Craig Kennedy Listens In

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ARTHUR B. REEVE

CRAIG KENNEDY LISTENS IN

ADVENTURES OF CRAIG KENNEDY
SCIENTIFIC DETECTIVE

Published by Harper & Bothers, New York & London, 1923

This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2022
Version Date: 2022-02-04

Produced by Matthias Kaether, Christopher Berks and Roy Glashan

All content added by RGL is proprietary and protected by copyright.

Click here for more Craig Kennedy stories

THE WIRELESS PHANTOM
Chapter I. Spirit Movies
Chapter II. A Super-Regenerative Ghost
Chapter III. Slander In The Air
Chapter IV. The Fiery Vampire
Chapter V. The Eyes Have It
Chapter VI. Ectoplasm
Chapter VII. Mystery Waves
Chapter VIII. The Dead Hand
Chapter IX. The Mind-Master
BURIED ALIVE!
Chapter I. Baubles And Rubles
Chapter II. The Sleepmaker
Chapter III. The Borgia Supper
Chapter IV. The Trance Telephone
Chapter V. The Return Of The Romanoffs
Chapter VI. The Russian Tea Room
Chapter VII. The Phantom Finger
Chapter VIII. Suspended Animation
Chapter IX. The Valley Of Death
Chapter X. The Crook Internationale
THE BRASS KEY
Chapter I. The Brass Key
Chapter II. Fortune Hunters
Chapter III. What Women Want
Chapter IV. The Weed of Madness
Chapter V. The Curio Shop
Chapter VI. The Hell Cat
Chapter VII. The Copper Room
Chapter VIII. The Lie Detector
Chapter IX. Secret Service
THE BOULEVARD OF BUNK
Chapter I. The Diamond Dance
Chapter II. The Diamond-Maker
Chapter III. Scandal-Mongering
Chapter IV. Heart Balm
Chapter V. The Diamond-Faker
Chapter VI. Blacklegs And Bootleggers
Chapter VII. The Arsonette
Chapter VIII. The Red Lady
Chapter IX. The Anonymous Girl
THE SOUL MERCHANT
Chapter I. Held For Ransom
Chapter II. Dual Personality
Chapter III. Like The Lotus
Chapter IV. The Anthrax Bomb
Chapter V. Ramifications
Chapter VI. Wheels Within Wheels
Chapter VII. The Opium Queen
Chapter VIII. The Counterfeit Plant
Chapter IX. The Selenium Cell
Chapter X. The Round-Up
BUCCANEERS OF BOOZE
Chapter I. "The Deil's Awa' Wi' The Exciseman!"
Chapter II. The Booze Barrage
Chapter III. The Bootleg Curb Market
Chapter IV. Argosies Of Hootch
Chapter V. The Three-Mile Limit
Chapter VI. The Sky's The Limit
Chapter VII. Rags To Riches
Chapter VIII. Broadcasting John Barleycorn
Chapter IX. Who Will Reform The Reformers?

THE WIRELESS PHANTOM

CHAPTER I. — SPIRIT MOVIES

"CREEPY, uncanny things are happening in my own picture—and under my very eyes, Kennedy—and I can't explain them!"

Murray Miller, director of a new motion picture serial, "Radio Romance," was appealing to Kennedy—Miller whom I knew to be engaged to his star, little Angela Arnold, that exquisite cameo of a girl who commanded a salary big enough for a couple of bank presidents and got on the front page of the papers if she so much as sneezed.

Craig and I were alone with Murray in the executive office at the Queensborough Studio.

Something about the movies has always interested me. Probably it is the big money many of my former newspaper friends are getting now as successful scenario writers. At any rate, whenever Kennedy was called in on anything connected with motion pictures I always managed to be on hand. Then, too, I knew a good deal about Murray, who used to be a newspaper artist before he took up illustrating magazines and then became a quite successful director of photoplays. The movies had lured many a good newspaper man to the studios.

"You know, Kennedy, the public is in just that unreasonable frame of mind to-day when it won't think twice before it fastens a scandal on anyone in motion pictures...."

Murray gesticulated excitedly as he paced up and down. "If I can't fathom what is going on—and stop it—my picture is ruined—I am ruined—Angela is ruined!"

There was a tap at the door and a boy entered with a couple of flat circular shiny tin cans and a receipt book.

Murray checked a hasty exclamation, and signed the receipt book, which I saw bore stamped in black the name "Beaumont Laboratory." The boy shut the door quietly. Murray looked anxiously at the cans.

"Here's yesterday's take, developed and printed and back from the laboratory.... Kennedy, you've got to help me! ... I can't think! ... Come down into the projection room and I'll show you what I mean.... This thing has cost me thousands of dollars already.... And I have the reputation of being an economical director and producer."

We followed Murray by a back way downstairs into the cellar of the studio building. The steps themselves were rickety, the cellar almost eerie. As we entered the gloom I was conscious of a strange whirr in the air.

"This used to be an old armory," explained Murray. "When the troop built a new one, my company hired this, made it into a studio." We picked our way past a huge, humming transformer. "Local current is A.C. We must have D.C. for pictures."

Beyond the transformer we came to a passageway and a door, behind which was another with a glaring, sputtering white light. Through the first door I could see a huge square of light with rounded corners and I knew that it was the projection room, and that on the other side of the second door the operator was adjusting the sputtering carbons of his projector.

We entered the projection room. I shivered. I felt a sort of dank, earthy dampness.

"Used to be the rifle range for the troop," explained Murray. "We cut this end off, built the screen, made a projection room; gives us a long throw for the picture."

He had paused only long enough to hand the cans into the booth where the man was working.

Hastily I noted that there were a dozen or twenty chairs ranged in the back of the room, under the beam of light that cleft from the safety booth back of them, and an ordinary small deal table, with a green-shaded lamp, evidently for taking notes. It was not a sumptuous room, like many projection rooms I had been in, but I recalled Murray's remark about economy.

Various shots and scenes began to unroll on the screen, each followed by a few feet of a boy holding a slate on which were chalked some mystic numbers, such as "Ep 1-132," which I learned referred to Episode 1 of the serial, scene 132, and was tagged on for identification.

We came at last to a scene of a merry party of young people in a most lavish room, evidently at a country house. In the left foreground one of them was adjusting a splendid radio set, as the others danced.

Faintly, now, I could make out a face, a shadowy face, of a man, an oldish man, a face some three or four times as large as that of the actor in the closest foreground.

"There! ... There it is!" cried Murray, leaping up, his own form now blackly silhouetted on the screen, as he came between it and the projection machine. "Do you see it?"

"Thousands of feet of my film have been rendered worthless by the presence of that—that spirit face!"

Murray stopped the projection as he drew us closer to him and in a few whispered sentences told us the story, which he had purposely postponed until he could tell it to Kennedy with best effect.

"Maybe you connect it now. Angela's mother is the rather famous Selena Arnold, who has mediumistic powers—or believes she has—believes Angela has, too. Only I think Angela's got too much sense. A couple of summers ago she and Angela lived at the old Garland House on the south shore of Long Island. The elderly John Garland, the proprietor, became infatuated with Selena. Oh, they held hundreds of séances....

"Well, Garland and Selena Arnold were married. Then things began to happen. Dr. Newlin, a pretty intelligent physician out there interested in psychical research, investigated Selena and wrote a paper exposing her as a trickster. The townspeople said that the spirits had affected old Garland's mind. Then Garland, apparently believing his mind was failing incurably, or else broken by the exposure of Selena, committed suicide. By his will Selena Arnold inherited his estate. There's been litigation over the will; the surrogate won't admit it to probate; it's still unsettled. There, you have the thing in a nutshell, that thing."

Murray called to his operator and the film unreeled some more. The boy with the slate appeared, then followed a second take of the same action, joined to the rest, as before.

On the second take, even on the few feet of the slate boy, still appeared the filmy torso and face of old Garland, almost as if with a sardonic grin on the wrinkled face.

"Bill!" called Murray. The operator stopped. "When you get through, tear out a hundred feet—"

"Yes, I'll give orders to the laboratory when we go upstairs. I'll give you hundreds of feet of negative with that confounded face on it. I'll send—"

There was a clatter of sprockets in the booth back of us. An automatic arrangement immediately closed a little fire door. We were in total darkness.

"The film broke, Mr. Miller," called the operator, voice muffled now. "I'll patch it in a minute, sir."

We sat in the darkness. Somehow or other my eyes persisted in showing to me that sardonic smile on the old man's face. Perhaps it was eye-strain.

At the moment I was as conscious that there was some presence near us, however, as I was that Kennedy and Murray were with me in the black projection room.

Kennedy laid his hand on my arm for silence. Plainly audible now was a tap, tap, tap!

We listened, stock still—at least I was. It was repeated, closer, louder, more distinct.

"What does it mean?" thrilled Murray under his breath. "Star? Angela's the star! More danger for Angela?"

The rapping ceased. Bill, the operator, had patched up the broken film, and the lights came back, with the picture—and the face. Almost I could see a deepening of that sardonic grin.

"Star?" I repeated, turning away. "Star? My paper! Here, I've got this morning's Star in my pocket. Did you have anything about you in this morning? I haven't read the paper yet myself."

Murray grabbed it, held it out in the light. On the first page his searching finger stopped on a headline:

Murray was plainly on edge. "My God! Was that thing really a ... threat? Does it mean that there is such a thing as a wireless fire, after all?"

"What are you thinking of—your thousands of feet of negative?" cut in Kennedy reassuringly. "They're in a vault at the laboratory, aren't they?"

"Yes ... but they're not safe ... nothing is safe ... even in a fireproof vault ... if there is such a thing as ... a wireless incendiary!"

Kennedy did not argue with him. We saw out the rest of the film, then turned to go up to the studio by the front stairs.

Out in the cellar again, I heard more plainly now the peculiar whirring noise, different in pitch from the hum of the transformer.

Kennedy paused halfway up the stairs. "Couldn't that negative raw stock have been tampered with—double-exposed?"

"Yes—you might explain it in that way; I can explain it, too ... that way.... But, explain what you will witness in the studio, on the set, where we are shooting our important sequence of scenes!"

CHAPTER II. — A SUPER-REGENERATIVE GHOST

WE passed down a short corridor in which an elderly man as buffer presided at a desk beside which hung a sign, "No casting to-day," offering him a graphic argument to the ten or a dozen movie-struck applicants with folios of portraits and stills.

Past a pair of swinging doors we came out into a great, girdered, armory-like hall, some eighty or ninety feet wide and perhaps two hundred feet deep. Near the doors I observed a huge switchboard.

"'Way down there at the other end," indicated Murray, "is one of my big sets—the Radio Dance set we call it—the set, by the way, you saw just now in the print that came back from the laboratory this morning."

"Well, you see, in the picture some young people, the Gerards, have just got the radio fever and have installed an expensive super-regenerative set. They are celebrating the installation in the huge living room of their country home on the south shore of Long Island by inviting all the younger set to their first radio dance. That's the title of the first episode, 'The Radio Dance.'"

"The dance is on," continued Murray, for once his visualization as an author and a director getting the better of his anxiety as both. "But a storm is coming up. You know what that does to the radio—static—and all that. I'll give you a chance to see some movie lightning to-day—I hope.

"The radio is out.... So they turn to canned music. Blooey! Another flash! The lights go on the blink! Darkness!

"Suddenly, a spotlight, in the hands of a masked figure ... in a light effect ... a girl, we see ... Close foreground of a masked girl.... Spoken title: 'Hands up!' ... then, when I cut it, back to the full shot ... the spotlight passes over the various faces in the room ... shots at various angles to establish what I want to establish.... We get over that there are two men and a girl.... They frisk the younger set for a couple of hundred thousands of old family jewels.... Cut!" laughed Murray, as if coming out of living it himself and not sure how Craig would take an author's trance.

As we picked our way in and out of sets, some standing for further use, one being struck and another on which the carpenters were hammering, making the big studio resound like a factory, the first thing I really paid much attention to was a very-pretty girl crossing the stage down at the other end of what must have been the radio dance set.

Still I looked toward the girl. She was now adjusting a mask over her face. As she finished she turned quickly and, with three or four long slides across the glossy floor of the handsome living-room-ballroom set, stopped suddenly before us.

She poked an automatic in Murray's face. Then with a quick motion she pulled off her mask.

Murray's poise was not shaken for an instant and we learned that we were favored by Lois Gregory, the "vamp" of the piece.

I thought she was one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen. Her hair was bobbed, thick and curly. Through the dark curls, when she removed a little red velvet cap, her scalp gleamed white. There was about her hair that wonderful perfume a girl's hair has when it is cared for attentively. Her eyes were the eyes of a lynx—large, dark, wise, with a wisdom that one knew was not always of things pure. When, at times, she looked at Murray, a dreamy, alluring light played in them.

Murray had introduced Craig as "Mr. Kimball" and myself as "Mr. James." But Lois was most interested in Murray, although I could see that nothing we said or did escaped her watchful eyes. I noticed she was the kind of girl who, when she talks with one, has to touch one's hand or coat sleeve or fool with a button on one's coat.

Her suit was a grayish sport tweed, knickers and a rakish cape to match—and with a scarlet scarf and cap she was good enough to advertise the best golf balls, or hosiery, or health builder. One could presumably have a mighty good time with the alarming Miss Lois.

"You must join us to-night, Murray; just a few in the party. Don't say you can't come. I've told, the rest I would bring you along," she coaxed. She had Murray by the arm and with face looking up pleadingly, winsomely, I think was putting it over by her sheer personality.

I heard footsteps back of me, and as I turned I heard a very gentle but determined little girl asking Murray a question about the next scene. There was nothing for Lois to do but to wait for another time for her answer.

"Do I appear on the floor of the ballroom during the hold-up scene or not, Murray?" asked the newcomer.

"Why, I thought we might get a little mystery out of not having you there—but taking a foreground of you on the balcony—to cut in, if we want to, when we see the picture assembled."

"What are you trying to do, Angela—steal my one pretty scene?" asked Lois quickly. Those dark eyes of hers could flash, too.

"When it comes to stealing, there are other things one can steal besides scenes," purred Angela.

Murray diverted the clash, dexterously I thought, by introducing Craig and myself to Angela.

Lois was pretty, but Angela was of the type of beauty that I, in common with some other millions of screen fans, admired most. Her hair glistened like golden strands when the lights of the spots fell on it; her complexion was radiant; and her eyes were the kind that would make one feel uncomfortable if one possessed a guilty secret. She opened them wide and looked you through and through with an eager, amiable glance.

She was gowned in a blue evening creation that enhanced the blue of her eyes, and her beautiful arms and shoulders were the most perfectly moulded I had ever seen. It was no wonder that people loved her in pictures. She was winsome.

"The script isn't quite clear about that dark scene," she went on. "And when I was reading it over, I thought, why not take it both ways, while we have the set. Then when you cut the picture you can play it whichever way you get the most drama. I—I didn't want to break in on anyone—but——"

A few moments later, Angela and Murray, Craig and myself were sauntering down toward another set when a slender young man in puttees, visibly upset, bustled up to Murray.

"What in the devil is going on in this confounded shop? I can't leave a set over night. In the prop room, the carpenter shop, all over it's the same way!"

"Sh-h!" cautioned Murray with a quick look about. "You'll get the others the same way as yourself, Hal. We've had enough bad luck. Cool down, old man—and walk over back of these flats and tell me the latest."

"Why, last night," the excited one exclaimed, "I locked the studio myself—even locked the night watchman off the stage floor! And when I looked at the ballroom set this morning, it looked like a scrambled egg! You can't match up your scenes, I'm afraid—or at least it will take me until after lunch to get that set back. I've got to take the set photograph and go over the whole thing and restore it!"

"That's Halleck, technical and art director," he informed us as the man strode off to straighten things out. "Now, what's all that? More table tipping? Another couple of hours lost! Everything stops—but the overhead!"

Murray gave a quick exhibition of the exigencies of picture making. In ten minutes he had everyone working on something; it was not what he wanted, but the time was not a dead loss.

Kennedy and I employed the time getting better acquainted with the other members of the cast and crew, and finally drifted back to watch Halleck put the last deft finishing touches on restoring the set in which tables had been overturned, chairs moved, veritable miracles of levitation, apparently, performed.

Seemingly the only thing not disturbed was the most delicate of all, the radio apparatus.

Kennedy and I stood over Murray and Halleck as they made sure that the radio was all right.

"It's not only a real radio set," commented Craig, "but there's the latest Armstrong super-regenerative receiver."

"Yes," returned Halleck. "You know a serial, after all, is 'kid' stuff—and the kids know radio. We've got to be right, or we hear from them!"

A few moments later the call rang through the studio that the director was ready and the members of the cast began assembling quickly, ready to work. It was noticeable, however, by the little knots and groups into which they broke and the lowered voices in conversation, that they realized that this company was working under most unheard-of conditions.

Murray took a moment to place us behind the two cameras in a position where we might miss nothing; then, with his assistant, plunged into the work of rehearsing the action he expected to shoot, coaching individual members of the cast, the thousand and one things which I now realized even under ordinary circumstances drove a director to distraction. I could not but admire Murray for the way he handled things under the exceptional stress. Such a man was a splendid C.O.

Gradually he had things arranged until finally, almost before I knew it, I heard his call, "Camera!"

The dance was on, the radio was supposedly out of commission and one of the boys was tinkering with it, while another started the phonograph. Outside the lightning was preparing. Beyond the camera lines Lois and the two hold-up men were ready to break in, at their cue.

Suddenly, from the supposedly broken-down, useless radio set, which, of course, was not actually out of commission, came a faint voice out of the loudspeaker.

"Oh ... Murray!" she cried, clinging to him. "Who or what is trying to drive me insane? I can't stand it! It is terrible!"

Suddenly it began talking again. It was the same voice again, with a slight Irish brogue.

"Kennedy—it is a wor-rld ye know nothing of in which I am! And this is as high above your science as Almighty God!"

Lois at the name of "Kennedy" gave Craig a quick glance, and with a satirical smile lowered her eyes.

III. — SLANDER IN THE AIR

DURING the early afternoon I looked with interest about the stage floor at the other sets.

One in particular caught my attention. It seemed to be the interior of the saloon of a house boat.

"It's a reproduction to match up with a real house boat, The Sea Vamp, we have out at Peconic on Long Island for exteriors. We've got a scout cruiser out there, too, and a flying boat for stunts in a later episode. You see, we take the interiors in the studio."

"Not far. I wrote the story and script myself, out there, and when we came to take the picture, the company decided we could work it best with the interiors here in the studio and the exteriors out there, really, in the actual country where the story is laid."

Murray paused a moment, glanced at his watch, then resumed. "I'll be through in half an hour. I want you to go out there with me. There are some people you ought to meet, people who have a connection with Angela's life. It's only a few hours from the city. I'll drag you out in my car. Angela will go, most likely. Her mother, Selena Arnold, has remained at the Garland House—not far from Peconic."

The work of the day was soon finished, the cast dismissed with the call for the morning, the day's take stowed away in the dark-room in cans, neatly taped as a warning, to be developed at the laboratory—possibly to show some more "spirit movies."

We were about to leave in Murray's car from the front entrance of the studio when Lois came out and stood beside the car for a few moments, chatting.

I felt that not only was Lois Gregory the "vamp" in "Radio Romance," but that she might be the "other woman" as far as the little romance of Murray and Angela was concerned. At any rate, there could be little doubt of Angela's reaction when Lois was near him.

"It's so hot to-day," murmured Lois fanning ineffectually with a little lace handkerchief, "I could climb in with you if you didn't have a full car."

"Look who's here!" Murray waved as a roadster purred out of the alley beside the studio. "Hello, Halleck. Going to take the air?"

The roadster pulled up just back of us. "You said it! Going to take Lois? No?" Then, to her: "Maybe you'll hop in with me?"

"Keep an eye on the sets to-night, Halleck," Murray shouted back as he shifted into high.

The air was hot, but the rush of it was cooling, I felt better and said so. "Everyone in both the cast and the crew seems demoralized."

"Yes ... if we could all get away and have things clear up, we'd be better for it," returned Murray. A moment later he turned to Angela, who was with him in the front seat of the sport car. "Does your mother feel any more cordial to you, Angela?" he asked.

"N-no, Murray, I'm afraid not.... Last night Tom, our old colored butler out there, called me up and told me the wildest tale about seeing old Mr. Garland's ghost walking in the hall, before Mother's room, and shaking a long, bony finger toward her door. I asked him what the ghost did—but all I got was a flood of dialect. As near as I could make out, Tom beat it. It sounded like a vaudeville act—but it's a tragedy for me. I think Mother is in serious danger—don't you?"

"Would you mind telling me all about your mother's estrangement?" inquired Kennedy, leaning forward between them.

"You think it's a direct attempt to involve Angela in it with her mother?" queried Murray.

Kennedy did not answer directly. "It's best for me to know all these things before I meet her. I may be able to help you more."

"Mr. Kennedy," confided Angela, "somehow I have a great deal of confidence in you, with us. You seem to encourage me."

"Yet I—I can't talk very much about the difference that has come up between Mother and myself; it is too painful to me.... But this litigation over the will, and the publicity from it, is doing me no good among picture fans. They like to idealize us; we should have no troubles or worries....

"I have asked Mother to drop the whole thing. We have enough for our wants"—with a smile—"but Mother is a fighter and she intends to get the property my stepfather has left her. In a way I can't blame her, I suppose, but it's hard on me.... I miss her companionship, her help, her advice—even when I buy my costumes for pictures. Oh, Mr. Kennedy, I just miss—Mother!"

We were quiet for some time afterward, then the conversation turned to the scenery, the road, almost everything that was not uppermost in our minds.

It was well along in the afternoon as we approached Bayhead, the county seat, on the road to Peconic.

Murray slowed up his pace and from time to time began making remarks back at us, leading up to the object he had in mind of our visit out there.

"Now, there is Lurie, James Lurie, the lawyer, and executor under the will. I think you ought to talk to him. He's right here in Bayhead, the town we are coming to."

Kennedy agreed and we pulled up a few feet past the post-office "block," over which hung the shingle on the second floor of the firm of Lurie & Randall. Then I recollected that they were the foremost real estate attorneys of the county.

"My idea," agreed Kennedy, who was always ready with an excuse that would start a conversation. "Jameson and I are in the hotel business. We're seeking to lease an inn where we can cater to the automobile trade."

Lurie may have been advanced, but he was no doddering octogenarian. Kennedy's mention of the hotel business and the automobile, accompanied by a covert hint that he knew how to run a car across the border and get back with that which made the hotel business profitable, called forth a sly twinkle in the almost clerical face of the somewhat portly attorney.

Combined with the caution of the attorney was now the salesmanship of the real estate agent and there could be no mistake about the intent of Lurie's remarks concerning a certain illicit occupation known as rum-running, which made the profession of landlord the more attractive here than elsewhere by reason of the activity of those who go down to the sea in ships.

Lurie consulted his lists, but it was really from his own head that he tried to sell us two or three leases, in each case Kennedy picking a flaw or an undesirable feature.

"That would probably be the ideal place for you," remarked Lurie. "The trouble there is that it's tied up in the courts, just now. Do you by any chance recall the circumstances? You must have read in the papers about the 'Garland Ghosts.'"

"Well," Lurie replied, bringing the tips of five fingers in juxtaposition to the tips of five other fingers. "The surrogate has so far refused probate of the will of old Mr. Garland. Mr. Garland was my friend. I drew the will and am the executor, by the way. I do not think there is any legal flaw in the paper I drew—naturally. But it has been claimed that Mr. Garland was not competent to make a will—or even to marry—on account of his mental condition.

"You see, gentlemen, it has placed me in a rather ticklish and embarrassing position. I cannot exactly be expected to impugn the sanity of my former friend and client. Nor can I conscientiously press a claim which may savor of adventuring and have the color of fraud perpetrated upon a credulous old man. Frankly, I am between the devil and the deep sea; damned if I do and damned if I don't. I have decided to keep my hands off and let justice take its course."

Lurie smiled. "Young man, if I could answer that, do you suppose I would be sitting on the fence?"

Kennedy nodded back, knowingly, and Lurie rose and paced with his hands flapping his coat tails. "If the contention before the surrogate is upheld, it will throw the estate back on the law of inheritance. The nearest relatives would inherit. But—there are no relatives—known. In that case, the property would revert to the state."

Lurie had evidently remained at his office only on the chance of making a sale to us. He also took his hat and clumped down the stairs with us. Outside he caught sight of Angela and Murray in the car. With surprising spryness he was over near them, his hat off, nodding to Murray but with interest centered on Angela. Kennedy and I stood aside, forgotten. We had neither to affirm nor deny our connection with them.

"A client of my partner, Randall, owns the Sea Vamp which you have chartered, you know. I've been thinking I might purchase it myself from him after your picture company has finished with it. If I do, may I count on you, Miss Angela, as a guest at my houseboat warming?"

Policy, no doubt, dictated a murmured acceptance. Angela soon swung us about to other subjects. But I retained a picture of Lurie's animation and the twinkle in his eyes which left my finite mind only one impression. The old gentleman certainly loved the ladies.

"Now, just one more visit," bustled Murray, without comment, as the attorney swung down the street at least twenty years mentally younger, "Dr. Newlin, local physician, member of the Psychical Research Society—the National Geographic Society, I suppose—all those things that a provincial medico has printed after his name when the local paper comes to his obituary."

"Craig ought to see him because he's the investigator who was commissioned—at his own request—by the Psychical Research Society to investigate the phenomena at the Garland House last year and gained some national prominence by his report that Selena Arnold was—er—helping out the spirits when the phenomena didn't come fast enough to suit the case. Now he says that these present phenomena are genuine, he believes."

Murray smiled. "Ever try to keep anything secret in a township like this? Everybody out here knows about the face in the films and the voices over the radio. They knew it the first time we came out last week to shoot exteriors. I guess you know the grape-vine gossip of the small town."

Dr. Newlin proved to be one of those country doctors who always have time to talk. In fact, in connection with a country druggist and a pad of prescription blanks, I feel sure that a good conversation would be had by all.

Kennedy's interest in psychical research was as deep with Dr. Newlin as his ardor to engage in the hotel business had been with Lawyer Lurie. Newlin was equally eager to talk on his hobby.

What chiefly seemed to interest Craig was the validity of the present phenomena.

"Gentlemen," remarked Newlin, in a low voice, fixing an eye on us as of a prophet handing down an oracle, "here are two things to think about. You picture people all know as well as I do, better, how supersensitive is the negative raw stock of films. You know the perfection of lenses, especially some of the German lenses. I believe you use the most improved camera, the Wells & Crowell. Am I right?" Murray nodded. "Then is it strange that the lens and the film and the box should pick up what the human eye may not see, what may be in rays of light beyond the mortal eye?"

Receiving no answer, he went on: "Again, let me say, there is the Armstrong super-regenerative set in radio—one hundred thousand times more sensitive than even the regenerative set, which is itself on a plane entirely beyond, higher, different from the human ear. Let me put it to you in a sentence: Science is every day leading us closer to the world beyond!"

"I can—but I don't." He smiled as we parted. "That is one case in which I believe those are more blessed who receive than those who give!"

