crimes, but of things that had never been heard of in a court of justice, monstrous egoism, lack of humor, and morbidity deliberately encouraged. Things came to a head in that celebrated diamond case in which the prime minister himself, that brilliant patrician, had to come forward, gracefully and reluctantly, to give evidence against his valet. After the detailed life of the household had been thoroughly exhibited, the judge requested the premier again to step forward, which he did with quiet dignity. The judge then said, in a sudden, grating voice: “Get a new soul. That thing’s not fit for a dog. Get a new soul.” All this, of course, in the eyes of the sagacious, was premonitory of that melancholy and farcical day when his wits actually deserted him in open court. It was a libel case between two very eminent and powerful financiers, against both of whom charges of considerable defalcation were brought. The case was long and complex; the advocates were long and eloquent; but at last, after weeks of work and rhetoric, the time came for the great judge to give a summing-up; and one of his celebrated masterpieces of lucidity and pulverizing logic was eagerly looked for. He had spoken very little during the prolonged affair, and he looked sad and lowering at the end of it. He was silent for a few moments, and then burst into a stentorian song. His remarks (as reported) were as follows:

He then retired from public life and took the garret in Lambeth.

I was sitting there one evening, about six o’clock, over a glass of that gorgeous Burgundy which he kept behind a pile of blackletter folios; he was striding about the room, fingering, after a habit of his, one of the great swords in his collection; the red glare of the strong fire struck his square features and his fierce gray hair; his blue eyes were even unusually full of dreams, and he had opened his mouth to speak dreamily, when the door was flung open, and a pale, fiery man, with red hair and a huge furred overcoat, swung himself panting into the room.

“Sorry to bother you, Basil,” he gasped. “I took a liberty — made an appointment here with a man — a client — in five minutes — I beg your pardon, sir,” and he gave me a bow of apology.

Basil smiled at me. “You didn’t know,” he said, “that I had a practical brother. This is Rupert Grant, Esquire, who can and does all there is to be done. Just as I was a failure at one thing, he is a success at everything. I remember him as a journalist, a house-agent, a naturalist, an inventor, a publisher, a school-master, a — what are you now, Rupert?”

“I am and have been for some time,” said Rupert, with some dignity, “a private detective, and there’s my client.”

A loud rap at the door had cut him short, and, on permission being given, the door was thrown sharply open and a stout, dapper man walked swiftly into the room, set his silk hat with a clap on the table, and said, “Good-evening, gentlemen,” with a stress on the last syllable that somehow marked him out as a martinet, military, literary, and social. He had a large head streaked with black and gray, and an abrupt black mustache, which gave him a look of fierceness which was contradicted by his sad, sea-blue eyes.

Basil immediately said to me, “Let us come into the next room, Gully,” and was moving towards the door, but the stranger said:

“Not at all. Friends remain. Assistance possibly.”

The moment I heard him speak I remembered who he was, a certain Major Brown I had met years before in Basil’s society. I had forgotten altogether the black, dandified figure and the large, solemn head, but I remembered the peculiar speech, which consisted of only saying about a quarter of each sentence, and that sharply, like the crack of a gun. I do not know, it may have come from giving orders to troops.

Major Brown was a V. C., and an able and distinguished soldier, but he was anything but a warlike person. Like many among the iron men who recovered British India, he was a man with the natural belief and tastes of an old maid. In his dress he was dapper and yet demure; in his habits he was precise to the point of the exact adjustment of a teacup. One enthusiasm he had, which was of the nature of a religion — the cultivation of pansies. And when he talked about his collection his blue eyes glittered like a child’s at a new toy, the eyes that had remained untroubled when the troops were roaring victory round Roberts at Candahar.

“Well, major,” said Rupert Grant, with a lordly heartiness, flinging himself into a chair, “what is the matter with you?”

“Yellow pansies. Coal-cellar. P. G. Northover,” said the major, with righteous indignation.

We glanced at each other with inquisitiveness. Basil, who had his eyes shut in his abstracted way, said, simply:

“I beg your pardon.”

“Fact is. Street, you know, man, pansies. On wall. Death to me. Something. Preposterous.”

