Meet Colonel Thornton — an English colonel to end all (literary) English colonels.

This one’s chief occupation was to shoot finches in the early morning.

The old lady lay on the four-poster bed very still, very fragile, her hands folded across her breast. A black morning dress was buttoned close up to her throat and held by a large cameo brooch. She still had her shoes on, black, elastic-sided affairs with a brilliant polish on the patent-leather toes. On the pillow to one side of her was a round, hand-knitted cap, topped by a large greeny-yellow tassel. She has iron-gray hair, very neat and tidy.

The police doctor straightened up from beside the bed and said precisely, “Not more than four hours ago. Death was instantaneous. Probably a .22 slug. Not close range — no burns on the skin. Not close enough for suicide, anyway. Entered just in front of the left ear and upwards to the brain.”

He moved away from the bed and began to tidy things into his bag.

inspector Cardew could see the small black mark at the side of Miss Thornton’s temple. “Accident, do you think?”

The doctor shrugged. “Probably. But that’s not my department. I’ll send up for her. We’ll get the slug for you.”

Cardew went to the door with him and asked, “You knew her, didn’t you?”

“Yes, for the last twenty years. She and her brother, the Colonel. Both of them mad as bats, Inspector... Well, perhaps not as bad as that. But surely eccentric. She used to play a violin in the garden to get her flowers to grow. He played too — a flute. Flowers grew, too — best in the district. By the way, that’s not her own hair. It’s a wig. Never knew it myself until now.”

Cardew said to the constable outside the bedroom door, “No one in without my permission.”

He went down the dark, gloomy stairs with the doctor and saw him out. Back in the hall he met the housemaid coming through from the kitchen quarters with a coffee tray — two cups and two saucers.

She said, “The Colonel’s back, sir. Came in while you were upstairs with the doctor. Would you go into him in the study, sir, he asks? He knows, sir. He saw your cars outside and asked and I had to tell him.”

“How did he take it?”

“I couldn’t say, sir. Well, I mean, he just nodded and then told me to bring coffee for you and him.”

She led the way into the study, announced the Inspector, deposited her tray, and left.

Colonel Thornton was standing by the window looking out at the garden which was bright in the early June sunlight. He was well over six feet, thinnish, and slightly stoop-shouldered. He wore corduroy trousers, a tweed jacket, leather-patched at the elbows, and his feet were bare in leather sandals. He turned to show a sunburned face, lean and worn, with bright, fierce blue eyes set just a little too closely together. His hair was white and needed cutting.

He said, “Morning, Inspector. Help yourself to some coffee. Damn bad business, what?” His voice was resonant, warm, but full of authority.

“It is indeed, Colonel.”

“Ha, well — happens to us all. Had a good run for her money. That’s the thing. Put up a good show while you’re going and then go without whining.” He came over and began to help himself to coffee.

For a moment Inspector Cardew felt embarrassed. This was not what he had expected. The Colonel showed not the slightest sign of distress. And he had lived with his sister for over twenty years. Cardew had a swift picture of the gray-haired old lady lying on her bed.

Ignoring the coffee, Cardew said, “She was found about two hours ago by the gardener. Lying on the path at the back of your shrubbery. The doctor thinks a .22 bullet, or something like that, killed her. It penetrated just in front of the left ear. Death was instantaneous.”

The Colonel nodded, took a noisy suck at his coffee cup, and then said, “Doctor, you say?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“Have to speak up a bit. Shade deaf. Yes, he’s right — .22 bullet. Did it myself. No right to be on the path behind the shrubbery. Out of bounds from dawn until ten o’clock. Everyone knows that in this house. Big notice there, too.”

“Yes, Colonel. I saw it on my way down.”

“Who’s sawn it down?” The bright blue eyes fixed themselves on Cardew.

“Not sawn, Colonel. Seen. I’ve seen it.” He raised his voice sharply.

“Oh, no need to shout quite so loud. It’s only my left ear.”

Speaking very distinctly Cardew said, “Would you please explain, Colonel, how you came to shoot your sister?”

“Certainly. Unfortunate, but there it is. Come up with me.”

He went out of the room and up the central staircase to a bedroom on the second floor. It had one large window which overlooked the garden. From the lawn outside a bank ran steeply up to a distant woodland. On the bank just above the lawn and a little higher than the bedroom window was a long hedge of shrubbery. On a table by the window lay a .22 sporting rifle.

The Colonel went to the window and without looking at the Inspector said, “Know anything about ecology?”

“Ecology?”

“Yes — the relationship of birds and animals to plants. Too many rabbits, for instance, and Australia becomes a desert. Not as bad here, but too many damned greenfinches and bullfinches and my shrubbery becomes an abomination and a desolation. Eat the blossoms, eat the berries and drupes. Had all me Daphne mezereum ruined last year. Greenfinches. Pest. Have to keep them down.”

“You mean, Colonel, you sit up here and shoot at the birds?”

“That’s right. From dawn until I go to shave and bath. Have me breakfast here. Strict standing order. No one in shrubbery before ten. Only way, Inspector. Wearing that damn silly hat, the maid told me. No wonder. Yellow-green tassel looks just like a greenfinch. Standing on the path behind the shrubbery she’d just show the tassel. Nothing else. Hellish thing to happen, hellish — but there you are. Mors omnibus communis. Pure accident. Only shot I fired this morning, round about seven.”

“But, Colonel, why would your sister be in the shrubbery against your orders? She knew your habits.”

“Rabbits? None in this garden, Not since myximatosis.”

“Why,” said Cardew, for once in his life feeling singularly incapable of handling a situation, “should your sister be in the shrubbery? She knew the rules.”

“Course she did. But she took me too literally. Always have breakfast together here in the morning. About six. Both early risers. Up at five sometimes she was. Pottering around doing odd jobs. She was a first-class do-it-yourself nabob. Distemper, paint, paper, anything. Always brought our breakfast here before maid arrived. Told her this morning I was going into Battersham to get some more .22 shots. That’s why she felt it was all right to go into the shrubbery.”

“If you had no ammunition, how could she have been shot?”

“Told you. Took me too literally. I still had one shot up the spout. Always leave the rifle with one up the spout ready to take a quick pot. Damn bad luck for Milly. Just happened to be the one. Fluke in a million. Be an inquest, I suppose? Lot of gawking people, and the coroner, young Feathershaw, sounding off about firearms. But what do you do?” He looked out of the window at the shubbery. “I’ve tried everything — bird scares, spraying, black cotton, plastic bags, muslin. No damn good. Place looks like a Chinese laundry. Kill ’em. The word spreads. Kill ’em while you have breakfast.” He turned and gave the Inspector a steady look. “If there’s nothing else, Inspector, I’ve got work to do. The world can’t stop, you know.”

Cardew let him go. He just didn’t know what to make of the Colonel. Although the whole thing seemed clearly an accident, he was beginning to have a familiar nagging of doubt. But for the life of him he couldn’t think why.

He went down to the bedroom where Miss Thornton lay and was met by the constable talking to the housemaid outside.

“Says she’d like a word with you, sir.”

“Please, if I may, sir. Could we go — go inside. It’s not something I want anyone else to hear.”

Cardew opened the door and they went in. The maid stood with her back to the bed.

“Well, what is it?”

“Well, Inspector, you know Miss Thornton was a little — well, odd. Well, sir, she gave me strict instructions years ago where to look for her will if she died. I wasn’t to tell the master where because he didn’t know about her wig. Anyone but the master, she said. And then it was to be kept quiet. She was touchy about the wig.”

“Where is the will then?”

“Under the best wig, sir — the one she’s wearing. Sewn up in the lining.”

“Thank you,” said Cardew.

He opened the door and she went out. He moved to the bed and eased the old lady’s wig off. Part of the center seam of the underside of the wig had been unpicked at some time and carefully resewn. Cardew slit the stitches.

He pulled out a folded and crumpled envelope which was sealed and addressed to a local solicitor. He put it in his pocket and then bent to put the wig back. The curtains of the room had been drawn badly and a shaft of sunlight fell across the woman’s head. The top of her head was bald, the skin a yellow-gray color.

In the strong light Cardew noticed four or five white marks on the top of the old lady’s skull. He lifted the head gently and examined them. They were made by white paint and from their size he guessed were the finger-marks of a man.

He left the room and went slowly down the stairs. He wasn’t feeling so helpless now. Almost at the bottom, at a turn of the stairs, he found what he wanted: a length of the bannister had been freshly repainted white. It was at a corner where, if a man had been carrying a woman down in a fireman’s lift, he would have put his free hand for support. And if the women’s wig had fallen off, a man would have lowered her to the stairs and held her head up with his hand while he put the wig back on — a man who could have shot his sister in his bedroom while they took breakfast and who then had time to carry her out into the shrubbery before maid or gardener appeared for work.

He found the Colonel in his workshop above the garage.

Cardew said, “Colonel, how long have you known that your sister wore a wig?”

The Colonel straightened up from his bench and said calmly, “For years, Inspector. Never let on, though. Woman’s vanity, what? Shall have her buried in it, of course. She’d like that. Mary Queen of Scots wore one, you know. Great secret. But when her head rolled it fell off.”

“Just as your sister’s did this morning when you carried her downstairs after shooting her. Didn’t you notice that your hand had white paint on it from the bannister she had painted before bringing your breakfast up? You made a nice set of white paint marks on her head.”

The Colonel stared at him impassively for a long time. Then slowly he began to chuckle. “Well, I’m damned,” he said. “That was when I got it. I thought it was afterwards when I came back and went upstairs. Saw it then on my hands and washed it off.”. He frowned suddenly. “Bit of a bad show, isn’t it, your taking wigs off the dead?”

“I had to, Colonel, to get her will — a will, I imagine, which leaves everything to you but which I’m afraid won’t ever benefit you now.” The Colonel shrugged. “Rem acu tetigisti,” he said.

“My Latin is non-existent, I’m afraid, Colonel. But I must ask you to come with me.”

“Certainly, Inspector. And a rough translation would be — very rough, mind you — you have hit the matter exactly on the head.”

Only the precocious Bernie Halper of Greenwich Village, New York, could get enmeshed in so remarkable a case — but he needed, in a curious way, the help of a certain tall, spare, stooped old gentleman.

Copyright 1939 by Popular Publications; originally titled, “The Counterfeit Hat”

The author certainly has a “way” with teenagers — bright and crisp! Question facing Marybeth and Karen: is it possible to fight bullets with arrows?

The ivory phone on the pink kitchen wall buzzed abruptly and teenager Marybeth Carmichael laid aside the handful of silver she was polishing. She lifted the receiver off the hook, murmured “Gr-r-r,” and hung up. Her father coming through the door looked at her curiously. “Either that was a wrong number,” he said, “or it’s the shortest telephone conversation you’ve had in ten years.”

“It was Karen,” said Marybeth, resuming her methodical polishing of the silverware. “She knows how slow I am doing dishes, so she calls every few minutes and yells ‘Onward, onward’.”

“Well, hurry it up,” he said. “As soon as you’re through I want to fix that hot water faucet. I promised your mother it would be done before she gets back from her Friday night devastation of the supermarket.” He spread his tool kit out on the snack bar. “Otherwise there will be tears and admonitions. You and Karen have a date tonight?”

“Strictly business,” said Marybeth. “We’re going over to school and mimeograph the programs for the Festival tomorrow. You’re coming, aren’t you, Daddy? To the Festival, I mean.”

“I wanted to play golf,” he said hollowly, “but your mother has been holding a pistol at my head.”

“You’re a true-blue parent and you won’t be sorry. It’ll be terrific. As a final, our archery team is going to attack a settler’s cabin with flaming arrows. Real neat-o. We’ll be dressed as Indians and we’re going to burn it to the ground.”

“Jolly,” said her father. “Just so you don’t burn down the rest of the property.”

“Don’t worry about that. The Fire Department will have a truck parked right there. They’re going to demonstrate how to smother flames.”

“Seems to me you spend more time on archery than you do on your studies. I sent you to school to learn about the Louisiana Purchase, and what happens to a man-and-a-half who digs a ditch-and-a-half in a day-and-a—”

“Oh, we learn that stuff too,” said Marybeth airily. “We have archery so we won’t lose our minds. I’m high scorer this year. Miss Kinslow says I should try for the district amateur.”

“That’s all we need in the family,” groaned Mr. Carmichael, “a lady archer.”

“Archery is good for a girl,” said Marybeth defensively. “It develops certain pectoral muscles that tend to sag in middle age.”

Mr. Carmichael coughed abruptly and rattled his tools. “Suppose you use some of your partially developed muscles and finish those dishes.”

“Sure, Daddy, just a minute.” She watched the soapy water gurgle down the drain and scrubbed the sink until it gleamed. “Isn’t Mother taking longer than usual tonight?”

He glanced at the wall clock. “She does seem to be running a bit late. I suppose the twins wanted to ride the merry-go-round. These shopping centers are getting more like Disneyland every day.”

He paused with a wrench in his hand. There was a sudden screech of tires and a thumping noise in the side driveway. A car motor raced wildly and then snapped off.

“Hey, something funny here.” Mr. Carmichael started toward the rear door. “Your mother is a better driver than that.” He dashed out with Marybeth on his heels.

Apprehension surged through him as he saw the car standing at an odd angle on the driveway, one wheel over the low concrete curbing. The rear door burst open and one of the twins hurtled toward him. They collided and. Donny grasped him wildly around the waist. He could see the other twin, Davey, struggling out of the front seat. “Hey, what happened?”

Donny sobbed dry-eyed, his face against his father’s chest. “It was awful, Dad. This guy with a gun hit Mom. Then he shoved Davey into a whole bunch of canned beans — and Davey’s got a big bump where this can hit him on the head.”

He pulled Donny away from his grasp. “Quick, Marybeth, take the kids in the house.” In one motion he pulled open the door and slid into the driver’s seat. Mrs. Carmichael collapsed slowly into his arms, then shook her head and looked up. He held her tightly. “Pam, for Pete’s sake, what happened?”

“It’s all right, Steve. I... I mean, don’t worry. We’re okay. Just reaction, I guess.” She buried her head against his shoulder and shuddered.

“Take it easy,” he said soothingly. “When you feel like talking, tell me about it.”

