Lying in the road with bullets whining over him, Bradley swore he’d follow his assailants to hell itself to get them.

There were three men in the low-slung red roadster with the New York license plates, grim-mouthed men who took the state trooper’s measure with hard eyes as his motorcycle came coughing into Sam Witherspoon’s filling station below Barlows with hardly a gill of gas left in the tank.

Old Sam had been afraid of them. That showed in his face when the light over the pump fell upon the gray uniform behind him. Relief was in his voice, too. He called over his shoulder:

“ ’Lo, Bradley. Be with you in a minute.”

Trooper Bradley, one foot on the ground, the other long putteed leg dangling over the saddle, was returning the stares from the roadster with interest. From his angle of vision, the light wasn’t so good. It didn’t give him as clear a look at the faces of the three in the New York car as he could have wished.

Even then he had a queer conviction that would probably be faces worth remembering; but the roadster stood well beyond the pump and the passengers were outside the shine of the single bulb burning above it. When they had tossed a crumpled bill to Sam Witherspoon and pulled away, they left with Bradley only an impression of hard-bitten mouths, rocky jaws and alert, metallic eyes glinting out of the shadows of low-drawn hat brims.

He shook his head after them. They had looked like thugs on quick appraisal, and probably were. The roads were full of their kind nowadays, particularly up in these border counties where so many gangsters from the big towns had bought up great tracts of wild acreage and established camps. Crooks, racketeers, city scum, rolling around in high-priced cars that not one honest man in a thousand could afford to buy or run, lording it with their pockets stuffed with blood-stained money — and nothing for a policeman to do but turn his head the other way when they passed. The law was a finicky thing, a shield to the criminal unless you caught him in the very act of crime.

Up by the pump, Witherspoon was chuckling.

“Diggety-dog! Well, if them’s hijackers, I could sure stand more of their kind o’ trade.” He came to Bradley smoothing and patting a grimy green bill. “Five simoleons for eleven gallons of the regular is what they left — and dodburn me if I wasn’t scared that they aimed to stick me up.”

Five dollars was more than twice the price of eleven gallons of gas. Bradley, wondering whether the tip would have been so lavish if the hard-boiled New Yorkers hadn’t found a sudden cause for haste in his appearance, put the question into words.

“Dunno about that,” Witherspoon said, still a little green around the gills. “But I’ll tell you the truth, trooper, they had my hair standing straight on end until you buzzed along. Maybe I shouldn’t be saying it after they treated me so good, but… well, they’re totin’ a piece of freight that’s fit to give any peaceable citizen the jim-jams.”

Bradley, bent over the cap of his gas tank, looked up quickly. “Yes? What was it, Sam?”

Nothing was left of Bradley’s smile when he had swung alongside the roadster. His shouted, “Pull over!” was strictly and briskly official.

Armaments and odds regardless, the New Yorkers were not hunting trouble just then. The driver obediently stepped on his brake and threw out his clutch. As he looked inquiringly at the trooper, the glimmer of the dashlight showed an expression of exaggeratedly innocent surprise on his face.

“What’s wrong, officer?” he wanted to know.

“Thirty-five an hour is legal up here, ain’t it?” asked the flat-nosed man beside him, his voice dulcet.

“That’s as high as we’ve been hittin’ it, trooper,” chimed in the passenger in the rumble seat. “Thirty-five. Never an inch more. We don’t know these roads so good, anyway — see?”

They hadn’t recognized Bradley in the darkness; that was plain enough to him.

“Then my speedometer must be wrong,” he said mildly. “Closer to sixty-five is how I clock it. Come on, Barney Oldfield. Let’s see the license!”

That was routine, as familiar to the men in the roadster as to Bradley. He thought it brought an easing of the tension which he had sensed beneath their outward show of docility. So much the better. If he could persuade them to follow him along to Holtsville without fireworks by letting them believe they were in for nothing worse than a brief delay and a fine for speeding, well and good.

With Law on the short end of a three to one bet, a lonely spot like that was certainly no place to start searching for the machine-gun which old Sam Witherspoon might or might not have seen. Bradley, for more reasons than one willing to let well enough alone, put an iron clamp on his impulse to reach into the rumble and jerk out the robe. He reached instead, and reached casually, for the license card extended over the wheel.

The driver had fished out a New York motor vehicle registration form along with the card. Bradley held them in the beam of the near headlight and made a show of comparing names and registration numbers. He wasn’t looking for information; registration and driving license blanks were easily come by, and any one could fill them in. It was only in further effort to lull suspicion that he questioned a discrepancy.

“You don’t own the car?” he asked the man at the wheel.

“No. It belongs to my cousin. He gave me the loan of it for a little vacation trip to Canada. And listen — he’s particular as hell, because it ain’t hardly broke in yet. I wouldn’t drive it faster than thirty-five on a bet.”

Bradley shook his head. “You’re on the wrong road for Canada,” he said. “Should have turned right, miles back. I don’t wonder you missed Canada Pike, passing it at better than sixty.”

The driver showed a flash of dental gold and a mirthless and confident grin. “Sure it was sixty, trooper?”

“Sure enough to stop you.”

“That’s a joke. You wasn’t behind us then — not near enough to clock us. Suppose we had been stepping on it; wouldn’t we of been watching for a motorcycle light?”

“Probably.” Bradley admitted. “But I’m making this particular speeding case on a point of elapsed time. You stopped for gas a while ago, didn’t you? Well, it was exactly seventeen minutes to nine by my watch when you pulled away from the filling station. That’s allowing you two minutes before I left. When I came up with you the watch said three minutes to nine — and right on this spot where you’re standing, you’re fourteen and six-tenths miles from the pump. Get it? I’ll lend you a pencil if you can’t figure it out in your head.”

A husky wind out of the northeast had been clubbing at the cloud rack, whipping it to lace, hustling it off in ragged streamers over the hills. Spangles of gold glinted from dancing water while the rout was on; then a yellow moon looked clear at itself in a little lake and gilded the roof of a bungalow on the shore.

The bungalow, log-walled, pressed to the grassy bank by the forest, belonged precisely to its setting. An artist, finding that lake and surveying its shore, would have chosen no other spot for it. But “Dutch” Gompert, owner of the bungalow and lord of the lake was no artist. Sport-shirted, heavy-shouldered, hairy-armed, he stood at the end of the broad veranda toward the water and turned a scowl upward to the sky.

“Damn the moon!” he exploded. “This ain’t going to help things any!”

In the doorway behind him, nicotine-stained fingers cupped themselves like yellow claws around a match that flared brightly between inhalations on a vulture face. The match, snapped out, described a glowing arc.

“Nature’s grand,” said the spindly man, squinting at the bright sky and then staring back along the road that curled down the hillside to the lake. “What the hell do you suppose has happened to them birds, anyway?”

Dutch Gompert directed a last glare at the unwelcome moon and turned his back on it.

“They’ll get here, all right,” he said. “It’s a case of got to. They know it, Crow.”

Corroboration, neatly timed, appeared at the hilltop above them. The headlights of an automobile climbing the far side of the rise whitened the sky.

“That’s service!” grinned the man called “Crow.” “Glad I didn’t have a bet up. Here they come now.”

“Maybe,” Gompert said, “it ain’t them yet. Maybe it’s Gwen. I told her to get here at ten o’clock, but she could be ahead of time for once in her life.”

The approaching car had shot over the hump and was coasting to them — a long, low roadster, top down. A door was opening as it stopped in front of the bungalow, and one of the three passengers jumped out.

“Okay, Lafayette!” he cried. “Here we are!”

Gompert withheld congratulation. His voice was sour. “Not any too soon,” he said “Duncan’s folding his tent tomorrow. Going back to town. If the trick ain’t turned tonight, we’re outta luck. What slowed you, Scudder? Lose your way?”

“Wait till you hear,” the flat-nosed traveler grunted. “We just got a traffic pinch, Dutch. In the dark of the moon, on the open road, miles from nowhere — up pops a cop, and we’re grabbed for speeding!”

“Jeez!” breathed Gompert. He stared, open-mouthed. “And you guys with a tommy-gun in the car!”

Down, but not out. Almost, not quite. Flat on his face, cheek to the icy cement, Bradley snapped out of his daze as the escaping gunmen’s car darted ahead.

What a chump! The trio in the roadster had been TNT on wheels, and he’d known it. Letting down his guard, giving them that chance at him, had been just about the equivalent of suicide. Except that the stiff brim of his campaign hat had broken the blow, a fractured skull would certainly have been the reward of his lapse.

He started to get up, then went flat again. Fire suddenly was spouting from the back of the roadster to the accompaniment of a throaty rattle. The flame and the roar vindicated old Sam Witherspoon’s eyesight. They did have a machine gun in the New York car and they were using it. A bee-swarm of slugs from it passed over him with a strident buzzing.

The angle of fire had been depressed when another burst came; bouncing bullets struck fire from the concrete all about him. One bit of lead scored a hit on the motorcycle out there in the middle of the road. He heard the hard ping and saw the front wheel spinning.

When the firing ceased he saw that the roadster was at a standstill. By rising then he would have courted another burst from the machine gun, so he lay quiet and made no further movement after he had cleared his automatic of the holster.

He didn’t open fire. That would have been one more sucker play. At a hundred yards — the distance between him and the roadster must have been all of that — his pistol wouldn’t be much good. They could rip him up with the machine gun before he got fairly into action with it.

He thought they’d be coming back, one or two of them at least, to make sure that the tommy-gun had done its work. That would be the time to use the pistol; to shoot fast and straight, drop whoever came and make a sprint for the car before the rapid-fire gun opened up again. But none of them came. He heard their voices, hot in argument, and then the tail light was receding.

In a few seconds it was at the crest of the next rise; up, over — gone!

Bradley was up as the tail light vanished, weaving to the motorcycle. The lump on his head seemed to be the size of his fist. He was giddy now, but that would pass after the breeze had been slapping his face for a while. With their machine gun those murderous New Yorkers might keep him out of pistol range; nothing on earth, he grimly promised himself, would keep him off their trail. And he was going to get them! No matter where they went, he’d get them even though he had to follow them to the gates of hell itself.

He had to amend that vow no sooner than it had been made. The miracle that had saved him when the bullets were flying thick had not spared the motorcycle. A bullet had passed through the front tire and that left him with a tricky repair job to do before he went anywhere.

It took time to get the wheel off, more time to patch the two holes in the tube, and a long ten minutes beyond all that to inflate the tire with the small hand pump after the blow-out patch was in.

Haste hadn’t made for speed, and when the motorcycle was ready to go he could no longer hope to overtake the gunmen, even had there been any way of telling which branch of the road they had taken at the fork a few miles beyond. It would have to be a case, now, of getting to a telephone and spreading an alarm; at least he knew the license number and could describe the car and its passengers, and there was a reasonable chance that they would be picked up.

The nearest telephone? Was there one nearer than Sam Witherspoon’s? Offhand, he couldn’t think of one. He made a quick calculation and decided that he could get to the little crossroads inn where he was billeted, on ahead, in no more time than a return to the starting point of the chase would require.

So deciding, he made the inn at a trifling speed of sixty miles an hour, a mere jog for him, sparing the sketchily repaired tire in momentary expectation of a blowout.

A wheezy gasp of relief came from the dope-soaked Crow when Bradley’s voice had revealed him to be a living man and not an avenging spirit. Beside him, Dutch Gompert mopped a face suddenly moist and plumped his weight down at the edge of the home-built table. Neither spoke.

“This must be quite a surprise,” Bradley suggested. “You hear, one minute, that I’ve got a lily in my hand. Next minute, here I am!”

Gompert’s bewilderment was evolving into rage. His face reddened.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he snarled. “You’ve got your nerve, breaking into a place like this!”

“Didn’t break in — I walked in,” Bradley countered, placid. “Walked in to get a little information. You had some visitors here a short time ago, Gompert. I want to find out where they are.”

“Visitors? Here?” Gompert swiveled. “Hear that, Crow? Remember seeing any visitors?”

“That’s a laugh,” said the Crow. “There ain’t been nobody here but us.”

“I mean,” Bradley said, “the people who came up in that red roadster.”

“What red roadster?”

“The one you just got rid of.”

That brought guilty eyes furtively together.

“You’re talking Choctaw,” Dutch Gompert complained.

“I’ve been here quite a while — and I’ve got eyes,” Bradley told him. “I saw you take an automobile out on the lake, on a raft. You towed back the raft, but not the automobile. Now I’ve got an idea where a few other cars went just when I was ready to grab them — and you.”

Gompert burst out with a too loud laugh. “Say, grayback, you didn’t see as much as you think you did! What car do you suppose that was? I dumped one, sure. I’m not denying that. There ain’t any reason why I should. It was a piece of old junk that’s been standing around here until I got tired of looking at it.”

Bradley grinned. “Yes? Well, the car you took out in the lake and didn’t bring back had this year’s license plates on it — New York license plates. Isn’t that a fact?”

“You’re telling me,” Gompert came back after a pause.

“You bet I am,” agreed Bradley. “And I’ll tell you something else, Gompert. That car was the same red roadster that Scudder came here in!”

The cigarette which the Crow had just lighted dropped from his fingers to the floor.

“Scudder!” he cried.

The side glance that Gompert darted at him was freighted with a promise of future reprisal for that slip. He did what he could to cover it.

“Who’s Scudder?” he demanded.

“Tom Scudder,” Bradley said. This was the time to put it on thick and he proceeded to. “Scudder, alias Stevens, alias a few other things. The Scudder who was indicted with you in New York in that whiskey withdrawal game. The Scudder who came in the red roadster a while ago and told you he and his friends had just shot up a state trooper with that machine gun they carried in the rumble. That’s the Scudder I’m looking for — and when I get my hands on him, you can lay your bottom dollar, Gompert, that he’s going to be a resident of this commonwealth for a good long stretch. Now, where is he?”

Dutch’s eves blazed. “You go to hell, Bradley!” he grated. “Even if I could tell you anything, do you think I would? Be your age!”

“You will,” Bradley promised. He jerked out the police positive. “Get your hands up, both of you! First I’m going to frisk you and then I’m going to work on you.”

Two men, gray-haired, dinner-coated, host and guest, sat together before a hospitable fire in the oak-panelled library of the manor house at High Acres, fragrant smoke curling lazily from their cigars.

They were old friends. That could have been taken from their very silence as they stared into the glowing embers. More tangible evidence than that of their long friendship was there behind them — a photograph of the guest, framed in gold, on the desk of the host.

The guest had been yawning; thirty-six holes of golf was more than he was used to these days. He caught himself nodding in the wing chair, not for the first time, and arose.

“I’m tuckered, Thorne,” he said. “If I don’t turn in now under my own power, I’ll have to be packed to bed. Good night.”

Thorne Duncan walked with him to the hall door.

“Too early for me; I’ll read for an hour or two,” he said. “Good night, Morton.”

A plump man in dark livery, also graying, opened the library door a few minutes after Duncan had returned to his chair and switched on the reading light beside it.

“Anything more, sir?”

“Nothing, thank you.” The master of High Acres shook his head. “You may call it a day, Ludlow — and a night.”

He opened the book he had selected after seeing his guest up the stairway, adjusted his glasses, and lost himself in the text. For half an hour the novel held him and then he closed it. Again he looked into the fire and dreamed — and out of the dreaming arose an impulse that presently lifted him to his feet. He went out into the broad, dim hall and softly climbed the staircase that had been brought to him overseas, entire, from an Old World palace.

In the upper hall he opened a door and tip-toed into a room where a night light burned. It was a very large room and in it, head to a wall along which painted sprites spread their wings and painted clowns cavorted, was a very small bed.

Thorne Duncan leaned over the sleeping figure in the bed — a little girl, brown curls all helter-skelter on the pillow, hugging close to her a battered, cherished doll with one eye gone and only half a nose remaining.

For Thorne Duncan, this was no rare expedition. In the two years since High Acres had been left without a mistress, the nightly pilgrimage to the nursery had become fixed habit with him. The small bed held everything that made his life worth living now.

He had made no sound since entering, but the child stirred. Her eyes opened and blinked sleepily. She released the doll, and the soft little arms that had held it reached up to Duncan. A pet name she had for him, her own nursery invention, shaped drowsily on her lips. He bent lower and kissed them, closed her eyes with gentle fingertips and stole away.

When he had returned to the library he found himself after a time in the grip of an unaccountable restlessness. Ordinarily, he would sit for hours by the fire; tonight it irked him to sit for minutes. He was wakeful and at the same time strangely uneasy, found himself regretting that his guest had not remained below with him.

He poked the log vigorously, trying to arouse a more cheerful blaze. Failing, he rid the lofty room of shadows by switching on the lights in the wall-brackets. When he had done that, he stopped on the way back to his chair and his book to listen.

Queer hour for visitors, but a car was coming up the main drive. Near now, it continued past the dark main door of the mansion and stopped beside the terrace outside the lighted library. In another moment some one was rapping at the library door which opened from the terrace. Thorne Duncan hesitated, then opened it.

A masked man who held a pistol confronted him.

“Don’t yelp!” he advised.

On the run from Little Moose Lake to High Acres, Bradley beat the twenty minutes he had allowed himself by two minutes and a fraction. At this time of year there was little or no night traffic on local roads and once he had hit the concrete he had it to himself. When he arrived at the High Acres lodge he had covered the sixteen-mile stretch of it without passing or meeting a single car.

The estate gate stood open, a circumstance which he marked at once as unusual. He had passed the High Acres entrance times without number, and the gate had always been closed except when automobiles were entering the estate or leaving it.

Turning in, he slapped on his brakes, jerked the motorcycle back on its stand and ran up on the porch of the lodge to find out just what visitors might have come to High Acres within the last hour or so. Scudder and his tommy-gun artists were of course no longer traveling in the red roadster. His guess was that Dutch Gompert, who always had two or three suspiciously fancy automobiles around, had lent them a replacement car. On that car, assuming that they had come to High Acres and already had gone on their way, he wanted to get a line.

His first knock at the lodge door brought no response. He knocked again and harder, and that evoked a sound within that sent a chill through him — a heavy groan. The door yielded when he tried it and in the dark hall he played his pocket flash along the walls until he had located the light switch. The groan was repeated as the hall lamp came on, and he traced it to a room at the rear of the cottage.

Mylan, the gate-keeper, lay on the floor there, his head a welter of blood, his wrists and his ankles bound with wire and a handkerchief stuffed into his mouth as a gag.

Swiftly on his knees beside him, Bradley relieved him of the gag.

“What happened? Quick!” he asked as he went to work on the wire.

Mylan’s eyes were open and had showed a flicker of recognition.

“Big sedan,” he whispered. “Something — something hit me.”

Bradley knew that questioning would bring nothing more. Also, there was nothing much he could do for the old man after freeing him, and there was a possibility that he still might be in time to walk in on something at the manor house.

“You’ll be all right, Mylan,” he said, “so I’m going to push on. Lock that front door and keep it locked until I get back. That ought to be soon.”