CHAPTER IV. — THE FIERY VAMPIRE

"I FORGOT to tell you," remarked Murray as we started on the last lap of our journey, "that at the Garland House, Garland's room has been left untouched since his death."

"Mother thought so much of Mr. Garland," explained Angela. "She likes to sit in the room, just as he left it. She says she seems very close to him."

"I thought you would be interested, want to see it," added Murray a bit apologetically, as if to justify his mention on some other grounds than a medium's feelings. "Aside from his alleged insanity and the spirit stories, a lot of questions must arise. They have with me. Did he die naturally, after all? Could he have been poisoned? If so, how—by whom?"

Kennedy nodded. "We've got to determine those things first—may even have to exhume his body before we get through and start all over again, as if it were a fresh case."

The old inn, the Garland House, was a quaint, ancient, rambling frame building. It had been built in the first place because it was at a narrow "carry" for the canoes of the Indians between Peconic and Shinnecock. One part of it actually dated or was reputed to date back to the seventeenth century. It was more than a mere roadhouse; it was an institution, historic, a fascinating combination of the old and the new.

As we pulled up under the porte cochère, Murray jammed on the brakes and hopped out quickly. While we were getting out, I could see him bowing to a sweet-faced elderly lady sitting reading on the porch.

Angela waved her hand, but her greeting was rather coolly received, I thought. Nevertheless, she let it make no difference in her verbal greeting.

"Well, Mother, how do you feel to-day? Better?" Leaning over, she kissed her mother and patted her gently on the arm.

Watching, I could see Mrs. Garland's back growing straighter and her face more stern. It was very hard work to be angry with Angela.

As we became better acquainted, she seemed to take a great liking to Kennedy. He was assiduously humoring her to talk on her favorite subject, the occult.

"Angela," she softened at length. "Call Tom and have him see about dinner for your friends. After the ride they must be famished."

Angela walked down the wide veranda, Murray following close behind, glad to be with her. A moment later I could hear her giving directions to the butler, who seemed to be overjoyed not only to have someone around, but that it was Miss Angela.

I thought as we talked to Mrs. Arnold Garland that it was easy to see where Angela obtained her striking features and hair. Her mother was a beautiful woman in her sixties, with a quiet, reserved manner and dressed in extremely good taste. She showed her deep interest in Angela only when Angela was not looking.

"With such air as you have here, Mrs. Garland," remarked Kennedy, "you should enjoy the best of health. I was very sorry to hear your daughter tell me that you did not feel so well."

"Oh, Mr. Kennedy, I'm not going to bore you with a tiresome health lecture. But I am exceedingly nervous. I hope to get over it soon. Perhaps the trouble, settling up the estate and the queer happenings about the Garland House, have had a lot to do with it."

I wondered why Kennedy was so solicitous about the health of a stranger. Consequently I began to observe her narrowly, though not openly. I was struck with her eyes—large, lustrous, almost staring, eyes such as I usually associate with a strongly passionate nature. Or was it a mark of physical or mental disease?

"At night I suffer so. I wake from sleep feeling so oppressed and weak. It seems as if some invisible hand were pressing on my throat and chest. I try to scream—and I can't. Mr. Kennedy, I know there is an antagonistic presence exerting a malign influence about me! I must use my will power to beat it down!"

"Are you sure, Mrs. Garland? It may be merely the state of your health, your nerves."

"But, Mr. Kennedy, I have seen it—hovering about me, not once but many times. I have even gone into a trance and made it materialize. I know what I am talking about." She nodded her head decidedly. "I know it because I have—touched—the ectoplasm!"

Kennedy shot a glance at me. I knew that this was a case he would never lay down, now, until he had carried it through. Ectoplasm was his chief hobby in his study of neo-spiritism.

"Then, Mr. Kennedy," she volunteered, with a smile, "after I am wakened, I cannot get to sleep again. I hear everything. I feel everything. I think I have heard the song of every mosquito on the south shore! I am a patroness of the mosquito extermination commission, now!"

Kennedy smiled with her. He had quite won his way, both on the porch and in the private parlor of the presumptive proprietress of the house, where she undertook to show him some letters from the most eminent psychical researchers in the country to offset the reports of Dr. Newlin. This was, as I learned later, just the opportunity Kennedy had desired.

We left the dining room about fading twilight and for a time sat all together on the wide veranda, a very uncomfortable group. For it was one of those sizzling nights, moonless, and humid. Every once in a while I surreptitiously stole my hand through the back of the old porch rocker in which I sat to pull my wet shirt from my shoulders. I was perspiring down to my feet.

"If this thing—and the weather—don't clear up pretty soon, Murray, I'll be prostrated!"

"Why don't you get a good night's rest, Angela? There's nothing like a rest for worry!"

Angela stood up, a slender, ethereal girl outlined by a quick flash of heat lightning.

Murray had risen. "Brace up, little girl. Our whole future depends on your strength. Kennedy and I are going to look out for you, to-night—and I want you to sleep—dear."

"I'll try, Murray. You are so good! ... Will somebody walk down that long dark hall with me? I wish Tom hadn't told me!"

Murray put his arm about the slender waist. They ascended the old colonial staircase that way and a moment later he rejoined us.

Adjoining rooms and a bath had been assigned to Kennedy, Murray, and myself further down and on the other side of the hall. None of us were in a hurry to disrobe. I stood by the window, trying to capture what little air there was and it seemed as if I had never seen such a dark night.

Suddenly, from the corridor, from the still night outdoors there came a piercing shriek, the shriek of a woman.

"What's that?" demanded Kennedy, leaping from a window seat in our combined living room.

"My God—it's Angela!" blurted Murray, seizing his coat and dashing into the corridor.

Kennedy and I hurried after him. At her door Murray did not even pause to knock. He tried it; it was locked. He looked questioningly at us. Kennedy thrust him aside and with a quick shove and upward push hurled himself at the door.

We could hear a series of shrieks, then a heavy thud as of a body falling against some piece of furniture.

The room was in total darkness. Suddenly another flash of lightning accompanied by distant rumbling thunder lighted it up. We could see Angela lying very still on the floor against a wicker chaise longue near the window.

Murray by this time had lifted up Angela, who clung to him, half conscious, moaning, crying.

Quickly darting in the shadows, across an open space between the shadows of two great oaks, swooping down in wide curves, rising, swirling away, then back in hideous bewilderment was some quickly-flashing, mysteriously dreadful creature.

"Nor nature, either! Some human hand—with a devilish intent—contrived a way to hurt Angela. Never mind—she needs us now more than that bat does. Here—carry her down to her mother's room—at the end of the hall, in the wing."

We laid Angela gently on a couch. Kennedy applied restoratives. Gradually the color came into her cheeks.

"Just keep quiet. You are all right now—safe. It was nothing. Someone tried to frighten you."

"My lights wouldn't work, Murray. That thing—in the room—kept swooping at me—in the dark. I was frightened. I must have fainted. Where did it go?"

"Stay here with her, Murray," whispered Craig. "Don't let her get excited, or get up."

Suddenly the weird creature seemed to swoop as if in desperate agony. It fell—to the earth.

As Kennedy turned it over, trembling, panting, with his foot, we saw that it was indeed a bat, a gigantic bat.

In the office Kennedy paused to scribble on a telegraph blank. "Walter, see that the night clerk gets this over to the telegraph office at once. I'll go back to Angela and Murray."

I read the message. It was to a private investigating agency which Kennedy often used. It gave orders to them to delve into the past of Halleck, together with sufficient information for them to identify him.

When I got back I saw that Kennedy, as physician, had improvised a sort of laboratory in the private bath of Selena Garland. Whatever he had done had worked. For Angela was more like herself.

He glanced hastily at the mirrors to see that we could not be reflected. Then he picked up a small bottle on a glass shelf.

"That's what I'd like to know," he answered laconically, dropping it in his pocket securely corked.

V. — THE EYES HAVE IT

BACK in the city the following morning, whither Kennedy wasted no time in going but took the early train, leaving Murray and Angela to drive back in the car, Craig plunged into work at once in his laboratory where for years he had been gathering nearly everything known to man in the warfare of science against crime.

Just at present it seemed to be the citronella he had taken from the glass shelf in the bath of Selena Garland that interested him most, to the exclusion of everything else. It was not ten minutes before he was surrounded by an array of test tubes and beakers and other mysterious glassware, testing, analyzing, catalyzing, cooking over Bunsen burners at a rate that must have struck terror into the heart of an uninitiated criminal and despair into the brain of the initiated.

I busied myself arranging my notes of the more dramatic high lights of the case against the time when I knew the Star would expect its exclusive story of the crime.

Finally, Kennedy seemed to have gone as far as he could without the aid of time in his analysis.

"What did you take from the Garland House in that big bundle, Craig, the family silver?" I asked, for I had been burning with curiosity, though I knew too well to interrupt him until such time as he had unburdened his mind of the tests he had planned.

"It didn't happen to be the family plate; only the family album and the family Bible."

"Look at that album carefully; only family portraits, it seems. And in five minutes tell me what you have found. I must go back to this distillation."

With that Kennedy resumed his attentive watching of reactions. I started to get acquainted with the whole Garland family. Some of them had been fairly good-looking. But the only beauties were two new photographs of Selena and Angela.

The old hotel man must have been a methodical old duffer and had the time to be so. Each photograph was named and labeled, and you knew the relation to the family of each original. However, as near as I could make out, they were a family of dead ones. It even told where they were interred and when. I thought it was a good idea—if a family must have an album.

By the time I had reached the last portrait, which was a beautiful cabinet of Angela, it dawned on me that there were no pictures of Garland himself, that is, no adult pictures. But there were three vacant spaces, following some pictures evidently taken in baby days and adolescence. I wondered a bit at that.

"Look here, Craig. Where are the old man's pictures? I think there have been some. Whoever took them out has torn the corners of the pockets in which they fit—as if in a hurry."

I felt rather proud of my detective ability and waited for Kennedy's approval. Looking up, I found that he had finished his test, whatever it was, and had been waiting for me.

"It took you some time to find that out, Walter," he smiled. "Yes, they have been taken, and I think if we could only find those photographs we would learn something by a comparison with these cuttings from Murray's negatives that the laboratory has sent me in the mail."

He held up a handful of negative clippings, a few frames in each, and a letter asking if he desired the complete negative rolls.

"You know the spirit photograph fraud of what some of our lecturers call 'the leading psychic photographers' is one of the crudest pieces of trickery that has ever been foisted on a heart-broken and bereaved public. It is the most despicable of all the fraudulent spiritist phenomena."

I was holding a negative film cutting. "First of all," explained Kennedy, "I can find the line of the double exposure. What actually happened must have been that the camera was masked, and roll after roll of the five hundred foot negative stock has been exposed."

"Re-photography of old Garland in his two poses—against black velvet in a shape to coincide with the shape of the mask over the lens. It reminds me of a spirit photograph, a print I was once asked to examine. It showed the screen marks always associated with a half-tone illustration! No photograph had been available for use and the spirit photographer had used a half-tone cut from a book, printed on coated paper. The screen marks betrayed it!"

"Simple. The degree of visibility—or materialization—is determined by the photographer. It's not wise for the spirit face to be too clearly defined. Just a bit out of focus—or a slight movement of the object during exposure will do in a photograph. Or he can move the camera. Either will do with a movie camera, masked. Out of focus is enough, however.

"And they're great fakers. Some say the spirits only affect plates, not films; that the hand camera can't catch them! The trouble is that it is entirely too easy to catch the makers unless they use their own plates and boxes. As to films, how about these? Aren't these 'spirits' stopped, caught on films?"

I was following Kennedy avidly, for I saw a "story" in his remarks. But he did not propose to pause in massing his evidence. "Here's something else. The family record in that Bible has been recently tampered with. There have been some erasures, with a certain chemical I can guess at, and some additions."

"Make some tests with ultraviolet light such as I use sometimes when questioned checks come to me to be examined. But I am working on something far more important just now—the poison, the same I believe, that killed old man Garland."

"What!" I almost jumped. "That's a great story. I thought he committed suicide."

"Just be patient a little while. Selena is being slowly doctored—by the same thing. I am convinced. Only, we'll be able to save her. I intend to return to the Garland House as soon as I can now and give her an antidote."

He turned to his beakers and test tubes. "If I had any doubt, I might delay long enough to make a test on a rabbit or a rat. But I have completed my chemical analysis of that citronella. If you care to look through this new quartz lens spectroscope to check up on it, I suppose I could take time to explain to you what you are looking at——"

"Yes. But properly used scopolamine, hyoscine, all these things can be made a deadly poison, too—mydriatic alkaloids, they are called. One of the most obvious effects is on the eyes. They make the eyes expanding and bulging, sometimes almost like that disease exophthalmic goiter, eyes that might make one look and seem demented. You remember everyone gossiped about the look in old Garland's eyes? You saw Selena's eyes, yourself. If you ask me to vote on the subject I would say that the eyes have it!"

I was astounded, speechless. Old Garland had actually been poisoned—not a suicide. Might it be that Selena was not only being poisoned, but her mind affected?

"Run over to the studio while I'm preparing the antidote and getting ready," asked Kennedy. "See what is going on and bring Murray back with you."

While I waited for Murray, who had come in alone, leaving Angela out there with her mother, I chatted with a camera man I had met before. Halleck was about, but I did not see Lois.

It did not take long for me to sense that there had been some gossip at the studio. Studios are gossipy places. One must walk the chalk mark, guard every look and word and gesture. It is easy to be misinterpreted. It is a matter of being as quiet as an oyster or bestowing smiles and favors on all alike.

"Well, we're all nutty I must admit, with so much, funny business going on—but that's no reason why Halleck, who is supposed to be guarding the sets and the company's interests, needs to be locked in here with Lois!"

The camera man laughed. "I wouldn't mind being locked up with her, that's a fact. But—well, I'm jealous—not of Hal—I'm jealous of the reputation of the movies. Foolish monkey-business that you find among some bankers—and some parsons for that matter—well, when it's found it's overlooked and forgotten. But it's remembered for all time when it's connected with the movies. It ain't fair—and it ain't fair to give 'em a chance to say things!"

I agreed with him and as Murray was ready, we rode over to the laboratory again.

"I've telephoned Peconic that we'll be out. Angela didn't come in with you, did she? I've asked Selena to give me a séance, and I've made arrangements to have Lurie and Newlin there, too. Think up some excuse. I want to take Halleck and Lois out." Kennedy briefly outlined to Murray his discoveries, especially of the scopolamine in the citronella. "And, under cover of the séance, also, I want to give Selena an antidote."

"Yes. I just got a report on your tech." Kennedy waved a tissue flimsy, such as I knew he received often from his investigating agent. "Halleck seems to be somewhat of a drifter. I learn that in the early days he was a barker at side shows and in a dime museum, then took up an act himself, some cheap magic, I suppose. Later, he drifted into the odd-lots, the back-lots, of Wall Street, and was a barker for a gigantic fake in a small way, the old get-rich-quick wireless stock selling, harpooning the suckers. Then came selling movie stock—and here he is making pictures."

CHAPTER VI. — ECTOPLASM

AT the old Garland House again we found Lurie in the parlor talking with Selena and explaining with great patience to the feminine mind the law's delays. He was making a great effort to be legally fair and disinterested.

Dr. Newlin arrived shortly after us and the moment I saw him in the presence of Selena I felt that there was something quite antagonistic between the two. I felt it in a remark he made shortly after his arrival.

"I've always said that every woman believes that if she had half a chance she'd make a great medium or a great actress!"

Murray and Halleck, with the cares of the picture company on them, had stuck rather closely on the journey. Kennedy had been aloof. That left Lois to me, and I had not been averse to accepting her companionship.

I thought Selena Garland a handsome woman when I first met her, even though she had been ill and distraite, tortured with harassing fears, and not inclined to enter into the activities of life about her. But to-day she was beautiful. I wondered at it.

"Doing it on nerves," whispered Kennedy when I made a remark aside. "Wait for the slump afterwards."

Angela came running down the long porch with a smile for all of us. She was just a child and I marveled at all she had gone through in her short life. Her disposition was mercurial; down in the depths one minute, up in the skies the next. I reflected that it was a fortunate thing for her. Angela stood by her mother talking to us, but it was evident that Selena was the field marshal that day.

She was gowned in a flowing white dress, accentuating the whiteness of her hair. Her big dark eyes sparkled and her black lashes and eyebrows set off the vividness of the color now in her cheeks.

"Would you care for a bite to eat first, Mr. Kennedy? I never dine before a séance, but I don't want to punish anyone else."

"Well, then, come with me. I am going to hold this séance in a room away from the noises of the road and service end of the house. To concentrate and have a successful séance there must be quiet and a feeling or desire to assist—rather than antagonize." She did not even glance at Dr. Newlin, but Kennedy did. "Please don't be sceptical." She smiled a bit in my direction.

The room was dark, and a heavy odor of incense hung in it. Dark curtains were drawn at the windows. The atmosphere was a bit tempered from the heat outside by reason of its very dimness. It was a quite cheerless room, too. In the corner, I recall, was an old-fashioned square piano, with some music opened in a rack.

"Angela, dear, I want you to play some sacred music for me. I have picked out what I want and the order in which I want it."

Angela nodded obediently and took her place at the piano. I felt that already something in the atmosphere curbed her rebellious young soul.

"Mr. Kennedy, I want the gentlemen to sit so that you all can see my chair and my person from all sides. I want to show you the simple honesty of my manifestations."

Kennedy bowed and placed Murray and myself in back of her, with Halleck to the other side of me. He took up a place in front between Dr. Newlin and the lawyer. As we disposed ourselves I saw that Lois seemed to gravitate toward Halleck, and take a position that brought her between him and Lurie, but nearer him.

Selena was talking about trumpet séances and cabinet manifestations, but was reticent about what form she expected this to take.

Seating herself in a little low rocker she leaned back and, closing her eyes, relaxed. Her features, as nearly as I could make out straining my eyes in the artificial darkness, became pinched, finally, and her face quite white. It looked almost as if her soul had fled on some ethereal journey to the nether world.

"Play 'Nearer My God to Thee,' Angela. My control wants something sacred. The Influences I feel would like you all to sing the hymn if you will."

It was rather odd sitting there in the dark, listening to Murray singing an earnest bass, Kennedy obligingly in the tenor, Angela betraying a soprano accomplishment I did not know she possessed. Her voice was one of the sweetest I have ever heard, only it needed training. Lurie's music was more a deep growl. Newlin declined even to move his lips. Lois, as I expected, swung a wicked alto. I followed with a gentle humming, sticking to the air and accentuating a syllable when I was sure of myself. It had been a long time since I had sung that hymn.

Mrs. Garland's hands began to rub the arm of the chair aimlessly. She was now going under the trance. Her respiration seemed difficult. She looked as if she were in great physical distress.

The mystery began to get under my skin. I could get nothing from Kennedy's face. It was immobile and betrayed nothing. Murray sat with his mouth open. If any of the others felt nervous, they were at successful pains to hide it.

"There is someone here who must beware of evil! My little Priscilla doesn't make it quite clear ... who it is ... oh, yes.... very muddled, as if there might be more than one. Mr. Kennedy, she is trying to indicate you ... Angela, too ... I can't make it out ... oh, but Priscilla, I am trying so hard! ... so hard to get it over! ...

"Someone else is here, too. Someone wants to come to the meeting to convince the world that those in the spirit world can materialize and make themselves known.... Now ... very slow music Angela!"

Selena paused. "Heavens!" ran through my mind, "Angela's playing the 'Dead March'!"

From somewhere I felt cold winds blowing about me. I could have sworn something touched my back. I wished they would lay off fanning my ankles. Murray must have been getting cold, too. Or was it nervous? He was pulling his coat together. Kennedy did nothing but look, staring, staring into empty blackness over Selena's head, staring until by a sort of hypnotism he had the others staring. I shivered. What was this hanging over my head—fine or superfine?

I almost leaped out of my chair when, out of the tail of my eye, I saw—or did I fancy it?—rising from behind Mrs. Garland, almost beside me, a cloud-like vapor. I was on edge. I could have sworn it had begun to assume the shape of a human being! What was it I saw? I don't know—frankly.

I heard a stifled cry, a crash of music—most discordant sounds. Angela had swooned across the keyboard.

Kennedy sprang up and seized a glass of water on the piano, as Murray leaped toward Angela. I knew that as Craig turned away quickly he slipped the antidote in the glass.

"It must have been the ... the ectoplasm!" Newlin was almost trembling with nervous tension and his words stuttered.

Kennedy coolly switched on the lights. "Yes," he said pointedly. "Some of your researchers have suggested a mysterious force; others an ethereal substance. The struggle to obtain harmony gave birth to a combination of the two theories and the present 'ectoplasm' theory of spirit manifestations. Do you believe that ectoplasm is a plasma of psychic origin extruding from the medium?"

"Stanley de Brathe, who translated Geley, says that analysis of so-called ectoplasm shows the contents to be at least fifty per cent water, some sulphur and albumin. He gives the formula as something resembling C₁₂₀ H₁₁₃₄ N₂₁₅ S₅ O₂₄₉. This formula is not so unfamiliar to the chemist—but he won't call it ectoplasm. I read that a Polish scientist has ectoplasm analyses showing the contents as fats and human cellular matter, and the appearance like that of well-beaten white of egg.

"Do you know the French Society found Marthe's ectoplasm nothing more supernatural than gossamer veiling and a disgusting mess of regurgitated albuminoid matter? Investigation of Neilson in Norway showed that his ectoplasm was nothing more than shreds of silk gauze which he alternately swallowed and regurgitated? Ask some of my friends in the magicians' society of the wonderful tricks of swallowing and regurgitation. Come to my laboratory some day, and I will have present the greatest of all of them. The tricks he will do will put to shame the best your ectoplasm fakers have ever offered—and he makes no supernatural claims."

A telephone call that a client was waiting at his office tore Lurie loose from the society of Lois. Newlin was eager to depart, with a venomous side glance at Selena and a wholesome avoidance of Kennedy.

Angela had long since recovered and was with Murray. Lois excused herself to go to her room, and Halleck remarked that, as long as he was here, he felt that he ought to give orders for getting the house boat ready for the next group of exteriors.

As for me, I was trying to figure it all out. Had Kennedy staged the séance solely to impress Newlin with the futility of all such phenomena?

CHAPTER VII. — MYSTERY WAVES

KENNEDY, Angela, and myself were in a secluded angle of the hotel parlor when the black butler, Tom, almost ashen and with thick lips that refused to remain in repose, shuffled up.

"Dey's somethin'—wrong—about dis yere house, Missy," he stammered. "I done heard 'em an' seed 'em at night—but dis yere's de fust time I ever hearn tell o' daylight spooks!"

"Ever sence you-all done come out o' dat sperrit room, dey's been de rappingest noises."

"Lawdamassy—No!" Tom had no sense of humor or of curiosity, either, as to the future life.

I didn't blame Angela for thinking it was eerie, or for being provoked with her mother for not leaving it. While I didn't normally believe in the supernatural, it must have been disquieting to a young and emotional girl capable "of portraying emotions so successfully.

"I think somebody is trying to discourage us from coming out to Garland House," countered Craig.

"They haven't studied the psychology of your mind, then, or of mine, either, for that matter. I want to find out what is doing this minute."

At that moment we did actually hear a strange metallic noise from the direction of the cellar. Tom's knees knocked.

"Stay here, Angela," directed Kennedy—then to me, as we got out of the room, "Don't go down from the inside. Let us see if we can find an entrance from the outside."

We cautiously tiptoed off the porch, hoping that no one would hear us. Keeping close to the house Kennedy finally halted, stooped over and gently felt of a cellar window. It was locked.

Another window was locked also. But he kept going until finally he came to a window open, with even no screen. He looked at it skeptically.

"It looks too easy—more like a plant. But I'm going in anyhow. Stay here and watch."

Needless to say he had not been thirty seconds in the cellar before I was in, too. I could never have let him go alone.

"Yes," he whispered back. "Keep with me. I was waiting to see if you would follow. I didn't want to make a mistake—with too many of us down here—after it—whatever it is!"

It was pitch dark and that part of the cellar had never been concreted. It smelled damp and unwholesome as a wet cellar by the salt water always smells.

It sounded like steps, careful steps coming down. We waited, but could see nothing. The ghostly tread stopped.

Suddenly I walked into a bunch of cobwebs hanging from a beam. It brushed my neck above the collar. I jumped, a tense example of goose-flesh. I thought it was something inhuman.

"It's coming nearer, Craig," I whispered. The ghostly steps in the other end of the cellar had resumed. "I'm ready to grapple IT—if I can!"

I was on my toes. What did it mean? Would we know now who was at the bottom of the whole affair?

Nearer and nearer—very uncertain steps, too. There was a clang! from the other part of the cellar.

Craig bent over near me and grabbed a shadowy form now faintly visible in the darkness. A scream—Angela's! "Help-p!"

"Angela—it's I—Kennedy. Don't be alarmed. We heard noises, thought we were following them."

"I wouldn't do it, again if I were you. There's no use walking into danger. You may not always be grabbed by friendly enemies!"

I fancied I heard hurried footfalls and a window carefully closed. Kennedy slipped away, leaving me to guard Angela. A moment later I fancied I heard the crunching of broken stone on a walk followed by the distant starting of a motor.

"Well, they've gone—whoever they were," reported Kennedy, appearing noiselessly from nowhere.

"And I'm afraid I spoiled your scheme to find out who it was. Please don't say, 'Just like a woman,' when we get out."

Getting out of the cellar involved no such fantastic terror as getting in. Perhaps I was too absorbed by the new problem. We had heard two noises. One had been caused by Angela. Who else had been down there—and why?

As we passed the hotel office a clerk who had been sorting mail handed Angela quite an accumulation.

"Letters from film fans?" asked Kennedy as she drew aside by a wicker table and began opening them.

"N-no," she replied with a puzzled look. "They seem to be from radio fans. I remember once when I broadcasted from WJZ my mail was cluttered up for days with hundreds of letters.... But this is different. Amateur radio fans must have been picking up those slanderous things we heard over the ... the spirit wireless ... and they're writing letters to know if it's all true. Good grief, Mr. Kennedy! Can't something be done to stop it? If this goes on, I shall be ruined with my public!"

Kennedy glanced hastily over the letters. "H'm—seems that a great proportion of them are from local fans—some even tell about their sets—a lot of crystal detectors—those won't pick up broadcasting from any great distance, ordinarily."

"That's what I'd like to know myself. Suppose you stay here with your mother; she looked decidedly ill when I helped her to her rooms after the séance. Walter and I will stroll over to the bay and see if we can dig up Halleck."

"Pretty complete looking craft," remarked Kennedy from the stern as we drew near it. "Even equipped with wireless."

I paused rowing, turned and observed that there were antennae on the boat, then resumed at the oars, thinking it over.

We shouted ahoy as we approached, but there was no answer. Even after we climbed aboard it was evident that there was no trace of Halleck. Uninvited and unimpeded we explored the Sea Vamp and soon found it a most comfortable house boat of seven rooms and bath, with its own motive power. Kennedy located the radio sending and receiving set, rather a good one, and began examining it.

It did not take me a minute to deduce that when the company was working out here, they used the rooms in the Sea Vamp as dressing rooms. I nosed from one to another, still hoping to find Halleck.