We shook our heads gently. Bit by bit, and mainly by the seemingly sleepy assistance of Basil Grant, we pieced together the major’s fragmentary but excited narration. It would be infamous to submit the reader to what we endured; therefore I will tell the story of Major Brown in my own words. But the reader must imagine the scene. The eyes of Basil closed as in a trance, after his habit, and the eyes of Rupert and myself getting rounder and rounder as we listened to one of the most astounding stories in the world from the lips of the little man in black, sitting bolt upright in his chair and talking like a telegram.

Major Brown was, I have said, a successful soldier, but by no means an enthusiastic one. So far from regretting his retirement on half-pay, it was with delight that he took a small, neat villa, very like a doll’s house, and devoted the rest of his life to pansies and weak tea. The thought that battles were over when he had once hung up his sword in the little front hall (along with two patent stew-pots and a bad water-color), and betaken himself instead to wielding the rake in his little sunlit garden, was to him like having come into a harbor in heaven. He was Dutch-like and precise in his taste in gardening, and had, perhaps, some tendency to drill his flowers like soldiers. He was one of those men who are capable of putting four umbrellas in the stand rather than three, so that two may lean one way and two another; he saw life like a pattern in a freehand drawing-book. And assuredly he would not have believed, or even understood, any one who had told him that within a few yards of his brick paradise he was destined to be caught in a whirlpool of incredible adventures such as he had never seen or dreamed of in the horrible jungle or the heart of battle.

One certain bright and windy afternoon, the major, attired in his usual faultless manner, had set out for his usual constitutional. In crossing from one great residential thoroughfare to another, he happened to pass along one of those aimless-looking lanes which lie along the back-garden walls of a row of mansions, and which in their empty and discolored appearance give one an odd sensation as of being behind the scenes of a theatre. But mean and sulky as the scene might be in the eyes of most of us, it was not altogether so in the major’s, for along the coarse gravel footway was coming a thing which was to him what the passing of a religious procession is to a devout person. A large, heavy man, with fish-blue eyes and a ring of irradiating red beard, was pushing before him a barrow which was ablaze with incomparable flowers. There were splendid specimens of almost every order, but the major’s own favorite pansies predominated. The major stopped and fell into conversation, and then into bargaining. He treated the man after the manner of collectors and other mad men — that is to say, he carefully and with a sort of anguish selected the best roots from the less excellent, praised some, disparaged others, made a subtle scale ranging from a thrilling worth and rarity to a degraded insignificance, and then bought them all. The man was just pushing off his barrow when he stopped and came close to the major.

“I’ll tell you what, sir,” he said. “If you’re interested in them things, you just get on to that wall.”

“On the wall!” cried the scandalized major, whose conventional soul quailed within him at the thought of such fantastic trespass.

“Finest show of yellow pansies in England in that there garden, sir,” hissed the tempter. “I’ll help you up, sir.”

How it happened no one will ever know, but that positive enthusiasm of the major’s life triumphed over all its negative traditions, and with an easy leap and swing that showed that he was in no need of physical assistance, he stood on the wall at the end of the strange garden. The second after, the flapping of the frock-coat at his knees made him feel inexpressibly a fool. But the next instant all such trifling sentiments were swallowed up by the most appalling shock of surprise the old soldier had ever felt in all his bold and wandering existence. His eyes fell upon the garden, and there across a large bed in the centre of the lawn was a vast pattern of pansies; they were splendid flowers, but for once it was not their horticultural aspects that Major Brown beheld, for the pansies were arranged in gigantic capital letters so as to form the sentence

A kindly looking old man with white whiskers was watering them.

Brown looked sharply back at the road behind him; the man with the barrow had suddenly vanished. Then he looked again at the lawn with its incredible inscription. Another man might have thought he had gone mad, but Brown did not. When romantic ladies gushed over his V. C. and his military exploits, he sometimes felt himself to be a painfully prosaic person, but by the same token he knew he was incurably sane. Another man, again, might have thought himself a victim of a passing practical joke, but Brown could not easily believe this. He knew from his own quaint learning that the garden arrangement was an elaborate and expensive one; he thought it extravagantly improbable that any one would pour out money like water for a joke against him. Having no explanation whatever to offer, he admitted the fact to himself, like a clear-headed man, and waited as he would have done in the presence of a man with six legs.

At this moment the stout old man with white whiskers looked up, and the watering-can fell from his hand, shooting a swirl of water down the gravel path.