He raced out, made his saddle with a flying jump and went scooting up the broad poplar-lined road. One minute later he was staring at the dark façade of the mansion. All seemed to be peaceful within. If there had been a burglary, the household evidently had slept right through it and by now the burglars had gone with their loot — gone out through that open gate.

The terrifically flustered plump man was Ludlow, the Duncan butler. Bradley, under personal orders from the Governor to stand by, was left with him to parry frantic questions while Thorne Duncan and Morton Wendover went into conference in the library.

A quarter hour had passed when a call from them rescued Bradley from the inquisition in the front hall.

“We have come to the conclusion,” Duncan said, “to take you fully into our confidence, trooper. To begin with, you will understand that nothing you now know of what has happened here tonight and nothing you will hear shall be repeated. Not only is the case not to be reported, it is not to be whispered.”

“Orders,” nodded the Governor. “Observe them strictly, please.”

Briefly, then, pacing the priceless rug as he talked, Thorne Duncan described the kidnaper’s raid and informed Bradley of their demands.

“I tell you all this,” he concluded, “so that you may keep silent with a clear conscience. So you will realize that police activity and newspaper notoriety could work only harm in this particular case.”

“The orders of the Governor,” Bradley said, “would have been enough. What’s all right with his conscience will always be all right with mine.”

His eyes, ever since Duncan had stated the kidnaper’s price, had been fixed upon Morton Wendover. Joe Veronalli’s name he had known; mention of it had caused him a start. It was a name familiar to every law enforcement officer in half a dozen states. Racketeer, hi-jacker, wanton killer, Veronalli was awaiting execution of the death sentence for a singularly atrocious gang murder in the metropolis of the commonwealth — a murder which he had been imported from New York to do.

If ever a man deserved the chair, Joe Veronalli did. No voice save that of his high-priced counsel had ever been lifted in his defense. Even the women’s clubs, solid against capital punishment, had neglected to make their usual protest when he was convicted and sentenced to death. The newspapers, the public, for once the pulpit, too, had agreed that here no lesser avengement by organized society would fit the crime and the criminal. It would be, certainly, the equivalent of political suicide for Morton Wendover to pardon Veronalli.

The Governor, it seemed, could read eyes. At least, he saw the question in Bradley’s, and calmly he proceeded to answer it when Duncan had finished.

“There are bigger things in life, trooper,” he said, looking steadily back at Bradley now, “than even the highest public office. One is friendship and another is heart. Poor Duncan’s child — his world — is in the hands of desperate men. There is no question but that they will execute their threat against her if there is no surrender by us. Quoting at random, but quoting from a wisdom profound — ‘it is better that a hundred who are guilty shall walk free than that one who is innocent shall suffer.’ Yes, I shall sign a pardon for Joseph Veronalli tomorrow, a full and free pardon, and so keep peace with my conscience. And you two, God help me, are the only mortals who will ever know from me why the pardon was granted!”

She left him in a living room that seemed to him a little garish, a room no more suggesting a farm parlor than she suggested a farm wife. While she was in the kitchen he was thinking fast. There was something queer about this invitation, something in her eagerness to get him into the house that held him on his guard. Something offside about the whole business, phone call and all. What? And why? Well, at least he had put himself now on the road to find out.

She came back first with an ornate cream and sugar service, teaspoons and a sliced lemon. Next she brought a steaming earthenware pot, and finally two cups she had filled in the kitchen.

“Cream or lemon?” she wanted to know, slim and beautifully kept hands hovering after she had seated herself across from Bradley at the cozy table. “And for Heaven’s sakes, take off that belt and hang it up somewhere. You do look so awfully uncomfortable.”

“I’m used to the belt — just as comfortable as I can be,” he said, and as he spoke he shifted his chair a trifle so that both doors at the rear of the room would be in his range of vision.

She had baby-blue eyes — but they were not, under the light, baby soft.

She repeated, “Cream or lemon?”

“Neither. I take mine straight.” How could he get her out of the room again? Simple! “I… I hate to bother you,” he said, “but a sandwich would go fine. I missed dinner.”

He thought that her eyes clouded, but she was quickly on her feet. “Oh, you poor famished thing! Of course!”

When he heard her rattling in the refrigerator, Bradley lifted his teacup — not to his lips, but to his nose. It smelled like tea, and also it smelled like something else. He said to himself, lifting the cup again: “Here goes, anyway!” The cup was empty when a cold roast and bread and butter came on another tray, and it brought a stare and an exclamation.

“You’ve drunk your tea! How… how did you like it?”

“Can’t begin to tell you,” Bradley said.

Truth again. He honestly could not begin to. He hadn’t drunk, hadn’t even tasted, what had been in the cup. Instead, he had spattered it along the rug under the table, not enough in any one spot to make the smallest puddle, and he was ardently wishing the dry fiber would hurry and absorb it.

That had been the beginning of an experiment; an experiment, Bradley had to admit to himself, that he might be feeling more than a little foolish about later on. But over-confidence in company not formally introduced had just missed netting him a headstone once that night, and he couldn’t help seeing something just a bit bizarre in people who carefully locked their garage when the car was touring.

A drumfire of gay chatter came at him across the table, but despite it his eyelids began to droop a little after a time. That was a continuation of the experiment, and a notable success. It wasn’t hard for him to look sleepy, because he was sleepy. When the roast had come his attack on it was feeble.

“You’re dog-tired,” he stood accused through that failure. “Too tired to eat.”

Somewhere or other, Dutch Gompert had got another gun to replace the one Bradley had taken from him at the lakeside bungalow. It was in his shoulder holster now — but it was Bradley who drew it, his own pistol jabbing hard into Gompert’s ribs.

Then his handcuffs flashed out. A moment later he shoved Dutch back into the closet, the blond woman safely manacled to him and passionately accusing him of responsibility for the upset. He turned a key on their vitriolic quarrel and pocketed it. The door was a heavy one. They’d stay put.

Now what? Ahead of him lay the chance of a single-handed capture out at Little Moose Lake, a spectacular grab, the walloping thrill of a big job done without help. Scudder being there meant that Thorne Duncan’s little girl was there. Capture, rescue and the salvaging of Morton Wendover’s career in politics — a one-man accomplishment!

But he couldn’t chance it. He didn’t have the right to. They’d certainly put up a fight against one lone trooper, might get him before he got them. Against a big posse, though, they’d see they didn’t have a show. What was he to consider — glory for himself or safety for the kid?

No argument there. To hell with glory!

When he called High Acres on Gwen’s telephone and exploded his bombshell of news, he was throwing glory out the window. Duncan, wildly excited, called the Governor into consultation while Bradley held the wire. Then Wendover was on the line, his voice crisp.

“Good work, Bradley! Damned good work! I’ve got a road map in front of me, and if the kidnapers are at Little Moose lake we can bottle ’em up. One posse going in from Holtsville and another coming west from Fairchild will do it. I’m phoning both places at once. You pick up the Holtsville posse at the crossroad and take charge. Duncan and I will be with the other one.”

Bradley didn’t have to go to the crossroad to pick up the Holtsville posse. They had to come by the Ketchum homestead, and when they did he sent his two handcuffed prisoners back to the Holtsville jail in one of the half dozen cars.

The storm had broken then and a driving sleet stung his face as he led his score of armed special deputies over the hill road. At half past one he was looking down for the second time that night at Little Moose Lake and a lighted bungalow. Now a big sedan stood outside the house.

He had halted the posse behind the brow of the last hill. The people from Fairchild, who were to come in around the lake from the west, weren’t in sight yet.

He waited until he saw the first pair of headlights on the shore road before he signaled his drivers and kicked the motorcycle into action.

Down in the bungalow the approaching headlights caused a sudden flurry. Speeding down the hill, Bradley saw dark figures piling into the sedan. That didn’t worry him then; the sedan wasn’t going anywhere.

But it did go somewhere. Blocked from both directions as he started his engine, the driver had made a wild sweep and plunged wildly into a narrow wood-road that came in near the bungalow. That was a road too obscure to be marked on the map, so little used that even Bradley had forgotten its existence.

Desperate, he swung into it after the fleeing machine, his posse stringing out behind him. The sedan had a lead of a couple of hundred yards and held it. That road had never been built for a motorcycle speedway. The best Bradley could do was hang on.

A mile north of the lake the machine gun opened on him. He gave himself up as the branches began to snap about him, but the gun went silent after the first burst. Jammed, he hoped. If it wasn’t, he’d be riding to his finish. He was on that sedan’s tail to stay until the bitter end.

That narrow, winding road had to go somewhere, and eventually, just as the machine gun started spouting lead again, it got there — got there so suddenly that the sedan went crazily sliding on the sleety cement of the highway into which it poured itself.

Bradley thought for a horrified instant that the big car was going to turn over with Duncan’s baby in it. He had a flash of her white face and scared eyes as he whizzed past the rocking car.

At that speed and on such pavement he couldn’t stop, once he had shot into the highway.

The sedan, righting itself, had made a complete turn. It was behind him as he braked down — behind him, and coming. Back of it the lights of the first of the fleet of pursuit cars racing through the wood-road shone bright on the wet concrete.

Bradley opened his throttle, warned to get going by the renewed rattle of the machine gun. It had been cleared somewhere along the wood-road and now he was being peppered from the rear.

When he dared look back, he had put a quarter mile between him and the sedan. Another quarter mile back he could see first one car and then another of the pursuing fleet skid into the highway and straighten out to the chase.

He knew this road, knew exactly where he was on it. It was a straightaway cut, just opened this year, between Barlows and the village of Lansdowne in the next county. Bar-lows lay twenty-odd miles ahead, and there was nothing else ahead short of Barlows but a railroad crossing and an invisible county line.

Bradley did some lightning calculating while he was pulling out of machine-gun range. There was an all-night garage at Barlows, a favorite stop with truckmen. If there were several trucks there tonight, could he possibly get to Barlows far enough ahead of the kidnapers so there’d be time for him to swing out the trucks across their path and block them at the edge of town?

Holding them for just a couple of minutes would be enough to cook their goose, for some of the pursuit cars were almost as speedy as the sedan. They weren’t being left behind fast now, and they’d certainly keep plugging along.

His motorcycle, hands down, was faster than anything on four wheels not built for the race-track. He could cover five miles to the sedan’s four. How much time would that give him in Barlows to organize his blockade? Enough? And would enough trucks be there?

They’d have to be, he grimly told himself. Beyond Barlows lay the big woods — safety for the kidnapers, and either death for the child or political ruin for the Governor. Once the sedan had plunged into that maze of forest extending deep into Canada, police alarms would mean nothing. And short of the big woods the posse would be hopelessly outdistanced and he himself out of gas and out of the chase.

It was a slim chance, but the best chance — the only chance he could see then. A few minutes after he had let out his final notch of speed, though, he was debating another chance that flashed to his mind as the hoot of a distant whistle came to him over the hills. That was the night train, Canada-bound, whistling at the Canada Pike crossing five miles east. In just five minutes that long string of Pullmans would be reaching this road.

The crossing was still several miles ahead, he didn’t know exactly how many. But if he could get there in time, could in any way manage to flag the flyer — what a barricade!

He threw another glance over his shoulder from the top of the long hill. The sedan was far behind him now, and the pursuit still gamely coming along in the remoter distance.

A long chance, but worth a try! It was a time for long chances and for desperate ones. Splashing, mud-covered, sleet-beaten, Bradley made for the crossing. Squarely in the middle of it, he stopped the motorcycle and kicked it up on its stand, back to the panting locomotive just letting go another blast at the whistle post for this crossing. The train was a quarter mile away. Exactly a quarter mile. That was always the distance from whistle post to crossing.

Yes — or no? Would the flyer stop, or wouldn’t it? That tail light of his, thought of at the last moment, wasn’t a very bright light. But it was a red light — and didn’t red mean, “Stop?”

It did. Or else the engineer had seen the motorcycle, apparently stalled on the tracks, at the same time he saw the tail light on rounding the curve. Behind Bradley as the great spotlight hit him, powerful air-brakes were screeching.

But the Limited kept coming. He stayed where he was, engine racing, until it was no more than a hundred yards away, still plowing on. Then it was time to move. He did move, but he didn’t get off the track. Suddenly he had realized what would probably happen if he did. The engineer would curse him out of the cab window and pick up speed, and the flyer would go on.

He didn’t mean to let it go on. Not now. Not when another grip of the brakes would halt it.

Not when that big sedan racing down at the crossing was this close to being stopped!

Jaw set, motorcycle crazily bouncing, Bradley went up the track over the ties. Ten yards. Twenty yards. Thirty. And the Limited, brakes again grinding, was blowing its hot breath down his neck, traveling faster than he could.

He knew it would stop then. His job was done. Desperately he jerked his handlebar at the precise instant when he felt his rear wheel lifting on that triangle of death jutting out from the locomotive’s prow, and he and the motorcycle went plunging down the embankment together.

Half way down it, something hard hit his head and the world went black.

He was chewing a mouthful of cinders when he opened his eyes a few minutes later. Duncan and the Governor were on their knees beside him, and many others were crowding behind them.

“We got them, trooper, thanks to you!” Wendover said. “Got all three of them — and the baby — without firing a shot.”

Bradley sat up. His head hurt like sin, but nothing seemed to be broken. Duncan seized his hand, tried to say something and couldn’t. A man in overalls then bent over him.

“I’m the engineer, trooper,” he said. “I wanted to tell yuh that when I see that red light, first off, I—”

Bradley spat out some cinders.

“Well, anyway,” he said, “it’s a green light now!”

A dying man, a headless idol and the flight of a bee tell Wentworth a tale of frightful crime and — Kong Gai!

“And what I don’t know, I can’t tell you,” said Captain Dunand, attempting honestly to answer the shrewd queries of the reporters as he sat behind his desk in San Francisco’s Hall of Justice. He went on doggedly, “You boys seem to think I’m trying to get out of making an arrest. That ought to make you happy, because as long as the Whitcomb case remains unsolved, your papers can keep on calling me a doddering old fool—”

“Then you refuse to admit that Whitcomb and his three children are victims of a gang outrage?” demanded the News-Call reporter. “You refuse to admit that they are being held for ransom? You refuse to admit—”

“I’m not admitting what I don’t know,” persisted the gray-haired captain of detectives. “Not if you keep after me all day, boys.”

The Enquirer man drawled, “We’ve been after you six days, cap, and you haven’t come across with one printable line. You play with us, and we’ll play with you. The public have a right to know what’s being done to clear up Whitcomb’s disappearance. They’re pretty worked up about it, too. A man and three youngsters can’t vanish without leaving some sort of clew—”

Captain Dunand stared out of the window, and blinked as the last rays of sun glinted off the roofs of Chinatown and were reflected into his eyes. He said finally, “I agree with you, Haynes. I don’t want to fool anybody, except the criminals involved in the case. The department had one clew, and gave it to you.”

“The fellow who came to Whitcomb’s office and threatened him?”

“That’s the man. Martin Cravens.”

“Well,” insisted Haynes, “how about finding him in time for my next edition?”

Dunand said wearily, “I told you boys that if you plastered his name all over the front pages he’d go into hiding.”

“Well, how ’bout the chauffeur of Whitcomb’s machine, cap? He’d do to keep our jobs for us.”

Dunand was about to reply that the department was making every effort to find the missing chauffeur when he heard a whisper, followed by a laugh. He asked abruptly, “What’s funny, Haynes? Let us in on it.”

“I just said it was too bad it wasn’t a couple of elephants your dicks were looking for, cap. They could probably find a pair of elephants, provided the animals stayed on Market Street—”

Leaning back in his chair, Dunand said, “Let’s go over this thing, boys. And” — solemnly — “anything I may say isn’t for publication. Right?”

The oldest reporters pledged their words with a quiet, “Shoot, captain.”

“Six days ago,” Dunand began, “Ronald Whitcomb left his house and went to his office. He arrived at nine o’clock, about. A few minutes later the man Martin Cravens, a clerk at the Consolidated Oil, came to see him. There was an argument. It seems that Cravens had bought stock on Whitcomb’s say so, and lost his shirt. Cravens said some dangerous words; he was heard to say them by people in the outer office.”

“We know all this, cap!”

“Wait. Let me finish, Haynes. Cravens leaves, promising to get even. At a few minutes past ten, Whitcomb’s own car takes him away.

“Then we learn that somebody telephoned his home, ordering the three children to come to Maginn-Duane’s, the department store, and meet their father. The children are taken there in a taxi—”

“What taxi, cap?”

“Not the one phoned for,” said Dunand, “because the maid at the house said a second cab came, a few minutes after the first one. Let me go ahead, boys, will you? You know all this, anyhow.

It was only a few minutes before a lean young man in the uniform of a patrolman stepped quietly into the captain’s office. It was only a few minutes, but in that time Dunand had firmly denied the pleas of two city editors, who wanted pictures of the “vagrant” who was supposed to have seen the abduction, and who promised all sort of influence being brought to bear on the captain’s gray head when the requests were refused.

The Whitcomb case had been on the front page for just a day short of a week. The city was aroused, not only because of the disappearance of the wealthy Whitcomb, head of the brokerage house bearing his name, but also because of the obvious abduction of the small Whitcomb children. Rumors — terrible rumors — were on every lip. In the meantime the police were not able to produce the man Cravens, who had threatened Whitcomb the morning of the disappearance, nor to find the Whitcomb automobile and its chauffeur. There was flaming talk, aided and abetted by the newspapers, which the administration did not find pleasing. Coals were constantly being dropped on Dunand’s head — and he could do nothing about it save keep after his men. Almost the entire department was on the Ronald Whitcomb case, but not a man had learned a single essential fact, nor picked up the trail of the clerk Cravens.

It was freely admitted that Cravens had just cause for anger against Whitcomb. The millionaire broker had advised Cravens to buy several varieties of stocks — or Whitcomb’s office had advised it, which was the same thing — and Cravens had lost his savings. But that was not unusual. Many others were in the same fix, and through no real fault of Whitcomb’s. Had Cravens taken a good punch at the broker, San Francisco would have said, “Served him right!” and laughed about it. But kidnapping three children, as well as Whitcomb himself, was a different matter.

The department was baffled. Here was what appeared an obvious crime, with the criminal known, and yet they were unable to produce the man.

All of this was in Dunand’s mind as he said, “Sit down, Jimmy. I’ve lied hot and heavy to give you time, lad. Now, let’s hear what you’ve picked up.”

Wentworth said soberly, “Yes, sir. It isn’t much, but it’s a clew—”

“It’d better be,” Dunand snapped. “Or the department’ll be in a fine mess. I’ll be the judge. What is it?”

The youthful sergeant of detectives reached into his trousers pocket, and as he withdrew his hand said gravely. “I’m afraid I’ll have to be the judge, sir. It’s in my line… this is it.”

“That? What’s that?”

Dunand stared at the object in Wentworth’s hand.