She spoke against his shoulder, her words partly muffled. “It was pretty frightening. They held up the supermarket while we were there — a gang of toughs in black leather jackets. We had just gotten to the check-out counter when they came in waving guns. One of them shoved Donny and I... I took a swing at him. He slapped me. My ears are still ringing.”

He held her away, examining her face in the light of the dash. There was an ugly red welt on her left cheek. “The punks,” he said, biting off the words. “I hope they nail them. I’d like to get a crack at the one who did this.”

He helped her from the car and supported her as they walked toward the kitchen door. “We were lucky,” she said. “They shot a man standing right behind me. Davey has a bump on his head. I don’t think it’s serious. They wanted to take us to the hospital, but all I could think about was getting home.”

Marybeth had Davey perched on a high stool and was applying ice cubes to the bump on his forehead. “The poor baby,” she said. She looked around wide-eyed. “Mother, are you all right?”

“I’m all right, darling. Just a little bruise. I’d like a glass of water.” She sank down on a chair in the breakfast alcove.

“I’d better run Davey down to the doctor,” said Mr. Carmichael. “It could be a concussion. Although the guy has an awfully hard head.” He grinned at Davey, who grinned back.

“Aw, I’m all right, Dad. When this guy hit Mom I got mad and belted him on the shins. He gave me a big shove and I went right into this pile of canned stuff. Spinach, I think. I hate spinach.”

Donny chortled. “It was baked beans. You should have seen Davey — he really messed up that pile of cans.”

Mr. Carmichael heaved a great sigh. “The next time you go shopping it’ll be with an armed escort. That’s the third holdup in the neighborhood in the past two weeks. Sounds like the same gang.”

“I just wish,” said Marybeth grimly, “I’d been there with my bow and some nice steel-tipped arrows.”

“Oh, come now, honey,” said her father. “You can’t fight bullets with arrows.”

The wall phone buzzed and Marybeth reached for it. “Right in the middle of everything. That’s Karen, for you.” She picked up the receiver and said, “Yes, Karen. Well, there’s been some excitement here. My mother was held up at the supermarket. A man shot at her and hit Davey on the head with a can of beans. Oh, you’ve heard it on the radio! Of course, kid, I’ll see you at school in twenty minutes.”

“Marybeth!” Her mother spoke up sharply. “You’re not leaving this house, young lady. That horrible gang is probably running around somewhere in the neighborhood.”

“But Mother,” wailed Marybeth. “We’ve got our programs to do for the Festival tomorrow! It’ll only take an hour or so and Mr. Knowland has given us special permission. What can possibly happen at school?”

“No use pushing the panic button,” said her father, and Marybeth looked at him gratefully. “That gang is far away by now, you can bet on that. I’ll drop Marybeth off at school when I take Davey to the doctor.”

Mr. Carmichael swung the car into the parking lot alongside the great sprawling glass-and-brick facade of Eastmoor High school. “Not a light in the place,” he said to Marybeth. “Are you sure you’re supposed to work here tonight?”

“Oh, yes, Daddy. We’ve got the mimeograph set up in the archery room. It’s off the gym and you can’t see it from here. I’ll bet Karen is there all ready. Old eager beaver. Now, please don’t worry. Her father will pick us up later.” She kissed Davey on top of his head. “You’re a brave little brother,” she said, “and I’m very proud of you.”

“I’m all right,” said Davey. “Just so Doc don’t stab me with no old needle.”

After the car drove away and the friendly light died out, Marybeth looked at the great blank row of darkened windows and shivered slightly. There was a dim light in the lobby of the gym entrance and she headed that way. Just as she reached the door it clanged open and she stepped back in momentary fright; then she recognized the tall gaunt figure of Mr. Bleecker, the custodian.

“Oh,” he said with a grunt, “you must be the other one. Mr. Knowland said there’d be two of you.” He opened a panel in the wall and switched on a single exit light. “I got enough trouble during the day without worrying about you kids at night.” He walked along ahead of her down the dim corridor, jingling his great ring of keys. “Man needs a little peace now and then.”

To the right of the corridor lay the great vaulted expanse of the gymnasium visible through the arched passages leading under the scats above. A faint glow from the skylight far overhead filtered down, slashed by a single bar of light from the outside cast by a vertical row of glass blocks set in the opposite wall.

Marybeth shivered slightly at the ghostly cavern so different at night from the noisy, brightly lighted expanse of gleaming hardwood in the daytime. The entire building took on a different character. Instinctively she stepped up her pace to be closer to Mr. Bleecker’s tall plodding figure.

As they turned into the side corridor leading to the archery room, she took one last look into the shadowed expanse of the gym. Suddenly she stopped and peered hard through the darkness. The narrow band of light across the glistening floor had blinked momentarily, as if an elongated shadow had just passed across it. Something, or somebody, had passed over the gym floor, quickly and silently.

“Mr. Bleecker!” she called toward the custodian, now out of sight around the corner. “Please, Mr. Bleecker, I think there’s someone in the gym!” She ran toward him as he turned and muttered something crossly. A door opened just ahead and light flooded the corridor as Karen’s face appeared. “Hi, kid,” she sang out cheerily. “About time. Gee, that was awful about your mother. I can’t wait to hear.” She stood aside for Marybeth to enter.

“But I wanted to tell Mr. Bleecker something,” said Marybeth hastily. “Wait a minute.”

“He can’t hear you anyhow,” said Karen. “Probably has his hearing aid turned down.”

Mr. Bleecker stopped in the doorway, jingling his huge key ring. “Now, listen, you kids,” he said, “you’re responsible for turning off lights and not leaving anything electrical hooked up. Understand? I go home to supper in a few minutes and I won’t be back until midnight. I left a door unlocked in the gym entrance. Pull it tight when you leave.” He glowered at them. “I want everything shipshape or I report you to Mr. Knowland.” He turned abruptly and stalked off down the corridor.

“What a grouch,” said Karen. “C’mon in, kid. I’ve got a stencil ready to run. Gee, I want to hear about your mother. I brought my transistor along and there was a news flash just a minute ago. The police have this whole end of town blocked off. Kind of exciting.” She stopped suddenly and looked at Marybeth. “Creepers, what’s the matter, Marybeth. You look pale.”

“It’s... oh, nothing really.” Marybeth shut the heavy metal door and snapped the lock. “It was probably my imagination, but I thought I saw someone sneaking through the gym.”

“Must have been a shadow. We’re the only ones in the building. Maybe what happened to your mother made you a little jumpy. I can’t blame you. But, gee, kid, it’ll get awfully stuffy in here with that door closed. No windows or anything.”

Marybeth smiled a little weakly. “I guess I’m just being silly.” She opened the door a few inches and peered out cautiously. “I don’t see why Mr. Bleecker couldn’t have left a light in the corridor.”

“He claims he’s protecting school board funds,” said Karen. “The old pinchpenny. He should hear my father groaning about taxes. C’mon, open the door and let’s get going. I’ve got to go down to the typing room and get more paper. This won’t be enough.”

“Hey, neat-o,” said Marybeth walking toward the archery rack at the end of the room. “Everything ready for tomorrow.”

“It should be,” said Karen. “Miss Kinsloe and I worked all afternoon. Restrung the bows and got all the arrows ready.”

“Lucky you,” said Marybeth. “You got out of English Lit. and Home Ec. We baked apple dumplings and mine tasted like glue. These are certainly funny looking arrows.”

“Oh, those are the flaming arrows for the finale. They’re simply fantastic. You don’t have to light them or anything. This little whoozis on the end throws out sparks from air friction and ignites the chemical in this tube. I think Miss Kinsloe said it’s magnesium. We fired some on the range and they’re fabulous. It takes a little more pull. That’s why we restrung the bows.”

Marybeth picked out a bow and pulled at it experimentally. “I see what you mean. This is—” She stopped suddenly and put the bow down.

From somewhere toward the front of the building came the unmistakable rattle of a heavy door being opened and closed. Karen’s brow furrowed. “That’s funny. Mr. Bleecker went out the back way. I heard him leave. Maybe that’s one of the teachers.”

She walked to the door and stepped out into the corridor, peering toward the main aisle. Suddenly she whirled back into the room, slammed the door, and leaned against it, her face pale.

“There’s someone out there, Marybeth,” she said, her voice choking slightly. “It’s a man. He lit a match and I saw him plainly. He... he’s wearing a black leather jacket.” Her voice dropped to a whisper and they stood listening in silence for several moments.

Suddenly Marybeth gave a short, sharp scream of warning. “Karen! The doorknob is turning. You forgot to lock—”

Karen twisted around desperately and fumbled for the catch. It clicked into place just as the knob turned hard and a weight thumped against the door. They both stood transfixed as the knob turned futilely and then stopped. There was no sound from the outer corridor,

“Who is it?” Marybeth called out, her voice quavering. “Who’s out there?”

The only answer was the faint click of metal against metal, and then dead silence. As an ironic counterpoint to the scene they could hear a police siren rising and falling in the distance. They looked hopefully at each other, and then the hope died as the siren faded away.

“I’m scared,” said Karen, sinking weakly into a chair. “All of a sudden I’m scared. I thought you were just seeing things.”

“We’re all right,” said Marybeth, her teeth chattering slightly, “as long as we keep the door locked. They can’t possibly get in. Maybe if we just stay quiet they’ll go away.”

For what seemed like an eternity they stood in frozen silence. Then suddenly a man’s voice came floating into the room, muffled but distinct as though he was standing at the end of a tunnel. “Al’s hurt bad,” said the disembodied voice. “That cop got him in the leg. Pete’s trying to fix it up with some first aid stuff he found in the locker room. We got to get out of here.”

Another voice answered in a high whine. “Oh, sure, with cops swarming all over the place. Who’s in this next room?”

“A couple of high school kids. I saw them come in. They locked the door before I could get to them.”

As the voices floated through the room, Karen and Marybeth looked at each other curiously. Then Karen leaped up and pulled her chair toward the end wall. “It’s the ventilating grille,” she whispered, pointing high on the wall. “It opens into Miss Kinsloe’s office. That’s where they are.”

Marybeth pulled up a chair and they stood on tiptoe with their ears pressed against the metal wall grille. The high-pitched voice whined again. “Here’s some keys in this desk. Maybe I can open that door. We could shove the kids in the car and make a break for it. The cops wouldn’t dare shoot. I could blow the lock off but it’d sound like a cannon.”

Karen wobbled on her chair. “Oh, creepers, I hope they don’t find the right key. It’s in that bunch someplace.”

“Okay,” said a voice. “You try the keys and I’ll go down to the locker room and see how Pete’s doing with Al. You sure the janitor is out of action?”

“Are you kidding? He’s wrapped up nice and tight in a broom closet. I got his keys so I’ll get that door open one way or the other. Tell Pete to get ready with Al. Once we get those kids we can crash out of here.” The voices faded away as they moved into the corridor.

Karen hopped to the floor and Marybeth landed beside her. “We’re in a mess,” moaned Karen. “He’s bound to find the key. They’ve even got poor old Mr. Bleecker. Tied up in a broom closet.” She half giggled. “I’ll bet he’s plenty mad.”

Karen turned suddenly and snatched up a bow. “A chance? We’ve got these. Twenty bows and about two hundred arrows. Do you realize what a steel-tipped arrow can do at close range?”

“But they’ve got guns. Bullets are a lot faster than arrows. Besides, I couldn’t shoot anybody.”

“I could,” said Karen tensely. “Just remember what they did to your mother and your little brother.” She pushed papers from the heavy table and pulled the table over. “Look, I’ll stay here where I can get a good shot at the door. You get on the other side behind the desk. They won’t be expecting anything like this.”

Suddenly Marybeth felt coldly furious. She tried several bows and picked up a handful of arrows. She remembered the ugly red welt on her mother’s face and the bump on Davey’s head. “These arrows, though,” she said. “They might set the place on fire.”

“No time to worry about that,” whispered Karen. There was a sudden clicking at the door. “He’s trying the keys now. Get over there, Marybeth. It’s our only chance.”

They crouched in silence and listened to the whining voice alternately mumbling and cursing as the keys were tried in quick succession. For several weirdly silent minutes the clicking went on, and then they heard a triumphant snort as the lock slid open.

The door creaked slightly and opened an inch or so. The whiny voice came through from the corridor.

“Now listen, you kids, come on out real nice and you won’t get hurt. If I have to come in there after you it’s going to be trouble.”

The door swung wider as he pushed it with his foot. Karen fell for the trick and shot too soon. The arrow screeched against the metal door panel and ricocheted into the corridor. There was a sudden blinding burst of flame and a startled cry from outside the door — then a thunderous roar as a bullet smashed into the door panel, slamming it wide open.

Sighting carefully across the desk top, Marybeth sent an arrow sizzling through the open doorway. It exploded in the outer corridor and they could hear the thud of feet running down the passage.

They both sprang from cover and almost collided at the doorway. “Cut across the gym,” gasped Karen. “I’ll try to make it for the entrance. They can’t get both of us,”

Still clutching her bow and a handful of arrows, Marybeth sprinted into the corridor thankful she had worn her flats with rubber soles. At the turn into the main aisle she saw two figures plunging toward them from the rear. It was too late to warn Karen. As she made the turn into the gym passageway she heard a startled grunt as Karen collided with one of the plunging figures.

“Poor Karen, poor Karen,” ran through her mind as she raced through the gym entrance. Back of her she heard the whiny voice echoing in the corridor. “I got one of them, Duke. The other one’s heading for the gym. Grab her!”

Marybeth burst into the gymnasium, turned to race up the steps leading to the seats, then changed her mind, and headed directly across the wide expanse of polished floor. Back of her she heard the insistent thud of feet pounding down the passageway. In a brief remembered flash she saw the tumbling team practicing at one end of the gym as she left school that afternoon. She remembered their mats and the wooden stands they used for acrobatics.

With the bow and clutch of arrows banging against her knees, she headed for the far corner. In the faint, luminescent glow from the skylight she saw the mats and cleared them in one bounding leap. Back of her the pounding feet grew closer, and then her pursuer, running blindly at full speed, struck the mats. There was a startled yip and he flipped almost completely over before he struck the floor with a sickening thump.