“Who on earth are you?” he gasped, trembling violently.

“I am Major Brown,” said that individual, who was always cool in the hour of action.

The old man gaped helplessly like some monstrous fish. At last he stammered wildly, “Come down — come down here!”

“At your service,” said the major, and alighted at a bound on the grass beside him, without disarranging his silk hat.

The old man turned his broad back and set off at a sort of waddling run towards the house, followed with swift steps by the major. His guide led him through the back passages of a gloomy but gorgeously appointed house, until they reached the door of the front room. Then the old man turned with a face of apoplectic terror dimly showing in the twilight.

“For Heaven’s sake,” he said, “don’t mention jackals.”

Then he threw open the door, releasing a burst of red lamplight, and ran downstairs with a clatter.

The major stepped into a rich, glowing room, full of red-copper and peacock and purple hangings, hat in hand. He had the finest manners in the world, and, though mystified, was not in the least embarrassed to see that the only occupant was a lady, sitting by the window, looking out.

“Madam,” he said, bowing simply, “I am Major Brown.”

“Sit down,” said the lady; but she did not turn her head.

She was a graceful, green-clad figure, with fiery red hair and a flavor of Bedford Park. “You have come, I suppose,” she said, mournfully, “to tax me about the hateful title-deeds.”

“I have come, madam,” he said, “to know what is the matter — to know why my name is written across your garden. Not amicably, either.”

He spoke grimly, for the thing had hit him. It is impossible to describe the effect produced on the mind by that quiet and sunny garden scene, the frame for a stunning and brutal personality. The evening air was still, and the grass was golden in the place where the little flowers he studied cried to Heaven for his blood.

“You know I must not turn round,” said the lady; “every afternoon till the stroke of six I must keep my face turned to the street.”

Some queer and unusual inspiration made the prosaic soldier resolute to accept these outrageous riddles without surprise.

“It is almost six,” he said; and even as he spoke the barbaric copper clock upon the wall clanged the first stroke of the hour. At the sixth the lady sprang up and turned on the major one of the queerest and yet most attractive faces he had ever seen in his life — open and yet tantalizing, the face of an elf.

“That makes the third year I have waited,” she cried. “This is an anniversary. The waiting almost makes one wish the frightful thing would happen once and for all.”

And even as she spoke a sudden rending cry broke the stillness. From low down on the pavement of the dim street (it was already twilight) a voice cried out with a raucous and merciless distinctness:

“Major Brown, Major Brown, where does the jackal dwell?”

Brown was decisive and silent in action. He strode to the front door and looked out. There was no sign of life in the blue gloaming of the street, where one or two street lamps were beginning to light their lemon sparks. On returning he found the lady in green trembling.

“It is the end,” she cried, with shaking lips; “it may be death for both of us. Whenever—”

But even as she spoke her speech was cloven by another hoarse proclamation from the dark street, again horribly articulate.

“Major Brown, Major Brown, how did the jackal die?”

Brown dashed out of the door and down the steps, but again he was frustrated; there was no figure in sight, and the street was far too long and empty for the shouter to have run away. Even the rational major was a little shaken as he returned at a certain time to the drawing-room. Scarcely had he done so than the terrific voice came:

“Major Brown, Major Brown, where did—”

Brown was in the street almost at a bound, and he was in time — in time to see something which at first glance froze the blood. The cries appeared to come from a decapitated head resting on the pavement.

The next moment the pale major understood. It was the head of a man thrust through the coal-hole in the street. The next moment, again, it had vanished, and Major Brown turned to the lady. “Where’s your coal-cellar?” he said, and stepped out into the passage.

She looked at him with wild, gray eyes. “You will not go down,” she cried, “alone, into the dark hole with that beast?”