It was small, no larger than an apple, which, at first glance, it resembled. A closer look showed that it was the body of an idol of some strange god, with the arms folded, and the legs drawn up. The image was of carved wood, and very old; so old that the surface was smooth, brown, and polished.

Officer Mulloy was standing on the fourth floor of the hospital, trying to appear as if he didn’t realize that the nurse at the desk was red-headed, pretty, and Irish, and as if he had forgotten that at home there were seven little Mulloys, and Nora herself, who would stand for no nonsense.

He saluted briskly as Dunand and Wentworth stepped from the noiseless elevator, hoping that the nurse could see the breadth of his shoulders.

“Found him wanderin’ on Forest Parkway, sir,” he said. “Red in the face he was, and that’s no lie, but whether it’s drinking he was I couldn’t say. He was goin’ this way and that, and I says, ‘Think shame to yourself, man, out on a street where th’ children is playin’. But he only looks at me. At first I thinks he’s far gone in a drunken spree, and then I see his eyes. And like no human eyes was they, sir! And—”

“And you brought him here,” said Dunand crisply.

“No other way could he have come, sir. For he fell right down before me eyes, he did, and I stop the first machine I see, and—”

“Good work, officer. Which room is Whitcomb in?”

“The one behind me, sir. But a nurse says he’s a very sick man, sir, or I’d have verified me suspicions—”

Dunand said sharply, “You aren’t positive it’s Whitcomb?”

Officer Mulloy drew himself up.

“And don’t he live on this beat, sir? Many’s the time I see him being drove home from work. I meant me suspicions about th’ drink an’ all—”

Dunand nodded, looking about. He said, “There’s a nurse, officer. Please ask her to go into Whitcomb’s room and tell the doctor I’m here, and that I want to see Whitcomb immediately.”

Nothing loath, Mulloy marched to the little alcoved desk and delivered the captain’s request. The nurse first telephoned her superintendent for permission to enter the sick room for the police, and, being given this, hurried across the hall. She reappeared in a moment and spoke briefly to Mulloy, who trudged back to his superiors.

“She says will you come with her to th’ room,” said Mulloy. “An’ she says he’s a sick man, is Mr. Whitcomb. And” — grinning broadly — “she wants to know if th’ young felly, bein’ you, sarge, is a college boy workin’ on th’ force for experience, an’ I didn’t have th’ heart t’ tell her what a tough felly you are.”

Jimmy Wentworth glanced swiftly at the pretty nurse, and her heightened color told him that she knew Mulloy had repeated what she had said.

The two detectives followed her into the sick room.

On the bed lay a man in middle years. His face was gray, what little the men from Headquarters could see. Most of it, and the entire forehead, was covered with what appeared to be thick towels, but were ice bags.

One hand was visible, and Wentworth’s first impression was that the skin must have been immersed in water, for drops stood out on it.

It was obvious that Whitcomb was indeed a man in peril of death.

The first extras were out by the time Dunand and Wentworth returned to the Hall of Justice, after having left word at the hospital to be informed of Whitcomb’s death, or any change in his condition. Dr. Henderson, Whitcomb’s own physician, had agreed with the second diagnosis of the hospital medical men, and agreed also that chance for recovery was almost impossible. All the physicians were positive that Whitcomb would not recover consciousness, but just the same Dunand had not left until two men from the department were in the room, ready to take down any word, and, if possible, to ask the questions Wentworth had told them to ask.

The headlines just about told the story:

Which Ronald Whitcomb, at death’s door, couldn’t possibly have done, but which held off the newspapers as to the manner of the broker’s dying for a few hours.

Down in Captain Dunand’s office, gray haired chief and black haired sergeant sat staring at the envelope they had taken from Whitcomb’s pocket. They had already read the letter a dozen times. It was typewritten on fine paper, with the sheet cut in half to remove a letterhead or address, and said:

The communication was signed by Whitcomb. The check, attached to the letter, was for one hundred thousand dollars.

Dunand said slowly, “Not much to go on, Jimmy. We’ll have men at the Whitcomb Company tomorrow. And tap their phones. Only…”

“Only you’re a man,” said Wentworth, “and you don’t want the children hurt.”

“No. I don’t want them hurt, lad. You… you still think this means Kong Gai?”

“I do, chief. Now more than ever. No one save a fiend like that Chinese would send a father with the ransom note for his children, knowing full well that he would not be able to tell where the youngsters were. And what has been done to Whitcomb will make anyone anxious to get the children out of the hands of such monsters.”

“I don’t understand it,” muttered the head of the detective bureau.

“According to the doctors, Whitcomb was stung and stung until he became almost unconscious. Somewhere along the line he signed the demand for ransom and the letter. Then the devils allowed him to partially recover consciousness, put him in a machine, let him off somewhere near his home while — according to the doctors — he could just stagger about, but was to all intents already a dead man.”

“And if he hadn’t raved, everyone would have thought he’d died from apoplexy!”

“There is no perfect crime,” Wentworth said slowly. “At least, not yet. Given time, Kong Gai the Venomous One may find it. Through his opium sales, he has his coils about some renegade physician. That’s sure. That’s where he must’ve picked up the bee sting idea. He has his slimy coils everywhere, captain! He—”

Wentworth had little sleep that night. Bees! He had to learn about bees, and with that thought in mind routed out an expert at the state university across the bay. To him Wentworth listened carefully, making notes again and again; he left with the scientist’s assurance that his original conclusions, if faulty in detail, were correct in all major analysis.

These were simple. Bees were hungry little things. Bees didn’t like smoke. Bees died if they did not receive adequate fresh air. Bees became angry when cooped up. Bees could get out of any crevice, and would if they had the chance. Lastly, bees would always return to their hive, or wherever they were being kept, if they had been brought a considerable distance from their original hive…

And Whitcomb had died from many bee stings, died under torture.

Only Kong Gai the Deadly would have thought of sending a man to deliver the ransom demand for his children. Only Kong Gai’s mind would consider such a thing a joke, and something to be proud about.

Wentworth believed that the little black lines, like the markings on a bee’s wing, had been made on the headless idol to further protect the ’binder carrying it from vengeance of a god or devil not even Jimmy knew — some awful being of the underworld who, in addition to riding on a dragon, in addition to breathing fire and bearing ten swords in ten hands, also could kill by stinging men to death… that must be the reason why the white flowers — representing the kidnapped children — were so painted. To propitiate the god.

At eight-ten in the morning Wentworth marched into the bowl shop of the Wangs, who had more than once assisted the department. He found old Wang Yu behind his counter, and, after bowing and hoping that the ancient’s health was good, asked for the son, Wang Chen-po.

Old Wang clapped his hands thrice, and a Chinese dressed in American clothing instantly appeared. Without a word or look toward Wentworth, Wang Chen-po said, “And what are my honorable father’s commands?”

“Here is our friend,” said old Wang, indicating Wentworth. “I have none, except to have demanded your presence.”

“Hi, Jimmy,” grinned Chen-po, without apology, since he knew that his friend understood the Conduct-Toward-One’s-Father. “What do you want now? Everything is quiet on the Eastern Front, so far as I know—”

“How many youngsters are there in the Wang family?”

“Thinking of adopting one of them, Jimmy?”

“It’s Saturday,” said Wentworth, “and I thought maybe some of them might want to earn money to buy duck’s-egg cake.”

“They all have the Yankee spirit,” laughed Chen-po. “What do they do in order to make enough to get good and sick? They’re ravenous little devils, Jimmy. They can eat you into the hospital. Shoot!”

Jimmy said lightly, “They hang around their windows, Chen-po, where the lily-pots are, and when they see a bee, they catch it and put it in a box. One bee, one dollar.”

“Bees in Chinatown? Say, these youngsters aren’t dumb, Jimmy! They know better than to try such a game.”

“I think some of them may catch a bee or so, old man.”

Wang Chen-po scratched his chin, and before he had finished his father cackled in Cantonese:

“You waste time, my son. Inform the grandchildren of Wang Yü that bees are desired, in the shortest time possible. Our white friend does not joke.”

“That’s right,” Jimmy said, after bowing to old Wang. “And if the kids’ll catch bees, maybe I’ll catch…”

The blue-clad patrolman making his regular beat on Nob Hill saw the hurrying figure of a fellow officer, and ran to meet him; when he saw who it was he said:

“What’s up, sergeant?”

“Plenty,” said Jimmy swiftly. “When you hear a racket — you’ll hear it — come along and see!”

With that he hastened back toward Chinatown. At the corner of Stock-ton and Sacramento, near the mouth of the tunnel where he had once found a murdered flower girl killed by Kong Gai, he paused, and then turned northward, walking slowly along the pavement, stopping to play with a Chinese urchin in pink jacket and red pantaloons; he did this until he heard a sudden roar, coming from the tunnel.

A moment later hook-and-ladder Number Fifteen roared out of the tunnel, siren wailing and engine humming a high tune. Behind it Wentworth saw a red-and-gold hose wagon, with men in fireman’s blue hanging to the sides…

Chinatown gaped, wondering where the Fire God was striking. As the hook-and-ladder slowed, and swung around the corner, barely missing the lamp-post on the sidewalk, Wentworth leaped to the side.

Nobody would think anything of that. It was a policeman’s duty to get to a fire as rapidly as possible.

Wentworth heard someone next to him shout, “Nice goin’, sarge!”

The deep voice was that of Officer Reilly, holder of the department’s record for marksmanship, and no fireman at all. Only the driver, and the rear wheel-man, were from the fire department. Every other person in slicker, or in blue uniform, was a member of the riot squad…

Down one street! Left turn! The scream and squeal of brakes and tires, and a sudden noiseless operation that shot the first length of mechanically operated ladder into the air, in front of the windows of the house Wentworth had told about.

A spying ’binder popped his head out from the basement across the street. Officer Reilly waited until he saw the flash of metal, and the raising gun, before he drew trigger. The sound of explosion was covered by the roar of the hose wagon’s engine as it drew up beside the hook-and-ladder.

Men were already running up the ladder. The first two were axe-armed, and the raising ladder took them to one of the windows. As an axe crashed against the barrier, Wentworth, followed by other men, swung to the building-side of the ladder, and continued frantically up to the roof.

Wentworth’s head cleared the coping first, and almost the same instant his gun roared. He saw a ’binder leap high in the air; saw others turn and level drawn weapons, and then the riot squadman behind him had shoved the nose of the deadly chopper across the coping, and the rat-tat-tat of the little gun sprayed death over the Chinese.

Wentworth knew there was not a moment to be lost. While some of the bo’ how doy were still trying to get a bullet into the slim target afforded by one eye and a bit of forehead of the man operating the chopper, Wentworth pulled himself to the roof. He felt the sting of hot metal in his shoulder, and the impact half swung him about.

Nothing better could have happened. Had he continued straight forward, he would have been riddled with bullets.

Jimmy Wentworth, the smiling young detective-sergeant of the Chinatown squad, had gone berserk. Here was a chance to get his hands on Kong Gai! He made one leap, notwithstanding the pain in his shoulder, and fell through what had been a skylight, but had been changed to a row of light slats, to give the bees air at times. The stairway to the roof was ten feet further along the roof. For a fraction of time something seemed to stay Wentworth’s fall — a black curtain of heavy silk, which had been used to cover the opening most of the time — and during it he managed to squirm about…

The silk ripped, and Wentworth fell, landing on hands and knees. His gun was up at the very time of impact, up, and blazing at a black-clad figure.

A shrill, sweet voice screamed, “Hold! Get him, snake-brothers! It is the white fool himself! Get him for Kong Gai!”

Wentworth’s heart stopped as his eyes and gun flashed up. He expected to die now, but if only he could get one shot at the King Cobra, and end his reign of terror! Then, so swift that it bit into Kong Gai’s last words, he heard the tapping sound of the chopper at work, searching out corners of the room in a vain effort to get the Venomous One.

Jimmy’s head began to work sanely again. He yelled, “Look out! The kids are somewhere here—”

“They’re behind you, sarge,” shouted the machine gun officer. “All’s O.K.,” and he alertly kept the muzzle of the chopper moving, ready to fire.

Despite this assurance, Wentworth waited. Would Kong Gai, from some clever point of concealment, kill him now? It could easily be done…

The sweet voice droned on, “Your eyes, oh white fool, I will tear out with my fingers! Your mouth I shall sew together, so you cannot destroy my sleep with your screams when we cut your body apart, inch by inch, and put little serpents to feed on you while you are still alive! The day will come soon! I could kill you now, but that is not my way of killing!”

A storm of bullets from the chopper ended the terrible promise. Then all was silent, save the hammering of axes and the stamping of feet.

For the three closed windows had not shown the room in which the kidnapped white children had been found, and when the officers smashed inside they found only a place of awful worship, with a great naked headless idol surrounded with crushed white flowers and many impaled dead bees, killed as sacrifices after they had served Kong Gai’s horrible torture of Whitcomb.

And a row of the little insects which, maddened, had stung Whitcomb to his curious death, was found about a sheet of paper before the idol. On the paper was a statement of the account of one Sam Gee Quong, who had lost several thousands of dollars in the stock market. And it was easy to guess that Quong was only another name for Kong Gai, and why the Venomous One had picked Whitcomb to kill, and his children to be held for ransom…

Jimmy Wentworth’s shrewd deductions had been close enough, and had led the riot squad to the building itself, if not to the inner room. The other room must have been the chamber in which the bees had been kept, and a search at once found a small, makeshift hive, with a volume of instructions on bee-keeping beside it. The constant burning of incense in the other room made it impossible to keep the bees there, save when it was intended to let them sting someone… Whitcomb.

Kong Gai had lost the children, and seven hatchetmen to boot. Four more were caught alive, but wounded. The remainder of the Brotherhood had escaped along some secret passage.

Captain Dunand felt that only Wentworth’s mad promptness in leaping to the roof in face of the ’binders’ bullets had prevented the Cobra Men from rushing off with the children. Apparently it had been Kong Gai’s command that the children be carried to the roof, and to some secret hiding place. That would be Kong Gai’s way, too — not taking any chance that the police might follow the children along his own secret tunnel deep into the dark places of Chinatown. He cared for his hide, did Kong Gai, and took no chances.

“If we’d nabbed Kong Gai, this would have been perfect,” commented the gray haired captain, as he surveyed the strange, terrible headless idol, supposed by the Chinese to protect those who kidnap children, and before which the Snake Brotherhood had bowed low.

“He was here,” said Wentworth quietly.

“See him?”

“No. Heard him.”

Captain Dunand said thoughtfully, “Say things, did he?”

“Some day,” Jimmy answered, “we’re coming face to face. Then… we’ll see.”

Kong Gai’s horrible laugh shrilled in the room.

“We’ll see!” screamed Kong Gai in English. “Yes! We’ll see!”

Try as they might, the riot squad could not find from what vantage point the fiendish Kong Gai had spoken. Once more the Evil One laughed, and then the room of the Headless Idol, with its crushed white blossoms and dead bees and streaming incense bowls, was as silent as death.

“Us Allens is all fighters!” Was their cry. And they proved it by making Carroll County, Va., a place of death and terror.

Back in 1911, before the greatest conflict in the world’s history had begun, Carroll County, Virginia, was peaceful, contented and, after its serene fashion, prosperous.

The wealthy people, and there were few of great wealth, lived among simple pleasures and the poor always were cared for by these rich to whom richness was a goodness for the less fortunate.

The county was a remote one and there were few of the irksome laws of a more enlightened community to chafe the proud souls of the meek and the mighty, alike. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you was law enough for the Carroll country.

Mightiest in this pastoral Utopia were the Allens. The Allens ruled the county, but they ruled it justly and, having amassed more than their share of the wealth of the country, used it to do good among others. None suffered in want so long as the Allens knew of it. Masterful and dominating they might have been, but they were the soul of charity and helpfulness.

The Allens were strictly products of Carroll County. Jeremiah Allen, a crusty fighter for the south in the Civil War, had founded the feudal chain. Now Floyd Allen, his son, a giant of a man, with a shaggy, snow white mane, carried it on.

It would be wrong to say the Allens were a power in Carroll County. They were Carroll County. Floyd Allen, with his great head and hulking shoulders and beady eyes set deep in a furrowed, weatherbeaten face, led. Jasper and Sidna and Garland, his brothers, and their sons and his sister’s sons, the Edwardses, followed.

They even went into the professions. There was a minister among them. He was Garland Allen. He was a fire-belching, hell-and-damnation soldier of the Cross, reviling sinners and scourging Beelzebub with a blacksnake whip technic. He battered his flock into line and kept them there because he was a fierce orator — and an Allen.

There was a lawyer, too. His name was Walter Allen, son of Jasper Allen. He went to the University of Virginia. Then he came back and did as his kinsmen did. He looked out for the Allens, then for the poor, then for the negroes, then for the Allens some more. He furnished the advice to the family, Big Floyd the leadership.

It is about these two, Garland and Walter, that this greatest of American social tragedies revolves. Without them and their leanings for the professions, there would be no story. But without the shibboleth of Big Floyd Allen, they wouldn’t have been driven into the story. It was a proud cry, and the giant patriarch, with his booming voice and his blazing eyes, never neglected to shout it when he felt the Allens were about to be forgotten, the battle cry of:

“The Allens is all fighters!”

On the following Sunday, as the Rev. Mr. Allen arose from his knees following the invocation, he looked squarely into the barrels of a pair of shotguns!

Behind the guns were two youths. They were Sidna and Wesley Edwards, his nephews, sons of his sister. The shotguns were aimed, as he got to his feet, squarely at the huge gold chain that stretched across the Rev. Mr. Allen’s gaunt middle.

The Rev. Mr. Allen knew that the boys meant business. He knew that he had violated the family creed. He knew that Floyd Allen would not submit to one of his own family bowing before the yoke of the hated Republicans.

In other words, he knew that he was in for it.

The congregation sat, spellbound. Someone moved as if to aid the beleaguered minister. Wesley Edwards left the preacher to his brother and swept the congregation with his shotgun. Then Sidna Edwards declaimed sonorously, from the pulpit.

“He ain’t gonna preach to you no more — he’s too danged ornery to preach t’ other folks.”

The nephews prodded the godly man down the aisle. The congregation muttered threateningly. Wesley Edwards swung the gun around again. Worshippers dived under pews. The muttering was replaced by the hysterical screams of women, the bleating of children.

The community was outraged. The churchgoers demanded that the law do something. One parishioner suggested that Floyd Allen would attend to the kids. He cited their action as a prank of two boys that would be attended to by Floyd Allen and attended to properly.

But Floyd Allen refused to punish the boys. They had done just right, he said. The fighting Allens wanted no milksop preachers among them, milksop preachers who would bend the humble knee before the mongrels who sought to destroy Carroll County’s then greatest industry and to defy the law and order that had been.

“The Allens is all fighters!” he bellowed, louder than before, and his bellowings detonated the most spectacular community feud of all time and resulted in one of the greatest political calamities in the history of rural America.