Marybeth was far up in the first tier of seats before she stopped to look back. All was now silent in the gymnasium. Moving numbly and holding the bow tightly, she moved upward into the highest tier of seats against the rafters. There she pushed open a window.

Across the wide expanse of the parking lot on the other side of the street there were houses, peaceful and brightly lighted in the darkness. Cars ran up and down the street, their brakes squealing as they stopped for the traffic light at the corner. There was help down there — but it was far away.

To her left out the window was the great silent expanse of the football field there the Pageant would be held tomorrow. The Pageant and the street below and the happy lighted houses seemed far off... She trembled and tears came to her eyes as she leaned her head against the cool wall. “Poor Karen,” she murmured.

Then lights flickered against her closed eyelids and she opened them suddenly and started down into the parking lot below. A long open convertible slid across the black-stop and stopped a few feet from the building. Two men came out of the rear door and they were supporting a third man between them. The car’s motor raced impatiently. The light from the convertible’s dash gleamed on the driver’s black leather jacket.

For a moment Marybeth watched in fascination. Then, acting as if in a dream, she raised the bow and fitted an arrow. She sighted over the window ledge and pulled back on the bow, allowing a little extra. There as a soft, deadly twang as she released the arrow.

“That,” she murmured, “is for what you did to my mother.”

A split second later the magnesium-tipped arrow exploded in the front seat of the convertible. Two seconds later another exploded in the rear seat. The three figures approaching the car reeled backward as the flaming figure of the driver hurtled from the front seat and rolled over and over, screaming on the ground.

“And this,” said Marybeth softly from her high perch, “is for my little brother.”

An arrow exploded in front of the reeling trio as she reached for another arrow, dimly conscious now of footsteps pounding up the aisle between the scats.

“And this,” she said, shaking tears from her eyes, “is for—”

She felt her arm pulled back suddenly and the bowstring hummed harmlessly in her hand.

“Onward, onward!” shouted the figure at her side. “I deserve one shot at least.”

“Karen!”

Marybeth released her grip on the bow and stepped aside as Karen pulled it from her hand and inserted an arrow. Karen stepped to the window, pulled the bow back, and then relaxed. “Wouldn’t you know — too late! That darn Fire Department didn’t have to come so soon.” The parking lot below had filled suddenly with a bedlam of roaring motors and sirens, and a blinding glare of floodlights was sweeping over the building. Karen leaned against the wall panting for breath. “I got away from that goon,” she said, “and pulled the fire alarm at the end of the hall. I’ll probably get expelled.”

“Sure you will,” said Marybeth unsympathetically. “We both will. But maybe we can save ourselves.”

“How?” asked Karen anxiously.

“Let’s go let Mr. Bleecker out of that broom closet. He’ll be our friend for life.”

Do you like puzzles? Then this unusual murder story should delight you — and make you put on your Thinking Cap. And if, after you have read the story and mulled it over, you still have any doubts (large or small), why we’ll be happy to forward your query to the author. One thing we insist on: we won’t try to explain it!

Jenks was standing at the windows in the smoking room of the Regent’s, looking out at the rain, smugly. Jenks is a young man who will bet on anything. The Regent’s is one of London’s older dubs, though very small, and it is perhaps the most disputatious.

By and large its members are not betting men, but Jenks never had any trouble in getting a wager. Any assertion made in the Regent’s is certain to be challenged, if not contradicted outright, and since Jenks was always making positive assertions he was frequently able to promote a bet. On this occasion he had made and won a bet in absentia, so to speak.

During the previous two days he and another member had been in Birmingham, and on the Monday — today was Wednesday — they had spent the evening in a pub there. At nine o’clock the B.B.C. weather report had come on, and the weather man predicted rain for the next afternoon. He was talking about London, of course, and said that a band of wet weather was approaching the British Isles from the northwest. Birmingham is a hundred miles northwest of London, and consequently Birmingham would get it first. It was due in London, the weather man said, at approximately mid-afternoon — around three P.M. Jenks’s friend pricked up his ears at this.

“I think we’d better shove off a bit earlier than we planned tomorrow,” he said. “Say about eleven — I hate driving in the rain. These cold fronts, or whatever they are, seem to travel about thirty miles an hour, so that ought to put us just ahead of it.”

“Yes, but not always,” Jenks said. “Sometimes they move faster.”

“Oh, I think that’s very unusual—” the friend began.

“I’ll bet you a quid the rain gets here at least an hour earlier than you expect,” Jenks interrupted, and after a short debate the other agreed to the bet. Jenks won, because when they got up the next morning at nine, it was already pouring.

Since Jenks enjoys argument — I think that’s why he joined the Regent’s — he had just brought up the subject of the bet. “You see,” he said, “it did start raining here at about three yesterday, didn’t it?” A couple of members nodded grudgingly. “Well then,” Jenks continued, “Bill, here (Bill was his companion in Birmingham) just underrated the speed of arrival of the cold front.”

“Low-pressure area,” one of the members hastened to correct him.

“Well, whatever it was, it was going a lot faster than Bill estimated, and the result was—”

“I’m afraid you’re entirely mistaken,” a gentle voice broke in. It was Dr. Sylvan Moore, our oldest member.

“How can you say that?” Jenks demanded indignantly. “I won the bet, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but not for the reasons you suppose,” Dr. Moore said, “It wasn’t going faster — it was going slower!”

There was silence in the smoking room at this. The members of the Regent’s may challenge most assertions, but not if they are palpably fantastic — they suspect a catch. However, it was too much for Jenks. “Are you trying to tell me that something gets there sooner because it’s slower?” he said weakly.

“Certainly,” Dr. Moore replied.

Meet Messrs. Labor, Trade, and Capital — in the form of Messrs. Burglar, Swindler, and High Financier — in one of O.Henry’s breeziest, slangiest Gests of the Gentle Grafter.

Across our two dishes of spaghetti, in a corner of Provenzano’s restaurant, Jeff Peters was explaining to me the three kinds of graft.

Every winter Jeff comes to New York to eat spaghetti, to watch the shipping in East River from the depths of his chinchilla overcoat, and to lay in a supply of Chicago-made clothing at one of the Fulton Street stores. During the other three seasons he may be found farther west — his range is from Spokane to Tampa. In his profession he takes a pride which he supports and defends with a serious and unique philosophy of ethics. His profession is no new one. He is an incorporated, uncapitalized, unlimited asylum for the reception of the restless and unwise dollars of his fellow men.

In the wilderness of stone in which Jeff seeks his annual lonely holiday he is glad to palaver of his many adventures, as a boy will whistle after sundown in a wood, Wherefore, I mark on my calendar the time of his coming, and open a question of privilege at Provenzano’s concerning the little wine-stained table in the corner between the rakish rubber plant and the framed palazzio della-something on the wall.

“There are two kinds of grafts,” said Jeff, “that ought to be wiped out by law. I mean Wall Street speculation and burglary.”

“Nearly everybody will agree with you as to one of them,” said I, with a laugh.

“Well, burglary ought to be wiped out, too,” said Jeff; and I wondered whether the laugh had been redundant.

“About three months ago,” said Jeff, “it was my privilege to become familiar with a sample of each of the aforesaid branches of illegitimate art. I was sine qua grata with a member of the housebreakers’ union and one of the John D. Napoleons of finance at the same time.”

“Interesting combination,” said I, with a yawn. “Did I tell you I bagged a duck and a ground squirrel at one shot last week over in the Ramapos?” I knew well how to draw Jeff’s stories.

“Let me tell you first about these barnacles that clog the wheels of society by poisoning the springs of rectitude with their upas-like eye,” said Jeff, with the pure gleam of the muckraker in his own. “As I said, three months ago I got into bad company. There are two times in a man’s life when he does this — when he’s dead broke, and when he’s rich

“Now and then the most legitimate business runs out of luck. It was out in Arkansas I made the wrong turn at a crossroad and drives into this town of Peavine by mistake. It seems I had already assaulted and, disfigured Peavine the spring of the year before. I had sold $600 worth of young fruit trees there — plums, cherries, peaches, and pears. The Peaviners were keeping an eye on the country road and hoping I might pass that way again. I drove down Main Street as far as the Crystal Palace Drug Store before I realized I had committed ambush upon myself and my white horse Bill.

“The Peaviners took me by surprise and Bill by the bridle and began a conversation that wasn’t entirely disassociated with the subject of fruit trees. A committee of ’em ran some trace chains through the armholes of my vest and escorted me through their gardens and orchards.

“Their fruit trees hadn’t lived up to their labels. Most of ’em had turned out to be persimmons and dogwoods, with a grove or two of blackjacks and poplars. The only one that showed any signs of bearing anything was a fine young cottonwood that had put forth a hornet’s nest and an old corset cover.

“The Peaviners protracted our fruitless stroll to the edge of town. They took my watch and money on account; and they kept Bill and the wagon as hostages. They said the first time one of them dogwood trees put forth Amsden’s June peach I might come back and get my things. Then they took off the trace chains and jerked their thumbs in the direction of the Rocky Mountains; and I struck a Lewis and Clark lope for the swollen rivers and impenetrable forests.

“When I regained intellectualness I found myself walking into an unidentified town on the A., T. & S. F. railroad. The Peaviners hadn’t left anything in my pockets except a plug of chewing — they wasn’t after my life. I bit off a chunk and sits down on a pile of ties by the track to recogitate my sensations of thought and perspicacity.

“And then along comes a fast freight which slows up a little at the town; and off of it drops a black bundle that rolls for twenty yards in a cloud of dust and then gets up and begins to spit soft coal and interjections. I see it is a young man broad across the face, dressed more for Pullmans than freights, and with a cheerful kind of smile in spite of it all that made Phoebe Snow’s job look like a chimney sweep’s.

“ ‘Fall off?’ says I.

“ ‘Nunk,’ says he. ‘Got off. Arrived at my destination. What town is this?’

“ ‘Haven’t looked it up on the map yet,’ says I. ‘I got in about five minutes before you did. How does it strike you?’

“ ‘Hard,’ says he, twisting one of his arms around. ‘I believe my shoulder — no, it’s all right.’

“He stoops over to brush the dust off his clothes when out of his pocket drops a fine, nine-inch burglar’s steel jimmy. He picks it up and looks at me sharp, and then grins and holds out his hand.

“ ‘Brother,’ says he, ‘greetings. Didn’t I see you in Southern Missouri last summer selling colored sand at half a dollar a teaspoonful to put into lamps to keep the oil from exploding?’

“ ‘Oil,’ says I, ‘never explodes. It’s the gas that forms that explodes.’ But I shakes hands with him, anyway.

“ ‘My name’s Bill Bassett,’ says he to me, ‘and if you’ll call it professional pride instead of conceit, I’ll inform you that you have the pleasure of meeting the best burglar that ever set a gumshoe on ground drained by the Mississippi River.’

“Well, me and this Bill Bassett sits on the ties and exchanges brags as artists in kindred lines will do. It seems he didn’t have a cent, either, and we went into close caucus. He explained why an able burglar sometimes had to travel on freights by telling me that a servant girl had played him false in Fayetteville, and he was making a quick getaway.

“ ‘It’s part of my business,’ says Bill Bassett, ‘to play up to the ruffles when I want to make a riffle as Raffles. ’Tis loves that makes the bit go ’round. Show me a house with the swag in it and a pretty parlormaid, and you might as well call the silver melted down and sold, and me spilling truffles and that Chateau stuff on the napkin under my chin, while the police are calling it an inside job just because the old lady’s nephew teaches a Bible class. I first make an impression on the girl,’ says Bill, ‘and when she lets me inside I make an impression on the locks. But this one done me,’ says he. ‘She saw me taking a trolley ride with another girl, and when I came ‘round on the night she was to leave the door open for me it was fast. And I had keys made for the doors upstairs. But, no sir. She had sure cut off my locks. She was a Delilah,’ says Bill Bassett.

“It seems that Bill tried to break in anyhow with his jimmy, but the girl emitted a succession of bravura noises like the top riders of a tally-ho, and Bill had to take all the hurdles between there and the depot. As he had no baggage they tried hard to check his departure, but he made a train that was just pulling out.

“ ‘Well,’ says Bill Bassett, when we had exchanged memoirs of our dead lives, ‘I could eat. This town don’t look like it was kept under a Yale lock. Suppose we commit some mild atrocity that will bring in temporary expense money. I don’t suppose you’ve brought along any hair tonic or rolled gold watch chains, or similar law-defying swindles that you could sell on the plaza to the pikers of the paretic populace, have you?’

“ ‘No,’ says I, ‘I left an elegant line of Patagonia diamond earrings and rainy-days sunbursts in my valise at Peavine. But they’re to stay there till some of them black-gum trees begin to glut the market with yellow clings and Japanese plums. I reckon we can’t count on them unless we take Luther Burbank in for a partner.’

“ ‘Very well,’ says Bassett, ‘we’ll do the best we can. Maybe after dark I’ll borrow a hairpin from some lady and open the Farmers and Drovers Bank with it.’

“While we were talking, up pulls a passenger train to the depot nearby. A person in a high hat gets off on the wrong side of the train and comes tripping down the track towards us. He was a little, fat man with a big nose and rat’s eyes, but dressed expensive, and carrying a hand-satchel careful, as if it had egg or railroad bonds in it. He passes by us and keeps on down the track, not appearing to notice the town.

“ ‘Come on,’ says Bill Bassett to me, starting after him.

“ ‘Where?’ I asks.

“ ‘Lordy!’ says Bill, ‘had you forgot you was in the desert? Didn’t you see Colonel Manna drop down right before your eyes? Don’t you hear the rustling of General Raven’s wings? I’m surprised at you, Elijah.’

“We overtook the stranger in the edge of some woods, and, as it was after sundown and in a quiet place, nobody saw us stop him. Bill takes the silk hat off the man’s head and brushes it with his sleeve and puts it back.

“ ‘What does this mean, sir?’ says the man.

“ ‘When I wore one of these,’ says Bill, ‘and felt embarrassed, I always done that. Not having one now I had to use yours. I hardly know how to begin, sir, in explaining our business with you, but I guess we’ll try your pockets first.’

“Bill Bassett felt in all of them, and looked disgusted.