“Is this the way?” replied Brown, and descended the kitchen stairs three at a time. He flung open the door of a black cavity and stepped in, feeling in his pocket for matches. As his right hand was thus occupied, a pair of great, slimy hands came out of the darkness, hands clearly belonging to a man of gigantic stature, and seized him by the back of the head. They forced him down, down in the suffocating darkness, a brutal image of destiny. But the major’s head, though upside-down, was perfectly clear and intellectual. He gave quietly under the pressure until he had slid down almost to his hands and knees. Then, finding the knees of the invisible monster within a foot of him, he simply put out one of his long, bony, and skilful hands, and, gripping the leg by a muscle, pulled it off the ground, and laid the huge, living man with a crash along the floor. He strove to rise, but Brown was on top like a cat. They rolled over and over. Big as the man was, he had evidently now no desire but to escape; he made sprawls hither and thither to get past the major to the door, but that tenacious person had him hard by the coat-collar, and hung with the other hand to a beam. At length there came a strain in holding back this human bull, a strain under which Brown expected his hand to rend and part from the arm. But something else rent and parted — and the dim, fat figure of the giant vanished out of the cellar, leaving the torn coat in the major’s hand, the only fruit of his adventure and the only clew to the mystery. For when he went up and out at the front door the lady, the rich hangings, and the whole equipment of the house had disappeared. It had only bare boards and whitewashed walls.

“The lady was in the conspiracy, of course,” said Rupert, nodding.

Major Brown turned brick-red. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I think not.”

Rupert raised his eyebrows and looked at him for a moment, but said nothing. When next he spoke he asked:

“Was there anything in the pockets of the coat?”

“There was sevenpence halfpenny in coppers and a threepenny-bit,” said the major, carefully; “there was a cigarette-holder, a piece of string, and this letter,” and he laid it on the table. It ran as follows:

Rupert Grant was leaning forward listening with hawklike eyes. He cut in:

“Is it dated from anywhere?”

“No — oh yes!” replied Brown, glancing upon the paper — “14 Tanner’s Court, North—”

Rupert sprang up and struck his hands together.

“Then why are we hanging here? Let’s get along. Basil, lend me your revolver.”

Basil was staring into the embers like a man in a trance; and it was some time before he answered:

“I don’t think you’ll need it.”

“Perhaps not,” said Rupert, getting into his fur coat. “One never knows. But going down a dark court to see criminals—”

“Do you think they are criminals?” asked his brother.

Rupert laughed stoutly. “Giving orders to a subordinate to strangle a harmless stranger in a coal-cellar may strike you as a very blameless experiment, but—”

“Do you think they wanted to strangle the major?” asked Basil, in the same distant and monotonous voice.-

“My dear fellow, you’ve been asleep. Look at the letter.”

“I am looking at the letter,” said the mad judge, calmly; though, as a matter of fact, he was looking at the fire. “I don’t think it’s the sort of letter one criminal would write to another.”

“My dear boy, you are glorious!” cried Rupert, turning round, with laughter in his bright blue eyes. “Your methods amaze me. Why, there is the letter. It is written, and it does give orders for a crime. You might as well say that the Nelson Column was not at all the sort of thing that was likely to be set up in Trafalgar Square.”

Basil Grant shook all over with a sort of silent laughter, but did not otherwise move.

“That’s rather good,” he said; “but, of course, logic like that’s not what is really wanted. It’s a question of spiritual atmosphere. It’s not a criminal letter.”

“It is. It’s a matter of fact,” cried the other, in an agony of reasonableness.

“Facts,” murmured Basil, like one mentioning some strange, far-off animals — “how facts obscure the truth. I may be silly — in fact, I’m off my head — but I never could believe in that man — what’s his name, in those capital stories? — Sherlock Holmes. Every detail points to something, certainly; but generally to the wrong thing. Facts point in all directions, it seems to me, like the thousands of twigs on a tree. It’s only the life of the tree that has unity and goes up — only the green blood that springs, like a fountain, at the stars.”

“But what the deuce else can the letter be but criminal?”

“We have eternity to stretch our legs in,” replied the mystic. “It can be an infinity of things. I haven’t seen any of them — I’ve only seen the letter. I look at that, and say it’s not criminal.”

“Then what’s the origin of it?”

“I haven’t the vaguest idea.”

“Then why don’t you accept the ordinary explanation?”

Basil continued for a little to glare at the coals, and seemed collecting his thoughts in a humble and even painful way. Then he said:

“Suppose you went out into the moonlight. Suppose you passed through silent, silvery streets and squares until you came into an open and deserted space set with a few monuments, and you beheld one dressed as a ballet-girl dancing in the argent glimmer. And suppose you looked and saw it was a man disguised. And suppose you looked again and saw it was Lord Kitchener. What would you think?”