A few miles out of Hillsville, the giant came upon the quartet. The youths were manacled to the buggy. Samuels and another deputy rode on either side of them. Both the boys were exhausted from their struggles. Their arms bled from injuries caused by the relentless steel handcuffs.

Floyd Allen rode down upon the deputies, swung his horse across the road in front of the buggy and grabbed the deputy’s horse by the bit. No one ever will know why Samuels didn’t shoot the giant then and there, but he didn’t. Instead, he waited calmly until Floyd Allen dismounted and then demanded to know what the patriarch wanted.

“I want them kids and I want them damned quick,” the big man roared. “If you don’t let them loose now, there’s gonna be blood let in this county before night.”

Samuels, an easy going mountaineer until aroused, sneered at the giant.

“Listen, Allen,” he said, “these kids are going to jail and there’s no Allen in this or any other county that can scare me out of doing my duty. Get to hell outa the way and let me pass.”

Floyd Allen emitted one bellow and rushed the buggy. Samuels, a big man himself, but far from a match for the behemothic Allen, kicked savagely at the giant.

Floyd Allen grabbed the kicking foot and whirled Samuels from the buggy like a rag cat. He slammed him to the ground with a berserk fury and beat him into complete insensibility. So wild was he with the fury of his attack on Samuels that he did not see that the other deputy was speeding away with the nephews, who screamed at the uncle, but to no avail.

When Floyd Allen had beaten Samuels to within a hair’s breadth of death, he arose and looked about for the other deputy. He fully intended to beat him into unconsciousness and then release the beleaguered nephews. He’d settle the question of what the law meant to the Allens for once and for all. He’d put Carroll County back where it belonged — on a plane fit to be inhabited by Virginia moonshiners with pride in their family line.

But the deputy was gone. Only a gray swirl of dust, fast rolling into Hillsville, a mile away, told him the story.

The two horses drawing the carriage were galloping furiously and the deputy was alternately plying them with the whip and using the butt of it to subdue the two youthful members of the fighting Allens, who tugged at his coat tails and kicked viciously at him with their free feet.

Big Floyd leaped to his mount and rode furiously after the flying carriage. Through the flying dust he charged, bellowing on high as he rode, so that other mountaineers, thinking there was a kidnapping, or fearing to do otherwise under the spell of the Allen chief’s awful voice, joined pursuit.

Into Hillsville the steaming horses of the deputy thundered. Down the main street and into the courthouse yard.

The deputy was quavering with fear, but he delivered the prisoners to tight-lipped and steely-eyed Sheriff Webb, and the sheriff immediately clamped them into the strongest and most remote cell in the Carroll County jail, gathered his guns about him and awaited the oncharging Allens.

He had no more than reached the front of the combination courthouse and jail than Floyd Allen galloped up to the door, leaped from his horse and charged Webb. It was an ill timed charge. Webb, not a big man, but a game one and an old enemy of Allen’s, leveled his rifle at the onrushing giant, sighted beadily down the barrel and wriggled his right forefinger menacingly.

Four hours after the word got around that Sheriff Louis Webb personally had gone out to get him, Floyd Allen walked into the courthouse and surrendered.

Then they knew, Judge Massie and Foster, what the steely-eyed sheriff had meant. Allen was willing to defy them by putting himself in their power.

“All right, lock me up, you pups,” Floyd Allen roared, seeing no sign of Webb. “Go ahead — and see what it brings you to.”

They didn’t lock him up. The Allens waited for him outside, brothers and sons and nephews, ugly customers, armed to the teeth.

They paraded before the courthouse and Walter and Claude Allen entered with him. Walter was the lawyer. He demanded bail, and got it, so that Floyd Allen did not have to undergo the indignity of spending a night behind the bars. They gave him his liberty, so that he could go out and foment new trouble and make new terrors for the distressed county.

Something told Floyd Allen that he was heading into trouble. He saw, and his brothers and sons saw, the handwriting on the wall. The clan gathered nightly in conclave, waiting for the day when Floyd Allen was to stand trial.

There began a series of terroristic raids. No one knew who committed the raids. They defied the sheriff and Foster. But they were directed at the Republican voters, or those who were suspected of being Republican voters. Men were taken out and horsewhipped. Many were stripped of their clothing and left on the mountains, in the deathly fogs and cold.

Those who rode into Hillsville behind Floyd Allen the day he was halted before the courthouse and who had slunk away when Sheriff Webb confronted him with a rifle, flanked by Foster and the deputy, were victims of night riders. Citizens flocked into Hillsville for protection.

A reign of terror, that could be traced to no one, not even by the zealous Foster or the grim Webb, made a place of horror and dread of the county.

Judge Massie ordered Floyd Allen brought to trial at once. In this way, and this alone, he reasoned, could he fling the defy of elected law and order to the terrorists.

Floyd Allen, boasting of his immunity, appeared in court, smiling a sinister smile. The Allens clustered behind him. Sheriff Webb suddenly ordered all but Walter Allen and Claude, the son, out of the courtroom. Walter beat the order. The Allens, and everyone else who wished to, were permitted to remain.

The trial was a brief one. The Allens, still believing in their superiority to constituted authority, declined even to bother about presenting witnesses. The experience of the two youths had not taught them that these despised enemies were not to be scoffed at.

Pinky Samuels took the stand. Reluctantly, with the fierce eyes of Floyd Allen and his sons and brothers upon him, he told his story. Foster and Webb, together, aided by Judge Massie, had to drag it from him. Ominous rumblings filled the room.

When the hearing was completed, Floyd Allen and the Allenites arose to leave the courtroom. They declined to wait until Judge Massie had left, or had made disposition of the case. The court, controlling the rage that welled up, ordered them to take their seats.

Floyd Allen contemptuously refused. He stood, with his hat on, looking grimly at Judge Massie. His son, Claude, stood beside him. Jasper, Walter, Sidna, and the others, were grouped about him, in a sort of semicircle, a phalanx that looked capable of sweeping through the court.

“I will not decide this case until I have considered every angle of it,” said Judge Massie. “In this consideration, the attitude of this defendant will be weighed heavily, I assure you. I will give my decision and pass sentence on March 14.”

Floyd Allen threw his shaggy white head back and laughed boisterously. The other Allens joined him. There came from their vicinity noises that sounded like what the English call the bird. Then court, anxious to avoid trouble at the time, withdrew with as much dignity as possible. Floyd Allen and his clan, with the henchmen that had gathered about him like rats when they saw that the court seemed intimidated, went out into the street, shouting their defiance of the court and the authorities.

The morning of the judgment broke. The day was misty. The mist came down from the hills and settled like a blanket of dire prophecy over the little courthouse.

Hillsville had not slept that night. Webb and Foster and Massie had not slept. They had paced their quarters, or sat about Webb’s office, waiting for the fateful tomorrow.

Dawn came ominously through the clouds, a red dawn, with blood on the foothills, blood on the sun. The men of the town went about their business guardedly. They were armed, stealthily armed.

Sheriff Webb ordered all places where firearms and ammunition might be dispensed closed for the day. He swore in extra deputies. They were difficult to get, these deputies. They feared the retribution of the Fighting Allens.

Families began to come out of the mountains early. They gathered about the courthouse, silent and fearful. They hitched their rigs in convenient places and left their horses in the harness. No path to flight was barred. The hill men were brave men, but they had brought their families. They didn’t know what odds the townspeople held against them. All they knew was that the Allens would make a fight for it if Judge Massie dared to defy them.

As the morning wore on toward 9 o’clock, the tension became more and more fearful. Men spoke in whispers. Women stood about, holding their children close to them, or remained inside the stores, watching through cluttered windows.

Presently hill men began to appear in the crowds. They went silently from group to group, dropping a few words here, a few there. They were grim-faced men, with heavy revolvers strapped to their hips and shotguns over their arms.

The men began to move toward the courthouse. Sheriff Webb stood on the steps. No one was to enter until Judge Massie arrived. His deputies stood a little back of him. Foster waited in the sheriff’s office.

The sun began to break through the mist. It was spring in the mountain town, with the vague quietude that spring brings to the hills. The trees were budding and the sun goaded them to new spawning.

Suddenly, out of the south, came a cataract of voices. It was a wild, fierce song, a song of bravado and recklessness, the song of men drunk with the feel of adventure.

A cloud of dust appeared. The figures of men, and horses, materialized from the cloud of dust. The song of the fighting Allens arose from the cloud.

Then the dust cloud was on the edge of the city. It swept into the main street. The battle song of the hill men rose above the beat of the hoofs of a score or more horses.

A giant man, with gray hair and a huge head and great, hulking shoulders thrown back, rode at the head of a troop of giants.

The Fighting Allens had come to judgment, with a song on their lips and scorn in their eyes.

Floyd Allen sat adamant, glowering contemptuously at Judge Massie. Sidna and Claude Allen sat with him, their grim faces riveted on their leader.

Dexter Goad tugged at his revolver. Floyd Allen saw him. A pair of deputies stepped into the bay.

Floyd Allen got up slowly. A forced smile overspread his dark face. Claude and Sidna Allen got up and stood, surly and scowling, beside him.

“I wouldn’t ’a’ done that, paw,” said Claude Allen, aloud, “who’s he that we have to get up when he comes in?”

The giant patriarch said nothing. He continued to curl his lip in that contemptuous smile until Judge Massie was seated. Then he sat down as Dexter Goad resumed his seat and picked up his papers.

Dexter Goad rapped for order. The courtroom was silent as a tomb. Floyd Allen leaned back in his chair, crossed one leg over the other and waited with supreme confidence.

The Allenites in the front rows of the spectators’ bay sat immobile. The deputies shifted from one foot to the other, keeping an alert eye on the men. Walter Tipton, one of Floyd Alien’s lawyers, coughed spasmodically. His hand shook noticeably as he wiped his mouth with his handkerchief.

Dexter Goad arose and handed a sheaf of papers to Judge Massie. A low hum ran over the courtroom. Dexter Goad rapped sharply. The deputies deployed toward the seat of the disturbance. Silence fell again.

Foster walked to the bench, before Judge Massie. Goad continued to stand. Walter Tipton took his place at the other end of the bench. He wet his lips with his tongue. Foster wet his lips. Goad’s hard eyes were upon Floyd Allen.

Judge Massie studied the papers. It was unnecessary. What he wanted was time for the tension to ease. His face was white, but stern. His fighting jaw was outthrust and the veins showed in his strong hands.

He looked up from the papers, out over the courtroom. He looked at Floyd Allen and the Allenites in the front row of seats. A contemptuous smile came to his lips as he swept the courtroom.

His eyes were blazing with the bitterness of his resentment against the show the Allens had staged.

In an even, dispassionate voice, he began his pronouncement.

“We are confronted here, not with the case of the Commonwealth of Virginia versus Floyd Allen, but with the case of Law and Order versus feudalism,” he began. “Unfortunately, we are authorized only to deal with the case of the Commonwealth of Virginia versus Floyd Allen, charged with assault and battery and interfering with an officer in performance of his duty.

“The defendant in this case has seen fit to defy this court and to create a situation in this county that is inimical to the proper functioning of justice and intolerable to duly constituted authorities. He has seen fit to attempt to set up a dictatorship, to place himself and those of his family without the law or, if you please, above the law.

“The proceedings in this case do not, as I have pointed out before, permit us to deal with outlawry and rebellion, since this defendant is not charged with these crimes. But it does permit us to show to this defendant and those who have encouraged and applauded him in his course and to those whom we are charged with protecting through the duly constituted law, that law does and will prevail, despite threats of violence and attempted coercion.

“Therefore, in full consideration of the evidence as it has been presented to me, I shall render my judgment and sentence in the case of the Commonwealth of Virginia versus Floyd Allen—”

Ensued now the hunt for the fugitives. Governor William Mann of Virginia took a hand. He ordered the militia into Hillsville. He sent twenty plainclothes men from Roanoke, sent Judge Staples of Roanoke to take charge, ordered Attorney General Williams to the scene.

These reinforcements went by train to Galaxy. Then, because no one knew they were coming, they had to walk through nine miles of mud and slime to Hillsville. There is no railroad in Hillsville.

The hunt spread over Carroll County. Then word came that one of the Allens had robbed an ammunition store in Mount Airy, North Carolina. Floyd Allen, hearing of this while flat on his back with his broken leg, exclaimed:

“Good. Us Allens is all fighters!”

A week later Sidna Edwards was captured while asleep in an abandoned hut sixteen miles from Hillsville. Five days later the seventeen-year-old Friel Allen was taken in a carriage shed near his father’s home. He was sick and whimpering. The bravado of the fighting Allens had been drowned in the homesickness of a scared boy.

Sidna Allen and Wesley Edwards still were at large. In spite of this, the state insisted upon bringing the captured four to trial, Floyd Allen, his son, Claude, and his nephews, Friel and Sidna Edwards.

Carroll County was in a state of chaos. Every citizen was an armed man, a self constituted avenger of a wrong, either against the commonwealth or the Allens. Thought of conducting the trial there was madness.

The hearings were transferred to Wytheville, county seat of a neighboring county. Militiamen were thrown about the courthouse. Plainclothes men from Richmond and Roanoke and Norfolk guarded the courtroom, watched everyone who came in.

No one was admitted to the hearings without first being searched for weapons. No known Allenites, not witnesses in the trial, were permitted in the town. Extra policemen from half a dozen towns patrolled the streets. Militiamen in their stuffy uniforms patrolled the main streets and checked up the hotels and train arrivals.

The county line of Carroll County was patrolled like an international border in war time.

No single juryman who ever had heard of the Allens was accepted.

Thus the trial started and thus it ended, in spectacular time. Friel Allen and Sidna Edwards pleaded guilty and were sentenced to fifteen and eighteen years, respectively.

Claude Allen and his father were found guilty of murder and sentenced to hang.

Then Wesley Edwards and Sidna Allen were captured in Des Moines. Sidna Allen charged that Wesley Edwards’ sweetheart, with whom they were living in the Des Moines town, had betrayed them for a reward.

They were given prison sentences, Sidna’s totalling thirty-five years, Wesley’s twenty-seven.

Then they took Floyd Allen and Claude to the state penitentiary. Half a dozen deputies rode with them. Militiamen guarded the procession. Plainclothes men moved among those who watched the start of the hegira. But there was no disturbance in Wytheville. Only in incendiary Carroll County, where Allenites burned farmhouses and some houses in the city in protest against the sentence.

Then began the appeals for mercy. There were more than a dozen of them. Finally, as a last hope, the case went to the United States supreme court. The plea was denied.

On the night of March 27, 1913, one year after the tragedy of Hillsville courthouse, the warden of the state penitentiary pushed his way into Floyd Alien’s cell.

The great, gray mane was unbowed. The huge head was held erect and the beady eyes were as fierce and defiant as ever.

“Your last appeal has been denied,” said the warden, gravely. “This means that we must execute sentence on you and your son at sunrise. Are you prepared?”

The giant patriarch stood up. He looked the warden square in the eye.

“The Allens is fighters,” he said. “They know how to die — if they have to die.”

The last was said with a startling significance. The warden looked apprehensive, then quickly left the cell to take the news to Claude Allen.

The warden called for a military guard. It was thrown about the prison walls that night. Every guard was ordered to be on duty throughout the night.

The next morning, amid an ominous silence outside the walls, the old man walked from his cell with his head high and a smile on his face. His shaggy mane looked whiter than ever in the spring sunlight.

He mounted the steps quickly. He seemed to be looking about him. There was hope, some trust in an omnipotence he still believed, in his fiery eyes.

Even as they placed the hood over his gray locks, he asked, in a firm voice:

“Do you really mean to hang an Allen?”

No one replied. The warden reached for the trigger. Just before the rattle of the trap broke the words, the giant patriarch bellowed, as he had bellowed two years before, to his eternal tragedy:

“Thank God, the Allens is all fighters!”

Then the rope muffled his cry into a crackling scream.

Claude Allen died without a word. Ten years later Governor Trinkle pardoned Friel Allen and Sidna Edwards. Then, in 1926, Governor Harry Byrd, brother of the noted polar explorer, pardoned Sidna Allen and Wesley Edwards.

The four of them live today, in Virginia, quiet, law abiding, industrious citizens, saddened and broken by their experience.

And no longer there echoes through the beautiful hills of matchless Carroll County the fateful war cry:

“The Allens Is All Fighters!”

O’Hara things he has his man at last — and then a woman’s scream tells him the killer has struck once more.

Cynthia Simpson, desk clerk in the Sippiconsett House, Siasconset, Nantucket Island, falls in a bad fog close to a house in which a “John Smith” is supposed to be hiding. She is helped by a young man whom she does not see.

That night “John Smith” is murdered, and his face so beaten that he is unrecognizable.

His three servants have completely vanished.

Next day Cynthia is astounded when a young man registers at the hotel, signs himself John Smith — and she recognizes him from his voice as the man she had met in the fog near the murdered man’s house.

Dan O’Hara, a state detective, is on the case. He is called at night to the house of a Mrs. Conlin, whose husband has disappeared.

O’Hara thinks the murdered man may be Conlin. The dead man’s three servants have been found — dead also, at the bottom of a pool. The four bodies have been taken to an undertaking establishment. O’Hara goes to check up his guess that the murdered “Smith” is Conlin — and finds the body gone.

Mrs. Conlin comes to the Sippiconsett House and meets the “John Smith” registered there — really Jack Billings, former football star, tried and acquitted for a murder in Chicago several years before. It was Mrs. Conlin’s former husband whom Billings was accused of murdering. Billings charges Mrs. Conlin with that murder, in collaboration with her present husband, Conlin.

Arriving in New Bedford shortly after noon, state officer O’Hara went first to police headquarters, where he was well and favorably known, and sat down with Chief of Police Flynn. He told him in full detail everything which had happened in Nantucket, including his theory regarding R. J. Conlin — the theory which had been blasted by the discovery that Conlin had arrived in New Bedford with a blond woman some hours after Dan had calculated that he had been murdered and mutilated. Dan admitted he still clung to the hope that it was a false Conlin who had passed Thursday night at the New Bedford Hotel.

The police chief, who was a little gray man with sharp, foxy eyes, a pointed nose and a wisp of a gray mustache, chewed reflectively upon an unlighted cigar for several minutes before he expressed an opinion.

“The Nantucket call, at six Friday morning,” he said, “was made from a drug store opposite the New Bedford Hotel. The clerk on duty remembers the woman. She was above medium height. She wore a gray coat with a collar turned up and a straw hat with a brim on it so he didn’t get a good look at her face. He thinks her hair was either blond or brown — he is sure it wasn’t black. He only remembers her because he had just opened up and was rather surprised to have a woman patron so early.

“Looks as though she might have come across from the hotel,” said Dan hopefully. “I got a photograph of Conlin. Somebody in the hotel, the clerk or one of the bellboys or a chambermaid ought to remember what the man looked like, and maybe someone got a good look at the dame. What time did they check in?”