"I didn't find Halleck," I reported, now full of excitement, to Kennedy, "but I did find the dressing room that Lois probably uses. Look—in a pocket of a sport sweater, hers of course, I came across this."

On the other side was written: "Riverview 1275 Apt. J," and after it "$125 per m.," "4R & B."

Craig seemed quite like a good hound on a scent. "Row me back to shore, Walter, quick. We'll get to the first public telephone that has a booth. I'll take the Carter side; you call Riverview."

I finished my call much sooner than Craig with his, and emerged so excited from the booth that I totally forgot the great beads of perspiration standing on my forehead.

"Miss Lois Gregory," I asked on a venture, as the voice of a colored hall-boy evidently came back to me.

Kennedy's face was a study as he came from his booth. "Craig," I exclaimed, "Lois is really the secret wife of Halleck—or something. That's their apartment!"

"So?" He seemed rapidly adding two and two. "I called Carter & Carter—as Halleck. He must have called them since he was out here. That disarmed them. The clerk told me the papers were drawn and they had received the portrait of Ezekiel Garland."

"Yes; don't you get it? There were two poses of John Garland in the spirit movies. What was the third portrait missing from the family album? Uncle Ezekiel? And then the erasure in the family Bible. My ultraviolet light test showed me a change of date of the death of Ezekiel—ten years added to the date."

"Oh, Walter! Can't you see? Halleck was getting ready to put in a claim that he is the long-lost nephew of John Garland—hence the sole heir."

CHAPTER VIII. — THE DEAD HAND

SELENA was really ill from the excitement of the séance and the weakening of the drug that had been breathed in the vapor of the citronella, if not also in other ways we did not yet know.

"Who's her physician?" asked Kennedy of Angela. "I saw the name of Dr. Newlin on some prescriptions in the medicine closet."

Angela shook her head. "They must have been for old Mr. Garland. No, mother has Dr. Wright."

Dr. Wright, taken into Kennedy's confidence, was not inclined to mimimize the seriousness of the case. However, Mrs. Garland was at last made easy, but the consequence was that we were all up rather later than we would have been otherwise.

"This porch looks like the dickens," remarked Angela as we gathered at a corner, now that her mother was assured to be out of danger. "I wonder if Tom is up yet. I'm going to call him, before the Garland ghost moves things about again for us. He can get us something to drink and straighten things out. Oh—no more bats or bogie-men—to-night!"

Murray was alone with us and we had our first chance to talk quietly over what had happened and had been discovered. Lois was not there; nor was Halleck.

Angela had not gone twenty feet from us, however, when I saw her stop and draw in her breath quickly. Then she ran over to the rail of the porch and leaned over, still breathing deeply. She sped down toward the service end.

Craig, Murray, and I scattered about to see if we could locate any fire. Suddenly, as we ran down from the porch, we could see smoke rolling out of the cellar in vast clouds under the wing where Selena's apartments were.

"I'll telephone the fire house!" shouted Murray, leaping back toward the little office.

Angela ran into the house before anyone could stop her and I followed. In a few seconds I was with her on the top landing. Already there was thick stifle all about us. Half leading, half dragging her mother, we managed to get her down the stairs.

Servants were running up and down now, hugging their most precious belongings in their arms.

The bellowing, shrieking, alarming siren at the power house blasted the echoes. It was not far, and we knew that it would not be many minutes before the volunteer fire apparatus would respond, for the fire company was the pride of the county at the tournaments.

Angela was everywhere. She had brought her mother out on the lawn. Now she ran back to the office. Books, papers, documents, everything she could carry, she heaped in her arms. The safe was closed.

For a few minutes it looked as if the fire might take the whole house. We heard the clanging of bells and the shouts of men as the fire apparatus came speeding, cut-outs wide, up the roadway.

"Kennedy, I take my hat off to these buffs—they are on the job! It hasn't been ten minutes since Murray phoned and here they are!"

I had been carrying out whatever Angela suggested. Kennedy had been making Selena comfortable and looking after her.

Soon we had more help than we needed. As the news spread that the famous old inn was burning, everybody who owned a car from a flivver to a Rolls hustled to the scene. One good fire makes the whole world akin.

Besides, they were all rather proud of the firemen, some of whom were themselves. And they were certainly efficient. It didn't take long before two good streams of water were playing on the house and another in the cellar. The water pressure was good and the firemen had the blaze under control quicker than I would have imagined possible outside of the city.

There was an air of relief. The crowd began to take on the look of a reception. Between Craig and Murray they managed to keep most of them away from Mrs. Garland's corner.

Destruction of the Garland House had been threatened—but the destruction had not been quick enough.

I saw that he was making for the window through which we had made our entrance but not our exit. The smoke was clearing a bit and he flashed his pocket searchlight down in carefully. Then he dropped through and I followed.

Groping, stumbling, choking, and coughing, he made his way in the direction he had disappeared when he had left Angela and myself standing alone in the blackness that afternoon. We could see that the fire had burned more there. Even the old lally posts were weakened.

A few feet ahead of us in the billowing smoke clouds lay a body of a man, a charred body.

"What's all that stuff around him—leather and rope—burnt?" I muttered, bending over also.

"Caught in a trap—the thing I moved from one window, where I was supposed to come in,—to the other where I heard him get out!"

"I think so. Anyhow—there must have been another with him to-night. There's the remains of some scientific incendiary contraption that that stream of water must have saved for us. So—we were to have more ghostly rappings—I was to investigate—get caught—destroyed—perhaps Selena Garland destroyed, too!"

"No. Events have been moving too fast for them. Yes—I believe there was another—who saw a chance—in the accidental miscarriage—to get rid of an accuser!"

As I gazed at Halleck's charred but recognizable face I began to find answers to questions that had been puzzling me for two days. Who was it had stolen, exposed, and replaced the negative, ready to perpetrate the spirit film hoax? Who but Hal-leek? What of the wireless? Kennedy's hurried words recurred: "I believe there was another—saw a chance—to get rid of an accuser!"

I felt in my pocket. There still was the card I had taken from the sport sweater in the houseboat. Quickly now Kennedy gave the alarm.

"Thank the stars, Mrs. Garland, you are fully covered by insurance," Lurie remarked as we approached.

With much dry-washing of his hands, he declared his belief that the townspeople had been deceived and asserted that as for himself he intended to urge the surrogate to admit the will to probate without any further delay.

Word seemed to have got about of the séance during the afternoon and Murray had been unable to keep the people from crowding about Mrs. Garland.

"But, Newlin," I heard one local wiseacre, "I can't see how you can say one set of these things is a fake—and then that another bunch of stuff like spirit movies and ghosts speaking over radio is true!"

Dr. Newlin looked as if he would have liked to escape by asserting he had been either hypnotized or hoaxed when he said that any psychic phenomena were genuine.

Newlin looked about. Angela seemed to have the crowd with her. "I don't believe she ever faked a séance!" he replied, weakly.

I looked about for Lois, as Kennedy interrupted and announced our finding the body of Halleck.

Still my one-track mind was thinking of his words: "I believe there was another—saw a chance—to get rid of an accuser!"

"Now, here, folks," boomed a deep voice, "I'm constable! See? You keep back until the coroner sees that body of Halleck—get me?" The local police force brandished his automatic to enforce the scientific detective spirit of Peconic law.

Something from a window above our heads hurtled through the air and fell with a thud on the turf.

Under the headlights' streaming rays on the lawn lay something, white, motionless.

I picked up a sheet of paper. My hand shook. For I knew it must tell the story, a dead hand reaching forth to shake an accusing finger at the living!

CHAPTER IX. — THE MIND-MASTER

KENNEDY seized the note as I handed it to him and read the hasty scrawl in a vertical, angular woman's hand:

I played to win a fortune. Now that it is lost, I am lost. I have nothing to live for except disgrace and punishment. Let this be a lesson to all girls who are tempted as I have been tempted.

My husband, Hal Halleck, was in reality the tool of the real master-mind—playing his part for a price, as I played my part, blinded by the glitter of money. I guess I never loved Hal much, or I wouldn't have been dragged into it. The wiser we are the harder we fall.

It was Hal who stole and double-exposed the negative raw stock at the studio. He had duplicate keys to the dark room and knew the combination of the film vault in the studio.

Dr. Newlin is in reality merely a credulous psychic researcher, a poor dupe of this mind-master, who holds a mortgage over his property out here in Bayhead. In my opinion the mortgage made him a hypocrite, but I try to be charitable.

This mind-master used Selena Arnold, then sought to fasten the crime on her and discredit her, ruin her reputation—even Angela's, if necessary—anything to shift the guilt on someone who, though innocent, might be made to look like a fraud.

It was this mind-master who really poisoned old Garland, after the marriage, then caused the local gossip when he sought to have the will broken.

His plan was to have my husband, Hal, pose as nephew and heir to Garland. He stole the photograph of Ezekiel Garland which is now with some attorneys down in Wall Street; also two photographs of John Garland which my husband used for the double exposure work.

Once with the fortune in Hal's hands, he proposed to gouge it out of Hal as an impostor. He forced me into it. I was fool enough to listen when he promised to get me a divorce so that he could marry me and settle a fortune on me.

Since Mr. Kennedy came into the case he has feared Hal would spill the story. Now that he has made away with Hal in a trap that was to catch Mr. Kennedy, I fear the same fate as poor Hal!

Kennedy paused in his reading. Selena turned slowly to her daughter. "Then, Angela, Lois was nothing but an adventuress! The estate is really mine!"

Angela said not a word. In death even the bitterness of jealousy was wiped away, as she looked at the broken, white form on the grass. Murray's arm stole about her as she turned to him.

"Just a moment!" I saw that Kennedy had moved over to the local constable and that the two were shouldering their way through the crowd toward a figure that was slinking off in the darkness. "Just a moment. There's another paragraph! The mind-master is James Lurie, secret owner of the Sea Vamp, from which he broadcasted the radio slander messages! I think we'll put you in jail, Lurie, and let you fight your way out—if you can!"

BURIED ALIVE!

CHAPTER I. — BAUBLES AND RUBLES

"IT is a good thing my parts are tragedies, or I could not act! Ah, Mr. Kennedy, it is terrible. I am so worried I cannot sleep, I cannot eat."

Olga Olanoff, the little Russian dancer, was pacing up and down the length of the laboratory, her brown eyes snapping, her hands in constant motion, every movement one of grace and intensity of feeling.

"I am so angry—I am so frightened—I am just myself as I am in those parts—the poor queen with someone after her head—only with me it is these jewels instead of my head!"

"We are here in America with the crown jewels of the Romanoffs—some of them—to be sold to American millionaires to restore the Russian ruble," explained the man who accompanied her. He had already introduced himself as Alexis Moskowitch, representative of the Soviet Crown Jewels Committee. "You must know that we have arranged at the American Gallery a great auction on the fifteenth. To-day is only the second of the month. But there have already been two attempts to steal these jewels of fabulous wealth! It is not the duty of Olga to guard them; that is mine. Her duty is the propaganda in the Muscovite Theatre. But Olga feels the responsibility so much since we were married in Paris that she had made me come to you, Mr. Kennedy, with her."

The eyes of Alexis, as he spoke in faultless English, had followed every action of his wife, with unconcealed admiration. For Olga Olanoff was a tiny creature, white-skinned, dark brown of eyes, eyes that could sparkle and glow one minute with fun and life and in the next portray the somberness and melancholy of the peasant land that was striving blindly upward toward the stars.

Her slenderness was almost emaciation, her ankles the slimmest I have ever seen, and the most active. All her life she had danced in the schools and the theatres of Russia, but she was versatile; she had adopted the speaking part of the stage as well as that of the dance and pantomime.

"In London yesterday," pursued Moskowitch, as Olga listened with large eyes raptly, ardently bent upon him, "you could buy twenty million Russian rubles in paper for one American paper dollar." He smiled back at her, then to Kennedy he conceded, "That shows a difference in paper. Before the war, those twenty million rubles were worth ten million dollars in gold. Think—twenty million rubles—one American dollar."

"Yes," nodded Kennedy. "I am told by Chaliapin, who is both a great actor and a great singer, that he worked for twenty-five years, lived economically, and saved three million rubles, worth a million and a half dollars in gold. I believe his plan was to establish a school in which young men and women of talent could be made into great artists, where he might live in his old age surrounded by the youth that he so generously encouraged. But he was an artist; not a business man. He kept his money in Russian rubles. Now his fortune, once worth a million and a half of our gold dollars, would be worth, according to your quotation, in actual money less than twenty cents. You could not start a school of music on that!"

I thought that Kennedy was about to launch into a lecture of warning, how the Russian ruble proved to those who planned a new world that there was nothing theoretical about money, but, instead, he merely asked, "Why do you come to me? Are you afraid?"

Olga answered like a flash. "Already they have come for those jewels twice—twice—and nearly got them each time."

Kennedy considered the inflection, rather than the words. "Do you suspect anyone?" he questioned quickly. Olga shrugged.

"Coming over on the boat," she answered, "there was Mr. Slade, the banker. He was friendly, too friendly for the comfort of my Alexis. He sit near me on the deck all the time he can. When we arrange a concert and I sing, then he is near me. I am so weary of him—talk of the jewels, what they are, the value, the price of them. Even he ask where we keep them—as if I would tell him all!" Another shrug and a derisive look conveyed the impression that the banker had made.

As for me, I had been all ears from the first. Only yesterday Clare Kellard, the writer and artist, had come into the Star. She had told the managing editor that she was temporarily laying aside work on her book of her experiences during her year in Russia and wanted to write for us a story about the efforts of emissaries of the Romanoffs in America to get back the jewels. She had hinted at the presence in America of Prince Vladimir and the fact that Cromwell Slade, frequent spokesman for the American international bankers, had shown such friendliness with Vladimir in consulting him as to the value of various objects in the collection of jewels now for sale.

Miss Kellard had accompanied her dark hint of Romanoff intrigue with an even darker hint: "You know Cromwell Slade himself and his friends bought millions of Russian bonds that are now worthless." She had not said as much, but the implication was plain that either by plotting for a return of the Romanoffs, or in some other way, Slade and others might be eager to recoup.

I managed to get into the other room of the laboratory with the door shut and whisper a call to the office, "I think I have the inside on the Russian crown jewel story!"

"Clare Kellard is in the office now," came back word from the managing editor. "I am sending her up!" He had hung up before I could object; and afterward I could see no reason to stop it. If Kennedy were to take the case he would need all the information he could get from every angle.

"We are staying at the beautiful Long Island home of Mr. John Brock Lord," I heard Alexis tell as I returned to the room.

Brock Lord, the radical son of a rather wealthy radical father, I knew, had put up his estate as bond for "Big Bill" Williams, the agitator. Williams had jumped his bail and fled—supposedly to Russia. The Brock Lord estate was about to be taken on the forfeited bond. Brock Lord could not save it himself; nor had the other more or less parlor radicals either the money or the disposition to save it for him.

"Some of the jewels we have sold at the price we have set and the money is in the bank," continued Moskowitch. "Mr. Lord's house is out there where your wealthy people all have estates. We are selling others to them. The rest will be put up at the auction. Meanwhile, they are all insured in the International Burglary Insurance Company."

Olga had been waiting impatiently for him to finish. "Even when we reached Mr. Lord's house," she broke in, "Mr. Slade made a call on me the first day. I made Alexis stay in the room with us." Then, with a lowering of the brow and her body swaying with anger, she vehemently exclaimed, "And that night they came—I do not know who—they got away—but they killed one of my beautiful wolfhounds, Nikky."

I nodded for him. "Yes, Adam Stein, organizer of a secret syndicate, it is said, of wealthy and powerful Jewish bankers, who lent money to Japan during the war in the Far East and later backed the revolution in Russia after the massacres of Jews continued—then backed the Soviet revolution. They say that Stein is quite eager, now, for trade favors, in return."

I glanced at Moskowitch, but Olga answered, "Yes, he is very wealthy here in America, I am told. He has given the Soviet much—but lately he has stopped his support. I do not know why. But now—every day he sends me flowers, very beautiful, very costly, always sent to the 'Wonder Woman,' he calls me. Last week he send me a beautiful bracelet of diamonds and platinum. I like it—but I send it back—for Alexis.

"It make no difference. He call to see us at Mr. Lord's house. Now I think the whole thing was to introduce the subject of jewels. He wanted to see them; he said he know where on Fifth Avenue a dealer would buy all, without doubt. We show them to him, then put them back in the big safe where our servant Dmitri guard day and night: ... That night, also, someone try to break into the house. But we have a guard outside, now. This guard frightened them away, whoever they were, but did not see. Now ... after these visits, each time, an attempt to rob. I want to know ... what is matter with our friends?"

Before Kennedy was aware of her intention, Olga had started across the room. Gently she took his hand. "Ah, Mr. Kennedy, I have hear so much of you and your honest work. You will help me; you will help my Alexis—to save the jewels for our Soviet?" The fires of patriotism glowed in her soul through her eyes.

Alexis whispered. "She is never still, always doing something for her beloved people, something for her Russia. Just as she is in personality, so she is in her work—more—more—more!" The Soviet representative threw out his hands to convey to me the idea of the marvel to him of her expansive personality and service.

"Why, Olga—of all things!—to see you here! I thought you were out at Lord's."

It was Clare Kellard who had come in. I greeted her and found to my surprise that introduction was needed to no one but Craig.

Olga's cordiality was not very manifest. I saw in her something of the same manner I had seen when she spoke of Slade and Stein. Could it be that when one goes to see about the protection of a treasure, it is not conducive to meet one you suspect of having designs upon it in some way?

"Judging by their opinion of him down on the Star Mr. Kennedy is a producer of shows—yes," nodded Clare rather pointedly. "By the way, I saw a friend of yours last night, Olga, Prince Vladimir. He raved over you and the idea of the Muscovite Theatre." Clare seemed thoroughly to enjoy the thrust.

I saw that I had make a mistake. If the two interviews were to be conducted, they would have to be carried on separately. Olga and Alexis saved the embarrassment by rising to go. Kennedy and the two held a hurried whispered conference by the door as I stood with Clare.

"If they are stolen," I heard Olga at last, "I will be disgraced.... So, I invite you and Mr. Jameson to come to me, as it is said in Russian."

She nodded and I saw that Kennedy had agreed to go out to the Lord mansion and look the situation over that night.

"If you are going out on Long Island," remarked Clare as the door closed, "I think we may postpone whatever we also have to say. I have an appointment with my publishers downtown. You see, I am living at the Brock Lord house while I am finishing the manuscript and the drawings for my book."

Neither Kennedy nor I said anything of the rather evident hostility of the two women. Craig chatted a few moments about Russia with Clare, then as she moved to the door, he grasped the doorknob to let her out.

As he flung the door open, we were surprised to see a stranger standing in the hall, very close to the door.

"Ah, I was about to knock," he bowed hastily. "But I can wait." He stood aside, then, as Clare left, entered.

He waited until the outside door of the laboratory building had slammed, then slowly and deliberately ignored Kennedy's glance of inquiry by asking a question himself.

"You know that there have already been two attempts at robbery out there at the Brock Lord place?"

"Well, sir, who are you?" Craig demanded. The man smiled, reached for a card case, drew out a card and laid it before us:

GASTON BARKER,
Special Representative of the
International Burglary Insurance Company.

"Just a polite camouflage for the fact that I am a detective for the company in which the Romanoff jewels have been insured against theft. If you decide to take up the matter, I may be of some assistance to you."

"But how is it that you happen along just at this moment?" queried Kennedy, a bit perplexed at the coincidence. "Of course I appreciate your coming clean to the extent you have. But it—seems somewhat—well, Russian, to say the least, to have you come in so soon after my two visits."

Barker smiled easily again. There was a sort of patronizing air about him, as of a professional to even a distinguished amateur.

"Well, you see, I am watching all those who have any connection with the jewels.... Just now I am running down a story that has just come to us. There is a scandal, it seems, about this Olga Olanoff. The story we get is that Prince Vladimir was infatuated with her in Petrograd during the late days of the war, that he used his power to force her to become his secret mistress. Now that his estates are gone, with only a title remaining, he is a soldier of fortune—I may say, reduced to parasiting. Her husband, this Moskowitch, is known as a very violent man. If he knew that she had concealed this scandal ... well, do we know that she might not still be herself infatuated with this Vladimir? He is a handsome chap. In other words, I am tangled in a mess of this Russian intrigue and blackmail—until I am crazy!"

Much as it seemed to go against Barker's professional grain, he was at last in the open. His attitude became one of frankly asking concealed co-operation.

"If, as you say, you are in the neighborhood of the Lord mansion much at night," agreed Kennedy as we parted, "I would be pleased to arrange a code of signals between us, in case either of us should need the help of the other."

"Done!" exclaimed Barker eagerly, adding, "As soon as you have looked the ground over!"

CHAPTER II. — THE SLEEPMAKER

SET in the midst of some eight or ten acres at an intersection of two state roads in the fashionable North Shore Hunt Club section of Westley Hills, the Brock Lord place was imposing. But the most intriguing feature of it to me as we came up the winding driveway was the low, rambling, weathered-shingle house surrounded by copses of evergreens, I felt that its somber color, its shadows from the trees and shrubbery, its distance from either highroad, had an atmosphere of intrigue, intrigue on no petty scale.

Brock Lord was one of those slender young men who will never grow old, if growing old means becoming impervious to new radical ideas. He was the type, from his Adam's apple to his pearl gray spats. Grandfather Lord had amassed a fortune, trading on the boom that had followed the Civil War, and clinched it by cash lending at terrific rates in the panic that followed. His son, Beecher, had promptly gone to the other extreme and, instead of increasing the fortune, had taken up agitation where the Garrisons and John Browns had left off. The son, in such an atmosphere, had gone the next step further—with the result that the old American adage was in all likelihood of being lived up to. Three generations would see a shirt-sleeved Wall Street represented by a shirt-sleeved parlor-radical precariously trading on the loss of a fortune for the "Cause."

Olga and Moskowitch welcomed us with a significant look of caution, and at once Moskowitch began a most dignified and courteous sales talk about the jewels.

As we were led into the library and introduced to Brock Lord, I saw why this was done. There was Slade, a stocky, gray-eyed man of early middle-age and Prince Vladimir, a tall, striking, dark-bearded, polished Russian, with the polish that had distinguished Paris, Petrograd, the Riviera, and Monte Carlo in the generation before the Red debacle of aristocracy.

The jewels were on exhibition again in the library and Slade was intently discussing, consulting, noting all that Vladimir said of them so smoothly. Back of the huge Jacobean oak table on which they were set forth, I saw the heavy safe in which they were kept when not on view to society and, standing between the safe and the jewels, with bright little ferret-eyes, under bushy brows and hair and beard even more bushy, stood Dmitri, the type of Russian who had faithfully made the Little Father safe until the debacle and will make the world unsafe for those in his path some day when an uprise shall follow the downfall. I knew that these jewels were guarded with the life of Dmitri.

A glimpse of them was astounding. Never, even in the vault of a famous jewel dealer, had I seen the equal of these remnants of the Russian crown jewels, the priceless heirlooms of the Romanoffs, with history more romantic than the Arabian Nights tales, soon to be disposed of by the Soviet treasury to aid the stabilization of the ruble.

In the center was the imperial Russian crown, which weighed over four pounds and contained the world's largest ruby, together with fifty thirty-carat diamonds, twenty-one forty-five carat diamonds and hundreds of smaller diamonds. There was the golden scepter, which contained the fabled Orloff diamond. Other treasures in this sparkling array included the famous thousand-year-old Shah diamond, as large as an apple. There were a 200-carat sapphire, the crown with 1933 diamonds, a chain of emeralds of 270 carats, a Ural aquamarine of over 1000 carats, a lavallière of pearls and diamonds—225 pearls of 250 carats. No wonder, I felt, that there should be threatened crime and violence about this collection of barbaric splendor, amassed by such crime and violence for centuries.

I watched narrowly as Clare Kellard, the friend of Brock Lord, and light in this leading group of serious thinkers, entered with a man of medium height, a trace of a roll under his olive chin and fat, pudgy fingers, thrust into the pockets of a dinner coat drawn in such a way as to conceal as much as possible his gaining embonpoint.

It was Adam Stein, the only one who affected anything but the plebeian afternoon business clothes.

As he talked with Clare and his rather prominent eyes met hers in frank appraisal, I could not resist thinking again of Olga's experiences as the "wonder woman." I wondered whether in Stein's nympholeptic search Clare Kellard was the new "wonder woman." Millions, perhaps the exact number unknown to himself from day to day, lay at the disposal of Adam Stein. It had become with him a game in which on the way to billions he was disporting himself with all things of beauty, whether they were human or mineral, that might become objects of ownership.

"First came the furore of the Russian ballet, then the barbaric splendor which America remembers as it does Bakst-blue," he was saying. "Now it will be the ferment of the Muscovite Theatre—-and that is more clever, as propaganda, than anything else that could be done. Take for example Olga's almost mystical devotion to the Russian theatre as the greatest theatre in the world, the most artistic, the most imaginative in acting, in directing, in producing. Is not that superb, subtle propaganda? Out of their sorrows the Russians have built an art—to win the world!"

Clare shook her head subtly. I saw a narrowing of her eyes. Then she spoke. "I do not agree—altogether. I have come to see that the Russians have built their art out of their gigantic Slav-Tartar exuberance and love of color, and mercurial resilience with a touch of—of Rabelais, if you get what I mean. I have a chapter on it in my forthcoming book, how the purely Russian optimist, Gogol, is more typical than the half-Teutonic pessimist Tolstoy. I believe the pessimism and self-analytical which bear the Russian trademark here in America are really Russian-Jewish, not Slav—that the two races are as far apart as—as the Poles."

She paused to see whether he caught her pun. A smile flitted over Stein's fat face and a quick look at her, which she answered. I wondered if the remark had struck at a basis of withdrawal of Stein's and his group's support of Sovietism of a certain brand. Or was it that she was subtly seeking to foment a cleavage of Olga Olanoff from Stein for her own advantage?

We had sauntered in groups, shifting and rearranging, into the long drawing-room which had been changed into a miniature theater for a private rehearsal of "The Dance of Death" from the last act of one of the plays in the repertoire of Olanoff. Lighting and music had been counterfeited as far as possible to conform with what was to be presented on the stage simultaneously with the sale of the jewels at the American Gallery.

In a little room off the drawing-room in the direction of the library had been set up Olga's dressing room. I noted that down the wide hall at the other end had sauntered Stein and Clare, also from the library, where, with the conclusion of the examination of the jewels by Slade and Prince Vladimir, Dmitri and Alexis had replaced them in the safe and clanged shut the door, twisting the combination, locked. Dmitri had taken up his post by the safe.

Suddenly, as we waited for the rehearsal, all the room grew dark. The emotions induced by the bits of action reproduced from the play preceding "The Dance of Death" made the intense darkness a fitting setting for the dance to follow.

The music was mad in moments; then a wild melancholy seemed to be exuded from the strings of the orchestra improvised from the theater, yet to open. Sad, mournful wails, tones of exceeding tenderness made us anxious to see what the mauve and yellow spotlight from the theater would accentuate.