He paused a moment and went on:

“You could not adopt the ordinary explanation. The ordinary explanation of putting on singular clothes is that you look nice in them; you would not think that Lord Kitchener dressed up like a ballet-girl out of ordinary personal vanity. You would think it much more likely that he inherited a dancing madness from a great-grandmother, or had been hypnotized at a séance, or threatened by a secret society with death if he refused the ordeal. With Baden-Powell, say, it might be a bet — but not with Kitchener. I should know all that, because in my public days I knew him quite well. So I know that letter quite well, and criminals quite well. It’s not a criminal’s letter. It’s all atmospheres.” And he closed his eyes and passed his hand over his forehead.

Rupert and the major were regarding him with a mixture of respect and pity. The former said:

“Well, I’m going, anyhow, and shall continue to think — until your spiritual mystery turns up — that a man who sends a note recommending a crime — that is, actually a crime that is actually carried out, at least tentatively, is, in all probability, a little casual in his moral tastes. Can I have that revolver?”

“Certainly,” said Basil, getting up. “But I am coming with you.” And he flung an old cape or cloak round him and took a sword-stick from the corner.

“You!” said Rupert, with some surprise, “you scarcely ever leave your hole to look at anything on the face of the earth.”

Basil fitted on a formidable old white hat.

“I scarcely ever,” he said, with an unconscious and colossal arrogance, “hear of anything on the face of the earth that I do not understand at once, without going to see it.”

And he led the way out into the purple night.

We four swung along the flaring Lambeth streets, across Westminster Bridge, and along the Embankment in the direction of that part of Fleet Street which contained Tanner’s Court. The erect, black figure of Major Brown, seen from behind, was a quaint contrast to the houndlike stoop and flapping mantle of young Rupert Grant, who adopted, with childlike delight, all the dramatic poses of the detective of fiction. The finest among his many fine qualities was his boyish appetite for the color and poetry of London. Basil, who walked behind, with his face turned blindly to the stars, had the look of a somnambulist.

Rupert paused at the corner of Tanner’s Court, with a quiver of delight at danger, and gripped Basil’s revolver in his great-coat pocket.

“Shall we go in now?” he asked.

“Not get police?” asked Major Brown, glancing sharply up and down the street.

“I am not sure,” answered Rupert, knitting his brows. “Of course, it’s quite clear, the thing’s all crooked. But there are three of us, and—”

“I shouldn’t get the police,” said Basil, in a queer voice. Rupert glanced at him and stared hard.

“Basil,” he cried, “you’re trembling. What’s the matter — are you afraid?”

“Cold, perhaps,” said the major, eyeing him. There was no doubt that he was shaking.

At last, after a few moments’ scrutiny, Rupert broke into a curse.

“You’re laughing,” he cried. “I know that confounded, silent, shaky laugh of yours. What the deuce is the amusement, Basil? Here we are, all three of us, within a yard of a den of ruffians—”

“But I shouldn’t call the police,” said Basil. “We four heroes are quite equal to a host,” and he continued to quake with his mysterious mirth.

Rupert turned with impatience and strode swiftly down the court, the rest of us following. When he reached the door of No. 14, he turned abruptly, the revolver glittering in his hand.

“Stand close,” he said, in the voice of a commander. “The scoundrel may be attempting an escape at this moment. We must fling open the door and rush in.”

The four of us cowered instantly under the archway, rigid, except for the old judge and his convulsion of merriment.

“Now,” hissed Rupert Grant, turning his pale face and burning eyes suddenly over his shoulder, “when I say ‘Four,’ follow me with a rush. If I say ‘Hold him,’ pin the fellows down, whoever they are. If I say ‘Stop,’ stop. I shall say that if there are more than three. If they attack us I shall empty my revolver on them. Basil, have your sword-stick ready. Now — one, two, three, four!”

With the sound of the word the door bust open, and we fell into the room like an invasion, only to stop dead.

The room, which was an ordinary and neatly appointed office, appeared, at the first glance, to be empty. But on a second and more careful glance we saw, seated behind a very large desk with pigeon-holes and drawers of bewildering multiplicity, a small man with a black, waxed mustache and the air of a very average clerk, writing hard. He looked up as we came to a stand-still.

“Did you knock?” he asked, pleasantly. “I am sorry if I did not hear. What can I do for you?”