“Between twelve and one,” replied the chief. “They gave New York as their address. Want me to stroll down there with you?”

“Don’t bother, chief,” replied O’Hara. “I can do this job myself. What do you make out of this mess?”

“Well, it’s a sure thing that the face was smashed in to prevent identification of the victim. It was hoped he would pass for John Smith. They fell down in not showing a John Smith in ’Sconset who would be the same coloring and height and weight as the man they intended to murder. If they had done that, you’d have made a few inquiries, you’d have got no line on the past and associations of this Smith and it would have gone into history as an unsolved mystery. Another mistake was killing the servants and leaving the bodies where they could be found. If he had a plane and they were going to escape in it, he could have killed them when over the ocean and dropped them overboard.

“Then it would be assumed that Smith was killed and robbed by the servants. Of course it would take a big plane able to carry four of five passengers and crew, and such planes are hard to get.

“Crooks can get hold of a two-seater easy enough, but a bigger plane could be traced. Probably kidded the servants that he would carry them away by air and, not being able to make good, this murderer bumped them off. Cold blooded cuss.”

“And he came back and carried off the dead body. Don’t forget that.”

“Yeah. Wonder if he knew you might think the corpse was Conlin?”

Dan shook his head. “Pretty far fetched. I never thought it myself until I had left the Conlin house. In half an hour after that I was at the undertaking rooms.”

“It sure is a puzzle,” said Chief Flynn. “Look here, a man who had a wife on Nantucket and faked an excuse to go to New York so he could meet another woman, wouldn’t be fool enough to go to a hotel right at the end of the Nantucket boat line and sign his own name on a hotel register. Of course it’s a crime in this state to sign a fake name, but nobody pays any attention to the law, and a big business man like Conlin would be the last to bother about that.”

Conlin and Company was a firm of investment brokers on lower Broadway. It had been a conservative house which had come successfully through the panic and preserved an appearance of prosperity through the three years of sagging security markets. It still occupied large and ornate offices, and only one familiar with the appearance of these offices in boom days would realize that there were only one third as many employees about the place.

On Monday morning after the Thursday night when R. J. Conlin left his home in ’Sconset there was a conference in the directors’ room of Conlin and Company, was presided over by William H. Good, junior partner, and attended by two young men who were, in theory, partners, though their interest in the profits were negligible. There was present the first auditor and a high official of the Stock Exchange.

“I wired Conlin on Thursday that the Republic of Paragonia had repudiated its bonds,” stated Mr. Good, “and that we would go under unless he could find a way to prevent it. He failed to put in an appearance on Friday. On Saturday, as you know, the papers carried the story of his disappearance, which they elaborated on Sunday.

“In times like these a scandal is fatal. I knew by the demands from clients up to closing time Saturday that we would be swamped by this morning. I am afraid that Conlin, who handled our Paragonian interests exclusively, was aware of the situation a week ago and laid his plans. I regret, gentlemen, to state that this firm appears to be insolvent and we shall have to make an assignment.

“I have been connected with the firm for twenty years. I am losing my personal fortune in the crash.” He stopped because his voice had broken, and he blew his nose in order to cover his emotion with a display of white linen handkerchief.

“How much did Conlin steal?” asked one of the very junior partners angrily.

“So far as I am able to discover his accounts are in good shape,” replied the auditor. “Our error was in underwriting the issue of Paragonian bonds. We might have scratched through their repudiation had the head of the firm been on the job, but his disappearance alarmed all our clients. There is no doubt that Conlin and Co. must go into a receiver’s hands.”

“You can bet he feathered his own nest,” said the second very junior partner.

“It is possible that our chief has met with foul play,” protested the acting head of the firm.

“Boloney,” commented the first very junior partner.

“He either flew the coop or committed suicide,” declared his colleague.

“In any event, sir,” stated Mr. Good to the official of the Stock Exchange, “I am filing a voluntary petition in bankruptcy.”

The Stock Exchange man nodded sympathetically. “We might have helped you out as we have helped out so many good houses in this trying period,” he said, “but the scandal of Conlin’s disappearance makes it impossible. He has a wife in Nantucket, but he turned up in New Bedford with a woman whom he registered as his wife. He slipped into New York and went to the Pennsylvania Hotel without communicating with this office, though he knew the seriousness of the situation. We can’t do anything for Conlin and Company, Mr. Good.”

“I didn’t suppose you could,” answered Mr. Good with a sigh. “That is all, gentlemen.”

Dan went across to City Hall Park and seated himself on a bench.

He had things to think about.

It began to look to Dan very much as though Jack Billings, a couple of whose Corona Corona cigars the detective had not yet smoked, had slain R. J. Conlin. He was far from being able to prove it. He couldn’t produce the body and there was evidence that he could not yet controvert that Conlin had been in New York on Friday night, while Dan happened to know that Billings was on Nantucket Island on Friday night. The collapse of Conlin and Company, coinciding with the disappearance of Conlin and the signatures on two hotel registers made it very evident that the banker had skipped, like so many captains of industry who couldn’t stand the gaff.

Dan pulled out his dudeen, filled it and lighted it. If it wasn’t for the hotel registers and the failure of Conlin’s firm he could make out a fair case against Jack Billings. The exfootball star had murdered one of Stella Starr’s husbands and he might have murdered the other. Dan had the police complex of believing that innocent persons are never brought to trial and the acquittal of an accused individual is usually a miscarriage of justice.

Jack Billings was in Nantucket. He claimed to have arrived the day after the murder, but he might be lying. He called himself John Smith. He might have been the John Smith who rented the Rapidan-Sears house. He had assumed that he was safe after he had destroyed the features of R. J. Conlin, but when he was recognized by Dan O’Hara, he was probably terrified and had decided that the dead body might be identified after all, so he had stolen it from the undertaker’s shop and gotten rid of it.

It would take a man of great force of character to carry off the corpse of somebody he had murdered and mutilated, but Dan had seen Billings on the football field, and he knew he had been tried for the murder of one of Stella Starr’s husbands, so it seemed he was capable of it. Dan hesitated to convict Jack in his mind, of slaying the three servants. He rather liked Billings, wished him well, certainly had no wish to accuse him unjustly. However, any man who has slain one person might kill by wholesale if he thought his safety demanded it.

What did Billings have against Conlin? Well, a man who is in love with another man’s wife doesn’t have to have a special enmity to her husband. The fact that he keeps the lovers apart is sufficient reason to kill him.

The point was that here was a very deep mystery. By following up a wild theory Dan had not only identified the murdered person, but had found an individual who was on the ground, who had a strong motive for murder, who had already killed the first husband of the wife of R. J. Conlin, who could easily have stolen the dead body from the undertaking rooms in Nantucket town, and the mystery was almost solved.

On the other hand, the presumption was that the corpse was that of John Smith, since it had been found lying on the bed in his home. Jack Billings claimed to have landed in Nantucket upon the day following the murder. If he were the killer he would have made sure that his presence on steamship and bus on Friday were noted.

There was a bus driver to swear that Conlin had been landed at the steamship pier on Friday night. There was the evidence of the register at the New Bedford Hotel which indicated that Conlin had arrived there with a blond woman. And Dan had questioned the hotel people and displayed Conlin’s photo and found nobody willing to declare that its original had not been the companion of the blond woman. Of course Mrs. Conlin was in with Billings — she was always sympathetic to her husbands’ murderers and she, probably, would insist that the signature upon the New Bedford and the New York registers were those of her husband.

There was no longer a chance of identifying the murdered man as Conlin, since the body had vanished. And there was a failure of Conlin and Company to supply the motive for the disappearance of the head of the firm.

When the Nantucket steamer bearing the sorely perplexed Dan O’Hara moved across Nantucket Harbor the following forenoon she passed close to a motor yacht. It was a long, low, knife-bowed craft built with a streamline effect which was not broken by the rake of her two short masts and the broad, squat funnel amidships. She flew the flag of the New York Yacht Club and the pennant that indicated that her owner was on board. So perfectly proportioned was she that she gave the impression of being small and dainty despite the fact that she was a hundred and twenty feet on her waterline, had a beam of twenty feet and could cruise all over the seven seas as safely as a twenty-thousand ton ocean liner.

Nor would the average observer dream that this lovely craft could travel through the water with the speed of the fastest torpedo destroyer in any navy in the world. Her twin Diesel engines could drive her at thirty-five knots an hour and occasionally had been called upon to do so.

The name of this vessel was the Huelva and her owner was listed as J. Parsons Peabody, son of General Elisha Peabody, who at one time owned a large part of the public utilities of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. As the Peabody fortune had dwindled to almost nothing during the depression New York society often wondered how J. Parsons was able to buy fuel for his million dollar speedster. There was a guest on board in Nantucket Harbor who could have explained all this, though it was his habit to explain nothing.

The guest was lounging in a huge chair under an awning at the stern sipping mineral water. J. Parsons was sleeping off a drunk in his cabin. Several of the young lady guests were also dead to the world this beautiful morning, and the young woman who was sitting at the stern with the drinker of mineral water didn’t feel so good.

As he never drank anything but mineral water, the guest was in fine shape. He wore a costume of white drill with gold buttons, a white yachting cap with a lot of gold braid on it, and on his feet were white shoes so large that he had to have them made to order. If Dan O’Hara, who gazed at the yacht lying at anchor a hundred yards from the course of the steamer, had been near enough to get a look at the face of the person in yachting costume he would have recognized him as Public Enemy number two, who had been promoted to Public Enemy number one since Al Capone was languishing in a Federal jail. And he would have understood why the gentleman was in Nantucket Harbor. Big Tim Moriaty was making a tour of inspection.

Fifteen years ago, Tim Moriaty had been a brawny young New York Irishman who earned a living on the docks of the North River by tossing bales of cotton and boxes of machinery around. He stood six feet two in his socks, he had a forty-eight inch chest and a forty inch waist; his biceps were bigger than those of Jack Dempsey, and he could carry a hogshead weighing three hundred pounds on his back. He earned an honest living by the sweat of his brow and he made about sixty or seventy dollars a week. Tim Moriaty had promised his old mother that he would never drink strong liquor, which had caused his father to die in his prime, and he had faithfully kept that promise. Unfortunately it had not occurred to his mother to make him promise not to rob, fight or kill because, being a good Christian woman, it never occurred to her that her big boy would be tempted to commit crimes.

In those days there were plenty of squabbles on the water front and Tim being barred from the harmless pleasure which comes from drinking beer and whiskey, got his fun in fighting. He was such a magnificent scrapper that he had an opportunity to join a little organization formed by two or three strong-armed and clear-headed stevedores who afterwards broke into fame as Public Enemies, the purpose of which was to protect shippers and slop shop men from — waterfront crooks, drunken mobs, strikes and that sort of thing. And along about that time prohibition came into being.

If it hadn’t been for prohibition, Tim Moriaty might have been a great heavyweight pugilist, but prohibition gave the Protective Association its great opportunity. During the next ten years Tim Moriaty and three or four of his fellow members of the Waterfront Protective Association gained fame and fortune. Thanks to them, New York was saved from going dry during the early and serious efforts to enforce prohibition.

From the small business of carrying bottles off the ocean liners to saloon keepers on the waterfront, Tim and his friends rose to cooperation with huge fleets of rum ships, and when the three-mile limit was extended by treaty with England to twelve miles, they chartered their own fleets of rum ships, met them with swift motor boats and sent huge caravans of trucks rumbling through the night from Long Island and New Jersey beaches.

Probably because Tim was a teetotaler and his associates drank too much of their own poison, he gradually won the leadership, and because he was by nature a monopolist, he realized that the retailers made a greater profit with less effort than the runners and wholesalers. So, he began opening night clubs where liquor which cost him seventy-five cents a quart at the ship was sold for eight and ten dollars a quart to society folks, and thus he secured the wholesalers, the jobbers, and the retailers’ profits.

By and by he had a string of night clubs where cover charges ranged as high as five dollars per person. He prided himself upon selling good liquor and he waged war upon those who sold poison and reduced the consuming population. Guns barked. Men were killed. Gangsters warred. The reign of terror was on.

For the first time since the murders Cynthia Simpson walked up the bluff path after she had turned over the desk at the Sippiconsett House to the night clerk at five o’clock. It was a gorgeous ’Sconset evening, peaceful and serene.

Being a New Englander with a long line of New England ancestors, Cynthia had a New England conscience and she had suffered for several days from a sense of duty undone. By great ingenuity she had avoided tête-à-têtes with John Smith since the morning that Mrs. Conlin had arrived at the Sippiconsett House. Smith, who had sublime impudence, had taken advantage of every opportunity to exchange a few words with her while she was on duty, and the burden of his remarks was his need for a walk and a private talk with her.

While Cynthia resented his impudence she was a woman, so she liked it. It was obvious that Smith was interested in her, despite his intimacy with the very beautiful Mrs. Conlin.

And the horrid thought that Smith and Mrs. Conlin might have made away with R. J. Conlin, which had been inspired by jealous fury the day of the woman’s arrival, had been driven away by the news that Mr. Conlin had been traced to New York.

Mrs. Conlin had assured her that the only reason she was remaining in ’Sconset instead of hastening to New York to help in the hunt for her husband was a police summons for fast driving, which was an outrage, as she had never driven fast and had never been arrested. That didn’t fool Cynthia. She was certain that the woman was at the hotel to be near John Smith but she wasn’t so sure, now, that Smith wanted to be near Mrs. Conlin.

Smith was such a likeable person that Cynthia could not possibly believe that he was a criminal, yet the fact remained that he was close to the scene of the murder somewhere near the time that the murder had occurred, and that he claimed not to have reached Nantucket until the day after. As the police were hunting high and low for persons who were in that vicinity, was she doing her duty in withholding this information? While, actually, wild horses would not have dragged the information from her, Cynthia’s conscience was raising hob about it.

She walked swiftly along the bluff path and noted absently how many of the recently tenanted cottages were vacant. She neared the lighthouse as shadows gathered, waved her hand to the light keeper, who was an old acquaintance of hers, and turned to retrace her steps. She had walked about an eighth of a mile and was approaching a hedge which marked the boundary of the house occupied by the Folsoms of Boston, who had left in a hurry two days after the murder, when a man, who was lying on the grass close to the hedge and whom she had not observed up to that second, sat up and said:

“Good evening, miss.”

Cynthia glanced at him nervously. He was a big man, dark complected and his countenance was rather unpleasant.

“Good evening,” she replied, and quickened her steps.

“I say,” he called after her with a pronounced English accent, “what’s your hurry, miss?”

Cynthia did not answer. In a second she heard footfalls behind her. She glanced nervously along the path and to the right. Nobody was in sight. Cynthia’s heart began to thump. Never in her life had she been accosted on the bluff path before. The man was alongside her and made to take her arm. She pulled it away.

“How dare you!” she exclaimed in a voice that was loud but shaky.

“Can’t you pass the time of day with a chap?” he demanded. “There ayn’t no ’arm in me.”

“No, I can’t,” she replied desperately. “Let me go. Let me go, I tell you!”

In Washington, D. C., there is a building which houses the Department of Justice, and in one section of this building is located the Prohibition Unit. The head of the prohibition department was in conference with the director of enforcement in New York and with the commander of the coast guard.

While the business of this unit is to see that the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution as interpreted by the Volstead Act is enforced impartially from Alaska’s icy shores to Florida’s sunny strands and at all way stations between, its officers are practical men or they would not hold down political jobs.

Being perfectly aware that the task set them is impossible and would be impossible if they had twenty times as large an enforcement appropriation and fifty times as many persons on the payroll, they endeavor to give the presumptive dry majority a run for its money by concentrating their efforts and striking at points where their energies will be reported spectacularly in the newspapers.

Reading of the activities of the prohibition unit as exploited in the papers, the conscientious prohibitionist is lulled into thinking that the law is being enforced and it won’t be long before the country will be all dried up.

So now let us listen in on the conference.

“Tim Moriaty is on board Peabody’s yacht, the Huelva, in Nantucket Harbor,” said the director in New York. “That means that something big is about to happen on Nantucket or Cape Cod and we have a chance to nab the Huelva and Moriaty red-handed.”

“I’d like to get Moriaty,” said the prohibition head. “He would look well in stripes at the next bench in Atlanta to Al Capone.”

He turned to the commander of the coast guard. “How much stuff is run in at Nantucket?” he asked.

“Plenty. You see the waters around Nantucket are very dangerous. There are any number of shoals and reefs, fogs are frequent, transatlantic liners are continually passing and God help the coast guard boat running without lights if she crosses the path of one of them. We do the best we can, of course.”

“But conditions must be just as unfavorable for the rum runners.”

“They take the same chances, of course, but fog always helps a fugitive more than a pursuer. Besides the island contains scores of inlets which are unguarded and we never know which has been chosen to land the stuff. Once ashore it’s up to the prohibition officers, and there aren’t enough of them.”

“We can hardly assign a big crew to an island with about 2,500 inhabitants.”

“Very well. They ship the stuff to the main land practically unmolested. And since Massachusetts repealed her dry law we get no help from state or local police. The game there hasn’t been worth the candle.”

“That’s true,” admitted the New York director eagerly, “but at this moment, because of the atrocious murders, Nantucket is very much in the public eye. A Nantucket development will make the front page of any newspaper. Of course these killings were done by bootleggers; anyway the public thinks they were. The time is ripe for a big demonstration at Nantucket. If we can get the goods on Moriaty, so much the better. Now, I’ll be glad to Ioan half my force. I’ll accompany my men in person—”

“You must be crazy,” said Jack Billings when O’Hara had announced his intention of arresting him for murder.

“No, sir,” replied O’Hara. “You had the opportunity and the motive, and that trial of yours in Chicago isn’t going to do you any good. You killed R. J. Conlin and you might as well confess it.”

Billings laughed angrily and seated himself on the bed.

“You’re bluffing, O’Hara,” he said. “And you haven’t a scrap of evidence. In the first place Conlin isn’t dead. I read the story in the New York papers about the failure of his firm and how he vanished Saturday morning from the Pennsylvania Hotel. As I have been on the island since Friday, it’s obvious that I didn’t kill Mr. Conlin.”

“You was on the island Thursday,” said O’Hara.

“Friday. I came over on the boat from Woods Hole which arrived at noon.”

“You came over Thursday in an airplane and you went back to the mainland on that plane after you killed Conlin and the three servants,” replied Dan.

“You’ll have a fine time proving that,” retorted Billings contemptuously. “Have you been drinking, O’Hara?”

“I’ve had a drink, Jack,” he replied. “I know where you got the airplane and where it is now. You came here secretly Thursday night.”

Billings shrugged his shoulders. “If I did,” he answered, “what has that to do with the murder of Conlin — if he has been murdered, which I don’t believe.”

O’Hara rose and turned on the light. “Don’t want you to murder me in the dark,” he replied. “Now Jack, Conlin never went to the mainland. He was lured to the Rapidan-Sears house and killed and then his face was smashed to avoid recognition. This woman who was in it with you, and some stooge signed Conlin’s name to the register in New Bedford and you got some pal to sign his name to the register at the Pennsylvania the next night. I got a line on the dame. She’ll be locked up within twenty-four hours.”