“ ‘Not even a watch,’ he says. ‘Ain’t you ashamed of yourself, you whited sculpture? Going about dressed like a headwaiter, and financed like a Count. You haven’t even got carfare.’

“The man speaks up and says he has no assets or valuables of any sort. But Bassett takes his hand-satchel and opens it. Out comes some collars and socks and quarter page of a newspaper. Bill reads the clipping careful, and holds out his hand to the held-up party.

“ ‘Brother,’ says he, ‘greetings! Accept the apologies of friends. I am Bill Bassett, the burglar. Mr. Peters, you must make the acquaintance of Mr. Alfred E. Ricks. Shake hands. Mr. Peters,’ says Bill, ‘stands about halfway between me and you, Mr. Ricks, in the line of havoc and corruption. He always gives something for the money he gets. I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Ricks — you and Mr. Peters. This is the first time I ever attended a full gathering of the National Synod of Sharks — housebreaking, swindling, and financiering all represented. Please examine Mr. Rick’s credentials, Mr. Peters.’

“The piece of newspaper that Bill Bassett handed me had a good picture of this Ricks on it. It was a Chicago paper, and it had obloquies of Ricks in every paragraph. By reading it over I harvested the intelligence that said alleged Ricks had laid off all that portion of the State of Florida that lies under water into town lots and sold ’em to alleged innocent investors from his magnificently furnished offices in Chicago.

“After he had taken in a hundred thousand or so dollars one of these fussy purchasers that are always making trouble (I’ve had ’em actually try gold watches I’ve sold ’em with acid) took a cheap excursion down to the land where it is always just before supper to look at his lot and see if it didn’t need a new paling or two on the fence, and market a few lemons in time for the Christmas trade.

“He hires a surveyor to find his lot for him. They run the line out and find the flourishing town of Paradise Hollow, so advertised, to be about 40 rods and 16 poles S., 27º E. of the middle of Lake Okeeshobee. This man’s lot was under thirty-six feet of water, and, besides, had been preempted so long by the alligators and gars that his title looked fishy.

“Naturally, the man goes back to Chicago and makes it as hot for Alfred E. Ricks as the morning after a prediction of snow by the weather bureau. Ricks defied the allegation, but he couldn’t deny the alligators. One morning the papers came out with a column about it, and Ricks come out by the fire escape. It seems the alleged authorities had beat him to the safe-deposit box where he kept his winnings, and Ricks has to westward ho! with only feetwear and a dozen 15½ English pokes in his shopping bag. He happened to have some mileage left in his book, and that took him as far as the town in the wilderness where he was spilled out on me and Bill Bassett as Elijah III with not a raven in sight for any of us.

“Then this Alfred E. Ricks lets out a squeak that he is hungry, too, and denies the hypothesis that he is good for the value, let alone the price, of a meal. And so, there was the three of us, representing, if we had a mind to draw syllogisms and parabolas, labor and trade and capital. Now, when trade has no capital there isn’t a dicker to be made. And when capital has no money there’s a stagnation in steak and onions. That put it up to the man with the jimmy.

“ ‘Brother bushrangers,’ says Bill Bassett, ‘never yet, in trouble, did I desert a pal. Hard by, in yon wood, I seem to see unfurnished lodgings. Let us go. there and wait till dark.’

“There was an old deserted cabin in the grove, and we took possession of it. After dark Bill Bassett tells us to wait and goes out for half an hour. He comes back with a armful of bread and spareribs and pies.

“ ‘Panhandled ’em at a farmhouse on Washita Avenue,’ says he. ‘Eat, drink, and be leary.’

“The full moon was coming up bright, so we sat on the floor of the cabin and ate in the light of it. And this Bill Bassett begins to brag.

“ ‘Sometimes,’ says he, with his mouth full of country produce, ‘I lose all patience with you people that think you are higher up in the profession than I am. Now, what could either of you have done in the present emergency to set us on our feet again? Could you do it, Ricksy?’

“ ‘I must confess, Mr. Bassett,’ says Ricks, speaking near inaudible out of a slice of pie, ‘that at this immediate juncture I could not, perhaps, promote an enterprise to relieve the situation. Large operations, such as I direct, naturally require careful preparation in advance. I—’

“ ‘I know, Ricksy,’ breaks in Bill Bassett. ‘You needn’t finish. You need $500 to make the first payment on a blonde typist and four roomsful of quartered oak furniture. And you need $500 more for advertising contracts. And you need two weeks’ time for the fish to begin to bite. Your line of relief would be about as useful in an emergency as advocating municipal ownership to cure a man suffocated by eighty-cent gas. And your graft ain’t much swifter, Brother Peters,’ he winds up.

“ ‘Oh,’ says I, ‘I haven’t seen you turn anything into gold with your wand yet, Mr. Good Fairy. Most anybody could rub the magic ring for a little leftover victuals.’

“ ‘That was only getting the pumpkin ready,’ says Bassett, braggy and cheerful. ‘The coach and six’ll drive up to the door before you know it, Miss Cinderella. Maybe you’ve got some scheme under your sleeve-holders that will give us a start.’

“ ‘Son,’ says I, ‘I’m fifteen years older than you are, and young enough yet to take out an endowment policy. I’ve been broke before. We can see the lights of that town not half a mile away. I learned under Montague Silver, the greatest street man that ever spoke from a wagon. There are hundreds of men walking those streets this moment with grease spots on their clothes. Give me a gasoline lamp, a dry goods box, and a two-dollar bar of white castile soap, cut into little—’

“ ‘Where’s your two dollars?’ snickered Bill Bassett into my discourse. There was no use arguing with that burglar.

“ ‘No,’ he goes on, ‘you’re both babes-in-the-wood. Finance has closed the mahogany desk, and trade has put the shutters up. Both of you look to labor to start the wheels going. All right. You admit it. Tonight I’ll show you what Bill Bassett can do.’

“Bassett tells me and Ricks not to leave the cabin till he comes back, even if it’s daylight, and then he starts off toward town, whistling gay.

“This Alfred E. Ricks pulls off his shoes and his coat, lays a silk handkerchief over his hat, and lays down on the floor.

“ ‘I think I will endeavor to secure a little slumber,’ he squeaks. ‘The day has been fatiguing. Good night, my dear Mr. Peters.’

“ ‘My regards to Morpheus,’ says I. ‘I think I’ll sit up a while.’

“About two o’clock, as near as I could guess by my watch in Peavine, home comes our laboring man and kicks up Ricks, and calls us to the streak of bright moonlight shining in the cabin door. Then he spreads out five packages of one thousand dollars each on the floor, and begins to cackle over the nest egg like a hen.

“ ‘I’ll tell you a few things about that town,’ says he. ‘It’s named Rocky Springs, and they’re building a Masonic temple, and Judge Tucker’s wife, who has been down with pleurisy, is some better. I had a talk on these lilliputian thesises before I could get a siphon in the fountain of knowledge that I was after. And there’s a bank there called the Lumberman’s Fidelity and Plowman’s Savings Institution. It closed for business yesterday with $23,000 cash on hand. It will open this morning with $18,000 — all silver — that’s the reason I didn’t bring more. There you are, trade and capital. Now, will you be bad?’

“ ‘My young friend,’ says Alfred E. Ricks, holding up his hands, ‘have you robbed this bank? Dear me, dear me!’

“ ‘You couldn’t call it that,’ says Bassett. ‘ “Robbing” sounds harsh. All I had to do was to find out what street it was on. That town is so quiet that I could stand on the corner and hear the tumblers clicking in that safe lock — right to 45, left twice to 80, right once to 60, left to 15 — as plain as the Yale captain giving orders in the football dialect. Now, boys,’ says Bassett, ‘this is an early rising town. They tell me the citizens are all up and stirring before daylight. I asked what for and they said because breakfast was ready at that time. And what of merry Robin Hood? It must be Yoicks! and away with the tinkers’ chorus. I’ll stake you. How much do you want? Speak up, Capital.’

“ ‘My dear young friend,’ says this ground squirrel of a Ricks, standing on his hind legs and juggling nuts in his paws, ‘I have friends in Denver who would assist me. If I had a hundred dollars I—’

“Bassett unpins a package of the currency and throws five twenties to Ricks.

“ ‘Trade, how much?’ he says to me.

“ ‘Put your money up, Labor,’ says I. ‘I never yet drew upon honest toil for its hard-earned pittance. The dollars I get arc surplus ones that are burning the pockets of fools and greenhorns. When I stand on a street corner and sell a solid gold diamond ring to a yap for $3.00, I make just $2.60. And I know he’s going to give it to a girl in return for all the benefits accruing from a $125.00 ring. His profits are $122.00. Which of us is the biggest faker?’

“ ‘And when you sell a poor woman a pinch of sand for fifty cents to keep her lamp from exploding,’ says Bassett, ‘what do you figure her gross earnings to be, with sand at forty cents a ton?’

“ ‘Listen,’ says I. ‘I instruct her to keep her lamp clean and well filled. If she does that it can’t burst. And with the sand in it she knows it can’t and she don’t worry. It’s a kind of Industrial Christian Science. She pays fifty cents, and gets both Rockefeller and Mrs. Eddy on the job. It ain’t everybody that can let the gold-dust twins do their work.’

“Alfred E. Ricks all but licks the dust off of Bill Bassett’s shoes.

“ ‘My dear young friend,’ says he, ‘I will never forget your generosity. Heaven will reward you. But let me implore you to turn from your ways of violence and crime.’

“ ‘Mousie,’ says Bill, ‘the hole in the wainscoting for you. Your dogmas and inculcations sound to me like the last words of a bicycle pump. What has your high moral, elevator-service system of pillage brought you to? Penuriousness and warn. Even Brother Peters, who insists upon contaminating the art of robbery with theories of commerce and trade, admitted he was on the lift. Both of you live by the gilded rule. Brother Peters,’ says Bill, ‘you’d better choose a slice of this embalmed currency.’

“I told Bill Bassett once more to put his money in his pocket. I never had the respect for burglary that some people have. I always gave something for the money I took, even if it was only some little trifle of a souvenir to remind ’em not to get caught again.

“And then Alfred E. Ricks grovels at Bill’s feet again, and bids us adiсu. He says he will hire a team at a farmhouse, drive to the station below, and take the train for Denver. It salubrified the atmosphere when that lamentable bollworm took his departure. He was a disgrace to every non-industrial profession in the country. With all his big schemes and fine offices he had wound up unable even to get an honest meal, except by the kindness of a strange and maybe unscrupulous burglar.

“I was glad to see him go, though I felt a little sorry for him, now that he was ruined forever. What could such a man do without a big capital to work with? Why, Alfred E. Ricks, as we left him, was as helpless as a turtle on its back. He couldn’t have worked a scheme to beat a little girl out of a penny slate-pencil.

“When me and Bill Bassett was left alone I did a little sleight-of-mind turn in my head with a trade secret at the end of it. Thinks I, I’ll show this Mr. Burglar the difference between business and labor. He had hurt some of my professional self-adulation by casting his Persians upon commerce and trade.

“ ‘I won’t take any of your money as a gift, Mr. Bassett,’ says I to him, ‘but if you’ll pay my expenses as a traveling companion until we get out of the danger zone of the immoral deficit you have caused in this town’s finances tonight, I’ll be obliged.’

“Bill Bassett agreed to that, and we hiked westward as soon as we could catch a safe train.

“When we got to a town in Arizona called Los Perros I suggested that we once more try our luck on terra cotta. That was the home of Montague Silver, my old instructor, now retired from business. I knew Monty would stake me to web money if I could show him a fly buzzing ’round in the locality. Bill Bassett said all towns looked alike to him as he worked mainly in the dark. So we got off the train in Los Perros, a fine little town in the silver region.

“I had an elegant little sure thing in the way of a commercial slingshot that I intended to hit Bassett behind the car with. I wasn’t going to take his money while he was asleep, but I was going to leave him with a lottery ticket that would represent in experience to him $4,755 — I think that was the amount he had when we got off the train. But the first time I hinted to him about an investment, he turns on me and disencumbers himself of the following terms and expressions.

“ ‘Brother Peters,’ says he, ‘it ain’t a bad idea to go into an enterprise of some kind, as you suggest. I think I will. But if I do it will be such a cold proposition that nobody but Robert E. Peary and Charlie Fairbanks will be able to sit on the Board of Directors.’

“ ‘I thought you might want to turn your money over,’ says I.

“ ‘I do,’ says he, ‘frequently. I can’t sleep on one side all night. I’ll tell you, Brother Peters,’ says he, ‘I’m going to start a poker room. I don’t seem to care for the humdrum of swindling, such as peddling egg beaters and working off breakfast food on Barnum and Bailey for sawdust to strew in their circus rings. But the gambling business,’ says he, ‘from the profitable side of the table is a good compromise between swiping silver spoons and selling penwipers at a Waldorf-Astoria charity bazaar.’

“ ‘Then,’ says I, ‘Mr. Bassett, you don’t care to talk over my little business proposition?’

“ ‘Why,’ says he, ‘do you know, you can’t get a Pasteur institute to start up within fifty miles of where I live. I bite so seldom.’

“So Bassett rents a room over a saloon and looks around for some-furniture and chromos. The same night I went to Monty Silver’s house, and he let me have $200 on my prospects. Then I went to the only store in Los Perros that sold playing cards and bought every deck in the house. The next morning when the store opened I was there bringing all the cards back with me. I said that my partner that was going to back me in the game had changed his mind, and I wanted to sell the cards back again. The storekeeper took ’em at two bits on the dollar.

“Yes, I was seventy-five dollars loser up to that time. But while I had the cards that night I marked every one in every deck. That was labor. And then trade and commerce had their innings, and the bread I had cast upon the waters began to come back in the form of cottage pudding with wine sauce.

“Of course I was among the first to buy chips at Bill Bassett’s game. He had bought the only cards there was to be had in town, and I knew the back of every one of them better than I know the back of my head when the barber shows me my hair cut in the two mirrors.

“When the game closed I had the five thousand and a few odd dollars, and all Bill Bassett had was the wanderlust and a black cat he had bought for a mascot. Bill shook hands with me when I left.