There was a doubtful pause, and then, by general consent, the major himself, the victim of the outrage, stepped forward.

The letter was in his hand, and he looked unusually grim.

“Is your name P. G. Northover?” he asked.

“That is my name,” replied the other, smiling.

“I think,” said Major Brown, with an increase in the dark glow of his face, “that this letter was written by you.” And with a loud clap he struck open the letter on the desk with his clinched fist. The man called Northover looked at it with unaffected interest and merely nodded.

“Well, sir,” said the major, breathing hard, “what about that?”

“What about it, precisely,” said the man with the mustache.

“I am Major Brown,” said that gentleman, sternly.

Northover bowed. “Pleased to meet you, sir. What have you to say to me?”

“Say!” cried the major, loosing a sudden tempest; “why, I want this confounded thing settled. I want—”

“Certainly, sir,” said Northover, jumping up, with a slight elevation of the eyebrows. “Will you take a chair for a moment.” And he pressed an electric bell just above him, which trilled and tinkled in a room beyond. The major put his hand on the back of the chair offered him, but stood chafing and beating the floor with his polished boot.

The next moment an inner glass door was opened and a fair, weedy, young man in a frock-coat entered from within.

“Mr. Hopson,” said Northover, “this is Major Brown. Will you please finish that thing for him I gave you this morning and bring it in?”

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Hopson, and vanished like lightning.

“You will excuse me, gentlemen,” said the egregious Northover, with his radiant smile, “if I continue to work until Mr. Hopson is ready. I have some books that must be cleared up before I get away on my holiday tomorrow. And we all like a whiff of the country, don’t we? Ha! ha!”

The criminal took up his pen with a childlike laugh and a silence ensued — a placid and busy silence on the part of Mr. P. G. Northover; a raging silence on the part of everybody else.

At length the scratching of Northover’s pen in the stillness was mingled with a knock at the door, almost simultaneous with the turning of the handle, and Mr. Hopson came in again with the same silent rapidity, placed a paper before his principal, and disappeared again.

The man at the desk pulled and twisted his spiky mustache for a few moments as he ran his eye up and down the paper presented to him. He took up his pen with a slight, instantaneous frown and altered something, muttering — “Careless.” Then he read it again with the same impenetrable reflectiveness, and finally handed it to the frantic Brown, whose hand was beating the devil’s tattoo on the back of the chair.

“I think you will find that all right, major,” he said, briefly.

The major looked at it; whether he found it all right or not will appear later, but he found it like this:

“What,” said Brown, after a dead pause, and with eyes that seemed slowly rising out of his head, “what in Heaven’s name is this?”

“What is it?” repeated Northover, cocking his eyebrow with amusement. “It’s your account, of course.”

“My account!” The major’s ideas appeared to be in a vague stampede. “My account! And what have I got to do with it?”

“Well,” said Northover, laughing outright, “naturally I prefer you to pay it.”

The major’s hand was still resting on the back of the chair as the words came. He scarcely stirred otherwise, but he lifted the chair bodily into the air with one hand and hurled it at Northover’s head.

The legs crashed against the desk, so that Northover only got a blow on the elbow as he sprang up with clenched fists, only to be seized by the united rush of the rest of us. The chair had fallen clattering on the empty floor.

“Let me go, you scamps,” he shouted. “Let me—”

“Stand still,” cried Rupert, authoritatively. “Major Brown’s action is excusable. The abominable crime you have attempted—”

“A customer has a perfect right,” said Northover, hotly, “to question an alleged overcharge, but, confound it all, not to throw furniture.”

“What, in God’s name, do you mean by your customers and overcharges?” shrieked Major Brown, whose keen feminine nature, steady in pain or danger, became almost hysterical in the presence of a long and exasperating mystery. “Who are you? I’ve never seen you or your insolent tomfool bills. I know one of your cursed brutes tried to choke me—”

“Mad,” said Northover, gazing blankly round — “all of them mad. I didn’t know they travelled in quartets.”

“Enough of this prevarication,” said Rupert; “your crimes are discovered. A policeman is stationed at the corner of the court. Though only a private detective myself, I will take the responsibility of telling you that anything you say—”

“Mad,” repeated Northover, with a weary air.

And at this moment, for the first time, there struck in among them the strange, sleepy voice of Basil Grant.