“You interest me strangely,” said Billings. “Proceed, Philo Vance.”

“Where you was up against it,” continued O’Hara, “was when Mrs. Conlin got scared on account of the murders and wired New York to tell her husband she was coming home. You didn’t expect her to find out he was missing until the body was buried. So you had to swipe the body out of the undertaking shop in Nantucket.”

Billings laughed. “I particularly dislike stealing dead bodies, Dan,” he said. “What else have you against me?”

“That’s plenty. You killed this woman’s first husband and you love her so much that you killed her second husband.”

“In the first place I didn’t kill her first husband. I was acquitted.”

“Sure. She cried you loose.”

“And far from killing her second husband, I didn’t know she was married to Conlin. I never saw the man and don’t know what he looks like. And I don’t love Mrs. Conlin. I hate the woman. Dan, she used me as a cat’s-paw in Chicago. She was having an affair with Conlin all the time she was going around with me. I believe that Conlin killed Jim Crane. I left Chicago right after the trial and she married Conlin.”

“That’s a better motive for killing him than the one I thought of,” said O’Hara enthusiastically. “You killed him because he let you stand the gaff for a crime he committed in Chicago. That motive is good enough to send you to the chair, my boy.”

“Well,” said Billings slowly. “You can’t identify the body as Conlin’s because the body has disappeared. And you can’t prove that Conlin didn’t spend the night in New Bedford and New York. Conlin is alive and in hiding somewhere. So I don’t think you’re going to arrest me for killing him. Furthermore, you’re a shrewd old Mick and it’s not like you to tip off a suspect that you have the goods on him, even when you haven’t. Exactly what is your purpose in handing me this line, Dan?”

They found Cynthia behind her counter and she described her assailant on the bluff as well as she could. O’Hara drew the photograph of Conlin from his pocket and showed it to her.

“Does it look anything like this feller?” he demanded.

“No,” she replied. “This man had a horrid face. He is quite different.”

“Then it wasn’t Conlin,” declared the detective

“How could it be?” asked Billings. “We know he wouldn’t be loitering on this island.”

“The woman upstairs. More women are killed by their husbands than by men they’re not married to. Does it sound like Haywood?”

“No. Haywood is an Englishman by birth and Miss Simpson says this scoundrel had an English accent, but Harry’s face is rather round and chubby.”

“Nothing to do here,” said Dan impatiently. “I’m going to get a car and go after this murderer myself. Want to come with me, Billings?”

Billings nodded. “You bet.”

Cynthia looked frightened. “Don’t go, Mr. Smith,” she said and then she turned crimson and dropped her eyes.

Jack gazed at her tenderly, and O’Hara, who saw everything, grinned appreciatively.

“It’s my duty to help the officer catch this fiend, Miss Simpson,” Jack said in a low tone.

“Of course it is,” she responded. “I didn’t think.”

O’Hara and the man whom so recently he had accused of being the author of a quadruple murder found a hotel guest about to climb into his Ford and immediately deputized him, to his alarm and indignation. A minute’s drive brought them into the village, which was teeming with excitement.

A minute later the Ford, whose owner had gladly loaned it to the state detective in exchange for his own release from service, started down the state road.

“Old Amos Plympton and his cops will be blocking the end of this road, and Bide Parker, the constable, is on his tail,” said O’Hara. “Ten to one he took a side road, and that’s what we’ll do.”

“There is a road opening off to the left which leads to Tom Nevers Head,” Jack informed him.

“What’s over there?”

“Nothing much. A small inn and a few cottages and some isolated shacks on the moors.”

“This will probably be an all night job. We’ll stop at every house and when we’ve exhausted that possibility we’ll come back here and try another by-road.”

“I’m just as eager to catch him as you are.”

“Now, let’s see,” commented the detective. “Things are dovetailing on this case. It was Conlin who told Moriaty about ’Sconset and who secured the Rapidan-Sears house as a hideaway for Haywood. Conlin disappeared the night Haywood was murdered. Conlin’s firm went broke, which means that he was broke. Haywood had twenty thousand dollars. Aside from you and Moriaty, Conlin was the only person who knew that Haywood would be there Thursday night. And it was Mrs. Conlin who has had her throat cut.”

“But Conlin left the island in company with another woman.”

“Yeah? Who had any reason for killing Mrs. Conlin?”

“I don’t know.”

“Didn’t this woman have a lot of jewels?”

“Yes. She was wearing three or four diamond bracelets the morning she moved into the hotel.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Dan O’Hara. “Well, her jewel case was empty and she didn’t have a ring on her finger tonight.”

“She was wearing a huge diamond solitaire and several other valuable rings when I saw her early this afternoon.”

O’Hara braked the car suddenly, turned around and started back for ’Sconset.

“What’s the idea?” demanded Billings.

“If what I think is right,” replied O’Hara, “this killer didn’t go to Tom Nevers Head. He went to Sankaty.”

“But he started toward Nantucket Town.”

“He could have turned off.”

“Why Sankaty?”

“Because that’s where Conlin lives. Jack, it might have been Conlin that killed his wife. If it was, he would make for his house. It’s closed up and a perfect hideway.”

“Conlin went to New York.”

“He could have come back.”

“Why should he rob his own wife?”

“Jack, that guy was broke. If he killed Haywood for twenty grand, he might have killed his wife for forty or fifty thousands worth of jewels.”

“But she would have given them to him if he was in trouble.”

“I only met that dame once, but she don’t look like the kind that would give up anything.”

Jack nodded. “From what I have seen of Stella, I am inclined to agree with you.”

“He had another woman, remember that. Twenty thousand dollars wouldn’t last a high flier like Conlin long. This feller knew his firm was going broke. Probably he was half crazy. He might have asked his wife for her jewelry and she wouldn’t give up. He knew Haywood, didn’t he?”

“I can’t tell you that. I didn’t know that Conlin was friendly with Moriaty. I only learned that today.”

“He could have dropped in on Haywood and Haywood wouldn’t have been suspicious.”

“You’ve gone over to my theory bag and baggage,” commented Billings.

“I look facts in the face. He left ’Sconset on the bus. He didn’t take the boat but he sneaked away from the steamship pier, swiped a car or a motor boat and came back to ’Sconset. He killed Haywood, drove the servants into the car, took them out on the moor and shot them and chucked them in the pool. After that he went to New Bedford by motor boat, met the woman there and spent the night with her in the New Bedford House. That established his alibi.

“On Friday they went on to New York, and then decided to come back and get Mrs. Conlin’s jewels. He expected to find her at her cottage, but she had closed it up and come to the hotel. That made it harder and he had to hang around waiting for a chance to get at her. If we have luck we’ll find him at the Conlin House.”

“I have no reason to like the man, but I can’t believe all that.”

Dan chuckled. “Don’t know as I do, but it’s something to work on.”

They had already driven through the village and now swung left upon the road to Sankaty. The fog had come in and their progress had to be slow, but they encountered no cars on the road and in ten or twelve minutes they rumbled over the wooden bridge which Dan had crossed upon his first visit to the Conlin domicile.

After proceeding a short distance along the shore of the inlet, Dan stopped the car.

“We’ll walk the rest of the way,” he said.

They trudged in silence along the dirt road until they came to the gate posts, and then they climbed the steep driveway to Conlin’s. The house, of course, was dark, but it hadn’t yet been boarded up. O’Hara led his companion around to the rear, produced a diamond glass cutter and proceeded to cut out a pane of glass from one of the windows of the side. He laid it carefully upon the grass, thrust his arm through the opening and slipped the catch upon the sash.

“Give me a boost,” he requested. Billings complied and he crawled through the window. He then extended his hands to Billings, who clambered up, and in a few seconds both men were standing in the dining room. O’Hara produced a flash light and guided by it the pair made a careful survey of the ground floor. No effort had been made to cover and pile up the furniture or to protect the rugs for a long period of unoccupancy. Mrs. Conlin, apparently, had walked out the front door and slammed it behind her.

Nor was there any indication that the house had been occupied since. Dan, finally, began to mount the stairs and grunted as he saw an object upon one of the steps.

He picked it up and turned the flash full upon it. It was a small suede glove, a woman’s, and it was incredibly dirty. The detective put it in his pocket and continued up the stairs.

Jack sniffed. “Something wrong with the drainage,” he commented. “A curious odor.”

“Noticed it,” said O’Hara.

He led the way into a front bedroom, which was empty.

“Wrong hunch,” he said in a low tone. “I’ve had lots of them.”

He pushed open the door of a chamber on the opposite side of the house. The smell, which both had noticed, was almost overpowering and came from that chamber. O’Hara moved his flash around until it rested upon the bed.

“Glory be to God!” he exclaimed.

Lying in the bed was a body without a face, the sheets drawn up to the neck. And it was this body which had been giving off the odor of putrefaction.

“Haywood!” exclaimed Billings. “In Heaven’s name, how did he get here?”

O’Hara turned his flash and located the light switch. “See if the lights are still on,” he said hoarsely.

Jack turned the switch and the tights flashed on.

“I can’t stand this!” exclaimed the young man.

“I got to,” replied O’Hara. “You can go downstairs if you like.”

Billings went down the staircase at top speed and threw wide the front door and breathed deeply of pure air. Five or six minutes elapsed and the heavy tread of Dan O’Hara was heard on the stairs.

“See if you can get Amos Plympton on the phone,” he said harshly. “I’m all in. That body has been dead for a week.”

“Why should whoever stole it bring it here?” asked Billings, who moved toward the phone which stood on a table in the hallway.

“Because this is where it belongs,” said O’Hara.

“Poor Haywood, they won’t even let him rest in peace,” commented Jack as he tried the instrument to discover if it were still connected. It clicked. It was alive.

“Billings,” said O’Hara, “that isn’t Haywood.”

“Then who the devil is it?”

“We came here to find Conlin and we found him. That’s R. J. Conlin, Mr. Billings.”

“It isn’t. It can’t be.”

“Conlin had peculiar ears. So has this corpse. It is the same height, breadth and complexion. It’s R. J. Conlin. He was murdered Thursday night in the Rapidan-Sears house and the body was stolen from the undertaker’s the next night. Conlin never went to New Bedford and New York. And the reason he was brought here was because it was known that this house had been closed and they didn’t expect it would be found for months, or maybe a year.”

“Give me the office of Chief Plympton, please,” said Billings into the telephone.

“I’ll talk to him,” declared O’Hara. “And you keep away from that shotgun. I’ve got you covered.”

He laid his revolver on the table in front of him as he took Billings’ place at the phone.

“Are you crazy?” asked the astonished young man.

“Kind of. You’re under suspicion again, Billings.”

Jack laughed harshly.

“You are out of your mind,” he asserted. “If that is Conlin upstairs, what has become of Haywood?”

“That’s all a cock and bull story. You made it up.”

“Well, if this is Conlin, who killed Mrs. Conlin?”

“Oh, my hat!” exclaimed Dan. “How in hell do I know?”

“And who killed the servants?” O’Hara lifted a pleading, protesting hand.

“Plympton,” he said. “O’Hara speaking. You catch that killer? I didn’t think you would. Listen. Send a couple of men over to R. J. Conlin’s house to watch the place. Right away. The stolen body is here. Yes. And I’ll take my Bible oath it’s R. J. Conlin. I can’t help what you read in the newspapers. I’ve identified it by the ears. All right. Come yourself, and comb the countryside for the man in the Ford who killed Mrs. Conlin.”

He hung up. “And, Mr. John Billings—” he began. “Hey, stick ’em up!”

Through the open door came a swarm of men; two, four, seven of them. Two of them precipitated themselves upon Jack Billings, who had laid aside the shotgun and had only fists to present to the armed marauders. But Jack could use his fists and he floored two men before he was firmly held by two others.

“Drop that gun,” bellowed a burly blond man at O’Hara. “Surrender in the name of the law.”

O’Hara laughed impatiently. “I represent the law myself,” he retorted. “Who in hell are you?”

“Prohibition enforcement officers,” replied the blond man. “What are you doing in this unoccupied house?”

“With all my troubles I got to answer questions from a lot of Federal snoopers,” said Dan in deep disgust. “I’m Dan O’Hara, of the Massachusetts State Police. I’m hunting a murderer and I don’t want to be annoyed by you rum sniffers.”

“And who is this fellow?” demanded the leader of the revenue squad.

“My deputy,” replied O’Hara. “You guys would have saved yourselves a couple of black eyes if you told the boy who you were.”

“Credentials,” demanded the Federal man.

Dan flashed his badge and produced his card of identification.

“Glad to know you, Mr. O’Hara,” said the revenue officer. “We’re laying in wait for a rum shipment in the cove below and when the light went on up here we figured you were signaling the bootleggers. We knew this house was untenanted. What’s the funny smell?”

“There’s a man upstairs who is very dead,” replied O’Hara. “Want to have a look at him? He’s the person who was killed in a house on the bluff a week ago. The body was stolen and we’ve just located it.”

“It’s not in our line,” said the revenue man promptly. “Sorry to have butted in, Mr. O’Hara. And we’ll appreciate any assistance you can give us in enforcing the law.”

“Listen, sleuth,” said Dan contemptuously. “There have been five brutal murders on this island in a week and I haven’t any time to bother about stimulant purveyors. Just this minute I could use a swift shot of Scotch myself.”

The revenue man produced a flask.

“You come to the right shop,” he said. “It’s cold lying out on the sands all evening.”

O’Hara helped himself to a drink, but Billings refused it. After a minute the rum hunters retrieved their flask and returned to their posts, leaving the original intruders into the Conlin home to themselves.

“Jack,” said O’Hara, “I don’t like those guys. Now I’m going outside for a minute. Being as you are working for Moriaty, maybe you’d like to call up George Lake across the way and tell him that ‘Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight.’ Being an officer of the law, I can’t do it myself.”

Jack grinned. “Think it safe to leave a desperate criminal?”

“Aw hell,” replied Dan, “I don’t think these are the kind of murders that you would be interested in.”

Billings regained the phone and supplied Mr. Lake with some interesting information, after which he joined O’Hara on the porch and they sat down to wait until the local officers relieved them.

“Go see Moriaty tomorrow if he is still on the yacht,” said Billings. “Under the circumstances Tim will be as frank with you as I have been. Haywood positively was in that house on Thursday night.”

“You think he killed Conlin?”

“In self defense perhaps. It may be that Conlin attacked him.”

“But Haywood didn’t need money. No call for him to kill Mrs. Conlin. And he wouldn’t dare show himself in New Bedford or New York, even using Conlin’s name.”

“The mystery is getting deeper every minute,” said Billings. “I have been convinced all along that it was Haywood who was murdered and that the motive was the twenty thousand in cash which he carried.”

“Mrs. Conlin certainly was robbed,” declared Dan. “I’m only a cop, Billings. I got a good two cylinder brain. We need Sherlock Holmes on this job.”

“You’re sure that thing upstairs is Conlin?”

“I have his photograph,” Dan said. “His ears bulge in a funny place. So do this corpse’s. The body is the same complexion, same weight, about, and same proportions. It’s Conlin all right.”

“Somebody went to a lot of trouble to establish the fact that Conlin left Nantucket. Mrs. Conlin, who could identify him positively, has been slain. You’ve nothing to go on except the bulge in the ears. Not enough, O’Hara.”

“Don’t forget they stole the body and hid it in Conlin’s deserted house.”

“And the person who killed Mrs. Conlin a few hours ago is still on the island.”

“Yep. Now, Billings, you could have killed Haywood for the twenty thousand dollars and chucked him out of the airplane over the ocean. You had plenty of reason to hate Conlin. You could have lured him to the Rapidan-Sears house and murdered him. You were in Nantucket the night the body was stolen. You knew the house was deserted and you could have parked him here.”

“But I couldn’t have impersonated him in New York, and I didn’t kill Mrs. Conlin. You know that.”

“Yes,” admitted O’Hara reluctantly. “But you could have had confederates.”

Billings laughed.

“You’ve got blond hair and it’s long in front. You could have combed your hair in the Smith house and left those hairs on the comb.”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” said Billings, smiling. “After introducing Haywood to the servants, I did comb my hair in that bedroom. I went over the bluff without a hat and my hair was disarranged.”

“I ought to pinch you on suspicion,” said O’Hara irresolutely.

“And permit the real killer to escape, eh?”

“That’s the trouble. I can’t make myself believe you did it.”

“Thanks, old man. I didn’t.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes and then a motor car came up the drive and Chief Plympton with two officers descended.

“What’s happened here?” demanded the chief. O’Hara put him in touch with events as briefly as possible.

“This fiend killed Mrs. Conlin while you were sitting in a room only a short distance away,” commented Amos. “I don’t call that very smart.”

“Never mind what you think,” replied O’Hara gruffly. “Put a couple of men on guard here so they can’t snitch this body again. Billings and I are going after the killer.”

Continue this story next week

There was a red-headed crook Ollie should have been chasing, but Ollie had a date to go night casting for bass.

Ollie Bascomb, the sheriff of Derby, leaned back in his favorite chair in the lobby of the Derby House and examined the level-winding reel that the city fishermen had just given him.

“My soul an’ body, Mr. Murdock, thanks,” he said gratefully.

“Don’t mention it, Sheriff,” laughed the big, ruddy-faced man called Murdock, with the abashed air of one trying to make little of a very nice gift. “Had it in my tackle box a — yep, a good dozen years. I remember I bought it back in nineteen twenty before I went up to the Adirondacks for some bass fishing.”

“Gosh, you didn’t go wrong when you did buy it,” beamed Ollie. “It sure is a beaut’, all right. Cripes, looks most new. Twelve year in your kit, eh? Take good care o’ your tackle, you do.”

“Well, you take just as good care of your own, from what I’ve seen, Sheriff,” the other complimented. “There’s just one complaint I have to make against you, though,” he added with mock gravity.

“What’s that?” asked Ollie.

“You should have taken up plug casting for bass long ago. It’s the greatest fishing there is.”

“I reckon you can’t git Ollie to admit any kind o’ fishin’ comes nigh to wadin’ a stream an’ castin’ a fly for brook trout, Mr. Murdock,” an onlooker broke in with a chuckle. “Eh, Ollie?”

Ollie flushed. He was famous all over the county for his love of fishing and hunting, but his favorite sport of all was known to be casting for brook trout with a dry fly. Nevertheless, it was plain that he did not want to offend a man who had given him such a valued present.

“Gosh, Mr. Murdock, they’s suthin’ to be said for both them kinds o’ fishin’. Wadin’ a stream is one o’ the noblest ways to spend a day I come to know ’bout, an’ this plug castin’ for bass after dark is sure a grand way to spend your night hours. Yes, sir, they’s a lot to be said for both of ’em!”