“ ‘Brother Peters,’ says he, ‘I have no business being in business. I was preordained to labor. When a Number One burglar tries to make a James out of his jimmy he perpetrates an improfundity. You have a well-oiled and efficacious system of luck at cards,’ says he. ‘Peace go with you.’ And I never afterward sees Bill Bassett again.”

“Well, Jeff,” said I, when the Autolycan adventurer seemed to have divulged the gist of his tale, “I hope you took care of the money. That would be a respecta — that is a considerable working capital if you should choose some day to settle down to some sort of regular business.”

“Me?” said Jeff virtuously. “You can bet I’ve taken care of that five thousand.”

He tapped his coat over the region of his chest exultantly.

“Gold mining stock,” he explained, “every cent of it. Shares par value one dollar. Bound to go up 500 per cent, within a year. Non-assessable. The Blue Gopher Mine. Just discovered a month ago. Better get in yourself if you’ve any spare dollars on hand.”

“Sometimes,” said I, “these mines are not—”

“Oh, this one’s solid as an old goose,” said Jeff. “Fifty thousand dollars’ worth of ore in sight, and 10 per cent monthly earnings guaranteed.”

He drew a long envelope from his pocket and cast it on the table.

“Always carry it with me,” said he. “So the burglar can’t corrupt or the capitalist break in and water it.”

I looked at the beautifully engraved certificate of stock.

“In Colorado, I see,” said I. “And, by the way, Jeff, what was the name of the little man who went to Denver — the one you and Bill met at the station?”

“Alfred E. Ricks,” said Jeff, “was the toad’s designation.”

“I see,” said I, “the president of this mining company signs himself A. L. Fredericks. I was wondering—”

“Let me see that stock,” says Jeff quickly, almost snatching it from me.

To mitigate, even though slightly, the embarrassment I summoned the waiter and ordered another bottle of the Barbera. I thought it was the least I could do.

How Galileo experimented with two falling bodies, dropped from the Leaning Tower of Pisa — with spectacular results!

On an evening in the spring of 1590, the young professor Galileo Galilei hurried along the Via S. Maria towards the river Arno, now and then glancing back at the empty moonlit streets. He paused for breath in the centre of the Ponte di Mezzo and listened to the water swirling in full flood beneath the bridge.

The city of Pisa lay peacefully quiet around him, her skyline of belfries, cupolas, and thrust-up loggias black against the luminous night sky. Now the bells of the Duomo began to ring with reassuring sweetness through the still, warm air.

When he had rested a few minutes, Galileo continued across the bridge and into the southern section of the town, turning presently into a side street, where the way, although narrow, was lined with substantial homes. He stopped before a square, brown house, faced with white stone — the home of Jofre Tarrega, professor of philosophy at the university.

Galileo’s knock brought to the door a buxom housekeeper who greeted him pleasantly in a broad Calabrian accent, and then showed him into the living room.

“The signorina is not at home, maestro,” she said smiling. “She is visiting her aunt in Lucca, but we expect her to return to-morrow.”

“I know, Guilia,” Galileo said. “I came to see Signor Tarrega this time.”

“I will tell him.”

Jofre Tarrega appeared almost at once, clad in his riding clothes. He took off his leather gloves and threw them upon a table.

“Ah, Leo,” he said opening his arms in greeting to the stocky red-haired young man. “I’ve just had a fine moonlight ride on the Cascina road. Guilia sounded concerned about you, and indeed, you do not look happy. Is there something I can do for you?”

Galileo looked soberly at the proud, thin-lipped man, who had the lean but powerful body of an expert swordsman.

“I need your counsel, Signor Tarrega,” Galileo said. “As my colleague at the university, and the only one who has opened his home to me, perhaps you could tell me what I should do about this.”

From his pocket Galileo drew a folded note and handed it to Tarrega. The latter stooped before a lamp and read the message slowly aloud.

“ ‘Your denunciation of the truths established by Aristotle is prompted by the Devil. Beware! He soon will come to claim his own.’ Well, now, Leo, where did you get this?”

“I found it upon the lectern after my class left the hall this afternoon.”

“And upon what have you lectured of late?”

“I have been investigating Aristotle’s statement that bodies of different weights move in one and the same medium with different speeds. To-day, for example, I demonstrated how wooden balls of unequal weight, when rolled down an incline, reach the bottom at the same time.”

“Then you have successfully refuted Aristotle!” Tarrega exclaimed.

“Of course. I can prove it to anyone who will take the trouble to look.”

Tarrega clicked his tongue. “You know, of course, that the faculty stands united against these demonstrations of yours. Isn’t it likely this was written by one of them?”

“Yes. I am the youngest professor, and they resent my questioning their sacred Aristotle. But I suspect an outsider.”

“Who, then?”

“Giovanni de Medici.”

“Giovanni, the grand duke’s brother?”

Tarrega appeared startled. A widower of Spanish origin from Catalonia, the professor was distantly related, through marriage, to the Medici family, and although Tarrega’s fortunes had not waxed greatly through that connection, he was nonetheless passionately proud of the distinction.

“You see,” Galileo continued, “shortly after I came to Pisa, Giovanni de Medici asked me if I would examine a model of a dredging machine which he had designed. I did, and told him it would never work.”

“Tact is a quality you should cultivate, Leo.”

“Perhaps. But it was the truth. Anyway, Giovanni was so stubborn he had a big dredger built and tried to dig out the harbor at Leghorn. All the machine did was sink so far into the mud that they couldn’t get it out. Since then, when Giovanni passes me by, he makes a sign against the Devil.”

“You apparently have a way of making dangerous enemies, Leo,” Tarrega said. “And I cannot see how I can advise you.”

“But what would you do? Confront Giovanni with the note and demand an explanation?”

“Look here, Leo, you must learn to control your impulse to fling down challenges — that is the reason you have more than one enemy on the faculty. My advice to you is to restrain yourself. Especially do not challenge Giovanni de Medici, or you will find yourself in serious trouble with the rector of the university.”

Galileo shrugged uneasily. “I know, Signor Tarrega. You’re light. I have a hot temper. I only hope that you are not now so angry with me that I cannot come to visit your daughter.”

Jofre Tarrega smiled unexpectedly, and then placed his hands gently on Galileo’s shoulders.

“You are always welcome in my house, Leo.”

It all started in Lower Two of a Pullman sleeping car named Mt. Minnequamagog... Don’t miss this gay and ghostly caper!

You talk about these old-time millionaires lighting cigars with hundred-dollar bills to show off. Well, I’m no show-off and I never been what you could call rich, but I’m way out ahead of that kind of caper. I mean, sixteen years ago I lit a cigarette with a five-hundred-dollar bill and never regretted it. It don’t matter if people know about it now. Nobody’ll believe it anyway.

I come from Callao, Indiana, which is a tank town on the Vandalia railroad, or was. The Vandalia was swallowed up years ago. For all I know, Callao’s gone too, but my hailing from there had a lot to do with this deal.

I went to Chicago when I was seventeen and got a job in a wholesale grocery concern called Blatch & Cummings. They got branches for three hundred miles around, and I moved up the ladder and traveled for them, checking up on local managers. Never married, just worked days and went out nights some, but never hooked up with any girl that got steady ideas same time I did.

Well, November, 1928, I had to go shoot some trouble in the Columbus branch. I disremember what the trouble was, but I never forgot much else about that trip.

I left Chicago in Lower Two in a Pullman named Mt. Minnequamagog, on the men’s washroom end, right over the wheels. They said it was coming on Thanksgiving and travel was heavy and I was lucky to get that.

Half an hour before we pulled out, I was on board and brushing my teeth and crawling into my nightshirt — I never been comfortable in pajamas yet — and bedding down for the night. I reckon I might have got to sleep and missed it all, only when they hooked the engine on, the engineer come back too heavy and gives us a shaking up that fetched me broad awake and sore about it.

I was still wide-awake and sore when we were already fifty miles on our way. I had a bottle in my grip — Canadian rye, stronger than most you got those times — so I had a snort, and then another one, but it just made me wakefuller, like I had something bothering me but couldn’t recollect what.

One trouble was the train noises — first a stretch of whacka-whacka-whacka-whacka, and then a string of clicks and rattles that was worse. Usually those ordinary train noises don’t trouble me ten cents’ worth, but this stuff kind of latched on to my attention and pretty soon I commenced hearing tunes in it, only the tune wouldn’t stay put long enough to help you drowse off. It would start Turkey in the Straw and switch to I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles and then to Marching Through Georgia, fit to drive you nuts. And then it seemed like it started sending Morse code.

I know Morse because when I was a kid, me and another kid next door named Myron Brinton, only we always called him Puggy, pooled our junk money and sent away for one of those Learn-to-be-a-telegrapher layouts: two keys and some wire and dry cells and a code book. We rigged her up and sent stuff back and forth from each other’s bedrooms. Puggy was smart but in a low-down kind of way and I don’t know as I ever liked him exactly, but he was a couple of years older and always up to something and some ways I guess he was kind of a hero to me too. His call letters was MB and mine was TK, for Tom Knox, which is my name. And I reckon once you know Morse you never forget it, like swimming.

Well, these rattles on the train hit a Morse letter now and again — just V and some hash, then P and more hash, and so on. Then over and over again, like these things they shake in rumba orchestras, they started up: Da — daditda... Da — daditda... Da — daditda... And that’s Morse for TK.

That’s right, I thought it was the whiskey. I hadn’t had much, but a little bad booze sometimes goes a long way. But the more I listened, the queerer it got, because the rattle even sent that TK with a little slur, just like Puggy used to. I never got up to. a sending speed that would faze him, but he was always a sloppy sender compared to me.

Then I figured I was asleep and dreaming without knowing it, so I shook myself awake for sure, and the rattles kept right on sending. It seemed like the noise was back of the head of the bunk somehow. So I got into my pants and checked up, and what was back of the head of the bunk was the washroom wall and the steel closet where they keep sheets and towels.

I prowled the men’s room, and the only soul in it was the porter catching a nap. I was feeling kind of cool round my bare feet, but I stayed with it and woke him up and offered him a dollar to open up the closet, though it didn’t seem reasonable there was any room in it for a practical joker.

He did it, but it was pretty plain he thought I was drunk or nuts, and I wasn’t arguing the point; I just waved the dollar at him. And, like I expected, there wasn’t any little green men in there sending Morse. There was nothing but stacks of linen.

When I got back in the bunk, the TK business had quit. But naturally I sneezed as my cold feet warmed up and here it was again: Dadadit — dit — dididit — diditda — dadit — dadidit — didididit — dit — didit — da. And that’s Morse for Gesundheit.

That finished me. I reached over to the window sill and tapped back with my middle fingernail, like handling a key: Dada — dadididit, meaning MB.

Puggy come right back — it was him, all right — with a stream of Morse that swamped me, I had to break in and send how I was rusty as an old gate and he always was a lousy sender and slow down! Then I did one of those double-takes, like in the movies. Here I was, holding conversation with the rattles on a train!

He slowed and begun sending pretty clean code for him. First off, he made it clear he was dead. “But I ain’t in the other world,” he says. “Seems to be one but I ain’t there yet. I can’t go there till I get something off my mind.”

So I asked him where he was; I had to send it twice before he got it. I guess I was pretty jittery.

“Calm down, Tom,” he says. “I ain’t going to bite you. I’m too glad to see you. If you stay jumpy, I can’t read you and I got no time to waste. Where am I? I’m right here in the bunk with you. You need a shave and you got on an old-fashioned nightshirt, like the hayseed you always was. But you don’t feel crowded because I ain’t here in the flesh, like they say. And no squawks about its being your bunk because I been first citizen of this Lower Two for seven years, and if anybody’s an interloper it’s you, see.”

He said he’d died in 1921, when he was thirty. Seems he’d left home after I did and gone bad and turned professional gambler and done all right on long-distance trains sometimes and in joints sometimes and then when he was in France with the A.E.F., cleaning up on the boys paydays. He said he never asked for trouble with amateur stuff like marked cards but he never saw the beat of the second deal he developed.

Well, this car had been on a Florida run in 1921 and Puggy and his partner had quarreled over money in the washroom; the partner had knifed him and he’d staggered out and fell into Lower Two and died there. “I been here ever since,” he says. “When you’re dead and got something on your mind, you stay where you died till you get it off. That’s the rules. And that’s where you come in, chum.”

I said, “Why pick on me?” There must of been hundreds of people in that bunk in seven years.

“Ain’t you my friend?” he says. “You’re the first familiar face I seen since I got mine, boyhood pal.” He sent that with a kind of a sneer. “Besides, I ain’t the kind of spirit that can moan or holler or talk right out. Some can, but I’m the rapping kind, and the run of these passengers don’t know Morse. A couple of times I tried the regular spirit system, rapping the alphabet by numbers, five for E and thirteen for M and such, but it’s too monotonous to catch their notice. They’d just go to sleep on me. I don’t see how those uneducated spirits get anywhere with it.”

I asked if the train crews didn’t know Morse.

“They don’t sleep in Pullman berths,” he says. “Now, if I was haunting a house, maybe I’d get somewhere pounding and hammering, but nobody pays any attention to noises on trains. I been trying Morse on them all this time and I never found a one that knew code, barring an old fellow that begun to tumble five years ago and got so scared he threw himself off the train. They put it down to suicide. He never said yes or no, just skinned out of the bunk and out to the vestibule and wrestled the door open and dived out and broke his neck. Served him right,” he says. “He didn’t have no call to panic like that. I wasn’t going to hurt him.”

Well, about that point I got out my bottle, poison or not.

“I ain’t had a drink since I died,” Puggy says, sort of wistful. “But don’t you go getting plastered. I got a proposition for you.”

I asked him was it honest.

“Your end is,” he says. “Anyway, you got no choice. I’m asking polite, like one pal to another, but you try saying no and see what happens to you.”

His trouble was money and his wife. Seems he’d eloped with a Callao girl named Velma Burke in 1912 and she was kind of up against it after he got killed. She was working in a roadside place called Virgil’s outside Lansing and getting along the best she could and he wanted to see she was done right by. He wanted her to have a nest egg he’d stashed away that she didn’t know about, and I was to go lift it and take it to her.

I asked him how he knew where she was if he couldn’t leave Lower Two, and he blew up at me.