A couch, dirty and unkempt, ragged covers pulled over it in confusion, and on it an old, old peasant woman, apparently in her last illness. It was she who had been Queen!

Withered arms were raised to heaven pleadingly. There was a loud clatter on the door of the hovel, a disturbing clamor for admittance. The arms were beating the air in agony. The door fell in with a crash.

The woman raised herself from the bed in horror. With a wild cry of fear she turned her tortured eyes on the intruder. Death had come to call!

The fear left the eyes of the woman. The figure in white, dead white, raised a beckoning finger. The woman, in surprise, walked, a little faster, faster still. Suddenly her arm was seized by Death and a dance of sheer madness and agility took place. All the time the look of wonder and entrancement was found on the old woman's face. Never in her younger days had she danced like this! Great leaps and bounds, feet scarcely touching the floor, leaping for roses that seemed to come from the air, from nothing, accompanied by music loudly crashing, triumphant, led up to the final burst of grace. With a low bow Death led the woman back to her couch. Taking his robe with a sweeping flare of the arm, he backed out of the hovel door.

An anguished cry—and an old man rushed in—to find her dead by the pallet. Only the eyes of the audience saw the soul of the woman, a beautiful young girl, in airy draperies, leave the body of the corpse—and with joy and happiness dance out of the room into the intense golden light of the world to come.

So tense was our little audience that I doubt whether any of us were conscious of the presence of any of the others. I know that if I had been truthful I would never have been able to swear even that Kennedy was sitting all through it the foot and a half away that he was when it began and when it ended.

The rehearsal, an earnest of the splendid artistic success that was to come to the Muscovite Theatre, was followed by a midnight supper in the dining room in another wing of the house. No one, I thought, would ever have imagined from it that Brock Lord was so near facing dispossession and bankruptcy.

Though it made no impression on me at the time, I remember that each guest had as his special favor a vintage of some specific rare date. What did impress me was that in the midst of the midnight supper a servant entered with quiet tread to inform Clare Kellard that she was wanted on the telephone. She left, but was back soon, rather flushed and excited.

Animatedly, Alexis was repeating the story of Olga. "Throughout the Revolution, you know, the theater was never closed! Play shots on the stage inside sometimes merged with real shots on the street outside!"

A scared-faced butler stood in the doorway uttering the name. No one questioned him. No one paused. As if one in mind and body, we sped down the wide colonial hall toward the library.

There, in the huge armchair in which he had alternately watched and dozed before the safe, night after night, and day after day, lay Dmitri.

Kennedy rose slowly. In his hand he held the needle of a hypodermic which had been sticking in the man's neck!

We turned as Alexis cried. The door was closed, but no longer locked as he had left it. It was possible to swing it open. He did so and looked. The crown jewels were gone—stolen!

"But why did he make no cry, if it was a needle? The needle does not put you out—like that!"

"The sleepmaker—first a thrust of ethyl chloride or amyl nitrite under the nose—pouf!—out—it lasts only a few seconds—then the jab of the needle—that lasts for hours. It is the method of the Paris sleep-makers," returned Kennedy.

Dmitri, revived, dazed, bewildered, was, as Craig had expected, oblivious to all that had happened. He had known not a thing!

"Every one of them," I whispered hopelessly, "has had possible access at one time or another during the evening, the Dance of Death, the midnight supper, to the library where Dmitri was guarding that safe!"

The portière moved. I pulled it aside. There stood Barker, the insurance company detective.

"Remember," he whispered, "Prince Vladimir had been blackmailing her! ... I believe she stole them herself, from her dressing-room—eh?—hoping that the Soviet would get the insurance—while she might satisfy the extravagant demands of this Prince Vladimir, who's a past master in blackmail of woman. She herself would be safe, then, from the hidden violence of her husband.... It is my duty for the company to watch her! ... My signal will be three short, three long, three short on this whistle—my SOS!"

III. — THE BORGIA SUPPER

IT was not five minutes later when Kennedy's quizzing of the servants, with a careful eye on the guests, none of whom we could come out in the open to accuse, was interrupted by sharp blasts outside from a police whistle.

We hurried out into the shadows to find Barker and the outside guard who had been placed to patrol the grounds, arguing with a chauffeur of a big dark touring car.

"What's the matter?" demanded Stein as he pushed forward. "That is my car which I ordered here for me at midnight. What's the matter, David?"

Barker did not give the chauffeur a chance to reply. "Matter enough! How about this? What is it? What's in it?"

He pointed to a big leather duffle-bag in the rear. Quickly he opened it. But it was empty.

"Yes—empty, now," he growled. "But what was in it? You were here before—at midnight. Where have you been?"

Stein was not accustomed to having anyone interrupt him. Besides, it was his nature to hold the center of the stage. He blocked the way between Barker and David, and, himself began fingering the leather duffle-bag.

"Ha! What is this?" he declared, switching on the little light by the rear door of the car and holding the bag down in its rays. "Initials—'C.K.' It is not mine. I never saw it. Whose is it?"

"C.K." repeated Slade, then with a half sneer turned to Kennedy. "Those are your initials, if I am not mistaken."

"Don't try to be facetious, Slade," returned Kennedy, suddenly wheeling on someone in the darkness. "What about it?"

"It is mine," came the answer from Clare Kellard. "It was full of my drawings which I made in Russia. I had promised to send it to the art editor of the Rural Press, who lives only a few miles from here at Park City. But it escaped my mind until pretty late. I sent it, anyhow. It was promised for the morning and I know what a nighthawk Mr. Hutton is. They're in a great hurry to get out a book, 'Soviet Sketches,' and can't wait for me to finish the manuscript I'm writing."

There seemed to be nothing for the present to do but accept Clare's explanation, especially as David confirmed it.

Kennedy consumed an hour or two questioning the guard as to whether he had seen anything outside at the time. He seemed not to have seen anything. It was certain also that no one of the guests had the more bulky jewels, at least, on his person. Nor did a thorough search of the house reveal anything. Craig established a cordon of guards about the estate and we waited until morning.

We were gathered in the sunny breakfast room of the Lord mansion, admiring the outlook through the many windows. Olga with her cardinal red gown and Clare with her brilliant mulberry vied with the gay flowers about the room to lend color and enchantment.

Some women are like cats. They like to use their claws and sometimes Clare used hers merely as if sharpening them. "Well, Olga, are you alone? Always there are men, men, men about you, dear. Where is Alexis?" She avoided Olga's sharp glance by smiling at me.

"Clare, it has always been so. Is it not so with you? If it is not, I feel sorry for you. I should grow weary if I had to try hard always to attract!" She put out her hands naively and Olga's hands were the hands of an artist. She talked with them. "Alexis did not feel well. He seemed to be sleeping when I came down. He should be down with me, now. I go and see him."

We had all gathered for breakfast and were waiting for Olga and Alexis to appear.

Suddenly a piercing scream came from the hallway, loud sobs from a distracted woman, and Olga flew into the room, past her host until she came to Kennedy. "Alexis! My Alexis! Please come—hurry! He is so still! Oh, what is the matter? What have they done to him?" Great tears were rolling down her cheeks, and she was the embodiment of frightened grief.

All forgot breakfast in the rush to help Olga in her trouble. But Kennedy took charge of the situation. "If he is ill, dangerously ill, he must not be disturbed or excited. Let me go with his wife. Brock, will you summon a doctor?"

Craig accompanied Olga into her room and I followed. There indeed lay Alexis Moskowitch, in a stupor, as though poisoned. Craig had me chasing after a hundred errands between ineffective efforts to quiet the high-keyed Olga.

But it was of no avail. He seemed to gasp out his stupor before even the doctor arrived, and was dead.

Kennedy held a hasty conference with the doctor, while I kept a barrier between the distracted Olga and the curious guests in the upper hall.

Olga heard them outside and it seemed to revolt her. "Oh, Doctor ... Mr. Kennedy ... please ... let him sleep quietly. He never cared for what you call the limelight. He was quiet, unobtrusive. I was his light. I will watch him. He didn't like to be stared at by strangers. I respect his wishes when he is dead. He would have done that for me!"

When we heard Olga murmuring through her tears about her husband's love for solitude we naturally fell in with her wishes. It was the least we could do and Craig drew me out with him into the hall away from the others.

We were not alone long. The others were soon crowding about to listen in as Craig, thinking aloud, expounded his first theory of what had actually happened.

"It makes one think of the Borgias," he hazarded. "Whether they used poisons in rings or wines or fruits or other means, they possessed the secrets of many strange poisons—but not so many as modern science has invented.... You know, many a prince and cardinal expired in agony after having been invited to one of their dinners. They were not so crude as to poison wines with any ingredient which would cause death quickly and thus arouse immediate suspicion. But on such occasions they administered poisons which worked only after several days and produced symptoms which might have been caused by natural illness."

I wondered. Had it been a Borgia supper the night before? Alexis was dead. As Kennedy talked, I recalled now that each had been supplied with a special vintage at the supper....

One of the servants was making frantic efforts to attract Kennedy's attention and we managed to slip away down a corridor to talk to him.

"I don't know whether I ought to say anything or not—but I was in the hall when that woman was at the telephone," the butler whispered. "I did not hear all, but I did hear her say, 'Yes, it is time to do it!'"

"Yes—it is time to issue my book of drawings, 'Soviet Sketches.'" Clare had detached herself from the others and had come down the corridor, which was a veritable whispering gallery. "I told them, Hawkins. They knew I had an appointment with my publisher at his New York office yesterday, that I had forgotten to send what I had promised out to the Rural Press, here."

The butler was squelched. But myself I wondered why she had picked out Stein's chauffeur and midnight to dispatch the duffle-bag. Was it true?

Craig did not stop to smooth things over, but hurried down the hall to Olga's room, where the door was now ajar. In our absence Barker had entered the room very professionally. There had been a glint of determination in his eye as he approached Olga.

A little surprised, she had left the doctor and gone to the end of the room with him, when we saw them. As nothing much can be done to snub a reporter or his curiosity for news, I managed to get within earshot by absently admiring one of Brock's wonderful etchings on the wall.

"I think," I heard Barker bluntly, "it is mighty strange, Mrs. Moscowitch—the jewels disappear one night; your husband is dead the next morning. I have heard from Clare Kellard that you had dinner with the Prince one night last week and we know that in Petrograd the Prince——"

"Oh, you beast! You evil-minded creature! In my country I could have you killed for so insulting me! I, who would have died for him—and my beloved Russia!"

Olga's temper was fast getting the better of her. She had taken Barker's arm and was shaking it as fast as she was talking. Great red spots glowed in her cheeks.

"You attribute to me the things that Kellard woman might do! I shall see that she does not have so easy a time to get into Russia again—she who is making money telling lies about us—while I am giving, giving my life, my money, my husband. You are a defamer! You must learn facts before you accuse!"

Craig had hurried down to them. He took Barker aside. "That is not the way to treat a woman like that," he cautioned sharply. "If you suspect her, watch her, and if she is guilty she will make a break sooner or later. Let me manage her, Barker. You do the bigger job—find the jewels and the murderer!"

I could see nevertheless that Barker was even more confirmed than ever that it was Olga at the bottom of it.

When we got him away and back into the hall, I saw at the other end Clare Kellard and Brock Lord in a heated argument. All we could catch as we tried to get near was the name, Stein.

I had my suspicions of Brock Lord and Clare. Could it be that the disagreement over Stein was merely a blind? I wondered. Was it about Stein, really? Could the argument between them have been over the jewels? Or was it about the butler who had overheard and reported to Kennedy?

CHAPTER IV. — THE TRANCE TELEPHONE

KENNEDY used every endeavor to respect Olga's wishes in regard to privacy, without lapsing in the least in his vigilance in watching her or the others.

It was sad to watch Olga as she and the doctor looked at Alexis. She was quiet enough, now. Only the great circles under her eyes showed the havoc her grief had wrought.

It was hard also to think that the pale, heavily bearded man lying so quietly in death's embrace had been taken from the cause for which he had worked so zealously and the wife he had loved so tenderly.

The day passed wearily, with many false alarms from the ubiquitous Barker and much quiet work on the part of Kennedy.

The burial of Alexis Moskowitch had been set for the morning of the fourth and it had been determined to inter him in a hermetically sealed coffin.

Olga was wearing a black gown of soft crèpe that served only to enhance her girlishness, slenderness, wistfulness. I saw her drop into a chair that seemed to overwhelm her in its depths. She pulled out a miniature of Alexis, gazed at it a long time earnestly, and then kissed it.

The casket was already sealed and was soon to be conveyed to the mausoleum. Olga had already said her last good-by and was only now waiting for the departure of the body. Craig had asked me to remain with her. Out of respect for her sorrow I tried to keep silent, but when I heard her sobs I felt as if I must do something for her to show my sympathy.

"Please, my dear Madame," I entreated, "let me help you in some way! If there is any message I can write or any errand I can do, I would be so glad—so glad to help." I leaned over her chair, helpless.

My only answer was a head bowed on the arm of the chair and body-racking sobs. Suddenly looking up at me, she murmured, "Mr. Jameson, as a little girl, a tiny little girl, I have had a horror of being buried alive! Once I read a story and it was illustrated. It was about a woman being buried alive. It showed the coffin and the woman struggling in the narrow place—gasping, gasping for air. She was tearing her hair out by handfuls. Oh, I shuddered and dreamed over that woman! Now I feel so worried about Alexis. Suppose he should not be dead—and he needed help—oh, my God—what a thought—to be in that thing and not to be able to get out!"

"Oh Madame," I remonstrated gently. "I would not worry over that. You have enough that is real to worry you. They don't do things like that any more. Science has made many advances. It would be impossible. Your sorrow is your worry—not a conception of agony such as you have pictured.... But I feel so sorry for you. Ill see what Craig can do or say to relieve your fears."

"Oh, your Mr. Kennedy! He is such a good, kind man. I like him so much. I wish he could come to Russia some time. But, Mr. Jameson, I have already told Mr. Kennedy. I had to. I worried too much about it. One cannot hide anything from him.... Ah, here he comes, now."

I moved over and put the question to Kennedy. He smiled indulgently in the direction of Olga. Then in a low voice he said: "The fear of being buried alive has tormented the human race from the earliest times. Now and then, Walter, the opening of tombs and coffins in graveyards has revealed most distressing evidence that those who are dear to us have come to life and consciousness in their graves. In fact many have left specific provisions in their wills to drain their arteries to make sure that they will not awake in the grave, and I have heard of other wills that provide that means be taken for keeping the supposed dead body under observation to give immediate relief at the first sign of reappearing life. It is a question on which I have thought, just as have others."

He paused, then went on, "A very strange fact is that science with all its research has been unable to suggest any certain and practical method for determining positively that death has really come. Many tests, such as applying a lighted candle to the fingers to see whether a blister forms or not, injection of fluorescin into the veins, which will give a yellow cast to the face if there is the least flow of blood, and various other means have been suggested—but none of them are satisfactory and positive. She had told me her fear. I have arranged for a rather elaborate system of prevention of the danger of death after burial, as you will see when you arrive at the cemetery."

As the hour set for the interment neared, there came a new Soviet representative, Ravoff, the trade representative in the United States, to take the place of comrade Alexis of the Crown Jewels Commission in the search for the missing treasures.

Ravoff was a smooth-shaven man, an intellectual, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, energetic and systematic, a capable worker for the Soviet.

The burial was very simple. In the break between the Soviet and the Greek Church, Ravoff officiated at the simple committal service of a few well-chosen words—and it was all over, all but the strange, barbaric mysticism of Olga, her unconquerable fear that Alexis might be buried alive.

When the coffin had at last been placed in the stone mausoleum of the Lord family, which I had a sneaking fear might be before long the sole property left to Brock Lord, Kennedy was busy for some minutes making an electric attachment which seemed to be connected in one direction through the back of the vault under the slab of stone in the floor, and in the other direction ran through the hermetically sealed coffin itself.

"You see," he remarked aside, under his breath, "to satisfy Olga we are using a new death alarm, or trance telephone. Physicians know, it is doubtless true, that certain persons have been buried alive in the sense that while the heart's action was still at a minimum they have been placed in a coffin. Stories of persons 'laid out' for the undertaker and reviving are not unknown. Some have even revived on the bier. But the number of persons buried while the body as a whole lived is in reality very small. I suppose moribund persons have been buried at times of great confusion during plagues and epidemics. This has happened when the people have been in a state of narcolepsy, as it is called, or in reality suspended animation."

"In this case I am using, as I said, what may be called the trance telephone. Inside the coffin there is placed in the hand of the person interred a very delicate annunciator, from which are led electric wires to a sort of little kiosk. Then, there is also a microphone attachment in the casket, which is connected also with a receiver in this kiosk. It is a rather ingenious invention, designed to permit a mourner at the grave to listen at a telephone and watch for the movement of a semaphore which will rise if the body stirs."

I noted that he had moved across the cemetery lawn near the driveway, where the kiosk had been set up on the other side of the hill from the Brock Lord mausoleum, where Alexis had been laid to rest. As Kennedy explained the thing to her, I wondered whether it was merely a superstitious fear on the part of Olga, or did she really believe that Alexis was not actually dead?

"All day, I shall be here," she murmured, choking back her sobs. "At all hours! No message can come over this wire without Olga hearing and helping! Oh, Alexis—to think I am doing this, in a foreign land, instead of the many beautiful things we had planned to do together for our country!"

Nothing could coax her away. Kennedy finally left her, expecting, I suppose, that soon this feature of her grief would wear itself out.

As we were leaving the cemetery, I noted Clare with Slade, and I thought that there was a rather closer intimacy between the two than was called for at a funeral.

"Whither bound, Prince?" Stein greeted Vladimir, as they emerged upon the big broad road that led from two smaller roads.

"It looks to me as if gossip has started us on the same quest," Prince Vladimir answered cryptically.

Stein laughed. "It is a case of renewing an old love with you—and starting a new one with me. I wonder—which is the more attractive to a woman?"

Prince Vladimir was a bit incensed at the familiarity. "If I had your money I wouldn't be guessing, Stein. As to my relations with Olga—it is nobody's business!" The last was brusque.

"Only as people make it so. I have reasons to be friendly with her—and her interest in other men interests me."

"Well, don't make your interest obnoxious to me. They may have taken away my estates—but I still have my honor. Good morning, Stein."

V. — THE RETURN OF THE ROMANOFFS

IT was several days after the interment of Alexis. Kennedy was exhausted after the excitement that attended the disappearance of the jewels and the strange death of Alexis. The insurance company detective, Barker, had kept us busy with a never-ending succession of "clues." The last one had taken us out again to the Lord mansion on Long Island and had proved as unfruitful as all the rest. I was almost ready to admit that the case was going down on the record as unsolved as the Wall Street bomb mystery.

It was getting late and Kennedy decided to catch a few hours of rest, while I scribbled some notes of the latest blind alley up which we had stalked in the search for the gems. I had learned that in my daily stories of mystery cases, it was not so important to solve the mystery as it was to be interesting.

"What's that, Craig? Did you hear anything?" I jumped up to see where the tapping was coming from, but Craig in his silk house gown was first at the door.

He opened it cautiously and peered out. "Why—Miss Kellard! What has happened?"

Without answering a word, she slipped in and closed the door softly. I must say that I was not much impressed by the visit. She was all wrapped around with a batik-dyed dressing gown and her head was swathed in it, too. It was hanging in points from her everywhere. I couldn't tell where she began or where she left off.

"Mr. Kennedy," she gasped, out of breath. "I have run up all these stairs, the back way, from the service entrance, as fast as I could to tell you."

I must have shown a little lack of cordiality, or Clare must have read it in my face, for I was frankly tired. "Mr. Jameson," she deprecated, "you know enough of newspaper women to realize how we are always on the jump for news. I must confess I am interested in those jewels. The more I know of them, the better my story will be.... I suppose it is trite, but in a case like this I always look for the woman."

I felt that I must be careful of my face. It was my own rule and flashed through my mind the thought, "That's precisely what I am thinking—and why I am watching you."

"I've been' observing Olga rather closely," she went on with lowered voice. "Just now I heard someone walking stealthily past my door and, instead of continuing down the main corridor, turn to the servants' stairs. I'm always curious. I opened the door quietly. It was Olga."

"Not then—but I know her feet. There is only one Olga. I followed her. At the service door there was a big sedan. I heard a voice.... I am sure it was the voice of Prince Vladimir."

"'Did anybody see you leave, Olga?' Then she laughed nervously and said, 'No.' Here's the thing, though. I heard her ask, 'How long will it take us to get there?' And he answered, 'Only about three hours—and you'll be back.' By that time the door was shut and they were off. I heard only one word more and I'm saving that as the kicker to my story, 'The Ritz!'"

"We had better follow them, Walter," exclaimed Kennedy. "Thank you so much, Miss Kellard."

Clare was out in the hall again as skillfully as only Craig can manage those things.

I put out everything but a dim pink night light after Kennedy had gone with as much commotion as if he had been two men, and waited. I quite understood. Sleepy though I was, I did not even allow myself to doze.

It was a bit after midnight when I heard the front door downstairs open and close. That was all, but I knew someone had either entered or gone out. I tiptoed down the hall. By this time I was aware of every creaking board in the hall floor and knew how to avoid them. Down in the drawing-room I caught a glimpse through the portières of Stein with Clare and Brock Lord. They were whispering in a tone that I could not overhear, and it was only a short visit. Stein was on his way again so soon that I was forced to take refuge in the shadows of a reception room and retrace my steps to our room afterwards.

It all left me wondering. Had the alarm of Clare been to get us out of the way? Did they know that I was still there?

I sat up the rest of the night, and just before dawn, I was rewarded by the return of Kennedy.

"Instead of getting a rest, I've been watching them dance," he muttered wearily, as he dropped into a big upholstered chair.

"To the Ritz. You must have forgotten; this is the night of the big ball of the Russian Famine Aftermath Committee for the benefit of the reconstruction that seems to be quite as necessary as the famine relief was. I should say that everyone interested in Russia was there—bankers and Bolshevists."

"I should say yes! Olga is either the most treacherous little lady in the land—or the greatest actress in the world!"

"If you could have heard the conversations I overheard you would be spinning. Slade had a box at the ball. Prince Vladimir was in it. It seemed that from all sides there had been an insistent demand for Olga; Vladimir had volunteered to run out and get her, before the other side did."

Kennedy paused wearily, as he refreshed himself with a cigarette. Then he added in a lowered tone, "I overheard Vladimir actually proposing to her that she should be the connecting link between the Bolshevists and the Romanoffs. In other words, she has actually promised to report inside facts from the Bolshevist side and distort things for the benefit of the Romanoffs with the Bolshevists. It is the same old Russian game of the agent provocateur. Olga has some job on her hands. I wonder...."

"Propose? Only the putting back of a younger Romanoff on the throne as a constitutional monarch, backed by the international bankers of the world! The younger Romanoff looks to be Vladimir himself, picked by Slade, who is the mouthpiece of the bankers ... and most likely Olga as his queen!"

"Then, to make the matter more confusing, I saw Stein come into the ballroom, late. He had a box on the other side of the floor. Olga saw him. She went over to his side—always the artiste, always impartial for her beloved Russia! I heard Slade say, as Vladimir scowled, 'Well, she might as well begin here!' But he was furious, when he saw Stein throw her scarf about her dainty shoulders and bow deeply with all the passion he can put into those bulging eyes of his. Over there, with the radical element, she was just as ardent as before Moskowitch was murdered!"

I told him of Stein's midnight visit at the house, from which he must have left, finding Olga was gone, just in time to make his late appearance at the ball.

"Do you see it?" concluded Kennedy in the breaking dawn. "Slade and Stein in conflict over Olga—for Vladimir represents Slade as long as he plays fair. Back of Olga lies the conflict between two groups of international bankers. Slade is allied with Americans who train with the French group. Stein is allied with Americans who train with the German group. A tangled feud—complicated by Clare Kellard, who has set her cap for either Slade or Stein—ready to color her book on Russia to suit either purpose. That is why, really, she is holding back that manuscript, I am sure—to see which way the cat jumps, where is the most money, perhaps matrimony for Clare!"

In the morning Olga was back. When we met Brock Lord, he was tense with subdued excitement.

"Last night," he imparted, "I heard a disquieting rumor that 'Big Bill' Williams is somewhere in hiding in this country; after all, has not fled to Russia. Do you suppose he could have stolen those jewels? He knew my house like a book," added Lord bitterly.

It had been a strange, unaccountable night, ending with a clue to many things that we had not suspected and with what looked like a new lead.

CHAPTER VI. — THE RUSSIAN TEA ROOM

"WHATEVER it really was at that Aftermath Ball," I reported to Kennedy a couple of days later, "It is bearing fruit. I've just learned from Clare that Olga has been coaxed away again from her vigil at the trance telephone."

"There's some kind of meeting, a luncheon or something, of those interested in the Muscovite Theatre movement at that tea room, the Caviare, in Greenwich Village. They'll all be there."

"Oh, it's another of those Russian tea rooms with a name like the Samovar that suggests Russia—and jazz moujik."

Craig frowned at my pun. "It happens to be backed by Stein. Did you know that?" he commented.

As we went down the steps into the Russian tea room, I looked about. Suspended from a gilded metal basket was a huge sign bearing the name, "The Caviare." The entrance was uninviting enough, but when we opened the door the scene before us was quite interesting.

Clouds of smoke hung about the room. It seemed as if everyone was smoking those Russian cigarettes with long hollow paper tips and a bit of cotton to take up nicotine, cigarettes which they; smoked incessantly, some of them hundreds, I imagined, in the course of a day. Brass samovars lent a touch of color to the rugged furniture. On the walls hung rich embroideries from Russia done in vivid colors. Everywhere there seemed to prevail a spirit of comradeship and enthusiasm.

Olga's appearance was greeted with a shout of welcome. Doffing her cape, she revealed herself in the native Russian costume. It evoked such a storm of applause that Olga could silence it only with a few daintily blown kisses and a short speech of welcome in her native tongue.

Among the people I could see several wealthy and enthusiastic American patrons of the drama and theatrical life of the city. There were some producers and many talkers, but there were more, the real high-brows, the builders of the highest in drama, who were trying to present true art to the American public.

I listened here and there to fragments of very informing conversation as I noted that Stein himself was present. Of course Clare was much in evidence, being greatly lionized by the cognoscenti as a woman who had "done things." Here was art fraternizing the intelligentsia of all shades. I did not see Slade at first, but he came later, careful not to be too much with Prince Vladimir, but rather with Brock Lord, who was also reaping to the full for his sacrifices for the various causes that were running through a fortune. Even Barker was in the background. I wondered if "Big Bill" Williams might not be there in disguise. Ravoff was there, a bit cold to the smooth advances of Stein.

One of a group of three, talking to an ignoramus much like myself about the third, was saying: "Yes, Seaman believes the Russian theater is the greatest in the world. It's a creed, almost a religion with him. You know, he made a crusade, you might call it, exploring this creed. It carried him through war and revolution and cold and famine and destruction, seventeen thousand miles—think of it!—from America to Japan, then to Vladivostok, and through Siberia in winter into Moscow torn with strife, and Petrograd where the snow was red with blood."