“Major Brown,” he said, “may I ask you a question?”

The major turned his head with an increased bewilderment.

“You?” he cried; “certainly, Mr. Grant.”

“Can you tell me,” said the mystic, with sunken head and lowering brow, as he traced a pattern in the dust with his sword-stick — “can you tell me what was the name of the man who lived in your house before you?”

The unhappy major was only faintly more disturbed by this last and futile irrelevancy, and he answered, vaguely:

“Yes, I think so; a man named Gurney something — a name with a hyphen — Gurney-Brown; that was it.”

“And when did the house change hands?” said Basil, looking up sharply. His strange eyes were burning brilliantly.

“I came in last month,” said the major.

And at the mere word the criminal Northover suddenly fell into his great office chair and shouted with a volleying laughter.

“Oh! it’s too perfect — it’s too exquisite,” he gasped, beating the arms with his fists. He was laughing deafeningly; Basil Grant was laughing voicelessly; and the rest of us only felt that our heads were like weathercocks in a whirlwind.

“Confound it, Basil,” cried Rupert, stamping. “If you don’t want me to go mad and blow your metaphysical brains out, tell me what all this means?”

Northover rose.

“Permit me, sir, to explain,” he said. “And, first of all, permit me to apologize to you, Major Brown, for a most abominable and unpardonable blunder, which has caused you menace and inconvenience, in which, if you will allow me to say so, you have behaved with astonishing courage and dignity. Of course you need not trouble about the bill. We will stand the loss.” And, tearing the paper across, he flung the halves into the waste-paper basket and bowed.

Poor Brown’s face was still a picture of distraction. “But I don’t even begin to understand,” he cried. “What bill? what blunder? what loss?”

Mr. P. G. Northover advanced in the centre of the room thoughtfully and with a great deal of unconscious dignity. On closer consideration there were apparent about him other things besides a screwed mustache, especially a lean, sallow face, hawklike, and not without a careworn intelligence. Then he looked up abruptly.

“Do you know where you are, major?” he said.

“God knows I don’t,” said the warrior, with fervor.

“You are standing,” replied Northover, “in the office of the Adventure and Romance Agency, Limited.”

“And what’s that?” blankly inquired Brown.

The man of business leaned over the back of the chair and fixed his dark eyes on the other’s face.

“Major,” said he, “did you ever, as you walked along the empty street upon some idle afternoon, feel the utter hunger for something to happen — something, in the splendid words of Walt Whitman: ‘Something pernicious and dread; something far removed from a puny and pious life; something unproved; something in a trance; something loosed from its anchorage and driving free.’ Did you ever feel that?”

“Certainly not,” said the major, shortly.

“Then I must explain with more elaboration,” said Mr. Northover, with a sigh. “The Adventure and Romance Agency has been started to meet a great modern desire. On every side, in conversation and in literature, we hear of the desire for a larger theatre of events — for something to waylay us and lead us splendidly astray. Now the man who feels this desire for a varied fee pays a yearly or a quarterly sum to the Adventure and Romance Agency; in return, the Adventure and Romance Agency undertakes to surround him with startling and weird events. As a man is leaving his front door, an excited sweep approaches him and assures him of a plot against his life; he gets into a cab, and is driven to an opium den; he receives a mysterious telegram or a dramatic visit, and is immediately in a vortex of incidents. A very picturesque and moving story is first written by one of the staff of distinguished novelists who are at present hard at work in the adjoining room. Yours, Major Brown (designed by our Mr. Grigsby), I consider peculiarly forcible and pointed; it is almost a pity you did not see the end of it. I need scarcely explain further the monstrous mistake. Your predecessor in your present house, Mr. Gurney-Brown, was a subscriber to our agency, and our foolish clerks, ignoring alike the dignity of the hyphen and the glory of military rank, positively imagined that Major Brown and Mr. Gurney-Brown were the same person. Thus you were suddenly hurled into the middle of another man’s story.”

“How on earth does the thing work?” asked Rupert Grant, with bright and fascinated eyes.