“Rot you,” he says, “I don’t want no questions. We got ways of knowing things. I never see her, but I know what her situation is. If I can just fix this up, I can have some peace,” he says with a kind of a sigh. “I sure can use some after doing sixty thousand miles a year in this old crummy. Just back and forth, back and forth. Now, dry up, and here’s your marching orders,” he says. And he give them to me.

The cash — ten thousand dollars in big bills — was in a couple of waxed flat-fifty cigarette tins nailed up inside a big hollow sycamore in the creek bottom on the Cass place outside Lebanon, Michigan. “Biggest tree anywheres along,” Puggy says. “Way high in the dark of the hollow.” And he sends “Dididitdadit — ditdit,” which is “30” and means a sign-off.

I spent the rest of the night tapping, trying to raise him again, but I reckon he just squatted there and laughed at me. Between bad company and original cussedness he was a pretty mean lot. I didn’t want any part of him, or Velma Burke either. I remembered her. She was kind of an angelic knockout to look at — green eyes and red hair and rose-petal skin, and blow-away slim — easy to fall for, I guess if you didn’t know her the way I did, from being in the same high-school class.

I wasn’t likely to forget her, because she did me real low-down dirt once, whispered to me for an answer in a history test and I gave her my guess, which was it was Benedict Arnold shot Alexander Hamilton. It sounded reasonable to me, but it was wrong, and when it come up that way on both papers they had us both on the carpet and Velma made out she’d guessed wrong and she’d seen me peeking at her paper. And that was the girl I was to drop everything and do a big favor for.

Well, I wasn’t much use to Blatch & Cummings in Columbus, and I didn’t sleep coming back next night, though I made sure the car wasn’t Mt. Minnequamagog but Polecat Springs. Then that Thursday, while I was still groggy inside, old J.M. Blatch told me to get over to Bay City and find out about spoilage trouble there with our canned beets. Yes, Bay City is in Michigan and Lebanon is close by. I was crazy enough, to wonder if maybe Puggy and his spirit friends hadn’t fixed it to spoil those beets.

I went. And, after I’d smelled enough sour beets to last a lifetime, I hired a car and spent the weekend looking for the Cass place near Lebanon. And what beat me, being in the state of mind I was in, I couldn’t get track of any Cass place within fifteen miles of that town.

I didn’t just check the courthouse records and then drive around aimless. I covered the local real-estate men and the editor of the paper and the oldest inhabitants. If anybody named Cass had so much as dickered for an acre of land near Lebanon since Methuselah’s time, I’d have got wind of it.

So I was sure I was crazy. Only, on the train coming back to Chicago, I got a queer feeling on my right thigh like nothing I ever had before. And when I took my clothes off that night, there, neat as you please, in red on my skin, branding me like a steer, not to be rubbed off or washed off — I found that out fast — was Puggy’s call letters: Dash-dash — dash-dot-dot-dot.

I still recollect how that place felt — not like a burn or an itch or a sting or a prickle, but more like the way you feel in the back of your neck when you suspect somebody is staring at you and you turn around and sure enough they are. It was real, all right. I should know. I lived with it for years.

I got salve from drug stores and goop from advertisements about “blotched skin” and “stubborn blemishes.” I gave up swimming because I didn’t want people to see it. Finally I took it to the best skin doctor I could hear tell of and gave him the story.

He looked at my leg and said something about “interesting stigmata” and told me to come back Friday and he’d have a colleague there to look at it. Well, before Friday I looked up “stigmata” in the dictionary and it said stuff about “certain mental states, as in hysteria.” So I never went back.

Next thing was to have it out with Puggy. So I wrote the Pullman outfit asking for sentimental reasons if they could locate me a car named Mt. Minnequamagog, and they wrote back short but polite that there was no longer any such name on the list. That made sense. She was probably overdue for scrapping. But that letter disappointed me so I didn’t hardly bother to wonder where Puggy was hanging out, now that they’d put the blowtorch to his old home on wheels.

Always and forever I had that feeling in my leg, and it looked like there was no chance at all of ever getting rid of it. I took to drinking heavier and going out with a class of people I’d never liked before. I hung on to my job, but it was plain that old J.M. had stopped thinking of me as a comer the way he had. And even though I knew Puggy’s old car was gone for good, I worked up a creepy feeling about trains so strong I took to driving or flying wherever I had to go — planes were coming in by then. For years I never set foot in a railroad car.

But, come winter of 1935, I was stuck. Ice all over, and I had to testify in a lawsuit about a refused order in Evansville. The airport was snowed in; trains were still running, though. And every train was so jammed, the best I could get was Lower Two. The car was named Mountain Melody, but even so you probably have a rough idea of how creepy I felt about it.

She had plenty of clicks for me to wince at and listen to. Then, right out of Englewood, as speed picked up, they come cold and clear: Ditdidit — ditda — da, and that’s Morse for RAT.

I just froze.

Dididididit — diditda — dadit — daditda, says the clicks, and that’s Morse for PUNK.

I unfroze enough to work my nail on the sill. “This not your car.”

“My car, chum,” says Puggy. “Renamed years ago. Some professor of Indian stuff noticed her and wrote the company did they know what Minnequamagog meant in Indian and they found out it was something you’d blush to chalk on a fence. How’s your right leg, you double-crossing swindler?”

Well, it was jumping and pulsing awful, that’s how it was. I could scarcely keep from hollering. But I got a grip on myself and sent him all about how I’d combed Lebanon, Mich., and finished up: “I’m not spook enough to make out how you figure I get your mark on me because you don’t know what you’re talking about. But I do know there’s no Cass place in that end of Michigan, nor ever was.”

No answer for a spell. Then very slow: “What state was that?”

I sent: Dada — didit — dit-didit — didididit, meaning “Mich.”

There was another long break, then a string of bad language sent sloppy but heartfelt, then: Didit-didit — dit-dit — diditda — ditdaditd — dit-dit — dit-dit — daa — didit — a — dididit — dada — didit — dididit — dididit, making: “You fool, it’s Miss.”

I might have known. Practically every state in the Union has a Lebanon, and Puggy’s dots were always unreliable. The string of dots on the tail of Miss. could easy make Mich., if the sender was careless. Or maybe I read it wrong. That was Puggy’s idea.

I said it was his fault, and we had it backwards and forwards all the way to Terre Haute. I don’t reckon any such language ever got into code since old man Morse invented it. But I didn’t argue about what I did next. My leg was leaving me no choice but to hightail it for Lebanon, Miss., first chance.

This is the 223rd “first story” published by EQMM... “The Eye of Jehovah” has a driving sincerity that achieves credibility — you can see the bedridden, nearly paralyzed old lady, almost hear her think...

Mrs. Melcher is in her early forties. She has two children — a teenage daughter who plans to be a nurse and a son who entered college in the fall of 1960 and plans to be a physics major.

The author’s first job was that of Desk Assistant in a Public Library, but after two years of trying to support two children and herself on $90 per month, she took a State Examination and is now a file clerk in the Vermont State Income Tax Department.

Her “first story” stems from real life — she once knew similar characters and they made a strong impression on her; but, Mrs. Melcher tells us, “they are dead now, so perhaps I shan’t be haunted by them any more.”

Something is going to happen. I wish Nurse Barnes was here. Not but what she doesn’t deserve her afternoon off — the trouble she has, taking care of a cantankerous old hulk like me, helpless as a great fat baby. Wonder what she’d do if she knew that every time she goes off, my dear little sister, Ellie, and her criminal son, George, come sneaking in to paw through my things.

She-devil and her whelp! They don’t get past Miss Barnes — not after my first stroke.

Wonder how they get by Miss Trask downstairs — silly little flibberty-gibbet. Probably swallows all George’s sweet-talk. Pretty good at it, George is. Got by with a suspended sentence even when they caught him red-handed. Talk himself out of anything.

Wish I knew what they want this time. Ellie’s already taken everything worth any money, times she’s pussy-footed around while Miss Barnes was gone.

Nothing I can do to stop them — can’t hear, can’t talk, can’t move. Only my eyes and one finger, though Doctor Cushman told Miss Barnes the paralysis could get better gradually, if I don’t have another stroke. Funny, almost wish I hadn’t seen him tell her — hard to know when your toes really tingle or when you just think yourself into it. If he’d been facing the other way, I wouldn’t have been able to read his lips. And then I wouldn’t be wondering.

Maybe Ellie and her precious son don’t know Miss Barnes was supposed to take my will to the bank this afternoon. Can’t be that they want, though. Ellie knows all the money I’ve got left goes to this Home. My books and the embroidered mottoes and the pictures are the only things I can leave anybody.

I hope Miss Barnes did take my will instead of leaving it in the safe downstairs. Ellie’d be mean enough to burn it in front of me just for spite. And the lock on that safe wouldn’t stop George.

Wonder what they really want. I’ve got this funny feeling. Guess I’ll know soon.

Door’s opening.

So there you are, Ellie — and your darling George. Radio said what, George? — turn around, drat you, so’s Lean see your lips! What deed? To the Little Princess Mine? What in tunket would anybody want that for? Even Papa finally admitted he’d been swindled. Apologized for calling it the name he used to call me. Never was any gold there.

Government wants it? Willing to pay the owner how much, George? You don’t say. And the owner has only three days to bring proof of ownership before the mine reverts to government property? Well, well. What was it they found there, I wonder. Never mind. I’m the owner. You won’t get it, Ellie.

Yes, I could point to the deed. But I won’t. Haven’t even thought about it for years. Funny, I’d have thrown it away, except it reminded me of Papa — and it was just the right size to use as backing when I framed my embroidered motto. Right in front of me now. THE EYE OF JEHOVAH IS UPON YOU. You’re looking right at it, Ellie, but you’ll never think to take the frame apart.

So it’s the deed you’ve been hunting for all this time. No wonder you didn’t find it. You always slide right over that motto. THE EYE OF JEHOVAH... Makes you uneasy, Ellie, don’t it?

My will? Lucky I got it tended to before I had the stroke. You’re wasting your time, Ellie. You won’t get a thing. All my pictures and books — and the mottoes — are for Miss Barnes.

After what you did to me, breaking Papa’s heart and spoiling my engagement, do you really think I’d let you have anything of mine? I’ve had to watch you steal all my trinkets, Ellie, but you won’t get the deed to that mine.

You’re going to what, George? if the will is in the safe, you’ll... Of course. You can do it so easily, too. With me dead and the will burned, Ellie would get my stuff.

What did you say, Ellie? Who won’t wake up? Oh, poor Miss Trask. Drugged. Her silly little head will ache when she does wake up, but she won’t dare say anything. Won’t want the trustees to know about her lallygagging.

Just like George to think of everything. Even has a substitute will all ready to forge the signatures on. I hope Miss Barnes remembered. If she didn’t... Funny, I’ve been expecting to die for a long time now — but not like this... Probably he’ll smother me. Won’t leave traces.

He’s gone. Will Ellie watch him do it when he gets back? I couldn’t. I’d remember. Times when she was little — like a baby fox, she was — sly, but helpless and cuddly.

Burns me up, though — George to go unpunished and them to get all that money. My money.

There! I did feel a tingle. I know I did. I think I’m wiggling my toes. Isn’t the blanket moving ever so little? Don’t look this way, Ellie. I’m sure it is.

Too late. He’s back.

Oh, Miss Barnes, you did forget. You never thought the safe downstairs would be so unsafe!

They’re going to burn it. What’s the matter, Ellie, don’t you like what I said about you in it? Or are you feeling a little bit squeamish?

She’s going. Almost running. Away from yourself, Ellie?

It’s going to be now. I think I’m scared. I ought to be praying. I want to shut my eyes, but I can’t...

What’s happened? Did the bed shake just then? Something’s happened! George has stopped. He’s listening. I wish I could hear. Has somebody come? Too soon for Miss Barnes, and nobody else would... What is it, George? It’s Ellie?... THE STAIRS! Ellie didn’t know about the back stairs! The men weren’t to start fixing them until this morning and it’s dark in the hall. George is running out.

That hurt. All the way up my side. Pain. Real pain! Maybe I could roll over. Wouldn’t stop George, but if I can move, maybe I can grab at his knees. He won’t be expecting anything... Here he comes again.

Elbe’s dead? Poor Ellie. Always wanted so much more than she could have. Funny, I’ve hated her for so long, and now I just feel sorry for her.

George, if you could see your face! The Devil himself must look just like you do now. Don’t you even care, George? Your own mother’s body still warm, and you’d leave her there and let them blame her for my death?

I’m — not — going to — let you — get away with — it, George. I’m — going to — stop you.

He’s reaching for the pillow.

God, help me!

Now...

Stop that squirming, George. I couldn’t move now even if I wanted to, falling off the bed that way. You can’t breathe under me? Of course you can, or you wouldn’t be screaming like that. You’ll wake all the old ladies, if they aren’t already. But they’re scared. I wish I couldn’t see your face. It isn’t pretty.

I hope Miss Barnes comes soon. I’m not very comfortable, either. Nothing hurts, but I can see my foot — turned backwards. It makes me feel queer to look at it.

I mustn’t faint. Not until I can point to the deed for Miss Barnes. Please hurry, Miss Barnes!

Names won’t hurt me, George, and blubbering won’t help you either.

Are they here? I can’t see the door.

Yes. At last.

That’s right, George. Tell them everything. Later on when you’re not so scared, you’ll be sorry you talked so much.

I wish I didn’t feel so dizzy.

Miss Barnes, never mind George and his broken ribs. He’s lucky to be alive at all — my two hundred and seventy-two pounds landing on top of him when I got his legs and tripped him over backwards.

Just get me to where I can point to the motto. There. Look at my finger! Please, Miss Barnes. That’s right. Now bring me the motto...

Why, my finger isn’t moving any more. I feel very strange. Where did everybody go? It’s so dark...

In which Miss Phipps creates a detective story before your very eyes, thus giving would-be writers a lesson in technique, and readers a lesson in suspense...

It was a wet afternoon in brittlesea. The sea looked like lead and the rain poured from a sky of unbroken gray. Detective Inspector Tarrant had not come home for lunch. Young Johnny was upstairs engaged in his afternoon nap. Mary Tarrant and Miss Phipps sat beside a bright fire, each with a cup of Mary’s excellent coffee beside her. Mary was knitting a pullover for her husband and Miss Phipps held a detective novel in her hand. The general effect was intimate and cosy.