The third, who was being talked of, nodded. "For seventeen thousand miles I persisted on my errand, relying on my own faith, a blind faith which I could hardly analyze. And at the end I found no disillusionment, no shattering disappointment, but a glorious fulfilling of all I had dreamed and hoped!"

Somehow I liked the man, a bit chimeric, perhaps, but the correspondent in me went out to him. I, too, loved to explore the unknown and seek the unattained. Often I have thought, if anything should happen to Kennedy, in my love for the search of mystery I should become a wanderer on the face of a marvelous earth.

"He was struggling with a great problem," I heard from another group. "What is the common denominator of artistic excellence? He wondered if it were not possible to discover it and utilize it for the benefit of the stage. And he found it! It was simpler than one would suspect. It is life! The difference between great actors and small ones is psychological. It is not stage technique. Great actors invariably live their roles. They never act. During the hours behind the footlights they are the characters they depict as completely as if they had no other existence."

I overheard Clare. "In the bleakness of life which Russia presents to-day as I saw it, the theatre stands out solitary in its grandeur. Through the years of chaos it has preserved most of its original excellence and charm. One sees Russian life re-enacted with all that wonderful humanness and realism that singled it out among European theaters before the war."

"The theater has survived the revolution," put in Brock Lord, with keen second-hand, drawing-room intelligence. "It is one of the singular features of wars and revolutions—this persistence of the theater in spite of disturbances. You recall the tenacity of the theater throughout the French Revolution. And during the World War, you recall the crowded theaters here, but more especially in London, packed every night."

The luncheon or conference or both had proceeded to a point where now there was an expectant demand that the great Olga Olanoff say something.

Olga felt it and rose to it. Eyes glowing, she thanked the people for their cordial greeting.

"Friends," she exclaimed, spreading out her hands appealingly, for the real purpose of the gathering had been to draw into the Muscovite Theatre movement all groups of support. "Friends, we have come a long way to show you our art. It is our life to us. But to go on successfully we need co-operation. Here we need the help of those interested in worthwhile drama in this country. We are asking you for your support."

She was interrupted for a moment by a slender young intellectual passing her a card. She read it and frowned slightly. Then she turned to the people and spoke sadly.

"I am asked to tell something about the disappearance of the crown jewels. I wish I could, friends.... But I did not come to talk of that.... If I did not feel the importance of the growth in popularity of the Muscovite Theatre in this country—I would be at home—with my grief." She bowed her head solemnly.

Suddenly she lifted her face proudly. "But if grief cannot be indulged in, then there is our wonderful Cause to cherish! ... I felt I must come as one of the artists to inspire support for our theatre. It is hard for me—to talk here with a grief so recent and tragic.... Friends—there are treasures other than jewels that we bury!"

She stopped, as if in her grief she had said more than she had intended, then sobbingly, stumbled to her chair.

There was a hush for a moment before the crowd burst into its mad applause for her, as if to testify its sympathy and love.

The words still rang in my ears. I glanced hastily at Craig, but he was eagerly scanning the faces before him as Olga dramatically broke down.

Ravoff looked startled, I thought. As for Stein, I thought his big bulging eyes would pop out of his head. Clare and Lord caught themselves exchanging a glance. Slade, who had come in, stared piercingly at Olga, while Prince Vladimir smiled quietly t himself.

The luncheon was really over now. To see and hear Olga had been the real thing, after all. The groups broke up in much buzzing of conversation.

Outside, Kennedy eyed me questioningly, as if to see what effect it had had on me.

"You might almost have thought Olga had done something incriminating when she said that," he ventured.

I shrugged. I had felt it. I said, "But could she be guilty? Think of her grief!"

"There's not been a clue to the jewels," I considered. "It's strange, for except for the leather duffle-bag, there wouldn't seem to be a chance that they could have been taken out of that house after the discovery of Dmitri unconscious."

"Everything?" He paused. "What about that coffin? That is the only thing that has left the house without being searched.... What was in it, besides the body? ... Anything?"

CHAPTER VII. — THE PHANTOM FINGER

LATE in the afternoon we returned to the Lord mansion. Olga had preceded us and as we entered we saw that she had been alone in conference in the library with Ravoff, who was about to leave.

As we passed the library door, I thought I saw him look rather strangely at the now empty safe, then, as he caught the eyes of Kennedy and myself, turn away suspiciously.

"She's not out there listening at the trance telephone," decided Craig. "It is a good time to do a little investigating. Let us run over to the cemetery."

His first care was to make a thorough examination of the trance telephone itself. So far as anything outward was concerned, it seemed to be as intact and untouched as it might be until the trump of the day of resurrection.

He looked across at the buried cable that came over the hillside from the old Lord vault and that also seemed undisturbed. We walked over to the vault.

The iron grating door was locked, not by an ordinary padlock but with a lock of some better combination. Kennedy had a duplicate key and he inserted it carefully into the outside keyhole.

As he swung the door open, instead of turning as I did to an immediate examination of the slab placed over where the casket had been lowered, he swung the door partway closed, so that it came into the light and bent to examine the lock carefully on the inside.

A quick exclamation from him brought me to his side. I saw him reach gingerly with his thumb and forefinger and literally lift one of the screws from the lock where it had been set on the inside of the iron grating door!

He tried another. It also lifted out. So all around. Someone had got in and had literally destroyed the threads of the set screws in the door, so that the lock could be actually pushed in if you exerted pressure on it right. It was no longer a lock; it was a mere camouflage.

"Someone must have been contemplating a visit at a time when it was necessary to get in quick, work quick, and get away quick! I thought the lock felt queer when I inserted the key."

I had heard of burglars doing that, before. Once having got into a place where they might be interrupted and to which they would like to make a sudden return, they had taken the screws from the lock itself, leaving it so loosened that they could make a re-entry at any moment they chose, almost instantly. The lock looked all right, was all right—as a lock. But it was no longer really fastened to the door. A push was all that was needed to have the door carry in lock and everything!

In the fast waning daylight I saw that he had taken from a small pocket case a little bottle of white powder and a fine soft camel's hair brush.

As I now re-examined the slab where the coffin had been lowered I saw what were plainly fingerprints in plaster or something similar.

With a specially prepared sensitive rather gummy paper of his own invention, which Craig always carried with him, he took off impressions of the fingerprints on the lock, then of the full set in rotation which I had discovered on the slab.

He replaced the lock and the now useless screws and we returned to the Lord mansion. Kennedy's first care was to call a messenger and dispatch copies of all the fingerprints to Deputy O'Connor in the city, our friend who had risen in charge of all city detective activities, including the fingerprint bureau and the files of the old Rogues' Gallery. If anyone could identify those prints in his own or the other various agencies of the city and federal government concerned with fingerprints, it was O'Connor.

"It seems that after we left, Olga went back into the city," I reported to Craig, after inquiries of the servants, since no one at all seemed to be at home. "The butler who hears everything over that hall telephone tells me that Prince Vladimir called her up once. I shrewdly suspect that that is where she has gone—to meet her future emperor!"

Kennedy scowled. The idea did not evidently please him. Still, it seemed to be a good enough guess on my part for him to act on it. He returned to the city and I heard him direct the taxi-man to the Ritz.

Before the captain of all the aristocratic army of waiters could capture us and parade us before his other victim-guests, much as an old Roman conqueror used to lead his captives triumphantly down the way to the city, along with the treasure he had extorted from their miserable countrymen by way of a tip to refrain from further extortions, Craig avoided capture. Moreover, he avoided it just in time to escape being visible to Olga and Prince Vladimir, who were dining not twenty feet away on the left of the main floor.

We were about to start in again as less ostentatious prisoners of the head waiter when Craig again stopped short. This time I saw that he had spied Stein seated at a table in a raised part of the dining room, where he was not visible to those on the main or lower portion of the floor. Stein was ordering, but not dining. I thought it was queer when I saw him hand a pretty good sized tip to a sort of bread-and-butter boy, who circulated all about the room far superior to the even haughty bus-boys.

There was nothing to do for the present but to edge over as best we could in the doorway and observe, under the pretext that we were waiting for someone who had not arrived yet. The captain seemed haughtily vexed. I thought that any moment Mr. Ritz was about to have us ejected from his hotel. However, Craig salved him with tribute.

Even at this distance, I gathered that the Prince was not exactly pleased by Olga's neglect of the past few days since the ball. Still, it was very unsatisfactory at this distance between the Scylla of Vladimir and the Charybdis of Stein until Craig hit upon another expedient. The bread-and-butter magnate passing us, he salved him, also. I felt it was no wonder they all soon rode in Renaults. But it enabled me quickly to reconstruct what was actually going on.

It appeared that Ravoff must have received and left with Olga a code dispatch from Moscow relating to the jewels and the need of money to maintain a military organization, the strength of which the code revealed. Olga had slipped the information to Prince Vladimir, who was naturally delighted to obtain some inside check upon the strength of the military and naval forces.

The bread-and-butter boy had already handed the account of what he had read over the shoulders of the two to Stein, who was studying it at his own table. If there is articulate pantomime in the Russian theatre, there certainly was in Stein's action. From the change in his look from anxiety to a broad expansive smile, I knew that he had inside information that proved to him that the figures being handed to Vladimir were false. It needed no lip reader to see him frame the common word, "Bunk!" as he rose and sauntered out, very ostentatiously now past Olga and the Prince. For a split second we could catch a knowing glance from Stein to Olga and its return.

Kennedy did not answer. He grabbed me just in time so that we could gain the lobby entrance before being seen by any of them.

There a new surprise awaited me. Outside, pulled up from the carriage entrance, was Stein's car with David at the wheel. In it was Clare Kellard, waiting, but now in a most excited and nervous way endeavoring to hurry along Slade, who had stopped for a moment to exchange a remark with her.

Half an hour later, down town in O'Connor's bureau we were handed the most astounding bit of information of all. When the fingerprints had been looked up, O'Connor had found that they coincided with those on file of "Big Bill" Williams!

"Whoever he's working for," I exclaimed, "that lying son of a sea-cook will double cross them as sure as——"

"Don't be too hasty and jump at conclusions," cautioned Craig. "That's your fault, Walter. You don't put yourself in the place of the other fellow and ask yourself what you would do in his position. If you'll look over there on O'Connor's table in the third number of 'Dactylography' you'll be disconcerted to learn that the practice of forging fingerprints is increasing so fast that it will soon become a problem for Scotland Yard—to say nothing of ourselves. Any criminal can do it if he can first obtain a set of fingerprints of the dupe on whom he wishes suspicion to fall. Transfer paper and a rubber stamp are one way of doing it. It can be done by getting a negative cast in a mold of wax, plaster of Paris, clay, or even bread. Then there's a third process by photographing a photograph of the prints to be forged on a reversed plate, which is clamped to a duplicate plate made of gelatine mixed with bichromate of potassium. I can't go into it further. Read it, if you want to. I suspect it is the thing that was used here—and has given us a phantom finger. It would have been literally so if it had only occurred to them to use finger prints of Alexis—if they had them!"

"So that this is really an elaborate smoke-screen!" I exclaimed, astounded at the cleverness of the criminal with whom we were dealing.

VIII. — SUSPENDED ANIMATION

THERE had been several hours between Olga's strange break, if it had been a break, at the luncheon and our discovery of the possibly forged fingerprints of "Big Bill" Williams. Who had made this quick, elaborate preparation?

Kennedy seemed to have a consuming desire to wind the case up quickly. He called the International Burglary Insurance Company and for the first time I learned that he had been in touch with them secretly, over Barker's head, so to speak, for several days.

Then he hurried up to the laboratory and waited as if he expected something to happen.

Suddenly the telephone rang and Craig pulled off the receiver expectantly. "Yes, Lord," I heard him reply. "We can do it. We'll start right away. Is Olga there? Good! I want to see her. We'll be right out."

He turned to me with a broad smile. "It's working like a yeast plant! There's something doing out at Lord's now. The vice president of the Burglary Insurance Company is out there—and he happens to be a special deputy sheriff in Nassau County."

"I wish the Russians would keep their jewels home," I growled. "I hope they don't pay you in paper. Have you got a five-ton truck handy in case they should give you five dollars?"

When at last we arrived out at Lord's, we found practically the same group of people there who had been present the night the jewels were stolen. Only the insurance company was represented by two instead of one. Not only was Barker, their detective, there, but also Thwaite, the vice president in charge of the company's detective activities.

They were all gathered in the library and Thwaite had before him an endless array of affidavits and depositions, reports and newspaper clippings. He seemed to have been going over the affair and giving them all a polite third degree.

Evidently it had not been to their liking, for they seemed rather more cordial to Kennedy than they had been before.

Thwaite now turned his attention to Kennedy, and step by step he took Craig over the ground until he came to the luncheon at the Caviare. Then, for some reason of his own, Kennedy volunteered a report of that which emphasized the remark of Olga: "There are treasures other than jewels that we bury!"

"Then," demanded Thwaite. "You mean to imply by that that there may be treasures other than a dead Russian that may be buried?"

I thought he was pretty heartless in the way he put it, but I suppose callousness is part of life with one who has to deal with the crime and fraud that he must run into.

"Well, have you found anything else that has not yet appeared in the record?" He tapped the mass of papers on the table before him? "Anything later, anything new?"

It was as though Thwaite and all the rest had been electrified. "Fingerprints?" he demanded excitedly. "Whose?"

"Well, I sent them down to Deputy O'Connor in the central bureau to be looked up if possible—and he informs me they coincide with those of 'Big Bill' Williams."

Either he did not choose to go on with his suspicion of fingerprint forgery or the interruption satisfied him.

"That's perfidy!" broke in Brock Lord. "Just what I would think of that man. That fellow has been a guest at this house hundreds of times. That's a fine way to repay hospitality. Where did you find them—on the safe?"

Everybody looked over with one accord at the big safe which had once housed the treasures. Kennedy did not answer.

Kennedy also looked inquiringly at her. She looked at him, but evidently saw no refuge. She lowered her eyes.

"We had a pact ... that he was to be exhumed ... on the tenth day after the burial...." She stopped as every eye was riveted on her.

"What!" demanded Thwaite. "And revived?" He was not only brutal now, but incredulous.

"Yes, I'm afraid you must—sooner or later—either now or under a court order." There was no sympathy there.

"Well," replied Kennedy slowly, "there are cases on record of states of narcolepsy or suspended animation. Science has pried into the mysterious secrets of the East and understands how Hindu fakirs buried for months and sealed up in their tombs come, to life again."

"The answer to that is 'Yes,' but in so replying we must recollect the kind of suspended animation which is compatible with the delicate protoplasmic structure and chemical behavior of human tissues. Of course no mammal, no human being, can be dried up or frozen stiff like some of the lowlier creatures and yet live. But what we may admit is that life in man can be retained when all the vital processes have sunk to a minimum. What is known as trance or narcolepsy is the form which latent life takes in the human being. Every now and then we hear of cases, usually young women, going into profound and prolonged sleep from which they do not awake for weeks or months. During that time they take no food, they scarcely breathe, their heart's action is at a minimum. It is, of course, quite different from the hypnotic or mesmeric trance."

"Yes, Colonel Townsend of Dublin who could die or expire when he pleased and yet, by an effort, could come back to life again."

Kennedy shook his head. "The narratives are very extraordinary. There are fakirs in India who are said to allow themselves to be locked up in sealed tombs for weeks without food and to be found alive at the end of that time. Reports of these cases of human suspended animation are quite numerous, and seem to be authenticated by witnesses of apparent integrity. It would not seem to be due to collective hallucination on the part of so many people. Besides, modern science has given us a great many hypnotic drugs—and there may have been many opportunities for someone to tamper with the bottles in each of the special vintages we were served at the supper after the rehearsal that night in the drawing-room."

"I don't believe that Alexis Moskowitch was buried alone!" Slade had leaped at the conclusion, aloud. "I don't believe the jewels were ever really stolen!"

Olga avoided his eyes, nervously. Slade shot a glance of suspicion at the Prince, who smiled smoothly.

It was too much for Clare. She had risen in anger. "What kind of woman are you?" she demanded of Olga. "Why don't you answer? What has happened? Why have you infringed on your privileges as a guest and caused Brock all this trouble and worry?"

I happened to glance about at the words, and saw that Brock Lord had quietly disappeared.

"And made your copy for the newspapers—not so snappy!" retorted Olga. "Always I find a reason hidden behind American actions quite the same as among us Russians!"

Kennedy reached over and gestured with his hand palm down three or four times for quiet. "Stick with me!" he whispered.

Clare had succeeded in focusing attention on Olga. Had it been the way of Alexis Moskowitch of getting an "out" on the loss? Or was it Olga's "cover" for stealing for blackmail, as Barker had insisted?

Kennedy looked at his wrist watch. "It is now eleven. In that case it is now the tenth day of the pact." He was speaking now to Olga. "The day will close at two o'clock, precisely. At that hour I will go with you. We will do our best!"

CHAPTER IX. — THE VALLEY OF DEATH

WITH Thwaite and myself, Craig decided to explore the interior of the mausoleum and the coffin even before the hour he had set with Olga Olanoff.

Still, Craig proceeded in a very leisurely manner, it seemed to me in my excitement. I could not see how any man could be so cool and deliberate under such stress.

At last we came in by the back way into the cemetery. Of all places at night I know none more fearsome than a cemetery. I was on edge from the moment we entered it. Every gravestone, every movement of the branches of the trees was a white sheeted figure or a desperate intruder to me. Even Thwaite's ardor cooled considerably.

As we picked our way over ground thickly carpeted with pine needles and found the road that circled the cemetery, I knew that we were approaching the trance telephone that Craig had set up to satisfy the fears of Olga. It would not have surprised me to see her black-suited figure there, listening, vainly listening. But there was no one.

He seized the delicate telephone and listened, then handed it quickly to me, to check on what he heard. I listened also in the receiver of the microphone.

I felt my hand shake. Was Alexis alive? Was he struggling to get out? In a wave of imagination I pictured Alexis Moskowitch in his mental prison, gasping, struggling, weak, frantic, desperate!

Kennedy did not answer, but started creeping, almost, over the hill crest that separated us from the Lord vault. As he did so he drew a gun, which I had seen him slip into his pocket when we left the laboratory. I followed, with Thwaite behind me.

As we rounded the hill slope and came in front of the Lord vault, I saw that the door had been forced in. That was no problem for anyone who knew how the screws had been loosened. Nor was it even a problem if one did not know. A smart push would accomplish it.

Inside, Kennedy pointed in the murky, dank, unhealthy darkness. There was an earthy miasma in the air. I followed his finger.

The slab in the floor had been removed. There lay the metal coffin. I overcame my feeling of revulsion and leaned down near it beside him. It had been pried, forced, cut open, as if with some instrument like the "can-opener" safe-breaking yeggmen use on old strong boxes.

Kennedy touched us silently on the shoulder. I saw that he was beckoning us to withdraw quickly. Did I hear the faint muffled chug of a motor on the other side of the cemetery?

He drew us into the shadow of a thicket in the heavily laden night. I wondered whether our vigil would be rewarded. The soughing of the night wind in the evergreens, mournful at best, was doubly so now. The seconds seemed hours.

There was a hesitating crunching of gravel on the walk. There was a solitary dark figure. Before either of us could move, make up our minds whether it was of this world or another, Craig had darted from our concealing shadows.

He drew her with him toward us, where, waiting behind some heavy boxwood, we strained our eyes in the darkness for the ghoul, the body-snatcher, to return for the rest of the loot.

It was weird, uncanny, unlovely in a graveyard at night. But Thwaite was evidently thinking of a graveyard of his hopes, if he failed.

"Even at that the Company is stuck!" He said it half accusingly at Craig, but with more of menace to Olga. "Half of them are gone—unless we succeed!"'

Olga laughed. Thwaite turned on her fiercely. But she did not give him a chance.

"Those jewels were only paste replicas that the Crown Jewels Committee had made up—for emergency protection!"

"They are all safe!" exclaimed Kennedy. "They have been safe from the first. The real jewels lie unsuspected in my own laboratory. I say unsuspected, because even Mr. Jameson didn't know that until this minute. They were removed by agreement with Madame Olanoff during the evening, and the paste jewels were the only ones in the house—up in her own room—at the time I framed up his sleepmaker unconsciousness with Dmitri at the open safe.... I think the success of this auction will be assured. In that aspect it is going to be one of the greatest publicity stories ever perpetrated!"

"At the same time that I wanted the jewels to be perfectly safe, I wanted also to catch the thief who had made two attempts before to steal them. It was equally important to American justice and the Russian Soviet to know who that was."

As I began to untangle the skein of intrigue, the thought in my mind was of the danger to Alexis Moskowitch in such an experiment. That was indeed risking one's life for one's country!

Where was the body of Alexis? Had it been at the cost of his life? It was now the beginning of the eleventh day!

Who was it that had carried off a part of the apparent treasure and the body—hence might have killed him? I thought of Brock Lord with his fine estate in jeopardy, of Vladimir with his ambitions and passions and expensive tastes, of Stein seeking jewels always to add to his properties, of Slade who would recoup his worthless bonds at the expense of those who had made them so, even of Ravoff and his rather treacherous actions, of Clare Kellard, friend of Brock Lord, and social climber.

Down the hill now, from the direction of the muffled purring motor, I saw what looked like two figures. Who were they? I could not distinguish whether they were two men or a man and a woman. They were approaching the door of the mausoleum.

"It's my flashlight revolver," muttered Kennedy, "the most accurate 'gat' in the world in the darkness. A perfectly good gun is all right. So is a perfectly good flashlight. But you may miss. Hitch them together—and you draw a bead with your very light!"

There was a shout as Kennedy's bead of light began to travel swiftly, unerringly, like a finger of doom toward the figures.

CHAPTER X. — THE CROOK INTERNATIONALE

AS we crashed over to where the groaning form lay near a granite shaft, I saw that it was Barker.

Across the still night air now came the raucous chug of the motor as it sped, cut-out open, with every advantage, even the dampness of the air mixing with the gas, to give it speed.

Kennedy bent over to stop the flow of blood from Barker's useless leg as Clare and Slade, having heard the shot, pushed forward. Curiosity had taken them out to the cemetery.

"It seems the darkness must have bristled with eyes!" Slade had caught sight of Stein coming up the hill.

A spectacled figure with horn eyeglasses gleaming in the spot of Kennedy's flashlight-gun, appeared, Ravoff.

Olga had flung her arms about Ravoff. As the useless glasses fell off I saw that they restored a part, at least, of the looks that shaving off a beard had destroyed.

"Yes, Mr. Thwaite," muttered Barker, "I framed it with this fellow—he's an international crook—I knew all about the client of the Company, Olga Olanoff, and the jewels—but I didn't think there was a paste set—or that she'd drag Kennedy in!" He looked about, propped against the granite pillar. "So—this Ravoff is Alexis—eh? Then no one was ever buried!"

Kennedy smiled quietly. "No, we fixed that with the local physician at the 'death' of Alexis. The trance telephone was merely a burglar alarm in a trap to catch you and your friend. Alexis, I agree with you. Your wife is the greatest actress in the world!"

Loud voices of altercation came from the road and as we turned we could see the motorcycle cop of the county who should have been off duty hours before except for Kennedy and Thwaite. With a gun poked into the small of his back, he was prodding ahead Prince Vladimir.

"As fine a pair of international crooks as ever preyed on society," beamed Kennedy, "now preying on the Soviet—because it has no friends!"

THE BRASS KEY

CHAPTER I. — THE BRASS KEY

"I HAVE sworn to catch the criminal who has stolen his mind!... But if I catch the person I suspect, I'm afraid I may catch the girl I love!"

In the clutter of baggage, trunks, boxes, valises, Jeff Jermine, the artist, stood in the middle of his studio on West Eleventh Street, agitated, perplexed, appealing.

"I'm spinning, Kennedy!" he exclaimed, "just simply spinning!" Jeff paused, involuntarily, jerking his head toward a closed door at the far end of the big room. "Well I may be—with a crazy man—my best friend—locked in that bedroom!"

"It's Wallace Dalrymple, the architect, retired, you know, with a bit of a fortune. Dal was in splendid health until last night ... this morning ... and now ... I've had Dr. Hamilton, the alienist, here, but he won't say anything, yet. He is sending one of his male nurses, Radway, to keep Dal under observation. Meanwhile, I'm keeping him here. No one else knows where he is. I have a reason. The thing's unnatural; there's nothing in it like anything you ever heard before."

"Why, we just came up on the boat together from Vera Cruz. You know since Dal retired he's taken up archeology; his hobby has always been prehistoric America. My friend, Dellora Delmar, was on the boat. She became quite friendly with Dalrymple. You see, she was traveling with her friend, Bonita Hernandez, who lives with her here in the city. Bonita was Dal's second wife—divorced. After we sailed, Bonita started for New York by rail—arrived here just ahead of us.... Well, the friendship on the boat continued a day or two after we arrived—and, now—this!"

Though there was little that was coherent, Jermine's fears were evident and real enough to himself.

"If it should turn out that this Dellora is responsible in some way," queried Craig, "will you stand for my going on with the case?"

Jermine stared, startled. There seemed to be in him a terrific struggle between loyalty to his lifelong friend and love for the girl.

"I suppose," he hesitated, "I'll have to!" He paused. "I'm thinking of little Daisy Dalrymple, his daughter by his first wife—my sister.... Kennedy, her death was a blow to him. He retired from his profession, decided to travel, with me. We left Daisy in New York to be educated at the most exclusive schools, under the charge of her old governess, Ellen Burns. Ellen had married a fellow named John Sterling who has bought and rebuilt, with the help of Dalrymple, one of those old houses in Sutton Place overlooking the East River.

"But every two or three months Dal feels he must come back to New York, because he must see Daisy, be near her. He keeps his own former studio apartment where they lived before her mother died, up on Fifty-ninth Street, facing the Park, the Belleaire. But he's never in it, even when he's here. He spends most of his time at the Hispanic Museum ... with frequent visits to see Daisy in her new old home in Sutton Place...."

"Let me see him," cut in Kennedy, imperatively. Wallace Dalrymple was a handsome man even as he sprawled, his long legs at ridiculously unsymmetrical angles, hunched up in a corner of Jermine's four-poster, his clothes wrinkled and awry, resting his head, with its rumpled shock of splendid iron-gray hair, on his hand with elbow jammed into the pillow.

Big, staring eyes looked straight ahead at us. Yet it was evident that he did not see. "He seems rather weak on his feet," whispered Jermine. "All in."

Jermine reached him a glass of ice water. He took it as he felt his hand touch the cold glass. But he could not seem to drink. Kennedy moved closer and it was only with difficulty that the water was forced down.

"Look at his tongue—fiery red!" whispered Kennedy to me. "Do you notice this red eruption on his skin?"

Dalrymple had taken to rocking slowly back and forth with the sort of monotonous gurgle in his throat which we had heard.

The door at the hallway end of Jermine's studio opened and we caught the accents of a child. Both Craig and I started involuntarily to move out of the bedroom.

"Kennedy, come here a minute," called Jermine, from outside; then quickly, "Close that door!"

A few seconds later we were looking into the sweetest of eyes of a little girl, about fourteen.

"Daisy, this is Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Jameson—fr-friends of your father," hastily added Jermine.

She gave us a look of frank appraisal. Her glance lingered longest on Kennedy. Then, with a nod more of approval than recognition, she stepped forward and extended her hand graciously.