“And I’m saying right now that even if I think bass casting is the greatest sport in the world, I think you’re going to make one of the best night casters in the business,” insisted Murdock. “I never in my life saw a beginner become an expert so quickly. I—”

“Sheriff, here’s something we should look into at once,” a crisp and youthful voice interrupted from the doorway. “A message about a crook from the Chief of Police of Portland!”

As they reached the outlet of Saltash Lake, where the sheriff kept a rowboat, Ollie got out his knife, opened it and reached into his pocket for his pipe. When he brought out the ancient corncob, he cried: “My soul an’ body,” and looked worried.

“What’s the trouble?” asked Murdock.

“I… I… my reel! I thought I had it in that there pocket with my pipe! I could ’a’ swore I put her there ’afore I left the car, so’s to have my hands free to help you lug down the tackle. I… I—”

He stuck his knife and pipe back into his pocket and hurriedly started back to the car, parked perhaps a hundred feet away on the road.

“Jest a minute, Mr. Murdock,” he called over his shoulder. “Reckon I left that reel on the seat, seems as though.” Then, a moment later, he let out a whoop. “Yep, here she be, all right. I’d left her on the seat, like I said. Here I come, ready an’ rarin’ to give them bass all Sal Brookes an’ the devil.”

“Well, let’s get your line spooled onto your reel, first,” laughed the city man.

“Gosh, I do seem to be all excited up tonight, don’t I?” Ollie said with an abashed grin. “You got to excuse a feller, that’s all. This night castin’ for bass has got me behavin’ like a two-year-ol’ at the business.”

When they stepped into the boat after he had rigged up his tackle, however, Ollie became the cool fisherman that he was.

It was an ideal night for plug casting for bass. It was very dark, there was no moon up as yet, and the surface of Saltash Lake looked like a sheet of black onyx. For the end of June in this county in northern Maine, too, it was extremely warm. On such nights bass are hungry and ready to strike. Now, off in the shallows where the tanlacs grow in sandy bottom, they could be heard breaking water.

Murdock had insisted on taking the first turn at the oars, while Ollie took his place standing up in the stern. It was, in this case, virtually the bow, for Murdock was pushing the boat forward with the oars, so that the sheriff, facing the direction in which they were moving, could more comfortably cast toward the shore.

Plug casting for bass, as Murdock had frequently stated in the lobby of the Derby House, was one of the most difficult as well as the greatest sport in the world. It is hard enough, in daylight, to cast from the reel a wooden or metal lure for a distance of fifty, seventy-five, a hundred feet or more; when it is dark, and the shore line is barely distinguishable, the feat becomes infinitely harder.

Murdock had not exaggerated, however, when he had also said that Ollie Bascomb had become an expert from the start. Now, with the city man pushing him along some seventy feet from the shore, the sheriff was not getting a single backlash, not once overshooting his mark and getting the hooks on his lure entangled in the tree branches that spread out over the water. It was, apparently, born in the man. He had spent all his life handling fishing tackle and firearms, and he handled them with that indefinable something that causes even a casual onlooker instinctively to sense that the rod or gun are almost part of him.

Ollie, putting down his arms, silently exchanged places with the city man. He took the oars and began to row.

“Put some steam into that rowing,” Murdock ordered from where he was sitting in the stern.

“Judas Priest,” said Ollie, as he increased his speed, “then I reckon you’re the feller that robbed all them other camps, eh? Senator Brodhead’s place. Them at Long Lake. The bunch at the Rangeleys!… I—”

“Bright boy, Sheriff,” said the crook. He added, shortly: “Come on, row like your friend all Sal Brookes and the devil. I’ll admit it’s a hot night and I hate to see you overworked, but I gotta get quick action from now on.” He took off his own coat.

Ollie, silently, did as he had been bidden. Peering at Murdock through the darkness, he knew that here was a man who could be classed as dangerous. If crossed in the perpetration of one of his crimes, he would unquestionably shoot. He would shoot to kill, too. Something in his eyes — that were not those of a genial fisherman any more — assured Ollie of that.

Fifteen or twenty minutes later, after Ollie had been steadily pulling across the lake, he nosed the boat up against the wharf in front of the Gansvoort camp:

“Stick that stern around so I can get out first,” ordered Murdock curtly, in a whisper. “Don’t step out till I say so. When you do get out, keep your trap closed.”

He stepped out onto the dock and then motioned for the sheriff to follow suit.

“Tie the boat up. Then walk up to the porch of the camp and call out to your friend Gansvoort. Tell him you were fishing and just thought you’d drop in. I’ll be right behind you with this gat, and if you make one false move I’ll drill you and him both. Savvy?”

Ollie nodded.

“Get goin’,” said Murdock.

Ollie walked to the porch, more sure than ever that he was dealing with a man who would shoot to kill.

“Call out to him now,” whispered the crook presently.

“Hi, Mr. Gansvoort. It’s me, Ollie Bascomb. I was castin’ for bass an’ thought I’d drop off an’ visit for a spell, seein’ that you was prob’ly up fussin’ with your coins.”

“That’s fine, Sheriff. Glad you did. Step right in,” a friendly voice answered, coming through the opened window.

Ollie, pulling open the door, did step in. Murdock, right behind him, saw a thin, bespectacled man bending over a table, a magnifying glass in his hand with which he had apparently been examining a scattering of coins spread out on a green baize cloth.

The crook, at this, briskly moved in behind Ollie and waved his weapon threateningly.

“Stick ’em up again, Sheriff. You stick ’em up, too Gansvoort,” he commanded.

“Sorry, Mr. Gansvoort, better do like he says,” said Ollie, as his own hands went up. “Not my fault. I had to come with him. He’d ’a’ got you anyways, an’ if he’d surprised you alone there might ’a’ been worse trouble.”

“You’re talkin’ sensible, Sheriff,” said Murdock. He added: “Go ahead an’ lift ’em, Gansvoort.”

As the coin collector obeyed instructions, Murdock glanced about the large, comfortably furnished living room. His eye passed by some fine hunting and fishing prints, some superbly mounted moose and deer heads, some equally choice salmon and trout and bass specimens. He saw, only, two ebony cabinets, one on either side of the huge fireplace, on the purple velvet backgrounds of which the collector had started to place some of his coins for permanent display.

“Gansvoort, go over and strip them cabinets. Chuck all the stuff in those two leather cases you carry ’em in I see there on the table. Put all the others on the table in with ’em. Hustle!”

Gansvoort, like his friend the sheriff, apparently decided that the crook was a man who meant business. He walked over to his cabinets and removed the coins he had secured there on metal racks. It was with a slight sigh, though, that he let them trickle through his fingers into the two valises on the table. Finally the job was over and the cases closed, ready for transportation.

“You, Sheriff,” said Murdock, sticking his hand into a hip pocket. “Take this roll of picture wire and bind your pal to that straight-backed chair. Do it right, see. Then you’re gonna row me back to my car. You won’t have to gag him, cause if he lets out one peep while we’re on the way I’ll drill a hole through your bean. Savvy, Gansvoort! One yelp from you in — well, in the next hour, and Bascomb’s a dead bird!”

But Ollie, in presumably trying to disentangle himself from the landing net and line, was searching for the bamboo casting rod and securing the proper grip on it. Finally he succeeded. Then, with the expertness on which the crook had complimented him, he whipped back the rod tip, twisted his body about to face the man on the dock, and made what he knew was to be the most important cast of his life.

Swiftly and silently, with three gangs of treble hooks screwed securely into it, that top-water plug sailed through the air. Ollie, for an agonizing second, thought that he had overshot his mark. Immediately he was reassured, though, for with a relief so great that it literally caused his whole body to tremble, he saw that he had at least won the opening move.

The plug struck the bare right forearm of Murdock, holding the automatic, and as the sheriff yanked with all the strength that he felt the split bamboo could stand, the hooks sank into the crook’s flesh. Murdock let out a cry of surprise and pain. The gun went sailing out of his fingers to land in the lake. Simultaneously, the man himself lost his balance, tried to right himself, and pitched forward into the water with a heavy splash.

Ollie began reeling in his line like a madman. It was new line and strong line, he was aware, and it could take powerful punishment. It had to, furthermore, for the sheriff was pulling his boat toward his captive, still struggling in the water. The lake was not more than three feet deep there, and it was not long before Murdock had regained his footing. He stood up, blowing out water and shrieking with pain:

“Damn you, you’ve dug them hooks clean through my arm!… Damn you, lemme loose!… I’ll—”

“You’ll stand quiet an’ stick your hands in the air, this time, Mr. Murdock,” said Ollie quietly, when only a few feet away from his opponent. “If you don’t, I’ll jest be c’mpelled to bash your bean in with one o’ my oars!”

The crook obeyed.

“Good,” drawled Ollie. “Now jest stand there till I git on the dock.”

Ollie, then, deftly maneuvered his boat, pushing it along with one oar, until he was able to step onto the wharf. He gave further commands:

“Walk up here to the edge of the dock. That’s it. Now, put your arms down, close to your sides. Fine. Keep ’em there an’ — no, keep ’em there, I said!”

As he spoke, he began whirling the short one-piece bamboo rod in the air and winding the braided silk casting line around Murdock’s body, lashing the crook’s arms to his sides.

“Jeez, you’re cuttin’ into me,” complained Murdock.

“Had to cut into my friend Mr. Gansvoort a mite, didn’t I?” queried Ollie, going on with his job. “There. I cal’late you’re what they’d term plumb roped an’ hogtied, out in the great open spaces o’ the West, Mr. Murdock,” he added in a moment.

Murdock was bound quite beautifully, at that, with all but perhaps eight or ten yards of the tough line.

“Step up onto the dock now,” said Ollie. “Here. Let me give you a hand. There. That’s fine. Now pick up them two valises. We’ll go in an’ free Mr. Gansvoort an’ then we’ll hike into Derby.”

“Hike into Derby?” gasped Murdock, as he awkwardly and painfully stooped and picked up the bags that Ollie had placed on the dock.

“Sure we’ll hike,” said Ollie.

“Can’t… can’t we row over and get my car?” asked Murdock.

“Shucks, your car ain’t fit for travellin’. Not knowin’ what ’ud happen, you see, I went an’ cut the two rear tires an’ the spare when I made believe to go back for that reel. That’s why I had my knife opened. Besides, I got to show the boys to the Derby House what I caught whilst out learnin’ plug castin’!… Sure, pick up them bags an’ let’s go let loose Mr. Gansvoort!”

Sam Smitz was seasick — anyone would be seasick watching dizzy fluffy McGoff try to pull a hold-up on an ocean liner.

I never been one to take much stock in horseshoes, rabbit’s feet, and that kinda hooey, but all crooks is a little superstitious at heart, and how I ever come to go sailin’ out the Golden Gate on Friday the thirteenth is beyond me. I’d never ’a’ done it under ordinary circumstances, bein’ the cautious, methodical type that takes account of such details, but the run of good luck I’d been havin’ was enough to unbalance any guy.

Landin’ in Frisco three weeks before, without a dime in my pocket, Fortune, which has been dealin’ me foul of late, suddenly gives me the glad hand. First I finds four bits in the gutter, with which I buys a forty cent meal down in one of them dumps where you can still drop your tip in a slot machine. This I does, wins the jack pot, and starts out with three and a half in nickels. But some guy stops me by the door and suggests a game of stud. I’m agreeable, and departs later with twelve bucks and a Chinese lottery ticket which some guy has put in for a quarter. I keeps this just from sentiment, havin’ never won so much as a chop-stick in my life, and knocks over twenty-five hundred cold cash at the drawin’. Boy, it’s no wonder I gets a little giddy and goes in for more’n a few loud neckties.

Well, it may not mean nothin’ in your life, but somethin’ I always wanted to do was take a trip some-wheres — just for the ride. So I gets flirtin’ around with a lot of them seethe-world folders, and the first thing I know I’m booked for Hawaii. I can’t honestly afford a vacation, but I figgers there must be somethin’ over there a good crook can turn his hand to, same as anywhere else.

Anyhow, the trip will do me good, because I ain’t been feelin’ myself for a long time now.

All dolled up like a trouper I saunters aboard about sailin’ time, and it sure is a thrill to be for once mountin’ a means of transportation without the law at my heels. I follows the boy down with my bags to the stateroom I’m to share with some other gent, and then hurries back on deck to see the excitements. The band is whoopin’ it up and the deck’s full of serpentine, bonny voyage baskets and gay parties, and I gets right into the spirit of the thing. All these folks looks like ready money, and it strikes me maybe this ship itself has got possibilities.

So we steams out through the Gate into the path of the settin’ sun. I watches the land grow low in the distance and then ambles down some ladders to D deck and hunts up my quarters. All carefree and unsuspectin’ I steps over the doorsill into the double stateroom, and starts to spruce up. I ain’t seen nothin’ of my roommate yet, but his bags is there on his bed. “F. McG.” says the fat gilt inscription on one of ’em.

“F. McG.” says I, pausin’ in my wash, “where have I heard that before?”

“Well for gosh sakes,” pipes a high voice from the doorway, “if it ain’t my old friend Sam Smitz!”

She’s a swell ship; a hundred fathoms long and I don’t know how much misplacement, with hot and cold water and all kind of built-in features from swimmin’ tanks to beauty shops. It’s my first voyage, except on ferry boats and lumber scows, and I takes to this palace like a duck to water.

I never went in much for sociabilities on shore, but out here things is different. Of course there’s some highbrows that’d start up a social register aboard a desert island, but for the most part everybody is congenial like one big family. I mixes in all the games, gets to callin’ guys by their first name, and it’s great. In fact, if it wasn’t for Fluffy McGoff I’d be havin’ the time of my life.

But you should get a load of that lummox. We ain’t been afloat twenty-four hours before he broaches me thus:

“Sam,” says he, “I don’t want to irritate you or nothin’, but maybe you ain’t noticed everybody has sealed his dough in a envelope and give it to this Mr. Purser, and he’s got it in a dinky safe in one of them offices off the big saloon. Now of course I didn’t lug nothin’ aboard with me that I couldn’t explain to the customs officers, but if we could borrow a drill and some stuff from the engine room, why—”

“Yeah, I’m ’way aheada you,” I bawls. “We could crack the safe, jump out the window into our high powered car and speed away. You ain’t in a hotel you know — you’re in the midst of the Pacific Ocean. There’s no way to pull anything big on board a ship and get away with it. Now make a note of that somewheres before you winds up in the brig.”

“Oh, all right, Sam,” he sighs. “Only I can’t help observin’ things, can I?”

He’s correct there. Crooks is as bad that way as the sailors that goes rowin’ on shore leave — they can’t get outa harness. I been takin’ careful stock of all the fellow passengers myself.

There is some interestin’ folks aboard, includin’ especially Mr. Bart Bodie, a tall, lean-faced gent with black hair, a long, sharp nose, and narrow eyes. He wears a black hat, dark double-breasted suits with the pockets sewed outside, and shaves twice a day. He’s got a slow, engagin’ smile and one of the parlor suites up top, and invites everybody to drop in on him. Which a lot of the boys does, provin’ a new crop is still comin’ up, one a minute.

Then there’s Pilsner, the pineapple prince, and Simpson, the sugar baron, besides a scatterin’ of bankers, movie people, and just plain idle rich. It’s a good mix, and I’m right in the swim, callin’ ’em Pete and Joe and Andy. It’s in this way I gets drawn up to Bodie’s parlor, the second day out.

Beside cocktails, which a friend named Harry keeps mixin’ with both hands, there’s a perpetual game of poker goin’ on there. Mr. Bodie, fulla clever gab and pale from too much shavin’ powder, is presidin’, and one by one the ship’s list is takin’ a ride.

Surprised I didn’t spot this slicker right off as a member of the clan, my first impulse is to let well enough alone. I got a nice little roll for the first time in many moons, and no wish to gypardize it. “Every crook to his trade,” thinks I, and drifts out.

But before dinner time here comes Fluffy behind the silly grin he wears in moments of elation, and pulls me to one side.

“Sam,” says he, “you and me is old friends and I gotta let you in on the Christmas party some guy is givin’ up in number seven. It’s a poker game, and I just walked outa there with two hundred bucks. You’d oughta get in on that, Sam.”

“You don’t tell me,” I sniffs.

But once I’ve heard that I naturally begins thinkin’ of the swell luck I had before comin’ aboard, and number seven starts fascinatin’ me like a loose plank in a ball park fence. Whichever way I starts walkin’, I finds myself fetchin’ up outside of Bodie’s parlor. I holds out till after lunch next day, and then gives in. If a monkey like McGoff can take this guy for two hundred, so can Sam Smitz.

But, oh baby, I’m wrong! It’s the old come-on game in the hands of a expert. Between his sly chatter and Harry’s cocktails I runs up a fat surplus, till I gets to thinkin’ in round numbers, and then comes down the skid. Time and again I digs into the padded wallet for reserves, till I begins to touch bottom. Wow — nearly a thousand bucks has slid over the felt to this slicker.

“Excuse me, gents, I got a headache,” says I, and stumbles out.

I’m up on the sun deck, which is deserted this time of mornin’, pacin’ back and forth in the drivin’ mist, when some guy falls in beside me.

“Mornin’, Smitz,” says he. It’s MacEwen, the sour-faced camera man with the movie troop, lost deep in his overcoat and blue with the cold.

“Mornin’, Mac,” says I. “How long since you been a early riser?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” he grunts; “been up all night. Listen Smitz; wasn’t you in jail once in Kansas City?”

“Huh!”

“No offense — I just thought I recognized you, that’s all. I was there myself. It was Christmas, and they give us beans. You remember that, don’t you Smitz?”

“Hum-m,” I eyes him narrow, “seems to me maybe I do. What’s the gag, Mac?”

“Well, gettin’ right down to crass facts,” says he, “you lost some money to this guy Bodie, didn’t you?”

“And how!”

“Me too — not much, but all I had in the world. It’s a old failin’ of mine — drink and cards has been my ruination. But since I give up the stage and took to the technical end I been doin’ better. Had a little stake laid by and thought of openin’ a photo shop in Honolulu. Then — phooey! — in three days it’s gone. I tell you it’s got me all broke up.”

“That’s a fine shame,” I’m sympathetic. “But where do I come in?”

“Well, assumin’ that you’re a crook, Smitz — which I know damn well you are — I imagine you’re thinkin’ about some way to get back your losses.”

“Proceed,” says I.

Clutchin’ me by the arm he leads me in behind a ventilator, lowers his voice confidential, and slips me the proposition. If I’ll stick up Bodie for his roll, he’ll manage the job slick as a whistle and get the money safe ashore.

“It’s a pipe,” he assures me.

“A pipe dream,” says I. “If you got it doped out so slick, why don’t you pull it yourself?”

“I ain’t got the nerve,” he admits. “I been tryin’ to get up the courage, but I… I’m too nervous. But it’s right up your alley, Smitz, and it’s well worth your while. He must have close to ten thousand bucks there, and I know right where it’s hid. All you gotta do is pull the stick-up and slip me the jack. I run all the risk after that, and I’ll give you two-thirds of the swag when we get ashore. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t be interested in a haul like that if all the details was planned out safe.”