With a sigh Miss Phipps threw down her book.

“Come to the end?” said Mary.

“Only to the end of my interest,” said Miss Phipps.

“Why so?” inquired Mary.

“No suspense,” said Miss Phipps.

“How does one create suspense, Aunt Marian?” asked Mary, beginning another row.

“The best way to create suspense in a detective story,” declared Miss Phipps, “is to employ two characters, each of whose integrity appears to vary inversely with that of the other.”

“I don’t find that as clear as your usual pronouncements, Aunt Marian,” Mary remarked with a smile.

“Let us suppose we have two characters — A and B.”

“Arthur and Bob,” suggested Mary.

“Just so. If Arthur is to be believed, Bob should be a scoundrel. If Bob is to be believed, Arthur must be the scoundrel. For a few pages the reader is led to believe in Arthur. Then some slight but significant incident occurs, which appears to reinstate Bob. Can Bob be innocent after all? If so, Arthur must have been telling lies; therefore he must be the scoundrel. The reader’s suspense is drawn tauter and tauter by these alternate hooks — if you see what I mean.”

“Who is found guilty in the end?” asked Mary.

“Well, there lies the peculiar advantage of that kind of story,” said Miss Phipps, beaming. “There are no fewer than four possible answers to your question. One, Arthur can be guilty. Two, Bob can be guilty. Three, both can be guilty. And four, neither can be guilty. The final choice is open to the author and prevents the solution from becoming obvious until the end, or very late in the story.”

“Certainly a complicated structure would be necessary to maintain the situation in doubt until the last page,” said Mary, counting stitches.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Miss Phipps confidently. “It would need some skill in invention, of course.”

“Now you’re boasting, Aunt Marian. I challenge you to produce such a story, here and now.”

“But, my dear Mary—” began Miss Phipps.

“Start!” commanded Mary firmly.

“Well, let me see now,” said Miss Phipps, half flustered and half flattered. “Arthur — a rather old-fashioned name. Yes. Arthur, let’s say, was cashier of the Laire Woollen Company, a small but reputable firm manufacturing tweed cloth, in a rather quiet valley outside the city of Laire in Yorkshire.”

“You’ve begun well. A cashier suggests at once the possibility of embezzlement or theft,” said Mary.

“Doesn’t it? Well, Arthur was a man in his late fifties, thin, gray-haired, meticulous, with a habit of looking over his spectacles in a rather crushing style at any younger person who ventured to disagree with him — even, we’ll say, if that person were the junior partner. Slow in his bookkeeping, was Arthur, but sure — at least, the Laire Woollen Company had found him so for upwards of a quarter of a century.”

“But such a man could not possibly be guilty of any crime,” objected Mary.

“That,” said Miss Phipps, “is precisely the impression the reader is intended to receive — at first.”

“Go on,” said Mary.

“It was the custom of the Laire Woollen Company to have the wages of the employees fetched from the bank in Laire on Thursday afternoon. Arthur then prepared the pay envelopes, which were distributed on Friday morning. The money was fetched from the bank by Arthur and Bob—”

“Ah, ready to be stolen,” said Mary.

“Bob being the junior partner of the firm—”

“I thought so,” said Mary.

“—and Arthur and Bob naturally traveled to and from the bank in Bob’s car.”

“Tell me more of Bob,” said Mary.

“Bob’s grandfather, old Mr. Denison, was the head of the firm.”

“Grandfather?”

“Bob’s father was killed in World War II.”

“I see,” said Mary thoughtfully. “A gap of two generations, and a gap in sympathy, huh?”

“Exactly. Bob had been sent to a good public school, and then to the textile department of Laire University.”

“I suppose he was rather wild there, and got sent down without taking his degree.”

“On the contrary — and who is inventing this story, Mary? Bob wasn’t especially brilliant, but he took a good solid second-class. He also played rugby for the University.”

“Oh, no!” said Mary. “We can’t have the criminal being good at football.”

“Who said Bob was the criminal? He was — or appeared to be — a nice ordinary young man, strong though stocky in build, with brown hair and brown eyes. Quite knowledgeable about textiles, and fond of athletics and amateur dramatics.”

“That last item strikes a rather suspicious note,” commented Mary. “The ability to act is often found in a criminal plot.”

“Oh, he never took leading roles,” said Miss Phipps reassuringly. “Only minor parts — one of the two policemen at the end who arrest the villain, and that sort of thing, you know. What he really enjoyed was building the set — whacking about with a hammer and so on. He had a good deal of physical energy which had to be expended somehow.”

“He still sounds quite innocent,” said Mary.

“Moreover, he was in love with Arthur’s daughter.”

“The plot thickens! Was she a nice girl?”

“Both Arthur and Bob thought so. She worked with the Laire Woollen Company as old Mr. Denison’s secretary.”

“Pretty?”

“Yes, certainly. Very fresh and neat, with those attractive legs and full skirts one sees about so much nowadays. I haven’t worked out yet whether she was a blonde or a brunette,” said Miss Phipps thoughtfully. “Blonde, I think. Yes, fair hair, very well cut. Fine gray eyes. She was not a fool, you know. Intelligent. Sensible. Full of go. Kind to her father and mother.”

“The heroine, in short.”

“Exactly.”

“Had she any other admirers?”

“Oh, yes, one or two.”

“I think you ought to be more specific,” objected Mary.

“Very well. Let’s say, two. One of the clerks in the outer office, and a childhood friend, the boy next door. Her name was — let’s see, Catherine?”

“Agreed. Her father calls her Kitty in private?”

“I prefer Cathy. Arthur was a trifle old-fashioned, you remember.”

“In that case he’s probably rather strict with Cathy about dates and young men and coming in late, and doesn’t approve of Bob’s attentions.”

“I agree. Now we come to the day of the crime. A bright, pleasant day in October.”

“Thursday or Friday, no doubt.”

“Thursday afternoon, just after working hours. Arthur was just completing the preparation of the week’s pay envelopes when the mill buzzer sounded.”

“Buzzer?” queried Mary.

“Well, a hooter, a siren — whatever you like to call it. Some loud noise used to mark the beginning and ending of the work day.”

“Proceed.”

“The mill rapidly emptied of its employees, who poured out of the gate. Arthur finished his task and was just placing the pay envelopes in the office safe when a man came in and asked for work.”

“But don’t men in this country usually obtain employment through a Labour Exchange?”

“Exactly Arthur’s reaction. ‘You’ll have to go to the Labour,’ he said. ‘Any way we haven’t any vacancies here. Try so-and-so’s,’ he said, giving the name of a neighboring firm. ‘I did not,’ said Arthur when giving his evidence later — you understand, this is Arthur’s account of the affair — ‘I did not altogether like the appearance of the man. He didn’t look very respectable to me, and he held a handkerchief to his face in an unbecoming manner.’ ”

“Unbecoming is good,” said Mary with relish. “Just the right word for Arthur. What happened then?”

“The man said, according to Arthur, ‘I’d like to see old Mr. Denison, all the same.’ To which Arthur replied stiffly, ‘Mr. Denison has left.’ He looked into the inner office, and added, ‘Mr. Bob is not here either.’ ‘Good enough,’ said the man with the handkerchief, and drawing some implement from his pocket he whacked poor Arthur hard on the back of he head. Arthur fell down, but in falling grabbed hold of the man so that they rolled about together on the floor. The man disentangled himself, treading on Arthur in the process, and rushing to the window, shouted, ‘Come on in!’ and waved his arms, clearly beckoning to an accomplice. He then sprang back to the dazed Arthur, wrapped a scarf round his head, and sat heavily on him, holding him face down to the ground. Arthur passed out — I believe that is the expression. When he came to some time later and tore off the scarf, he found the safe empty and the men gone. Fortunately, some of the wage envelopes were still lying on Arthur’s desk — the men had overlooked these, or perhaps found them too scattered to collect in their haste. Arthur rang the police and old Mr. Denison, and very soon an able and conscientious Detective-Inspector — shall we call him Tarrant?—”

“Why not?” said Mary, smiling.

“—very soon Detective-Inspector Tarrant was at the Laire Woollen Mill, conducting a vigorous and detailed investigation.”

“How much money had been stolen?” asked Mary.

“Fifteen hundred pounds.”

“Not a big haul, as hauls go.”

“No. Inspector Tarrant noticed that immediately. The criminals were either small-time thieves, or they were—”

“Somebody in desperate need of such a sum.”

“Exactly. You’ve learned a good deal from your husband, my dear.”

“It seems to me, too,” said Mary thoughtfully, holding up the pullover to judge its length, “that a good deal of local knowledge was required for this robbery.”

“Just what the Inspector said, my dear.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t listen any more for a minute or two,” said Mary. “I have to narrow now, for the armhole.”

“I’m delighted to hear it — it gives me time to plan the next development,” chuckled Miss Phipps.

Presently Mary said, “I’m ready now.”

“Old Mr. Denison and Bob have now joined Arthur in the Laire Woollen Company’s office and are listening to Arthur’s evidence.”

Miss Phipps coughed to clear her throat and began to act her various characters.

“ ‘I suppose the two thieves went out by the side door,’ said Bob thoughtfully.

“ ‘They can’t have done that — I locked it when I left,’ said old Mr. Denison.

“ ‘But they can’t have left by the front door,’ exclaimed Bob.

“ ‘Why not?’ said the Inspector sharply.

“ ‘Because I was standing at the gate, with the front door in full view, for at least ten minutes after the buzzer sounded,’ said Bob.

“ ‘What were you doing there all that time?’ said old Mr. Denison.

“ ‘I was waiting for Catherine, and when she came I was talking to her,’ said Bob.

“At this both Mr. Denison and Arthur scowled at him, and the Inspector gave him a searching look... How do you think it is developing, Mary?” Miss Phipps inquired.

“Arthur is certainly under my suspicion,” said Mary firmly. “That business about the second man — the accomplice — struck me as rather unconvincing. Why have an accomplice? Why not just knock Arthur out yourself and take the cash?”

“You would need to hit Arthur much harder to carry out that plan,” said Miss Phipps. “As it was, a tap that merely stunned and a muffling scarf sufficed.”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” said Mary. “Arthur had to invent some reason for his lack of severe injury — so he concocted this thin story of the second man.”

“And how did he get rid of the money, if he stole it himself?”

“He had a few minutes alone, while he was supposed to be lying unconscious on the floor, you remember. And also while he was waiting for the police. However,” said Mary, “you are telling this story, Aunt Marian, not I.”

“At present, then, your suspicions rest on Arthur?”

“They certainly do.”

“So did Inspector Tarrant’s. Until he found the scarf in which Arthur had been muffled, lying in a corner of the office. It was what you would call a collegiate scarf, Mary — a scarf with huge stripes in pink, black, and gray. It was a Laire University scarf. In fact, it was Bob’s scarf.”

“I don’t see that proves anything,” objected Mary. “Those young men drive about in sports cars wearing huge gloves and enormous woollen collegiate scarves, I grant you. But Bob could easily have left his scarf hanging on a peg in the office. In fact, he must have done so, and the thief simply snatched it up to muffle Arthur.”

“Unfortunately,” said Miss Phipps gravely, “the evidence seemed to indicate that Bob left the office just before the buzzer went, wearing the scarf.”

“Whose evidence?”

“Arthur’s.”

“I don’t believe it. He was simply trying to implicate Bob and support his weak story about the accomplice.”

“And Catherine’s.”

“Catherine’s?” exclaimed Mary. “You mean Catherine said Bob was wearing the scarf?”

“Yes. While waiting for the police to arrive, Arthur telephoned his home to explain to his wife that he would be late and she was not to worry. Hearing the agitation in his voice, she asked what was wrong. He told her in general terms that there had been a robbery and he was awaiting the police. As soon as Catherine reached home and heard this news, she came straight back to the Laire Woollen Company. The Inspector saw her hurrying across the yard, intercepted her, and asked about her talk with Bob at the mill gate.”

“She probably thought Bob had been hurt.”

“Probably — let’s say he aimed at some such impression.”

“Then it was mean to trap the poor girl like that,” said Mary.

“ ‘Do I understand you and Mr. Bob left the mill together, Miss Catherine?’ said the Inspector.

“ ‘No. He left before I did and was waiting for me at the gate.’

“ ‘And you stood there and talked for several minutes?”

“ ‘Yes.’

“ ‘And then what happened?’

“ ‘I walked away towards the bus stop at the top of the road.’

“ ‘And Mr. Bob?’

“ ‘I don’t know what he did then. I presume he walked towards the right of the mill where his car was parked.’

“ ‘Still wearing his muffler?’

“ ‘Yes, of course. Is he hurt, Inspector?’

“ ‘No, no. I take it that he did not offer to drive you home, then?’

“ ‘He did offer to do so, but I declined,’ said Catherine.

“ ‘Was there a quarrel between you, Miss Catherine?’

“ ‘There was a slight disagreement,’ admitted Catherine. ‘But why do you want to know all this, Inspector? What has happened? Is Bob hurt? Is my father hurt? Has there been a robbery?’... And so on.” Miss Phipps paused. “Poor Catherine was very much upset.”

“No wonder!” exclaimed Mary. “This is dreadful, Aunt Marian! It would seem that Bob is guilty.”

“If Arthur’s evidence is truthful, perhaps so. Do you think Bob was the unseen accomplice, then?”

“Presumably. Yes. Yes,” said Mary. “He did not wish to be seen in the act of robbery by Arthur, so he remained outside until Arthur was knocked out. His guilt would explain, too, why Arthur was not severely injured — Bob did not wish to hurt Catherine’s father.”

“Bob gave his scarf to the young thief who had first entered the office, then?”

“I suppose so,” said Mary, but there was a doubtful note in her voice. “It seems a silly thing to do, I must admit. What did Bob say about the scarf?”

“At first he could not account for its presence in the office at all. Then he remembered that he had found the battery of his car run down, and had had to use the starting-handle. It seemed to him that he probably threw off his scarf while using the handle, but he could not remember with certainty.”