"Where is Daddy, Uncle Jeff?" she asked, turning. "I want to see him so badly. I wrote to him a couple of days ago. Nurse and I wondered why he hadn't come to the house or written. Oh, let me see my Daddy, right away. Is he in that room?"

Before we could stop her, she rushed down the short passage and into the room where her father was lying.

Jermine had started after her to stop her, to get her out. But Craig held up his hand with a laconic, "Don't!" Evidently he wanted to observe the man's mentality.

Not aware of her father's real condition, Daisy ran across the bedroom with childish happiness and sat down quickly on the side of the bed.

Dalrymple did not move. No intelligence gleamed from his eyes. He seemed merely to endure the childish caresses in silence. As I watched, my heart went out to the forlorn little girl on the bed.

"Daddy! Daddy! Look at me! It's your little sweetheart, Daisy!... Oh, say something, Daddy! ... Don't you know me? Why ... why... what's the matter?" Scrambling from the bed, eyes now dilated with fear and sorrow, Daisy forgot everybody except Craig. "Mr. Kennedy! Tell me—will he die? Will he ever love me again? Oh, my dear, dear father. They took my mother away from me ... now are they going to take my father, too?"

She ran up to Craig, took his hand, pleaded, and begged him to make her father well. Great tears were rolling down her cheeks as she pulled Kennedy over to her father's bedside. Silently pointing her little hand at him, she looked up at Craig with despair in her eyes. Craig put his arm about her tenderly and smoothed her curls softly.

"Cry it out, Daisy. Somebody has been unkind to your father, but we are going to get him well again.... Only there is one thing you must do. If anyone asks you if you know me, or if anybody other than your nurse, or Uncle Jeff, or Mr. Jameson, asks questions about our father—you don't know anything."

She looked at Kennedy through her tears and nodded. "No one will get anything from me, Mr. Kennedy. I have had no mother for so long and Daddy has been away so much that I have had to think harder than most children do about making friends. I don't make many ... and I don't talk much."

Daisy was prepossessing, too. Big brown eyes, dimples in her cheeks, and long brown curls falling past her shoulders, and about her the suggestion of strength of character and good sense. She was of the unusual type, the real thinker.

"There are three questions I want to answer right away," remarked Kennedy to Jermine as I took Daisy out into the studio. "By whom could this have been done, why, and how? What had he been engaged in, what work?"

"Well, you know his hobby. Perhaps you are familiar, maybe not, with the aboriginal Toltecs, the Mistecas, the Aztecs, and the Mayas who adopted many Toltec things?" Jermine looked about his studio walls and I saw that they were full of Mexican curios. "You've seen some of their gold and silver and copper." He picked up a knife. "They made even cutting tools of copper. Oh, Dal had a great interest in prehistoric records and inscriptions of Mitla, the great city and temple of the Mayas, in everything ancient, down there."

Jermine stood balancing the knife, not as if hesitating to tell us all, but as if in doubt just how to tell it.

"You know," he said finally, "we are fairly sure that in Mexico before the white man spoiled a growing culture, the Aztecs smelted a natural bronze from a mixture of copper and tin ores. Dal was an architect by profession and so he got interested in archeology. But at college he had been a shark at geology. Once he was going to take it up as his life work, but didn't.

"Now," added Jermine, fixing his eye on Kennedy and coming closer, "there is copper in the Mexican states of Jalisco and Guerrero. Also in Lower California. Here was an archeologist delving into the hieroglyphics of the Mexican aborigines. People called him, often, 'the fool.' But he was seeking, Kennedy, what he called, the Copper Key. In other words, where did the copper come from? There was a tradition that somewhere there was a gigantic deposit of free or rather nearly free copper. Maybe it was just superstition among the natives handed down from the dark ages. But anyhow in his studies he was seeking something that would show the source of the ores—to the north—perhaps in Sonora—perhaps in our own Southwest—perhaps even much further north in the mountains. He didn't say much. But I've been wondering. Had he gone down there this time to check up? Had he found his secret? Was that why he was so anxious to get back?"

"I saw something about Daddy that was unusual the last time I went up to the Central Park apartment with him. We always spend so much time together when he is back in New York. We go up there and talk about my dear mother and I promise him I'll never forget her and he tells me all about the happy times they had when I was a baby. Oh, Daddy is so good to me!"

"Well, Father had a big paper with some drawings and pictures and figures on it. He had it spread out on the little table that holds Mother's picture. I had a book and was reading. I don't know; it was some more of that old Mexican stuff ...

"Suddenly I heard Daddy make a noise out loud. I looked up and he was saying to himself, I've got it—I believe I've got it!' He seemed to be tracing something on the paper. Then when he finished, he made a mark on a map. He looked up and saw Mother's picture. He picked it up and was talking to it. It will be a great thing for America.—and for Daisy!' he said. I tried to get him to tell me what he was talking about, but all he would do was to kiss me and say, 'Daisy, you are getting more and more like her every time I see you!'"

"Oh, Radway?" nodded Jermine. Then, with another nod to us to keep Daisy engaged, he managed to get the nurse into the room with Dalrymple.

"Who is this Dellora Delmar?" asked Kennedy of Jermine, who rejoined us, evidently eager to get Daisy away.

"Oh, a newspaper woman," he said quickly. "There's a little crowd of us, who go now and then to Gitano's place, 'El Toro.' I imagine Jameson knows of it, down here on Eighth Street, run by Gitano Guerrero?" I nodded. "Oh, there's Allan Walworth who is a sort of promoter—Walworth, you might say, is my rival, as far as Dellora is concerned. He admires her publicity ability very greatly. Then, there's Bonita Hernandez, you know, and a mining engineer, a mighty well-informed chap who has traveled all up and down the earth, Noyes, Gilbert Noyes. But," he lowered his voice, "it's not here in New York, or even down there; it's that trip up on the boat. I'm afraid Dellora knows more about it than she should. She is a clever girl—too clever. I admire her—I love her—but——"

"Daisy, did you ever hear of a woman called Bonita?" Kennedy rose and went over to the big chair where the child was sitting. "Did your father ever tell you anything about her?" he continued, as he sat down on the arm of the chair, trying to gain her confidence.

"Oh, yes." She looked up at him with trust in her big brown eyes. "Daddy married her—but she wasn't nice to him. After a while she left him, got a lawyer, or something. I never saw her and she would never come to see me. Daddy told me she always seemed jealous of me."

"No.... You see, she was good to Daddy once when he first went down to Mexico. He had a dreadful fever and nearly died. This Bonita nursed him and when he got well she told him she had no friends or money. So Father married her so he could take care of her."

"That is all I know. But I heard my nurse say that she didn't get enough money when she pulled the old man's leg—that that was why she left him. I didn't know what she meant—and I had forgotten it until you just asked."

"Some crowd!" exclaimed Jermine. "Not a thought by any of them of the rights of a poor little fourteen-year-old girl! I feel like a piece of copper myself. You know they separate copper from the 'gangue,' as they call it, with which it has been associated in the lower regions—get that, lower regions. Yes.... I have been crushed, jigged, slimed, roasted, converted, fused—and thoroughly intermingled—just like a piece of copper ore. Oh, I'm no longer exclusive!"

There was a noise from the bedroom. We managed to leave Daisy near the hall door.

"The only thing that seems to quiet him when he gets one of these paroxysms is a cigarette," nodded Radway. "He seems to prefer these Mexican things rolled in straw——"

Kennedy picked up a couple of the butts and took two or three unsmoked cigarettes from the case Dalrymple carried.

"I must get Daisy out of this—home—it's getting late," whispered Jermine. "She mustn't see it. Here—let me give you the key to his apartment. Maybe, you'll find something there; something like what Daisy mentioned."

As he did so, a wild blow from Dalrymple's hand barely missed his face. Jermine dodged back just in time.

"No!" thundered Dalrymple with glaring sightless eyes. "Not that! Anything but that! There's danger in that key! They all know it! They all want it!"

Jermine nodded to us, as he reached into his own waistcoat pocket. "I've got a duplicate to his apartment key. Here."

"It's not that key he means. Whenever he gets that way—in one of those fits—he clutches his key ring. It has on it a big brass key.... That's the one he means. He sleeps with it clutched in his hand, like a vise.... It wouldn't do any good to take it away from him, either, as far as I can see. He cannot—will not, at least—tell what it unlocks. But he guards it with an insane jealousy."

CHAPTER II. — FORTUNE HUNTERS

Dalrymple had quite apparently been deeply impressed by both the beauties and permanence of copper. It was fading twilight and Kennedy now and then flashed his pocket searchlight about, rather than by a light betray our presence in the apartment. There must have been a score of beautiful brass candlesticks about. In a fireplace shone massive brass andirons. A bronze bust and other bronze art objects testified to Dalrymple's passion, as did jardinières of hammered copper and ash trays stamped out of sheet copper.

Kennedy carefully examined the archeologist's collection of copper beads, and ornaments, copper knives, hatchets, awls, axes, arrowheads, and spearheads.

"As much of the work of these early men as they did in copper, we know," remarked Kennedy. "Other stuff has perished, most of it. But the copper and bronze seem eternal. This is a wonderful collection, even what is here. Look, here's his stuff from Mitla."

Mitla, I knew, was south of the city of Oaxaca, and there, in its ruined palaces, was the crowning achievement of the old Zapotec kings. No ruins in America were more elaborately ornamented or richer in lore for the archeologist.

Dalrymple had brought up porphyry blocks with quaint grècques and much hieroglyphic painting. Already unpacked were half a dozen copper axes, some of the first of that particular style that had ever been brought up here. Beside the sculptured stones and the mosaics were jugs, cups, vases, little gods, sacrificial stones, enough to have equipped a section of a museum in themselves.

In a niche was an idol, a hideous thing on which frogs and snakes squatted and coiled. It was a gruesome thing; it almost sent a shudder over me. If I had been inclined to the superstitious, I might have attributed Dalrymple's predicament to it, traced to it retribution for having disturbed the lares and penates of a dead race.

"Here's Daisy's letter," remarked Kennedy, as he bent the flashlight rays on it and read:

I want to see you just as soon as you can come over. Nurse is going to have a big cake to-morrow night for my birthday and I am going to cut it and give you the largest piece.

It seems so long since I have seen you—just ages and ages to me. I have some reports from school to show you and I am glad my marks are getting better. I try so hard, Daddy. I am just going to earn that trip you promised me if I did well in school.

Tell Uncle Jeff to come to my birthday dinner, too. I want you both. I have a pretty new dress to wear and Nurse tells me I look just like Mother in it. I am going to wear it for you, dear Daddy. Lots and lots of love from

"Rather a contrast," he remarked as he held out a card from Gitano's on which was written:

"Try to be over Thursday night. We may learn something about the new government. You are interested in your permits for archeological digging.

He flashed out the light in his hands. I glanced about nervously, but dared not move or say a thing until I knew what had caused Craig's alarm.

Then I could hear a peculiar, scratching noise from the private hall. Closer we crept. Someone was picking the lock!

We were only on the third floor of the apartment house. It would have been possible for someone to have sneaked in when the elevator boy was away from the switchboard, if the operator was at dinner, I thought.

The picking continued. What would we face when the lock picker shot the bolts and plungers?

Suddenly there reverberated through the outside hall the clang of an elevator door and a shout. There was a scurry of feet as if down the marble stairs.

Kennedy flung open the still locked door. But we were too late for anything except the colored elevator boy, who almost ran into us as he sped down the hall.

Around the bend of the stairway as we peered in the half light I could make out a girl, a very beautiful girl, half disclosed, half hidden in the dusk as she leaped lightly down past the second floor.

Pursuit was useless. She was already at the first. An instant and she would be out in the hurrying homeward throng on the crosstown thoroughfare and lost. She had made a get-away.

"I think we'll accept the invitation to Dalrymple and dine at El Toro," concluded Kennedy, after we had made our own explanations to the alarmed elevator man and insured more careful watch of the apartment in which, so far, we had discovered nothing.

As we neared the entrance of El Toro, I was quite amused. These ramshackle Greenwich Village entrances are really funny. On each side of a pair of bright red painted barn doors were wrought-iron lights supported by two bulls in most belligerent rampancy. These gates opened and shut with a creak and a bang revealing two black doors inside, which made a better if not so picturesque a protection against the weather.

Inside, the walls were of brick with wide rough joinings. Someone with the modern artistic idea had taken a brush of whitewash and daubed it here and there. The floors were of wide black painted strips of wood. The table legs and chairs were black. But the tops of the tables were painted a red that would have gladdened the eye of any matador.

On the walls were painted posters, unique in conception and finely executed. The artist had caught the spirit of the matador. They were full of action and virility. The Spanish girls in other posters, in their dark hair, draped with black lace mantillas, dancing the fandango or some such dance, and shaking their castanets, breathed all the passion and fire of the race.

"Wouldn't you like to have some of those posters?" asked Kennedy. "They are the best of the sort I have seen."

Glancing about, now, I could see that people were eating from bare table tops and the napkins were little squares of bright red linen. I could not but be impressed with the difference in the people here from those in other restaurants and cabarets in the city, even different from the other places in the Village which are all, of course, "so different."

Mexicans, Spaniards from all over Latin America, even Japanese, all the adventurer types were present. Good fellowship seemed to be everywhere and everybody knew everybody else. They might be different, but they were not indifferent.

I smiled at Craig when two rather pretty girls came along and seated themselves at our table. One of them leaned over and with a gleam of devilment in her eyes trilled, "Will señor let me tell him his fortune?" She took my hand to read the lines, incidentally squeezing it rather more than necessary. I returned it. A repressed giggle, an arching glance under dusky eyelashes and her pressure became even tighter.

"You are no fortune teller, Juanita. You are fortune hunter!" the other girl laughed.

Craig seemed to enjoy the episode. He asked the girls what they would like him to order, let them do their own ordering, and we were soon laughing and talking as if we had known Juanita and Dolores all our lives. I was trying to make out whether they were what the Americano might call gold diggers, or whether that was just a way they had.

Before I could make up my mind, I noticed a girl sitting alone at a table as if waiting for someone. The thing that caught my attention first was when I heard someone mention her name: Bonita.

Bonita was a very beautiful woman, if you like them dark. Black hair, black eyes, olive skin, and just enough dark circles under the eyes to lend an air of mystery and enhancement to the face. Shadows bring out character.

"Indeed—so. I know everybody here. I will bring her here." She left the table and went over to Bonita.

With many gestures and much conversation, Bonita was soon seated at our table and we were making very merry over some queer Mexican drink that had slipped past the authorities.

Immediately, as if it were a second nature, Bonita was trying to enthrall Kennedy. Her chair was next to his. I thought she would be in his lap in a moment. They seemed very cordial girls, I must say.

"All, Bonita—may I join you?" Behind me I heard a man's voice. I may have been wrong, but I fancied I detected displeasure in his tone.

Bonita turned her head slowly upward and, with a languorous look and a lazy wave of the hand that held her cigarette, motioned him to draw up a chair. She moved a little closer to Kennedy.

"Ah, Gilbert, be seat! Now let me make you acquaint." We soon found that our new friend was Noyes, the mining engineer about whom Jermine had told us.

Bonita looked languishingly at Craig. As for me, I nearly choked over his speech. He seemed to mean it so much. In a second I felt he was going to date her up. Craig in the role of making love to a Mexican went to my esophagus.

I saw that Noyes was green with jealousy. At least, he was trying to convey to Bonita by admonitory glances not to make any further appointments with Kennedy. Bonita either did not see them or would not. At any rate she ignored them.

Meanwhile I saw that Jermine had come in. He was wise. He did not even give us a tumble. He carried it out to the end, too. He waited until something happened that caused us to be introduced to him. Meanwhile he chatted with Gitano, a sleek, shiny-haired, very polished Latin, who I am sure must have been classed as "cientifico".

They were joined by a Japanese from another table. Ordinarily all of our little yellow brothers look pretty much alike to me. But I happened to know this one. He was Kanakura, the curio dealer, with a wonderful shop on Fifth Avenue. As I looked about, I could not but be impressed that it was indeed a cosmopolitan crowd.

"Good evening, Dellora.... Hello, Walworth!" I felt that Jermine had made this just a bit louder for our benefit.

It was Dellora Delmar. Kennedy had heard it, too, even before Bonita took it up. He turned simultaneously with me.

As for me, I almost jumped out of my seat. It was the face of the girl who had tried to pick Dalrymple's lock at the Belleaire—and had got away!

Vaguely, now, as I studied her, I seemed to remember her, I had seen her somewhere before. But I could not place her.

Dellora Delmar was a woman of enticement and charm. She couldn't help it, A graceful carriage with a splendid figure and a piquant face made her many admirers. She was a jolly companion. As one soon learned from her animated conversation, her ability to mimic anything and anybody would have made her a fortune on the stage. It made her many friends in life. There was always a crowd about Dellora, and they were usually laughing.

It was done by Dellora and Bonita as if they were partners; or at least neither they nor their mutual friends could long be separated. Perhaps they were like some girls I once knew; each was afraid that the other might know someone she didn't. I could see that this party which was brewing was going to be a rip-snorter.

Moving the tables did not seem to interfere with a discussion going on between Gitano and Kanakura.

"Copper and bronze are the key metals of civilization and culture," Kanakura was saying. "You say it is iron? That is unstable. Only copper is permanent."

I felt that the conversation was just a bit Greenwich-Village. Still, I felt that if it verged too much on Mankind in the Making or a new Outline of History, we had with us womankind in the making who would quickly head it off.

"Man's copper key," put in Walworth, "unlocked civilization. That is true, Kanakura. It was a key that unlocked the future in different parts of the world at different times, but it unlocked it. Yes. And to-day the copper key unlocks a more permanent future—a future in which the present may be preserved, instead of rusting and rotting, as it does."

Kanakura's beady eyes seemed to snap. "Yes! Bronze is copper and tin; brass is copper and zinc. I have been reading a book, one of your new ones. A civilization rose between bronze and brass. The Bronze Age was about 3500 years Before Christ. Brass, I believe, was discovered or invented, not long before the year 1. It is wonderful how you in the West—and we in the East—are civilized by metals—and," he caught the eye of Dellora and bowed "—and by the ladies!"

In a flash it came to me. Dellora was the girl I had seen in the Japanese curio shop on Fifth Avenue as a stenographer when, at the time of the recent Washington conference on disarmament, I had been sent out on a wild goose chase for a Jap plot story of some kind or other for the Star.

My thought a moment before had been a correct intuition. The girls would not long allow of a conversation on the philosophy of history. Time sped around the clock before any of us realized it.

We were enjoying the wild antics of some bizarre people at other tables about us, when the lights flashed out quickly and on again just as quickly.

Gitano smiled and nodded. Then, bending over, he said to Dellora, loud enough so that only we could hear, "You know, Dellora, I am not afraid of the police or the enforcement. I pay! But there is word that to-night I do not get for what I pay! So—discretion! And Bonita tell me she have some new fine mescal—and pulque?—that she have bring up with her, eh? I want to be a little more merry before I am a little more sad, eh?"

Gitano went over to Bonita, put his hands on her shoulders, bent over and kissed her hair, raising his face with a most ecstatic smile.

Shouting and laughter and clapping of hands greeted this romantic action of Gitano.

Juanita put her arms about my neck and whispered: "I show you what a mescal mash is!" The invitation in her eyes was passionate and alluring, as we gathered ourselves together and chartered all the available taxis at the door for the ride of three blocks to the famous quarters of Dellora and Bonita.

III. — WHAT WOMEN WANT

OUR rather noisy crowd was admitted to the apartment of Dellora and Bonita by a quiet, very efficient Japanese servant, Gazi, who seemed impassively never surprised at anything that took place. Including our two hostesses, Juanita and Dolores, and another girl who "horned in" at the last moment, there were a round dozen of us. The seven men of the party were in various states of hilarity and, as can well be imagined, much took place.

The apartment was a most attractive little place of three rooms, one of them a very large front room, on the second floor of an old house at the north end of Washington Square. It had evidently been rented furnished, but the interior decorating had been helped out by Bonita and Dellora with a great many quaint art objects from Mexico, including basket work, weaving, and some excellent ornaments of copper and bronze.

However, the main business before the meeting was attended to with the aid of Gazi. It consisted in the production of innumerable bottles of bitter mescal and some pulque in a wretched state of preservation.

As for me, it was a party after my own heart. There was a lot of loose conversation and I early separated from Kennedy, with my ears tuned to scandal of any wave-length.

Over a tray set down by Gazi, I found Gitano and Kanakura, Gitano with one arm on the Jap's shoulder, almost about his neck. Gitano was pledging the unity of races and Kanakura was explaining about the ancient Ainus of Japan.

The Ainus, as I knew, where aborigines who had been driven northward into the island of Yezo, and were thought by some to be near of kin to both Caucasians and Asiatics. From all I had heard they must be a dirty, hairy race, but rather inoffensive and peaceable unless driven to extremities.

"You know also, prehistoric races of North America, of Mexico, came across by land from Asia and then spread south all over your continents," concluded Kanakura, his black beady eyes glowing. "So we are kindred, Mexico and Japan—brothers!"

Dolores had come up to me, listening to Kanakura and Gitano. Dolores never bothered her pretty head, any more than did her friend Juanita, about anything that concerned more than the adult population of the present generation. When she thought that the conversation had distracted attention from her own graces long enough, she broke in, "And I, Kanakura," throwing an arm about him, "am a sister of you both!" Leaning over she kissed Gitano. Gitano was, after all, a great catch, worth playing for. He accepted the kiss as a favor gratefully received.

I could see that Kennedy, while apparently deeply engrossed for the time with anyone with whom he might be talking, was watching Dellora constantly. Watching Dellora to-night meant watching Walworth, for he was her shadow. I never saw a fellow more infatuated. I got a great deal out of watching Jermine's chagrin, too. Walworth was trying to gratify Dellora's least whim.

There was a burst of laughter from Dellora's corner. Everyone looked. Dellora had taken an old raincoat out of a box and a man's old hat. Hastily donning them and pulling some hair down straight on her face, she was leaning over and imitating a man hitting imaginary rocks with a pick-ax.

"Oh, the copper—the copper—see!" She pulled off the hat and waved it in the air. "The world is mine!"

Every tone of her voice was Dalrymple's, every quaint awkward movement, even to his absent-mindedness.

"She has made an accurate study of him," Kennedy murmured to me, as I came over. "I wonder why?"

"Where is the old man?" Gitano asked, looking around at the rest. "How is he? I no see him? Who knows?"

He looked toward Jermine, who did not answer but shot a quick look at Dellora. Did I imagine it, or did Dellora really color? I turned to Craig to see if he had noticed. From his slight nod, I knew that he had. Did Gitano know of any reason why Dalrymple should not be present?

"Please," chimed in Bonita, "do not bore me talking about Dal. I have other things ... more interesting." Hips moving gracefully she crossed the room and seated herself by Walworth, put her arm about his neck and pulled his face down, proceeding to light her cigarette from the one in his mouth.

"Oh, I hear you liked Bonita's Dal on the trip up from Vera Cruz ... I like Dellora's Walworth. He is very nice man ... very." Bonita sunned him with an ardent glance.

Evidently Walworth did not think it worth while to do anything that might make a scene. He accepted Bonita's endearments quietly, but did not return them.

Here was a source of trouble, I thought. With the two girls, the fight was on. Still, I could not figure Jermine and Dellora. Had she been doing it merely to bring Jermine to time with a new rival? Walworth appeared deeply smitten by Dellora.

Kennedy must have felt it incumbent on someone to change the subject. At any rate he crossed between Walworth and Jermine. As he did so he picked up a hammered copper cup or bowl, of undoubted antiquity.

"Copper must have been treated like stone when these early men first found it," he remarked, holding the shallow bowl. "But finally the malleability of the metal must have caused them to shape it, instead of pecking it out. The pretty red color and the high polish they could give it must have delighted the barbarian eye. Maybe they practiced casting to some degree, but I've seen some wonderful results from their hammering, grinding, and annealing, thin sheets of metal made by laborious hammering, and the highest skill in sheet copper work exhibited in intricate repoussé."

Noyes had taken the diversion as a chance to approach Bonita with a couple of glasses of mescal.

He took her arm in what I thought was a rather proprietary manner and led her to a part of the room just near enough to me so that I could hear what they said. Mescal has no tendency to make people lower their voices, either.

"What's the matter to-night, Bonita? You seem rather free with your affection—first with this Mr. Kennedy—now with Walworth. I'll not stand much more of it!"

"You know darn well what I'll do! I've a mind to do it now," he growled, "if you pay much more attention to Walworth."

Mescal had given Bonita confidence. She looked at him defiantly. Raising her hand to her hair, she took out a jeweled ornament, fingering it casually. I was horrified to see that it was really a tiny little jeweled dagger, like a stiletto. With nonchalant grace she put it back and smiled wistfully. "He is a wonder man ... Mr. Walworth ... one for whom some girls would risk their character!" I could see that I had been right. This was a source of trouble.

"H'm," sneered Noyes, but with not too much disrespect. "I see... dressed to kill!"

"Oh—you may laugh!" There was a hard defiance in Bonita's tone, as she left him, still holding the two glasses.

"To me as an artist, copper has a great appeal," remarked Jermine to Kennedy and Walworth. At least they were not on the subject of the ladies. "As a metal and as an alloy, its rose red, golden yellow, and bronze are both artistic and practical. Then with other elements it produces blacks, blues, greens, browns that are mighty decorative. The brilliant blues and the beautiful greens of copper salts appeal to me as a painter. I've experimented with blues of two shades, greens, and intermediate shades—to say nothing of your old friend, Paris green, copper aceto-arsenite. There are a lot of people I might use that on—not as paint!"

"Oh, hang art! It's electricity and such things I'm interested in." Noyes had sidled over. "Wherever there's electricity there's copper. The nerves of the world are copper!"

"The nerves of a woman—carry a shock, too!" Bonita almost hissed that into his ear as she passed.

Gitano seemed to enjoy the flash of the make and break. It must have been in his nature, in his name Guerrero. He picked up a paper cutter fashioned from a brass rifle cartridge, a memento of more strenuous days.

"A man cannot even be killed in an up-to-date manner without copper," he exclaimed, as he and Kanakura joined us.

War, revolution was evidently on his mind. It was a subject in which he was evidently versed.

"Every part of a complete cartridge except the powder contain copper—primer cap, anvil, you call it, on which firing pin fall, to the bullet itself which have jacket of copper nickel, because steel wear out delicate rifling of gun barrel. Copper nickel not hard enough to damage rifling, yet keep the slug inside from deform. Down there, some time, we file it off. Then the enemy, he go—Bluh!" He mushroomed his hands out to illustrate dum-dumming his opponents. "Cartridge case, shell—gun metal, too—all need copper. My friend, Baron von Gall, he say even Germany cannot get along without it; there is no ersatz, they call it, eh?"

"It would be a great thing for America if Dalrymple should succeed." I could not help thinking of Dairymple's own words as Daisy had repeated them. Walworth had used them almost precisely. He went on: "Not so much the mere discovery of copper alone—as what he knows can be done for America with copper plentiful and within the reach of everybody. It is what I," he corrected himself quickly, "we know can be done with it in peace—a new copper age!"