“We believe that we are doing a noble work,” said Northover, warmly. “It has continually struck us that there is no element in modern life that is more lamentable than the fact that the modern man has to seek all artistic existence in a sedentary state. If he wishes to float into fairyland, he reads a book; if he wishes to dash into the thick of battle, he reads a book; if he wishes to soar into heaven, he reads a book; if he wishes to slide down the banisters, he reads a book. We give him these visions, but we give him exercise at the same time, the necessity of leaping from wall to wall, of fighting strange gentlemen, of running down long streets from pursuers — all healthy and pleasant exercises. We give him a glimpse of that great morning world of Robin Hood or the knights-errant, when one great game was played under the splendid sky. We give him back his childhood, that godlike time when we can act stories, be our own heroes, and at the same instant dance and dream.”

Basil gazed at him curiously. The most singular psychological discovery had been reserved to the end, for as the little business man ceased speaking he had the blazing eyes of a fanatic.

Major Brown received the explanation with complete simplicity and good-humor.

“Of course; awfully dense, sir,” he said. “No doubt at all, the scheme excellent. But I don’t think—” He paused a moment and looked dreamily out of the window. “I don’t think you will find me in it. Somehow, when one’s seen — seen the thing itself, you know — blood and men screaming, one feels about having a little house and a little hobby; in the Bible, you know, ‘There remaineth a rest.’ ”

Northover bowed. Then, after a pause, he said:

“Gentlemen, may I offer you my card. If any of the rest of you desire, at any time, to communicate with me, despite Major Brown’s view of the matter—”

“I should be obliged for your card, sir,” said the major, in his abrupt but courteous voice. “Pay for chair.”

The agent of Romance and Adventure handed his card, laughing.

It ran, “P. G. Northover, B.A., C.Q.T., Adventure and Romance Agency, 14 Tanner’s Court, Fleet Street.”

“What on earth is ‘C.Q.T.?’ ” asked Rupert Grant, looking over the major’s shoulder.

“Don’t you know?” returned Northover. “Haven’t you ever heard of the Club of Queer Trades?”

“There seems to be a confounded lot of funny things we haven’t heard of,” said the little major, reflectively. “What’s this one?”

“The Club of Queer Trades is a society consisting exclusively of people who have invented some new and curious way of making money. I was one of the earliest members.”

“You deserve to be,” said Basil, taking up his great white hat with a smile, and speaking for the last time that evening.

When they had passed out the Adventure and Romance agent wore a queer smile as he trod down the fire and locked his desk up. “A fine chap, that major; when one hasn’t a touch of the poet one stands some chance of being a poem. But to think of such a clockwork little creature of all people getting into the nets of one of Grigsby’s tales!” and he laughed out loud in the silence.

Just as the laugh echoed away, there came a sharp knock at the door. An owlish head, with dark mustaches, was thrust in, with deprecating and somewhat absurd inquiry.

“What! back again, major?” cried Northover, in surprise. “What can I do for you?”

The major shuffled feverishly into the room.

“It’s horribly absurd,” he said. “Something must have got started in me that I never knew before. But upon my soul I feel the most desperate desire to know the end of it all.”

“The end of it all?”

“Yes,” said the major, “ ‘Jackals,’ and the title-deeds, and ‘death to Major Brown.’ ”

The agent’s face grew grave, but his eyes were amused.

“I am terribly sorry, major,” said he, “but what you ask is impossible. I don’t know any one I would sooner oblige than you; but the rules of the agency are strict. The adventures are confidential; you are an outsider; I am not allowed to let you know an inch more than I can help. I do hope you understand—”

“There is no one,” said Brown, “who understands discipline better than I do. Thank you very much. Good-night.”

And the little man withdrew for the last time.

He married Miss Jameson, the lady with the red hair and. the green garments. She was an actress, employed (with many others) by the Romance Agency; and her marriage with the prim old veteran caused some stir in her languid and intellectualized set. She always replied very quietly that she had met scores of men who acted splendidly in the charades provided for them by Northover, but that she had only met one man who went down into a coal-cellar when he really thought it contained a murderer.

The major and she are living as happily as birds, in an absurd villa, and the former has taken to smoking. Otherwise he is unchanged — except, perhaps, there are moments when, alert and full of feminine unselfishness as the major is by nature, he falls into a trance of abstraction. Then his wife recognizes with a concealed smile, by the blind look in his blue eyes, that he is wondering what were the title-deeds, and why he was not allowed to mention jackals. But, like so many old soldiers, Brown is religious, and believes that he will realize the rest of those purple adventures in a better world.