“Foolish, misguided young man,” said Mary sadly. “Why did he ruin himself by committing this crime? He was in debt, I suppose.”

“The Inspector investigated that matter promptly. Bob was not in debt at all. The date was shortly after the beginning of the month and all his bills — garage and so on — were paid.”

“You mean he didn’t do it?” asked Mary. “Then Arthur must have done it. He’d been stealing from the firm — fiddling the books, you know — and he stole this money to make gool his shortage.”

“A very possible solution,” agreed Miss Phipps. “The Inspector, however, had the firm’s books closely investigated by a chartered accountant. They were in perfect order.”

“So we’re thrown back again to Bob. What about that quarrel between Bob and Catherine? Another girl, perhaps? He had seduced her and needed the money to pay her off?”

“Again a possible solution. Arthur, I may say, hinted at it. By this time he was in a towering rage against Bob and swearing he should never marry his daughter.”

“The Inspector investigated the ‘other girl’ possibility?”

“He did. There was no such girl.”

“What about Grandfather Denison? Could he be involved somehow?”

“Oh, he had an unbreakable alibi. He was being driven home by his elderly chauffeur during the entire period of the robbery. No, he definitely does not come into the mystery.”

“I wonder if Arthur and Bob could have been in it together?” suggested Mary thoughtfully. “Perhaps the Laire Woollen Company’s finances were unsound. Maybe the money wasn’t there at all, and Arthur and Bob faked the theft to conceal its absence.”

“The money was withdrawn from the Laire bank that afternoon,” replied Miss Phipps. “Inspector Tarrant investigated the Laire Woollen Company’s finances and found that the firm, though not a gold mine, was solidly prosperous.”

“Aunt Marian,” said Mary with determination, “will you please tell me at once who committed this robbery, and why? I can’t stand this suspense any longer. I’m on tenterhooks.”

“A very textile metaphor, my dear. So you admit that my recipe for suspense — two characters each of whose integrity appears to vary inversely with that of the other — is a valid one?”

“Yes, yes, I agree.”

“And that it is valid because there are four possible solutions? You have already advanced three of the four — that Arthur is guilty, that Bob is guilty, that Arthur and Bob are both guilty.”

“The fourth possible solution is that neither Arthur nor Bob is guilty,” Mary remembered. “I’d prefer that to be the correct answer, Aunt Marian, if it is at all possible. I’ve grown quite attached to these people, and I certainly want that nice Catherine to be happy. She can’t be happy if either her father or her future husband is guilty.”

“Well, let us see what we can do,” said Miss Phipps, smiling. “Let us assume that both Arthur and Bob are telling the truth.”

“Hurrah,” said Mary.

“Arthur is a slow, precise elderly man; Bob is a vigorous impetuous young one. The sense of time could vary considerably between two such persons. I suggest that Arthur was a good deal longer in finishing his pay envelopes than he thought. On the other hand, Bob had a few sharp words with Catherine; she whisked away in a pet; he hurried across the yard, tried the self-starter of his sports car, leaped out, threw off his scarf, finally started the car manually, and drove off, all in a fury. By that time the mill yard was empty, the thieves arrived, and the scarf, forgotten by Bob, lay on the ground.”

“Oh, quite,” said Mary. “I can accept all that. But it doesn’t give us a clue to the identity of the thieves.”

“I think it does,” said Miss Phipps.

“Really?”

“Yes. Remember that this scarf was very noticeably striped in the colors of Laire University. Nobody in the mill was likely to have a similar scarf. Everybody in the mill would know the scarf as Bob’s.”

“You mean that whoever took the scarf into the office did so to implicate Bob?”

“I do.”

“But who could that be? Surely not Arthur?”

“No, of course not. Arthur was a good man, a little too strict perhaps — a nonsmoker and teetotaler and all that kind of thing — but thoroughly honorable.”

“Then who? I don’t see anybody else in the story.”

“My dear,” said Miss Phipps with something of a smirk, “it is not required of a detective-story writer that she thrust the guilty person into view. The man is there, however. You can find him if you think back to one small incident in the story — an incident which you dismissed too casually after a single question.”

Mary paused. At length she said, “The quarrel between Bob and Catherine.”

“Exactly.”

“What was it about?”

“What indeed?”

“Did the Inspector investigate it?”

“Eventually.”

“Was it about Arthur?”

Miss Phipps shook her head.

“About Bob’s old grandfather? He disapproved of the match?”

“No. The grandfather was a rather fine old man, saddened by having lost his son in the War, a little perplexed by the strange modern world, but anxious only for Bob’s happiness.”

“Then who — oh!” cried Mary suddenly, dropping her knitting. “I’ve got it! Of course! Catherine’s other suitors. The clerk in the outer office. Bob was jealous of his attentions and said so rather too possessively to Catherine, who tossed her head and walked off. It all happened just as you said — about Bob and the scarf and the car — and this clerk, who of course knew all about the pay envelopes in the office — by the way, what was his name? Did you ever mention it?”

“No — but let’s call him Eric.”

“A name I’ve never had a fancy for. Eric picked up the scarf and gave it to his confederate in the office, deliberately intending to implicate Bob. Eric must have planned the theft beforehand.”

“Oh, yes, he had.”

“Gambling debts?”

“Dogs. And then a money-lender.”

“I see. Tight trousers and a mop of hair?”

“No, older than that. Sideburns and a fancy waistcoat.”

“And his partner in crime?”

“A bad companion from Laire’s underworld, I’d say.”

“Would they be caught?”

“Yes — you know that detective stories are the most moral of all stories. The numbers of the notes were known to the Laire bank — quite a customary precaution.”

“So Arthur and Bob and Catherine and Grandfather Denison were able to live happily ever after.”

“Yes. After a good deal of suspense, I hope you agree?”

“Oh, I agree. You win, Aunt Marian. Heavens, there’s Johnny moving already How time flies!”

She ran upstairs to her little son. Miss Phipps, with a sigh, picked up her book again.

“No suspense,” she murmured.

“A classical example of megalomania,” said Doctor Rand — and one of the finest stories by the author of PSYCHO.

The man who looked like Napoleon got out of the elevator on the fifth floor. He walked down the hall slowly, his head bent so that his forelock bobbed up and down. He might have brushed his hair back, but only if he took his hand from inside the front of his coat.

He couldn’t take his hand out now — later, perhaps, but not now. He was being watched.

All eyes were on the Emperor as he moved along the hall. No one was visible, but he knew they were there — behind the doors, watching. Watching and whispering. Well, let them whisper. He was protected by the Old Guard and the people were behind him, to the last man.

He came to the door. The sign on it read: G. K. Rand, M.D.

It was the right door. It was the right time. It was the right day — the anniversary of Austerlitz. The sun had been shining this morning, so he knew it was the right day. The sun of Austerlitz shone. And now he was coming here for his appointment — and because of something else.

A little pulse moved up and down in his throat when he thought of that something else. Well, he’d be able to handle things. Able was I ere I saw Elba—

He entered the office and the woman in white said, “Mr. Throng, good to see you — the doctor will be free in a moment. Please sit down.”

“Merci.”

She didn’t look at him directly, didn’t notice the way he glared when she called him Mr. Throng. He couldn’t help glaring when people called him that. He knew why they did it — they hated him and tried to pretend they didn’t recognize him. Well, they would have to recognize him now. He would tell the doctor.

“You may go in now.”

She didn’t even say “Sire”; she didn’t bow. But he ignored the insults and strode into the other room. He took short steps walking with dignity, still keeping his hand under his overcoat. Doctor Rand was sitting in his chair waiting for him, and he walked over and lay down on the couch and closed his eyes.

Doctor Rand was talking to him, and from far away he heard his own voice saying, “I’m fine, thanks,” and “Yes, I’m ready,” and “There’s a lot I must tell you.”

The doctor said, “Aren’t you going to take off your coat before you begin?” — but he shook his head without opening his eyes. He liked it better this way, with his coat on and his eyes closed. Then there were epaulettes on the coat, and underneath was the uniform of a colonel of artillery, the one he had worn ever since 1802, ever since Josephine had—

“Just relax now,” said the doctor. “You know how to do it. Say whatever comes into your mind.”

The doctor was master here. So begin. Let nothing interfere, let no man say him nay.

“Ney,” he said. “Peter Ney. Marshal of France. Yet he denied me before my return from Elba. He said nay to me. Peter denied me. He denied Our Lord. Peter denied Our Lord, and I was Peter Ney’s Lord, come to redeem all France.

“Why don’t they tell the truth, Doctor? I wrote them of my escape to America. I can show you the letter. I told them to go to Paris and look into the Tomb. They’d find it empty and then they’d know. The Tomb was empty after the third day. Read your Bible.”

He paused. Doctor Rand prompted. “Please, Mr. Throng. You aren’t letting yourself go. Just say words — not sentences or thoughts. You understand, we’ve been all through this before. I want you to say just what comes into your mind—”

It was no use. He could see that now. He sat up on the couch and opened his eyes, swinging around until he could face Doctor Rand.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to give this up. You can’t help me.”

“If you’d only take my suggestion,” the Doctor said softly. “Arrange to go away for six months. I could recommend a nice private Sana—”

He interrupted the doctor quickly. “So that’s it. History repeats itself. You want me to abdicate, go to St. Helena.” He laughed grimly, and the laugh abruptly soared to a falsetto giggle.

The doctor shrugged. “It’s the sensible solution, Mr. Throng. I think I can speak frankly to you. This is getting out of hand. We haven’t arrived at the adjustment I hoped for. You seem to be retreating from reality and—”

Retreating. He was rubbing it in about Russia again. But that had not been a retreat. Winter, and the firing of Moscow — how could he be held responsible for things like that? He wasn’t responsible. That was the answer. He just wasn’t responsible any more. That’s what they had told him last week down at the office, when they fired him. The doctor didn’t know about that part yet. And there were a lot of other things the Doctor didn’t know, either. He found himself shouting.

“You’re a fool, Doctor! It is you who refuses to face the truth. You earn a living by telling everyone who comes in here he’s crazy. That’s your little scheme and I see through it. No crazy ones and there’d be no business for men like you, would there? That’s how it works, isn’t it, Doctor?”

The nurse peeked into the room and the doctor nodded. She said, “Please, there are people waiting. I must ask you to restrain yourself, Mr. Throng.”

“Restraint, eh?” he said when she disappeared again. “I know all about restraint. Remember two years ago, I got a sample of restraint at the hospital when I had my concussion. They put me in a jacket without sleeves and strapped it up my back. If it hadn’t been for Josephine I’d still be rotting away in some damned asylum.”

The doctor patted his shoulder and he calmed down. His voice dropped. He had to explain once more.

“Why don’t you admit the truth, Doctor? Admit that I’m a product of reincarnation. There’s no accident or coincidence about the way I look, though I didn’t recognize myself until after the automobile accident. But it all ties in, doesn’t it? Didn’t I marry a woman named Josephine? And you know my family history. I’m a Corsican — I proved that to you. It’s simple reincarnation, Doctor.

“All my life I moved in a dream — until that accident. Then I had time to lie there and think while my head healed up. Even when they put me in the psycho ward I knew exactly what I was doing. I let them keep me there so I could work things out in my mind, until I was absolutely sure it all made sense. Don’t you see now, Doctor?”

Doctor Rand rose. “Really, Mr. Throng, you’re not making the progress your wife hoped for when she suggested that you visit me. With your permission I’d like to speak to her again about this.”

“Go ahead. Why don’t you call her now? You have my house phone number.”

He sat there grinning as the doctor dialed, waited, and finally replaced the phone.

“No answer, is there? I could have told you that. I was going to tell you, anyway. That’s really why I came here today — to tell you. History repeats itself, Doctor. You see, I finally forced the issue. This morning I got rid of Josephine.”

“You’re divorcing her?”

“I wanted to. Believe me I did. I begged and pleaded with her. I told her it was long past time. I must have children, an heir. It’s written in History. But she refused to consider divorce — she absolutely refused. And so I got rid of her.”

“You—”

As the doctor started to ring for the nurse, he stood up and pulled his hand out from under the overcoat. He brought the gun with it.

“Don’t do that, Doctor,” he said. “Just sit quietly. That’s better. Now I’m going to tell you all about it. Yes, I got rid of her this morning. You can’t stop History, but you can alter it.

“That’s the secret, Doctor. You can alter History, and this time things will be different. That’s the real reason for reincarnation. It gives a man a chance to improve on Destiny. And I have my chance now. No Waterloo this time!

“I started to change the pattern this morning, when I killed her. She’s lying on the bed at home now, but nobody knows. The police don’t know. Fouché will never discover her. I won’t tell. And you won’t tell. Because I’m going to kill you, too.”

He moved the gun up, stepped closer. The doctor was watching him, but he must be believing at last, because he didn’t stir. He just sat there and listened while the truth came out.

“You see, I never recognized you before, you traitor. I didn’t realize the whole truth — that we are all reincarnations of our past selves. How could I guess that it was you who betrayed the Revolution and then betrayed me to the Allies and the Bourbons? If I’d killed you the first time I would have saved myself. This time I’ll make sure you’re out of the way. I recognize you now. Doctor Rand, is it? I know your real name — Talleyrand!”

The doctor glanced toward the door. Hadn’t the nurse looked in and out again just then, before he could stop her? That meant she was calling help. Yes, now he could hear footsteps and sounds in the outer office. She had summoned the police. But they couldn’t stop him; this wasn’t Waterloo, this time there wouldn’t be any Waterloo.

Doctor Rand turned and said, “Mr. Throng!” — but it was too late. He aimed carefully and felt his finger move along the trigger.

He closed his eyes, started to squeeze and pull. Everything was squeezing and pulling and Josephine was dead, Talleyrand must die, he would raise a new army and they’d come out of the grave for him, the Marshals of France: Lannes, Bessières, Davout, Marmont — all of them. Squeeze and pull — now!

Then he fired and Talleyrand was lying on the floor and there was shouting. A man in a blue uniform ran into the room and he had a gun too — he was the Enemy.

Squeeze and pull, run for the window, it was jammed, the glass splintered all around him, trapped, the Old Guard dies but never surrenders, aim and fire now, this is Waterloo after all, jump, black and falling — Vive l’Empereur...