Gitano stuck to his point. "Maybe in peace; but in war that red metal is more important than gold. Man cannot live without it. It is as good as a draft of men. The country that have it not is worse off than if it have not the men, the general staff."

"True enough," agreed Kennedy. "Wars have been won in spite of military ignorance. But no scrap of any importance since the fashioning of the first copper battle-ax has occurred without the red metal fighting on both sides. You are right, Gitano. Copper, brass, and bronze, they are quite as necessary as iron, coal, tar, wool, wheat, gasoline."

As far as Gitano was concerned, I realized that he was a virtual exile. He had been on the losing side in the last revolution. If another was being fomented, he was interested in which side to go with; he wanted to be sure to be with the winners. In other words, Gitano was going to copper his bet; no putting the money on the wrong horse this time.

In another corner of the room there were plants blooming profusely. They were partly shielded by draperies. I had noticed them early and had been emptying my mescal which I could not drink into these pots. Otherwise I should have been emptying my stomach elsewhere.

I was busy a few minutes later giving the plants a drink back of the curtain when Dellora and Kanakura sat down on a divan in front of the drapery. Dellora had been leading Jermine a merry chase during the evening, making up to everybody else.

The best thing for me to do was to keep still. I could not help but hear what was said, and I must confess that it was a time when I was not averse to being an eavesdropper.

"I miss you, Dellora. The shop has no more big laughs from little girl." Kanakura almost purred. "I wish you come back. I give you more beautiful copper and brass ornaments for your rooms. My customers, they ask for you, too. Ornaments are beautiful...."

Dellora had been lying back on the divan, a vision of loveliness, her face flushed with the mescal. Her eyes were half closed speculatively. I think the Jap thought it was a languishing love glance. He leaned over and took her hand.

Absent-mindedly Dellora brushed his hand away. She sat up quickly. "You heard them talking over there? Kanakura, what would you do if you owned the biggest copper mine in all the world?"

"I do?" With eyes closed, revealing only narrow slits, the Jap dreamed of power. "In Japan, the copper, the veins of the ore, are seventy to eighty feet—but of poor quality—two per cent, eight per cent.... Why, once we had even to limit the export of it. I do? I go home. Make Japan the greatest nation on earth. I would be next to the Emperor!"

"Kanakura, I hear that you have booked passage for Yokohama. When do you start?" Dellora suddenly shot it at him.

"Yes? And when are you and Walworth going to start build big house? He show me plans of house; I see him with you all time to-night. I cannot help see to-night he build it for you? A lot of copper it take—for the house—for the money, copper pennies—thousands and thousands of them to pay. Where come?"

Dellora laughed musically. "You are jealous, Kana," she tapped his eyes. "You see too much—that is not so!"

I wondered at Gitano and Kanakura, however. Would it be that the money for this revolution was coming from Japan? I knew the canny Kanakura well enough to know that he was not going to buy a pig in a poke, either. He would be on top.

It was getting late. All the evening I had been dodging Juanita and her "mescal mash." Now, to my great relief, I saw that Gitano had stolen my girl. I was glad of it. Of the vices, I have learned that John Barleycorn you can take and he will leave you alone. But Juanita? Never!

As for Dellora, I began to think that she was one who was not going to sell her heart cheaply. She, too, wanted to know. In fact, all bets in the "gangue" of fortune hunters had to be copper-riveted.

"Come up—to-morrow," I heard her whisper, as we were leaving, to Jermine. "I'll be alone."

Whatever might have been his suspicions twelve hours ago, that sent Jermine away in a flutter. He even forgot to wait for us.

"Can you figure a motive?" I asked Kennedy, as he turned into Fifth Avenue, now deserted, and we walked up waiting for either taxi or bus, letting the early morning air clear the mescal out of our brains.

"Motives?" he repeated. "Plenty. The Mex—graft. The Jap—always preparing for war. The promoter—a chance to profiteer. The mining engineer—a fortune."

"Passion," I exclaimed. "Surely, Bonita—Hang it! There's beauty, money, passion, in all sorts of cases.... What do women want?"

We walked a full block as I turned it over in my mind. "You have read The Wife of Bath'? Chaucer knew, hundreds of years ago. Not beauty, not fortune—to rule! And they haven't changed."

He despaired of any other conveyance than the subway and we turned in. "If either of those girls had this secret, she would rule the man she chose—all the men—no, the world! ... Should she?"

Then I realized that Kennedy was thinking not alone of the poor, staring, helpless creature down in the locked bedroom of Jermine. In an old house on Sutton Place was a little girl, just entering the sub-debutante age. What of her rights?

CHAPTER IV. — THE WEED OF MADNESS

EARLY the following morning, however, almost before Craig was well into some test that he was eager to make, Jermine was at the laboratory.

"How do you feel this morning?" asked Craig, looking up from his work over the tubes and jars and bottles already clustered in front of him.

"No one invited me to come up to see her—alone," returned Kennedy, without a smile.

"All right. Kid me about my love affair.... Oh, I suppose I came out all right ... but ... it's hell to be full of suspicion. What did you think of her?"

"I thought she was a very beautiful girl." Kennedy was enthusiastically non-committal.

"Oh, all right. You can't make me mad, that way. But, I mean, what do you think ... my suspicions...."

"I think she knows a great deal more about copper and has a great deal better idea of what it's worth than a lot of the wise ones up there—including yourself. Now, don't bother me. Walter, take him over to the Physiological Lab and borrow a cat for me!"

I had long since ceased to ask questions over Craig's strange requests. I knew that he wanted a half-hour alone, and that at the same time we should be serving him best by executing his rather strange request.

"Here's your cat!" I exclaimed when we returned. "Now, I took Jermine off your hands for thirty minutes; answer some of his questions yourself; take him off mine."

"I thought a cat would be better to try my test on than either of you," he retorted, as he took the feline from the basket and held her in his arms, smoothing her fur gently to quiet the feelings I had severely ruffled in my carrying. "Although, speaking about cats, we might have made a martyr to science of some of those we saw last |night, eh?"

With a dropper he sucked up a bit of some liquid that was odorless and colorless in a test tube. Then he let a small drop fall into the eye of the cat. The cat blinked a moment and Craig let her loose.

"Something I've isolated from those cigarette stubs I picked up yesterday in the tray near Dalrymple."

He turned back to his table and picked up the test tube from which he poured out a few drops. Then he treated it with a few more drops of strong nitric acid, evaporating it to dryness by gentle heat. The residue seemed colorless or slightly yellow.

"Now, Walter, touch that with a drop of this alcoholic solution of potassium hydrate."

I did as he directed, not knowing whether to expect an explosion or a vile odor. Instead, I saw the thing develop a deep purple color. Rapidly it changed to violet, then to dark red and finally disappeared. It was one of the most beautiful changes, of test colors that I had ever seen.

"That's characteristic," anticipated Kennedy to our questions. "It responds to a very small quantity—one fifty-thousandth of a grain. It's Vitali's test for atropine and——"

"Oh," I responded. But Jermine had no ignorance to conceal. "What's an isomer?" he asked frankly.

"An isomer of atropine is something, some other alkaloid, having exactly the same chemical composition, very similar in chemical properties and physiological effect. Atropine is matched by another group composed of hyoscine, hyoscyamus, hyoscyamine, from henbane, and stramonium, or rather datura stramonium. No other alkaloid gives an effect that can be mistaken for these. The others give only a brownish color when you try Vitali's test. Therefore it is of great value. Catch that cat. You won't have any trouble. She acts as if she had the blind staggers or something."

It was true. And as Kennedy took the cat he held her head around so that we could see the eyes. One eye seemed to be enlarged, even under the glare of the fight, shining forth, as it were, like the proverbial cat's eye under a bed.

"What does it mean?" exclaimed the artistic Jermine. "Dal's eyes! Is it the evil eye?"

"Not exactly. These are all what are known as mydriatic alkaloids—from their effect on the eyes. You can try it on your own eyes, if you choose."

"No. Stramonium, in this case. There's a difference in the impurities that are present, often, but that is what I would say we have in this instance—what is known in Central America and Mexico as the Weed of Madness."

"It's something similar in this case to the Central American marijuana, the Mexican toloache, and the Hindu datura, of which you must have heard."

I had heard of these weird drugs, but they had always seemed to be so far away and to belong to another atmosphere. Yet, I reflected, there was nothing to prevent their appearance in our cosmopolitan city, especially in a case like this.

"You know the Jimson weed—the Jamestown weed, as it is so often called?" continued Kennedy. "It grows almost everywhere in the world, but it thrives in the tropics."

"I've seen it in lots and fields," replied Jermine, "but I never thought it was of much importance."

"Well, all the poisons that I mentioned are related to it, in some way. The Jimson weed, down in Latin America, has large white flowers which exhale a faint, repulsive odor. It is a harmless enough looking plant, with a thick tangle of leaves, coarse and green, and trumpet-shaped flowers. But to anyone who knows its properties it is quite too dangerously convenient for safety. Well, those cigarettes, or at least some of them, have been doped with a species of this weed of madness."

"Why, it acts on human beings like the loco weed on animals," interposed Jermine.

"Very much. It is known in all the states bordering on the Rio Grande and in Mexico. If properly prepared, it will make an ordinarily peaceful citizen run amuck. His eyes begin to dilate and bulge. One of the sensations is as if flying, they say, followed by a dreamless sleep. Others lie in a stupor of dreams, a drug Elysium. But the end is epilepsy and insanity.

"It just simply depends on how much there is in a cigarette. In one case I know a man went to a fingerprint expert and offered him a cigarette. The expert fell into the stupor and the fellow stole his own fingerprints from the records. There can be enough in a cigarette even to kill. Of all the dangers to be met with in superstitious countries, these mydriatic alkaloids are the worst. They offer a chance for crimes of the most fiendish nature, worse than with the gun or the dagger. They are worse because there is so little likelihood of detection. That crime is the production of insanity itself!"

It was a horrible and repulsive idea, and now I recalled something I had read. I fumbled in the pile of old papers on my desk until I fished out yesterday's Star. "Here's a strange thing," I exclaimed, pointing to an article under the head, "Balk Plot to Smuggle New Drug."

"Analysis by government chemists of a weed found secreted under the floor of a room on the liner Arroyo today confirmed the suspicions of customs agents that an attempt had been made to smuggle in a sinister Central American drug new to this country.

"The drug is marijuana, said by experts to fasten its grip upon the novice with far greater speed than morphine, cocaine, heroin, or opium, and to be more destructive in its effects.

"The marijuana was found while the customs officers were examining the Arroyo at Pier No. 15, East River. Something about the flooring in one of the linen rooms attracted the attention of a customs man, who had the floor ripped up. Below he found several bunches of what seemed to be withered weeds, wrapped in Costa Rican newspapers of recent date.

"The deputy surveyor decided that the circumstances were so peculiar that a chemical analysis should be made. The chemists say that marijuana is so powerful that a small bit of leaf or twig rolled into a cigarette has such a 'kick' that the traffickers in drugs have no difficulty in getting one dollar for such a cigarette.

"In Costa Rica, where the plant grows, it is considered so harmful that mere possession of the drug entails a prison sentence."

"The Arroyo!" exclaimed Jermine as I finished reading. "That was the ship we came on!"

"All of it?" he asked. "That Costa Rican stuff might have been a blind to cover Vera Cruz."

"Is that the only way a bit of it could have got up here?" asked Kennedy quietly.

"N-no," replied Jermine. Then he leaped up and grabbed our telephone, calling his own number.

There was no answer for some minutes. Jermine jiggled the hook and told central to keep on ringing.

"What? Who's this? Pat? The janitor?" Jermine's face wore a startled look. "What, Pat? Mr. Radway, bound, on the floor? Say, Pat, look in my bedroom. Is there anyone else there? No? Put Mr. Radway on—loosen him!"

"The buzzer sounded," called back Radway. "I answered the door. I remembered your orders, sir, not to admit anyone. I did not. I had my hand on the knob. There was a woman in a veil—and a Jap.... That's the last I remember. I was out! They got me—some drug—ethyl chloride, maybe. And when I came to, Dalrymple was gone!"

"Or Gazi and Bonita," grasped Jermine at a straw. "He couldn't describe them, he said. It was done so quickly."

He moved over toward his never-failing cabinet of new apparatus, and took out what looked like a small putty-blower and a small kit of hand tools.

"What were you telling me, Walter, about watching that curio shop of Kanakura's during the conference?"

"That I struck up an acquaintance with the shopkeeper next door, could watch everyone who went out and came in. But I couldn't look around a corner and see what was going on on the other side of a wall."

"So," I remarked, as we started out of the door, "Dalrymple's gone—disappeared!"

V. — THE CURIO SHOP

AS we left the laboratory Kennedy gave over to me a fairly heavy black box with which I was familiar and Jermine and I took turns carrying it.

With a handful of nickels Craig dived into a telephone pay booth and was busy for several minutes.

"It just occurred to me to start something," he chuckled as he rejoined us and we hurried on our way, "something that will bring them all down to Kanakura's—pronto!"

Kanakura's was one of those little half shops. That is to say, what had formerly been a rather wide shop had been divided in half by a heavy partition of lathe and plaster and two, shops had blossomed where there had been only one before. The other half was known as the "Sweetie Shop," doing a business in the front part most of the day in chocolates and bonbons and strange and wonderfully concocted drinks, while in the rear it had been fitted as a tea room.

It was not eleven o'clock yet and the tea-room patrons were not due for some time. I renewed my acquaintance with the proprietor and we were sure of having the tea room to ourselves perhaps for half an hour.

Kennedy set to work immediately, opening the black box which, I knew, contained his dictagraph.

We had used the various forms of microphone very often in our work, but the thing was new and quite interesting to Jermine, especially Craig's arrangement so that three or four might listen in at once.

Craig placed the little black disc transmitter flat up against the plaster and lath partition, and adjusted his resistance. It was a method that sometimes worked on some partitions and saved a great deal of trouble, when the vibrations of sound could be caught.

Beyond the fact that Kanakura had just come in, there seemed to be nothing going on beyond usual routine on the other side of the partition.

Kennedy had taken out a small brace and bit from the tool kit and laid out the "putty-blower" tube for use, when we were interrupted by Radway whom he had called up from Jermine's studio.

Radway was bursting with news. He had made inquiries as Craig directed and a kid playing across the street from the studio building had told of a private ambulance that had driven up at what must have been the same time that the woman and the Jap entered the studio. There were two men in it, one in a coat that might have been a uniform. The men had later brought out another man in what, according to the kid's explanation, must have been a strait-jacket. Then the private ambulance had started off suddenly, leaving the woman and the Jap on the sidewalk. The woman had started to run after the ambulance, but there was not a chance for her to overtake it.

A moment's questioning of Radway himself brought out that his recollection of the woman was mostly of suit coat and bonnet and neck-piece that covered most of her face. Kennedy glanced over at me significantly as Radway did the best he could. By the description it was Dellora as she had been attired when she had tried to pick Dalrymple's lock the night before!

He picked up the dictagraph, listened, and smiled. "That's Walworth, just came in. He thinks Kanakura called him. They can't make it out!"

Working rapidly and silently with the brace and bit, he bored until he had a little hole perhaps a trifle larger than a quarter of an inch in diameter through the partition. Then he inserted the "putty-blower" tube in it, just so that it could not have protruded noticeably on the other side.

"Have a look," he nodded, taking his eye away from an eye piece at our end. "This is my detectascope—with a 'fish-eye' lens, that looks through an angle of about one hundred and eighty degrees. It overcomes the usual trouble with keyhole evidence. You know, you look through a peep-hole and you see only what is at a small diverging angle in front of you. Now, Radway, look. Is that the Jap?"

Between the dictagraph and the detectascope we saw and heard in the next shop almost as if we had been there.

Kanakura's curio shop was a treasure trove. There was a wealth of articles in beautiful cloisonné enamel, in mother of pearl, lacquer, and champlève. There were beautiful little koros, or incense burners, vases and teapots, enamels in crusted, translucent, and painted, work of the famous Namikawa of Kyoto and Namikawa of Tokyo.

Satsuma vases, splendid and rare examples of the potter's art, must have represented a small fortune. Also there were gorgeously embroidered screens depicting all sorts of brilliant scenes, among them, of course, the sacred Fujiyama rising in stately distance.

Walworth was admiring some bronzes. He had paused before one, a square metal fire screen of odd design, with the title on the card, "Japan Gazing at the World."

It represented Japan as an eagle with beak and talons of burnished gold, resting on a rocky island about which great waves dashed. The bird had an air of dignity and conscious pride in its strength, as it looked out at the world, a globe revolving in space.

"Is there anything significant in that?" asked Walworth. "I see the continents of North and South America prominently in view."

"Ah, I suppose the artist intended by that to indicate Japan's friendliness for America and Americas' greatness!"

Kanakura was inscrutable. It seemed as if he were watching Walworth's every move, yet it was done with a polite cordiality at which Walworth could not take offense.

Behind some bronzes of the Japanese Hercules destroying the demons and figures of other mythical heroes was a large alcove or tokonoma, decorated with peacock, stork, and crane panels. Carvings and lacquer added to the beauty of it. A miniature chrysanthemum garden heightened the illusion. Carved hinoki wood framed the panels and the roof was supported by columns in the old Japanese style. It was in this compromise between the simple and the polychromatic that Kanakura held forth. The dark woods, the lanterns, the floor tiles of dark red, and the cushions of rich gold and yellow gave it the fascination of the Orient.

Dellora entered Kanakura's shop with a light, quick step. She had a rich voice and it was a pleasure to hear her greeting.

"Feeling fine after last night, Kanakura?" she queried, with a vivid smile displaying her small white teeth.

"Feeling fine as you look to me!" returned the wily Jap. "Do you see who is here?" he added quickly, as if not taking any chance of a remark slipping out and being overheard, unaware.

Dellora bent over the back of the high teak wood chair and lightly tapped Walworth on the head. "Why, Allan, I didn't expect to see you. I'm awfully glad!"

Kanakura was not going to allow any tête-à-tête in his own shop. If anyone advanced to a higher plane in Dellora's affections, he felt that he should be that one in such surroundings.

There was no need for Kanakura to scheme. Kennedy might well smile. From the street entrance came a bustling little woman, brushing past everybody. Bonita was surprised at seeing so many present. Also a flash of surprise and anger seemed to pass over Dellora's face as she looked at Bonita.

"I didn't expect to see anyone but Wally and Kanakura. What an audience we have!" It was easy to get the aggrieved tone in Bonita's voice.

"If I'm the audience, Bonita, I admit it's a good show! How well you look in my gown! What's the matter? Is Dal's alimony getting low?" Dellora laughed provokingly.

"No, Dal's money is not getting low—nor mine either! Why do you crow? Have you made a killing, also? Who this time? Shall I ask Jeff Jermine what he think of Wally's attentions, eh?"

"The men do not bother me—just now," colored Dellora. "I leave that to you! But I want to know about my gown. Why are you wearing it? It is a pretty red—and the hat!" Dellora was chilling.

I looked through the detectascope. It was the same gown and hat that Dellora had worn when we saw her trying to get into Dalrymple's apartment by picking the lock. What did it mean? Craig turned to Radway. With his finger pointing and a nod he indicated that it was Bonita he had seen, not Dellora.

"Wear it? For reasons of my own!" Bonita snapped her fingers in Dellora's face. "Kana, give me drink of sake! What is the matter with people in the morning? They are so—so damn hard to get along with. Don't you think, Wally? Now he is a dear!" The last was to Kanakura as she saw him getting the glasses. "I am going to sit on this taboret—near you—Wally."

She looked defiantly at Dellora as she spoke so familiarly to Walworth and chuckled with glee.

An attendant poured out the rice brandy. Taking his own cup quietly, with a long piece of carved wood, he dipped in the sake and shook a few drops on the floor to the four quarters, according to old ceremonial custom.

I could see that Jermine, next me, was biting his lips and clenching his free hand as he listened in on the dictagraph on Walworth, his rival.

More quick steps were heard. "Good heavens, who is it this time?" Dellora laughed and leaned forward.

"Is it a—a junta?" he exclaimed, looking about, then to Kanakura, as Kennedy on our side smiled knowingly, "I thought you left message you want speak to me alone about my country?"

Kanakura shook his head. Then he said reflectively, "I have not call message. You must make big mistake. But since you are here—have some sake."

Gitano was ever ready for a drink. Mescal or sake, either would have settled him for a minute.

CHAPTER VI. — THE HELL CAT

"I am called up on the telephone—and I am told that Bonita is having a devil of a party with Walworth up here at Kanakura's. Then when I get here I find a crowd, all sitting around as if they were at a wake—or a fight! Who in the devil called me up? Did you, Dellora?"

Noyes was angry. He seemed to feel as though a practical joker had made a fool of him. Kennedy smiled quietly.

Dellora leaned back and laughed outright. "Ask Bonita, Gilbert. Maybe she knows!" Dellora threw a rather spiteful glance in Bonita's direction.

"It's very strange," retorted Bonita. "I was called up by a voice that sounded very much like Mr. Walworth's and asked to meet him here."

Dellora laughed again. It was more than Bonita could stand. "You confound mimic!" she hissed. "I belief you have been up to your tricks again!"

Noyes was in no mood to have his own private scrap with Bonita clouded by another with Dellora.

"You know very well what I mean! You didn't make good. You don't play fair! I went up to your apartment. You——"

"Yes!" Bonita, roused, had all the fire of her race. "I belief you did thing yourself—Meestair Noyes! So!" I felt that if she had been a wild cat she would have leaped at his face. As it was she turned and almost flung herself in the arms of Walworth.

This was a thing calculated, from the spiteful conversation of the night before, to set Noyes crazy. As Bonita's soft hand moved caressingly over Walworth's coat, Noyes strode over and pulled her hand from Walworth angrily.

Before he knew it Bonita had swung her hand around and Noyes received a stinging blow in the face. Noyes saw red. In his rage he forgot everything.

Noyes saw his handkerchief covered with blood from his still stinging nose. The indignity had set him afire.

"Mrs. Nolan!" He paused. "Ladies and gentlemen, let me make you acquainted with Mrs. Nolan. She has a T.B. husband down in the tableland of Mexico—wondering who's pressing her now! She was never old Dalrymple's wife—legally. She faked him—to get his money. Nolan, the poor prospector, who went down there as a lunger, was her husband, all the time!"

For the moment there was consternation. Noyes had spilled the beans. There was a tuberculous husband down there, in the mountains. Noyes had known it. Bonita knew he knew it. It was one thing, however, for him to know it; quite another to proclaim it openly, most of all here and now.

Bonita drew herself up, looked about with eyes that flashed fire. I half expected her to reach into her hair again and seize that little dagger ornament with which I had seen her toy last night. Either she did not have it, or she was calm enough to realize that with so many others present it would do no good.

If she had looked daggers at the break with Dellora, this was a veritable emotional explosion.

"You? You tell on me? You?" She laughed a hard, hysterical laugh. "I belief someone—you—bribe my servant, Gazi! Dalrymple! Pouf! Drug—dope! I tell the world! There are place—a farm—out in country—for dope fiends. There! I have said enough!" She wound up with a shrill falsetto.

As for Noyes, he laughed. Instead of replying, he turned away with all the scorn that a man can assume when he is holding a handkerchief to a bleeding nose.

Kanakura shot a quick glance and caught the eye of Gitano. They exchanged a nod of mutual understanding.

"I know the place she means," muttered Kennedy. "East Farm, the dope sanitarium, up in Westchester. Let's go. That gang is broken up. Do you see? Not a word from any of them. Now, it's everybody for himself—and the devil take the hindmost! We're a lap ahead in the race. Let's hold it."

Following the trail of Bonita's spilled beans, it was less than an hour when we arrived at the famous drug farm for addicts just over the city line.

Piece by piece, like a mosaic, Kennedy had fitted the fragments together to complete the picture—the private ambulance, the strait-jacket, the virtual kidnapping.

"Yes," responded the superintendent at East Farm, "there is just such a man as you describe, committed early this morning."

The superintendent, a friend of Dr. Leslie who had worked with us on so many cases, fumbled in a safe until he found them. I looked over Kennedy's shoulder and to my astoundment read the signatures at the bottom:

"Forged!" I exclaimed. "By whom?" demanded Jermine. Kennedy undertook a swift questioning of the superintendent, who was a man with a camera eye for faces.

"By Jove, the man was Walworth!" exclaimed Craig. "But this signature of Mr. Jermine's name is in the handwriting of a woman. I could swear that it is."

Before the superintendent could reply, Craig turned. "Yes. It is not drug addiction; it is poisoning—poisoning by one of the mydriatic alkaloids, like atropine. There is a drug that is definitely antagonistic to the mydriatic alkaloids. It is so antagonistic that it is actually an antidote. Physostigmine. Have your chemist come here. Of course, you have had no time—haven't the information or means to diagnose his trouble. I have. May I see him?"

We found Dalrymple, dazed, weak, in a receiving ward, where-he was not only under observation but could do himself no harm.

Kennedy reached into his pocket where had been his key ring. Involuntarily Dalrymple's arm shot out with a blow. Craig had been expecting it and dodged. But as he jumped back he had to let loose the key ring on its chain.

Dalrymple recovered himself and sat, rocking back and forth, mournfully, on the edge of the cot. Slowly in one hand he drew back the key ring on the chain until it rested under his unseeing eyes. He moved his fingers over the keys, and uttered a groan as he continued to rock ceaselessly.

Jermine looked at the frightful figure, now, of his friend. "Yes ... but what does it open?"

Without a word Kennedy strode out into the hall where there was a telephone. I heard him give a number he had looked up and I knew that it must be the home on Sutton Place of Daisy Dalrymple.

"Thanks. Now measure out that physostigmine, as directed. There." Kennedy was calm animation as he returned with the apothecary. Then to the superintendent he added, "He will be better, as soon as it begins to work. We have with us one of the best nurses of Dr. Hamilton. You can trust him, Radway; you have heard of him?"

"That little niece of yours, Daisy, is a winner! She has given me an idea. I called her, quizzed her, told her everything that might set her mind to work. In the cellar of that house on Sutton Place is a vault—with a bronze door. The brass key must fit it!"

The superintendent looked up with a certain respect to Kennedy, as Dalrymple already seemed to move more easily.

"I am taking him to his daughter's, with his nurse," bustled Craig. "I prefer the ambulance—for speed—we must hurry!"

CHAPTER VII. — THE COPPER ROOM

WE drove up to Sutton Place. It was on a bluff over the East River, where old society once lived, to which new society was coming back.

The house of Ellen Burns and her husband, John Sterling, was one of those old four story and basement houses that had been remodeled with an English basement. All the living rooms had formerly faced the street. Now the living rooms were in the rear, away from the noise of people and traffic.

Back of the remodeled houses were beautiful gardens, a small garden for each house, all opening into a larger and sunken Italian garden. Stone benches, sun dials, bird baths, urns, and fountains, with the climbing plants and evergreens, made one forget the city. If one had to live in the city, it was ideal.

As the East Farms ambulance pulled up, we ran across John Sterling himself, just about to enter. Ellen had telephoned his office and he had hurried home.