“Sure I would, if they was safe, but—”

“Then listen here: I ain’t always been a camera man. I was once a first-rate actor and I’m still right there with the fine art of make-up. Now, while every one on the ship is well known, there’s several easily recognized types that ain’t on the ship, get me?”

“Say, that’s a corker,” I grins. “They’d have a heluva time arrestin’ somebody that ain’t on the ship, wouldn’t they?”

“Exactly.”

“But how’ll you get the money ashore?”

“Packed in my camera — rolled up in the film. They’ll never suspect me to begin with, and would never in the world think of lookin’ there. It’s water-tight, ain’t it?”

“It’s good enough,” I agrees. “Pull it the last thing, huh?”

“That’s the idea. We docks tomorrow about noon. We’ll pull it durin’ breakfast. Drop up to my place this evenin’ and we’ll go over the details.”

“Sure,” says I, and we grips on it.

Well, he’s hardly out the door when in breezes McGoff. Neither depression or the weather has dampered his spirits any, and it sure galls me how he can walk around on this heavin’ monster when it’s all I can do to stick on my bed. It’s a big blow to my pride to have to have him double for me on this job.

“Hello, Sam,” he beams. “How you feelin’? Odd how it ain’t bothered me none, ain’t it?”

“Not at all,” I snorts. “A guy as naturally dizzy as you are could ride anything. Sit down and give me your attention. I gotta job I can work you in on.”

“Oh, yeah! You been workin’ on them diamonds, Sam?”

“No, them diamonds is out. This is a big cash proposition, involving nothin’ but a cool stick-up and a quick get-away.”

“Hold on now,” he protests, “ain’t you been dinnin’ it into me that nobody on this ship could pull anything like that?”

“Yeah, but this is gonna be pulled by somebody that ain’t on the ship.”

“Huh? Say, you ain’t runnin’ a fever are you, Sam?”

“Nope, it’s like this, Fluffy.” I proceeds to give him the layout. “MacEwen picked you as the perfect guy for the job,” says I, “and you get one-third of the take, which should be a neat wad if his estimate is correct. What do you say — can you do it?”

“Sure I can do it,” he’s all aglow. “And how I’ll enjoy takin’ a fall outa that card sharp! When do we pull it, Sam?”

“To-morrow at breakfast, durin’ first call. Bodie’ll just be gettin’ up — he eats at second table same as us. Mac’ll make you up in here.

“Bodie keeps the jack in a money belt on his person. You buckle this under your coat, block him in his bathroom, and then walk along natural up to Mac’s. He’ll pull off your make-up, and you’ll go down to breakfast as usual. Then they’ll hunt for the rest of the voyage for a guy like Bodie says stuck him up, but of course they won’t find him.”

“Sure, I get ya, Sam,” he grins. “I knew you’d think up somethin’ so’s we wouldn’t start life in Honolulu with empty pockets. You and me is gonna stick together now, huh, Sam?”

“That all depends,” says I, “on how slick you put over this job. Now you know your way around the ship, don’t you?”

“Well, I got lost a couple of times a’ready,” he admits. “It’s a big boat. But there’s always somebody around that you can ask.”

“Holy smokes!” I moans. “You can’t be stoppin’ to ask nobody while you’re fleein’ with this money. You won’t be safe till you get that disguise off, and you gotta keep movin’. Get outa here right now and learn the way from Bodie’s parlor down to Mac’s. Learn two or three ways, and spot a place here and there where you might duck in case of emergency. Then go up and see Mac.”

“Okay, Sam.” Eager and obligin’ he dons his little round hat and goes out — after four days! — to learn the ship. Thank God there’s only one guy like Fluffy.

Well, all this has upset me almost more than the ocean. I thrashes and turns, and finally passes out from complete exhaustion. Mornin’ overtakes me in a mess of troubled dreams, and I wakes to find Mac and Fluffy already on the job.

As my head emerges through the tunnel of my shirt my eyes lights on Fluffy’s dressin’ table — and there lays his revolver. Him and Mac was so elated over that disguise, and me so busy dressin’, that he’s gone and walked off without it!

“Sufferin’ cats!” I yelps. “I knew it — that absent-minded dodo has gotta be watched every minute or he pulls somethin’ like this.”

Grabbin’ my hat and coat I picks up the gun and rushes out, my seasick momentarily forgot. Frantically I rushes up to C deck, after Fluffy. If he ever steps into Bodie’s joint without a gat, it’s curtains. Reachin’ one end of the hall, I spots him down at the other. But too late — he’s just turned the handle of number seven and stepped within. With a groan I sinks down on the steps of a companion ladder and takes my head in my hands. If I hadn’t been seasick already, I would ’a’ been then.

That’s the end, thinks I… I may just as well chase up and tell Mac not to wait.

Footfalls. Two guys has turned into the hallway, and blamed if it ain’t Bodie himself, with Detective O’Mally.

“Now, what is the meanin’ of that combination?” I blinks.

Whatever it is, it’s plain somethin’ is about to happen that I can’t afford to be mixed up in. I rises to go, then sorta weakens and sits down again. Though I can’t be no help to Fluffy, still I can’t drag myself away.

A minute passes — two — five — what’s goin’ on in there? Itchin’ with anxieties I starts edgin’ down the hall. Then the door opens. Here comes McGoff, and even through that disguise I can see his silly, satisfied grin.

“Okay, Sam,” he whispers: “forgot my gun, but I held ’em up with a shavin’ stick till I got O’Mally’s. I’ve got the jack and they’re penned up in the bathroom.”

Calm and leisurely, like he’s been instructed, he mosies past me, and I never been more surprised in my life. Good old Fluffy, he’s managed to put it over after all.

Then, wham! — open flies number seven and out pours Bodie and the dick. One look behind and Fluffy takes the first corner on the lam, these two not fifty paces behind him.

Well, if you want a pinch fit, just put yourself in my boots for them next few minutes. Here I am right on the edge of things while McGoff is dodgin’ back and forth, this way and that, with that ten thousand bucks. At first he’s got plenty ways to go, but he always picks the wrong turn, and after a minute they’re closin’ in on him every which way.

At last he makes it to a companion ladder and scrambles down a deck. But they’ve been expectin’ that and takes right after him.

“Cripes!” I moans, followin’ after.

Why don’t he duck in somewheres like I told him? Here he is riskin’ all that jack on a game of tag when, in that disguise, he’s safe with anybody on the ship but them two. There’s any number of places he can step in till they goes by.

On the deck below, Bodie takes a tack to the left, and O’Mally to the right. I heads down the middle aisle just in time to see Fluffy disappear into a doorway up near the lobby. Good — at last he’s usin’ his bean. I’ll tip him off as soon as these birds has moved on, and then if he can get up to Mac’s before there’s a general alarm, why—

Bodie appears in the middle aisle — then O’Mally — and my heart stops beatin’ as they advances, heads together, toward the hideout. But straight past the doorway they goes; through the lobby, and on up forward. Fluffy has put it over, and I takes back everything I ever said against him!

I rushes forward to give him the high-sign, then suddenly slows up, hesitates, and pulls up with a groan. Before me is a plate glass window entitled: Tonsorial Parlor. Beyond this stands two chairs. In one sits the venerable ship’s captain, just finishin’ a shave. In the other, a dignified, German-lookin’ man of science — with iron gray whiskers and flamin’ red hair!

The barber is just approachin’ with his white cloth. One good look and he bounces back like he’s bit, lets out a whoop, and drops everything. Of all the places on the ship, McGoff has walked himself into the barber shop and called for a shave!

The sea has calmed, the decks is millin’ with life, and the ship’s about to land when MacEwen comes poundin’ for the third time on my door.

“Heard anything of McGoff yet?” He pokes in his glarin’ countenance.

“Not a thing,” says I sourly. “Have you?”

“A little,” he gives a sour smile. “They caught him. I can’t find out how, but they caught him — with all the dough. Then it came out that O’Mally has been takin’ protection money on Bodie’s racket. McGoff got ’em red-handed while they was checkin’ the split from a list of the winnin’s, and spilled it all to the captain when he caught him. To avoid a scandal they’ve turned him loose and are payin’ back all losses outa the loot. You can chase up to the captain, Smitz, and get reimbursed.

“But, hell!” he grunts disgustedly. “We could just as well had the whole thing. There wasn’t nothin’ the matter with that disguise. What do you suppose happened to that guy?”

“I got no idea,” I shakes my head.

“Well,” he growls, “I’d give a lot to know, because it looks damn funny to me. If you ever find out, let me in on it, will you, Smitz?”

“Sure,” says I, and he departs, slammin’ the door.

“All right, you fuzzy-brained, nitwitted jackass, come on out,” I bawls, and from under the bed crawls my aspirin’ partner and continues removin’ the presence of Herr Mussendorfer from his downcast countenance.

It was a horse thief Sergeant Nicholson went to get. It was an unknown man’s skull and a sinister mystery he brought back.

With the ease and grace one would expect from so experienced a horseman, Sergeant Nicholson swung into the saddle and a moment later was galloping out of Ponoka across the hard-frozen Alberta prairie.

A member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, he was out to “get his man.” Three of them, in fact, for word had been brought to patrol headquarters that three horse thieves had been caught at the Comstock ranch.

It was pretty much of a cut and dried matter of routine, as far as Nicholson could figure it. Not much to expect in the way of action, and he was one of those men who craved action. His system required it. It was essential to his well-being.

He had had little of it the past few months. Riding lone patrol far to the North had been a monotonous ordeal, with nothing to break the monotony except occasional visits to lonely woodsmen and now and then petty arguments among the Indians over trap lines.

He would have relished this assignment much more if it had been the task of catching the horse thieves. As it was, they had already been captured. All he was required to do was to take them manacled to Edmonton for trial.

Life in the Mounted was like that! It was all very well for story writers and the motion pictures to portray the scarlet-coated troopers as engaging in one continual man-hunt, with glamour, romance and gun-fire at every turn. But Nicholson knew it was the bunk. He knew that such cases were very few and very far between in the records of the force. He knew that the average detail drawn by the men in its ranks was drab and dreary and monotonous.

There was the case of the muskrat skin hat, for example. No particular action or glamour or romance there. Yet for nearly two years every member of the force in the region had orders to find the owner of the hat.

It had been found early in 1907, torn and blood-stained, on the snow-packed trail east of Ponoka, and turned in at beadquarters.

Who could tell what it might mean — perhaps a murder, some sort of a crime, at least.

But it hadn’t. The most exhaustive search had failed to bring to light either the owner of the cap or even the indication of a crime connected with it. No one was reported missing and no one reported an injury which would explain the torn and bloodstained headgear. So in the end the search was ordered abandoned and instructions given to destroy the now dust-covered cap.

It became just one of those things in the life of a Mounty.

It was of drab, bothersome details such as this that Nicholson was thinking as he reined in his horse before the Comstock ranch house that crisp autumn morning of September, 1908.

Turning their horses’ heads toward the east, they rode off, Koenig in the lead, showing the way, and the Mounty close behind, his gun always in readiness in case the horse thief showed some sign of treachery. But this he did not expect. Koenig seemed too intent upon turning the tables on his two former companions.

For some time now the plain had been gradually dropping away to the left. The broken country encompassed them. They were traveling, Nicholson noticed, along a winding, dry watercourse from which arose, to right and left, low hills, soft and round. The surroundings were not unfamiliar to the trooper. He realized they had been traveling in a wide semicircle and were now somewhere in the vicinity of Ponoka.

Late in the afternoon they came to a weather-beaten but sturdily built shack in a clearing. It was shut off from the trail by a thick growth of foliage. The heavy door, built of logs, was padlocked.

“You’ll find the key down there,” Koenig said, pointing to a pile of dirt and refuse before the door. “Dig around in it a bit.”

While the horse thief looked on with a sneer, Nicholson did so, but with no success.

“Hell, I could find it in no time if you didn’t have me handcuffed,” Koenig declared. “Heard ’em tell where it was often enough. Can’t do it when you have me manacled.”

He paused and surveyed the trooper, his eyes wandering maliciously toward the Mounty’s rifle.

“Ain’t afraid of me, are you?” he jeered. “You got the gun, not me.”

There was truth in what he said. Common sense, too. Koenig was unarmed, while Nicholson had both revolver and rifle. Only a fool would attack a man so heavily armed. And the trooper was now firmly convinced that Koenig wasn’t that sort of a fool.

He unlocked the handcuffs and carefully stood guard while the horse thief knelt down to search for the key. He found it without difficulty, and a moment later the door was opened and the two men pushed their way into the musty, cold interior of the abandoned shack. Koenig led the way to a large, rusty iron stove.

Without hesitation, he removed all of the stove lids and, as Nicholson followed his actions, he saw that the stove was choked to the top.

“Take a shovel full of that and see what you find,” Koenig said, pointing to a small coal shovel that stood propped against the stove.

It did not take the trooper long to discover that it had been a grisly fuel, that had been burned in the stove the last time it was used.

As he took out the ashes and spread them methodically on the floor, he saw among them several partly burned bones, bones from a human hand unless he was greatly mistaken.

Digging deeper into the ashes, he came upon a large, round object, which, as he lifted it from the stove, drove from his mind any doubts that might have existed there. It was a human skull, with the top crushed in!

Nicholson received the punishment he expected when he returned to headquarters at Edmonton. He had allowed a prisoner to escape. There was no other alternative. He was reduced in rank on November 6. Sergeant Nicholson became Constable Nicholson.

Although his rank was taken from him, the opportunity to “get his man,” was not. Aside from the blot of the Koenig affair, his record was perfect, so his plea to be allowed to recapture the horse thief and try to solve the mystery of the charred skull and bones, which he had found in the stove of the abandoned ranch house, did not fall upon deaf ears.

He was detailed to “get Koenig” and to clear up the mystery.

On the surface of things, there wasn’t much to work on, but Nicholson had given considerable thought to the murder during his trek back to Edmonton, and the more he thought about it now that he was back, the more definite conclusions stood out.

When Koenig was grumbling about being double-crossed, it seemed logical enough. But now as Constable Nicholson had occasion to view the horse thief’s actions from long range, so to speak, it seemed to him that Koenig’s desire for vengeance had been somewhat overdone.

Calling upon his long experience as a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, he asked himself:

Would the average criminal act as Koenig had done? Wouldn’t he wait and when released from jail seek revenge in his own way?

Nicholson decided he would.

Why then, he asked himself, had Koenig acted as he had if he was not sincere?

In endeavoring to discover a reason, Nicholson went back over the events leading up to the discovery of the human remains in the cabin stove.

The more he thought of them, the more two questions perplexed him.

If Koenig, as he had said, had only heard bits of the conversation that passed between Burke and Skinner regarding the murder, would he have been able to know exactly where to find the key to the cabin and where the remains had been disposed of?

On the second question, Nicholson decided that it was altogether possible. After all, there was only one stove in the shack.

But the key! The murder wasn’t a recent one. All the evidence pointed conclusively to that fact. But how much time had elapsed since it was committed, the trooper wasn’t certain. From the appearance of the interior of the cabin, however, he judged that it had not been used for at least six months. Perhaps longer. At the minimum though, the murder had been committed six months before.

During the intervening period, autumn had passed into winter and winter into spring. It had rained and it had snowed. Much of the pile of dirt and refuse in which the key had been hidden had undoubtedly been washed away, leaving the pile no larger or any different in appearance from those near it.

Certainly no man could have known just where to look for the key simply by hearing snatches of conversation. It didn’t ring true.

When this fact impressed itself upon Nicholson’s mind the reason for Koenig’s professed bitterness to the two escaped horse thieves stood out in bold relief.

Koenig, and not Burke and Skinner, had committed the murder. He had built up the story of double-crossing so that suspicion would fall on his two former companions and not on himself. He, and not Burke and Skinner, was doing the double-crossing.

It was all supposition, of course, and the Constable knew it. Even if he should arrest Koenig, there was no way of pinning the murder on him. Supposition and direct evidence were two entirely different things.

Why, the identity of the murdered man was still unknown! Even if it was possible to charge Koenig with murder, whom would one charge him with having killed?

Nicholson decided to let suppositions go by the board for the time being and to put all his efforts on trying to learn the identity of the murdered man.

But though he engaged in an exhaustive investigation, it was of no avail. No evidence was brought to light. No one, apparently, was missing from the whole province of Alberta who could not be accounted for.

Then it was that Nicholson had a break — the sort of a break that so often crops up unexpectedly to play an important role in the solving of a mysterious crime.

He happened to think of the muskrat skin hat that had been found some two years before on the snow-covered trail east of Ponoka.

The Mounted Police had never learned to whom the hat belonged.

Could it be possible that it had belonged to the man whose crushed-in skull had been found in the rusty stove?

A week or so later Nicholson, posing as a Canadian wheat grower desirous of purchasing a farm in the neighborhood, appeared in Bemidji.

He was working on a hunch — a hunch that told him it was Hindahl who had been murdered on the lonely trail outside of Ponoka and whose crushed skull had been found in the rusty stove.

Furthermore, his hunch told him that through some queer quirk of fate the murderer had succeeded in successfully posing as Hindahl.

A few inquiries and Nicholson learned that the Bemidji Bank was holding overdue mortgages on several farms and was desirous of selling the properties.

He went to the bank and there he had another break. Among the mortgages was one in the name of Joseph Hindahl.

Nicholson feigned interest in the Hindahl farm. But first, he told the bank, he wanted to see the place and talk with the owner. The bank officials agreed that this was only natural, told him he would find Hindahl out at the farm most any time, and assured him that if the place met with his approval they would be glad to close the deal with him.

Nicholson waited until nightfall before he drove out to the Hindahl farm. As he cautiously made his way through the darkness toward the house, he was anxiously wondering whether fate was playing a trick on him or whether his hunch was right.

Well, it wouldn’t be long before he knew.

With utmost care not to make any noise he approached a window from which the light of a kerosene lamp cast a pale glow, and looked in.

A man was standing before the stove. Now he turned toward the table. He had a beard, while Koenig had been smooth shaven. But the beard could not disguise the man Nicholson was seeking. Furthermore, he had bow legs.

When Nicholson pushed open the door, Koenig whipped about. Seeing the Mounty, he uttered a snarl of rage, snatched up a butcher knife and swept the kerosene lamp from the table.

He had the advantage in the darkness because he knew the room, but Nicholson had his revolver and he did not hesitate to use it. His second bullet found Koenig’s leg. He dropped the knife as he fell to the floor. A moment later Nicholson had snapped handcuffs on him. This time he did not take them off until Koenig was safely lodged in jail.

Koenig was hanged early in 1910 for the murder of Joe Hindahl, while Nicholson was restored to the rank of sergeant and with the rank went a sergeant’s back pay for the time he had spent in clearing up the mystery of the torn and blood-stained muskrat skin cap.