"Yes, you see Mr. Dalrymple was a bug on copper," nodded Sterling. "When we rebuilt the place, of course the old roof had to come off. He insisted on shingling it with copper. And the new plumbing is all brass pipes. Everything was copper and brass with him.... Well, maybe it cost a little more, but, as he said, it was there for generations. Why when this house is scrapped, it'll be worth its weight in copper! Everything's been done not for my lifetime, but as an investment; for half a dozen lifetimes to come!"

Kennedy whispered hastily aside to Sterling and, instead of entering the house, Sterling beckoned a taxi which had just discharged a fare down the street and now had up the "Vacant" sign.

A butler admitted us and Craig asked to see Ellen first. We had left Dalrymple in the ambulance until Craig could make arrangements with Ellen to get him in the house and make him comfortable before Daisy saw him.

"Miss Daisy is in the drawing-room," bowed the butler, indicating the rear. "A lady came a few minutes ago to see her. Will you be so kind as to wait in this little reception room?"

"Stop! Leave me alone! Oh, tell me, what has happened to my father!" We heard Daisy give a frightened cry.

"You had better, young lady! I'll—" We could hear Bonita threatening the child.

Kennedy flung open the sliding doors, one with each hand, and stepped through. Bonita wilted, then instantly regained her sang-froid, staring boldly, refusing to tell what she had come for. Daisy ran to Kennedy with arms open in the excitement of the moment.

"Mr. Kennedy! My father—where is he? Is he dead? Did they take him away?" Daisy clasped and unclasped her hands in anxiety.

"He is in this house, Daisy! He is getting better very quickly. Someone gave him a drug that made him—terribly ill. But we know what will cure it. He has had the cure, and ought to be much better in a few minutes, now."

The quality of passing quickly from the extreme of sadness to the extreme of joy is beautiful to watch in children. Just a second and tears and fears are gone; only happiness is visible. It is the resiliency that makes youth priceless—at any age. Daisy was dancing with glee. "My Daddy, here with me? Oh, good! good! I'm so glad!" She took Kennedy's hands and kissed him.

Suddenly remembering, she turned. "Mr. Kennedy! That woman was trying to make me go to Daddy's safe. She told me if I didn't, my Daddy'd never come back to me. She says she is my stepmother, that I must mind her—but I won't!"

We had heard the bell ringing violently. Bonita glanced out of the corner of her eyes, sidewise. A vindictive smile passed over her face when she heard the voice of Noyes. Kennedy had already told the butler to let everybody come in. Noyes's excuse was slim. "He wanted to see Mr. Dalrymple's little girl; said he was a great friend of her father," announced the butler. A Mona Lisa smile from Bonita was his only recognition from her. Kennedy motioned him to be seated. There was nothing else to do.

Daisy gave a nervous little laugh. The bell was ringing again. This time Kennedy himself strode to the door ahead of the butler. As he flung it open he did so in such a way that he was hidden completely behind the door. Kanakura and Gitano walked in. Kennedy slammed the door with a bang that made the old timbers in the house rattle, and stood with his back to it.

"Right in the drawing-room, gentlemen! Some more of your friends are in there. Just make yourselves at home!"

Kanakura's beady eyes flashed. But he was silent. Gitano never lost his volubility. "Why! It ees Bonita! Yess, I am always at home to talk to a pretty lady!"

Kennedy had drawn Daisy aside into the little reception room. "Daisy," he whispered impressively, "your father had a brass key on his key ring which he guarded most carefully. When he was carried off from your Uncle Jeff's, the key disappeared. We don't know who has it—and we don't know what it unlocks—unless it is that bronze door you told me of, in the cellar vault." Craig looked at the child, to see whether what he had told her might suggest something.

A flash of inspiration seemed to light up her face. "I am sure now is the time to do it! Daddy is sick. His key is gone. And you want to help him!"

"Yes ... I think I have another key! I am not sure, but I think it might unlock that big bronze door. It is Daddy's room. I have never been in it. Neither has anyone else except Daddy."

"Daddy wrote me a letter a long time ago telling me he was very ill. It was that time before he married that Bonita woman. He sent me a package I have never opened. But in it he said there was a key—a big brass key. I was never to tell anyone. I was never to use it. I must never take it out with me for fear of losing it. It is where I put it that day—still. He said his most valuable possessions were in his room in the cellar. If he died, or if he lost his key, then I could use the duplicate he sent me!"

Daisy's cheeks were flushed with excitement as she led me up to her room. Over her bed was a portrait of a very beautiful young woman. She turned around and said simply, "My mother."

Then she took the picture down and I saw a small wall safe. There, when it was opened, was the package from her father. I thought to myself, what an unusual child, not to have erred even to the point of opening the sealed package.

Downstairs Daisy drew Kennedy aside, with his back to the others as she pressed the key into his palm and lifted her beautiful, serious eyes. "For my father's sake, Mr. Kennedy!"

"There are some people in the yard!" cried Ellen herself from the doorway. "I happened to glance out of the window from his room, where he's coming along fine. I saw them. They were here once before, this morning. See!"

I looked between the shoulders of Kennedy and Ellen. There, peering in between the bars of the cellar windows, were Dellora and Walworth, with stealth and suspicion in every movement.

Kennedy was out in the garden in a matter of seconds, leaving me with our sullen visitors. He was back of Walworth and Dellora before they knew it.

Dellora flushed, seemed vexed at Kennedy's presence. Walworth was mad, almost fighting mad. Dellora motioned to him to be silent, however, and follow.

"Well, is it not cozy?" was Bonita's greeting to Walworth as they entered. The rest were silent.

Daisy, with Ellen, by this time had run upstairs and had seen her father. Daisy was blissfully happy. He had known her, had held her close to him with all his old-time affection.

A hasty questioning and a whispered conference upstairs, and, Kennedy on one side and Daisy on the other, they managed to get Dalrymple down the steps safely and into the cellar, while with the butler I made the others follow them single file.

Taking the big brass key out of the velvet box, Kennedy unlocked the patina-encrusted bronze door at the dank end of the cellar.

As the bronze door swung open, crowding forward, we could see that the brass key opened up what was literally a copper room, a room with walls and floor and ceiling, all of copper, a room where any secret, any treasure could be eternally preserved!

The copper vault itself was like a museum, rich in all manner of archeological lore of Mexico.

Kennedy found and switched on a light, then led Dalrymple to a big chair before a table. Daisy dropped on an ottoman at his feet, awed at the darkened surroundings, in a dream at having her father safe again, with a childlike thrill at the idea that something was about to happen.

"Well, this is safe enough," remarked Kennedy with a glance about at the massive walls, "safe from everything but an act of God or the public enemy!"

Dalrymple smiled weakly. "Safe? The best lightning rod in the world is a copper roof with copper down spouts, well grounded!" He turned to Daisy, smiled, and patted her hand. "Yes, this is as near eternal as anything man builds! What is it they teach you in Sunday school, dear? 'Lay up your treasure where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt'?"

Slowly, weakly, with trembling hand Dalrymple picked up a prehistoric Aztec battle-ax of copper. On it he pointed to unintelligible hieroglyphics.

He dropped back, exhausted, in his chair. Weakly he motioned to a small spherical safe in a corner.

Jermine came over and placed his hand on his friend's shoulder. Hitherto he had been only a silent observer. "So," he said facing the others, "the 'fool' wins! The key is worth millions. In his imagination he saw for America a new copper age.... He has wealth, leisure, happiness"—Jermine turned—"He has Daisy!"

CHAPTER VIII. — THE LIE DETECTOR

SOMEONE was coming down the rough cellar steps. It was Sterling, who handed a rather large package to Kennedy.

Quickly Kennedy unwrapped the package, disclosing several instruments, some of cuff-like shape with a dial at the end of a tube, others long silken bags, with an indicator and a bulb to pump air into the tube.

"Why, what's this? That's the tiling they use when you try to get out life insurance."

"Exactly. That's where I got these sphygmomanometers, six of them. I got all that were available in the uptown offices. We'll have a little truth-insurance!"

He continued fastening the sphygmomanometers over the brachial or arm arteries of Noyes, of Kanakura and Gitano, then of Dellora and Bonita.

"The lie meter," he remarked, "may not yet have been accepted by the courts as infallible, but sooner or later it must be incorporated into the practice of justice. The dictagraph, the fingerprint, the Bertillon system, and other scientific methods of arriving at the truth were all once looked upon with suspicion. But the efficiency of our social machine demands more accurate justice. It demands just such a neat mechanical process by which the lies may be separated from the truth." He paused a moment. "Fear, pain, anger cause the indicator on this dial to jump. I have seen the needle jump from fifty to sixty points when a patient tells a lie!"

Dalrymple, weak but now keen again, was listening with great interest as Daisy rested her elbow on his knee and listened also to Kennedy. He stroked Daisy's hair gently.

Kennedy smiled as he saw the pair. "Now, there's Dalrymple," he said. "He's like copper, himself! He stands a tremendous amount of hammering and pulling. He only becomes harder when he is treated rough. And, another thing. He is everlastingly on the job. Under nearly all ordinary conditions he has the ability to finish the work assigned to him. Yes, Dalrymple's like copper himself."

He had evidently said this to get the thoughts of the others in a proper channel. Suddenly Craig faced Bonita. She glared back, defiantly.

"When you went to Jermine's studio to-day, why did you wear Dellora's gown?" he demanded.

"How in the devil did you know?" gasped Bonita, then turning she asked, "Who are your neighbors in the shop, Kanakura?"

"I will look into that, myself!" exclaimed the Jap, indignantly. "I have an idea who did the telephoning!"

Kennedy merely bowed in mock modesty. Noyes was looking at everybody sullenly. I suppose he could not help thinking that if he had not started the quarrel with Bonita at Kanakura's none of this would have happened.

Suddenly Kennedy shot at him. "Why did you keep quiet so long, Noyes, about Bonita's husband, Nolan?"

Noyes eyed Kennedy as something uncanny. "There may be honor among thieves," he muttered, "but not in this bunch. I needed some weapon to hold over somebody!"

Kennedy nodded, caught sight of what was on the table, then turned toward Kanakura and Gitano. "Neither of you are competent to decipher these hieroglyphics. I suppose you all hoped to get some other archeologist to read the mystic message contained in the inscription on the copper blade of the ax, eh?"

Sullen silence was the only answer. "Did you have someone handy to decipher the secret of the mountain of copper, Kanakura?" reiterated Kennedy. "Is that why you were booked to sail to Japan two weeks from to-day? It wouldn't take a very large amount of money to finance a revolution compared to the profits and power of an individual and a nation that dominated the copper supply of the world!"

Craig switched. "Was the drug on the Arroyo bound for El Toro, Gitano? Or was there more that was smuggled up by train? And ... who was to pay for all those guns that I hear some people were planning to order? It takes money! Did you think it would come from Japan—or copper?"

For once Gitano's volubility was squelched. Kennedy smiled quietly. "You see, I know much more than you think I know. I have secret sources of information—Mr. Jameson's paper—elsewhere. Walworth, you happen to be organizing your own company, I hear, Copper Promotion, Inc., or some such name, of which you are president."

Walworth seemed eager to vindicate himself. "Yes ... you know, there's half a billion dollars a year lost in this country just because people don't do as Dalrymple did in this house, with roofs, gutters, leaders, flashing, valleys. Brass pipes would save another eighty or ninety millions. There's over thirty millions wasted every year in painting, patching, and repairing screens. What of it? Is there anything wrong in seeing a day of copper houses, bridges, everything from cradles to caskets?"

"N-no," considered Kennedy. "You may not know women, Walworth, but there's one thing you do know. You seem to know how to make and sell copper and brass—wire, plate, sheet, pipe, rod copper and brass. That is all you know.... With this thing of Dalrymple's, that would have been enough!"

Kennedy moved as if he had worked his questions to a point where it would be worth while to examine the indicators on the sphygmomanometer dials.

"Dellora," he asked, "why did you try to pick Dalrymple's lock, last night? How did you manage to get Dalrymple away from the others who kidnapped him this morning? Why did you forge my name when he was committed—after the key had been stolen from him? Why were you looking in that cellar window to locate the copper room down here?"

I could see that at the mention of Dellora's name and Craig's sudden massing of questions on her, J ermine himself was almost frantic.

"I'm going to take a look at what the needles tell me in my lie detectors," menaced Craig.

It was a tense instant. Who was it who would be betrayed? Was it Gitano, the Mexican adventurer? Or the Jap, Kanakura? I watched Walworth, the promoter, and Noyes, the mining engineer. What were those two girls, Bonita and Dellora, hiding under their outwardly composed exteriors?

"According to this sphygmomanometer ... I would say that the brass key is in the possession of——"

There was a shot. The only electric lamp in the cellar vault was out. We were in total darkness. Someone had shot the light!

CHAPTER IX. — SECRET SERVICE

STERLING found another bulb back near the furnace and as he groped and flashed it up, I found that I was blocking Gitano at the foot of the cellar stairs. On the floor Kanakura had jiu-jitsued Jermine and I suppose I would have been next, but for the exclamation of Kennedy.

In the semi-darkness stood Noyes with a still smoking revolver, on his arm the smashed sphygmomanometer.

"Bonita and her servant, Gazi, carried Dalrymple off," ground out Craig, as he froze Noyes motionless at the yawning, cold blue mouth of his own automatic, "forced to it by the hold you had over her, before you cast her off!"

He nodded to the others, never taking his eye off Noyes. "Then he was stolen from them by Dellora and Walworth—for safety! Dellora is in reality the agent of the United States Government, for the Department of Justice, seeking to protect American rights in Mexico. Walworth, president of Copper Promotion, had appealed to the State Department for help. Both of them were there to protect Dalrymple. You recall what I said about him!"

"Copper is a good mixer. It is useful alone. But it has even greater ability when it is aided by some other metal. With Dalrymple I have been living in a dream of a copper age. Though it does not appear in the incorporation, he is an equal owner with me in Copper Promotion, in addition to his royalties per ton from the copper mountain!"

I was astounded. It had not been plotted and engineered by Dellora, Jermine's friend, over whom he had been so worried. Nor was it really Bonita. It was not Walworth; he was in reality Dalrymple's partner from the moment there was anything in which to be partners. It was not the Mex, nor the Jap.

Bonita had taken the key immediately from Dalrymple when she had spirited him from the nurse Radway; it had been passed to Gazi, who had been bribed by Noyes; then Noyes had taken the first opportunity to throw her over like a squeezed-out lemon.

As Kennedy felt over the clothes of the promoter-faker, Noyes, he struck a lump in his breast pocket—the brass key!

In relief at Dellora's freedom from suspicion, Jermine turned to her. "Dellora, didn't you say you would see me—alone—to-day?"

"Yes—I wanted to hear whether you had anything to ask me—before I resigned my job in the department to go in the company with Walworth and Mr. Dalrymple!"

"Oh, Daddy!" trilled Daisy. "It's so nice to think I never really had a stepmother like that Bonita! Now ... when you go out to the mine ... take me?"—winding her arms about his neck—"because I never, never want to leave you again!"

THE BOULEVARD OF BUNK

CHAPTER I. — THE DIAMOND DANCE

"OUR new Wild West is Wild West Forty-second Street—every street that crosses Broadway, the great Boulevard of Bunk!"

The sentence from Kennedy's talk on the new criminality before a little group in a studio in Carnegie Hall stuck in my mind as a possible newspaper theme.

It was late; so very date that it was almost early. We had lingered until nearly three o'clock in the morning, long after the others had left, talking with our friend Hallor, the artist, in his studio. It had snowed several inches the day before; now it was sleeting and we were making the best way we could on the icy sidewalk down Fifty-sixth Street, looking for a taxi.

Through the sleet I spied the rear light of a taxi in the middle of the street between the piles of snow heaped up along either gutter. The engine was running and I started out over the snow piles into the street to see if the cab was vacant.

"Never mind, Walter," called Craig from his muffled coat. "We'll be at Broadway and the subway in half a block."

I must have been some forty or fifty feet from the cab when a shot rang out; it seemed from above. I slipped on the ice, startled but untouched, as Kennedy came abreast and pulled me to my feet.

An instant later three men ran out of an English basement four-story brownstone house that had once been a dwelling, dived into the open door of the waiting cab, and the cab jerked ahead with a fusillade of wild shots back at us from its windows.

"The license plate was covered!" I panted, as I made sure that Craig was untouched also:

Then I made out what sounded like a muffled uproar in the house which I recognized as the Classy Club Cabaret, now closed and every window dark. I started for the door, that had not latched and now swung open in the draught. A second floor window was partly open.

Kennedy had stopped and was digging in the snowdrift banked up along the gutter before the next house, where it had been shoveled off the walk. A moment later from the dirty, sleet-covered, brittle, glittering snow he drew out a little gun.

"Evidently someone fired at you—then threw the gun out into the snowdrift—to hide it until later."

Kennedy and I pushed into the dark hall. There was no one, but there was a light in the hall above and it was from above that the sounds of turmoil came.

Still holding the little gun in front of him, Craig mounted from the basement, to the silent first floor, also belonging to the cabaret, then we started for the second whence came the sounds.

"Look out!" I muttered as I heard what I thought was a sound from above in the hall. "Strike me pink!"

What I saw on the staircase above the second floor was anything but what I had expected. Instead of another gunman I saw a shivering, trembling little man in pink pajamas scurrying about in yellow fleece-lined slippers. He seemed just about scared enough to cave in as he uttered the cockney exclamation.

"Oh, my Gawd! More of the bloody guns!" He had just caught sight of the little "gat" in Kennedy's hand. "Oh, my Gawd! What shall I do? What shall I do?"

He looked askance at the gun, his lips quivering so that he could hardly speak. "J-jukes, sir. Mr. Bullard's man, sir. Oh, but the bally racket! Shootin' and yellin'. The blighters have made enough noise to wake the city. The blasted idiots! I 'eard the racket and crept down to see—bli'me——"

"In there, sir. It's a party in the private ballroom of the Classy Club, sir. He told me not to wait up. So I went to bed in my room, in the rear on the fourth floor. In the middle of the night I hear the bloomin' shots—so I crept down—just as I heard the front door below banging.... But I cawn't go into that ballroom with only me pink pants on ... where them yellin' ladies is!"

Craig stood for a second, his hand on the knob. I wondered why they were not all out in the hall. But it was for only a second I wondered. Suddenly there were blows on the other side of the door. It was locked.

"Locked 'em in, Walter!" exclaimed Kennedy. "Come on!" The newel post on the stairs was loose and he ripped it out. Then with the post as a battering ram he splintered one panel of the door near the lock. Through the splintered panel I could catch enough of the little private ballroom to see that in it was the most agitated group of people imaginable. It didn't take long to batter the rest of the door in.

A hasty glance about at the agitated little mob in evening dress and Kennedy was over by a woman lying on the floor.

"Is it anything serious?" Without waiting for an answer, he knelt down beside her and felt her pulse. Then he made a hasty examination of a wound on her forehead over her eye.

"We tried to, but we couldn't get Central." It was a very pretty girl, a show girl, who spoke.

"So! Your telephone wires were cut—and you were all locked in the room. A very thorough job. What's it all about? How was the woman hurt?"

A very excited woman, with blood streaming from the lobe of her ear, rushed up screaming hysterically in the babel, "I've been robbed—robbed—all my jewels are gone—nearly two hundred thousand dollars' worth of them—gone!"

She fell on the floor beside a chair and buried her face in a fine lace handkerchief which was already spattered with blood, sobbing bitterly. "And Jim didn't know I was going out to-night! Oh, why did I ever come? Jim will be wild! Husband and jewels—the same night!"

"Come, Frieda, let Lorraine help you!" coaxed a stunningly tall creature, slim and sinuous, as she came up and put her arms about the woman.

Kennedy shook his head at the girl, whom I recognized from her pictures but could not quite place. "They must have been in a hurry. They've torn one earring out of the woman's ear!"

"Yes, Mr. Kennedy," she nodded, her quick ear having caught one or two of my own exclamations to Craig, "but the biggest loser is Mrs. Kaufman." She glanced at the prostrate woman, stunned by the blow, but coming out of it now as Craig bandaged her head as best he could, with a towel that someone brought from the washroom. "She had on half a million dollars' worth of jewels. They've taken everything but the jeweled baby pins in her shoulder straps! She resisted—and they beat her up." She managed to get the sobbing woman to her feet.

"Miss Sawtelle." At once I recognized Lorraine Sawtelle of the Revelry Revue. "I—I lost—not so much. I have only a few simple things—and even those I didn't wear to-night."

"Be careful, Lorraine. Don't talk. That man's that detective, Kennedy—don't you know?"

At once I recognized Marshall deForest, the young spendthrift who had broken into print more or less in the last month or two, going through a sudden legacy of a hundred thousand dollars in his rapid-fire courtship of Lorraine Sawtelle, whom he had married, running away from Yale in the middle of his junior year.

By the answer she gave him, mingled indifference and slight, I gathered that both the legacy and Lorraine were fini, that Marshall was slated for the ash can.

"Were you all in the room when it happened?" asked Kennedy, who by this time had Mrs. Kaufman sitting, dazed, in a chair. "It seems strange that—seven, eight men couldn't do something against three. But, of course, the three were ready—armed."

"Yes," Lorraine snapped, "we were all here but—but Cliff Ryerson. Cliff is the only man that still has his diamond studs. All the rest were taken. He was in the men's dressing room."

"Yes, it seems as if I missed the little fracas—all but the end of it." There was a sickly smile on the young man's face. "To tell you the truth, I guess I was born on the water-wagon. I drank some of the stuff they called Scotch to-night and it made me deathly nauseated. I had to leave the room—get out of the heat, where I could get into the cold air."

A couple of fellows who looked like two-handed drinkers, although they had not proved themselves two-fisted in the hold-up, smiled sarcastically as if it sounded weak to them. But it didn't bother Ryerson. He stuck to his story.

We were interrupted now by the entrance of a couple of policemen who had heard the shots and found the door still open.

I fairly gasped as the details of the million dollar diamond robbery within a hundred feet of the white lights of Broadway were unfolded to me, a scoop for the Star dropped right into my hands like a plum—the story of how Mrs. Loretta Kaufman, the Lady of the Diamonds, had been held up at the Diamond Dance at the Classy Club Cabaret within a stone's throw of Columbus Circle.

It seemed that there had been a larger dance first at the cabaret downstairs, followed by a little private dance upstairs after the cabaret had closed under the new police restrictions.

"Who lives in this house?" demanded one of the police, as Kennedy told of finding Jukes in the hall and Jukes, now clothed and in his right mind, confirmed it. "Who is this Mr. Bullard?"

"I'm Bullard, Scott Bullard." A rather dapper, slight chap stepped forward. I recognized him now as "Bull" Bullard, who was well known in the jazz circles along the line as a sort of professional escort to Mrs. Kaufman, whose husband, ten or fifteen years older than herself, showed a marked preference for business rather than jazz palaces.

"Oscar Rasche and I have the whole top floor," went on Bullard, "three rooms and a bath with a room in the rear for our man, Jukes."

"Two apartments, one in front, the other in the rear. The front apartment is for rent."

"Two fellows have it—De Angeles and Ostroff. I think they do a little bootlegging on the side—a little for the Classy Club downstairs, I believe."

As I looked him over I thought there was a touch of effeminacy in Bullard. But at any rate, Mrs. Kaufman found him very amusing as a pal. As for Oscar Rasche, I now placed him as a female impersonator in the Revue, the only "girl" in the show who for obvious reasons wore many clothes. Rasche was a tough-looking fellow in real life, although it may have been affectation, such as I have seen on the part of stage female impersonators.

"Don't you think you ought to get Loretta to her apartment where she can have her own physician—without this notoriety?"

This suggestion was from a quiet-voiced girl who had been talking with Clifton Ryerson.

Taking their pedigrees, the police had found, with Kennedy, that Ryerson was a young chemist recently graduated from the Tech, and employed by the Kaufman Power and Chemical Company, the firm of Mrs. Kaufman's husband. The girl with him had given her name as Waverly Wayne. I could see that there was a romance between the two, at least on Ryerson's part.

In the coatroom, as the guests were getting their things after having given the police their names, addresses, and what little they knew, there was a sudden outcry. It seemed that the coats had been rifled.

As for Kennedy, noting that the coatroom was a front hall bedroom and that the window was partly open, he pulled out the little gun that he had picked out of the snow. "Ever see that?" he asked.

There was a general crowding about and some whispered murmurs. "Why," exclaimed Marshall deForest, "isn't that yours, Waverly?"

Waverly Wayne looked at it a moment. Then felt in her coat. "It looks like mine. Mine's gone. I've carried one ever since that attack in Detroit."

Behind me I could hear the roommates, Bullard and Rasche, with Lorraine. I gathered from their muttering that Waverly Wayne, also in the Revue, was unique, the only girl they had ever known who always declined offers of wealthy old "angels" to back her show career. Consequently they looked on her with suspicion as if she must be waiting her time to pull off some big coup.

"I'm sure it was she that ran in the coatroom after they left and locked the outside door," whispered Lorraine.

Kennedy dropped the little gun back in his pocket. Mrs. Kaufman was showing the effects of the strain, and it was his first care to get her away—himself.

Outside we found a couple of cars belonging to guests parked up the street where the snow had been carted away. In both the spark plugs were out. The gunmen had taken no chances.

Finally we located a cab, not a difficult matter now, in the excitement, and at last delivered the nervous, almost hysterical Loretta Kaufman safely into the hands of her sleepy French maid, Fifi, at her Riverside Drive apartment.

"Such a woman!" exclaimed the mercurial little Fifi, when she had all the other servants alarmed and attending to her mistress, while we waited in a drawing-room, until we knew that her physician had arrived. "So careless—so careless!" Fifi raised her arms and brought her hands together before her face, and shook her head mournfully. "Many times, oh, so many times, I tell her. But she listen not to me. Mr. Kaufman, he tells her. She only laugh, easy." Again Fifi shrugged her trim little shoulders.

"Mrs. Kaufman say nobody would ever think because she wear valuable jewels. Ah! We do not know what people know and think. She is so good; she think people be that way to her. I am so glad, oh, so happee they did not do her any more hurt. They might have kill!"

"Did you ever see anybody suspicious hanging about or making inquiries—anyone who might know that Mrs. Kaufman was wearing the jewels—so many?"

"Oh, no, no! The only people I see who know the value are Mr. Kaufman and Mr. Bullard. They know and they both warn her—many times. But she laugh. If Mrs. Kaufman put on a pretty red dress, then she wear her pretty red jewels or jewels that go with red. Then there are the emeralds—she 'have, oh, such good taste and such beautiful jewels....

"After Mrs. Kaufman leave this night, Mr. Bullard, he call up and ask for Madame. I tell him that she go to dance and she look beautiful. Then he ask to know what she wear. I tell him her beautiful lace gown with the diamonds. Then he seem please that she be wonderful at the party which is big. I hear him say it be Diamond Dance, all the ladees would have many diamonds and he want her to know that one try to outshine—er? He veree please, then hang up—hem?"

"Non. Mr. Kaufman—oh—he is—well—he is not at home." She could not escape Kennedy's interrogating eye. She winked with a whimsical little French shrug. "Often—there are telephone call for him—from Mees Lorraine Sawtelle, of the Revue— ah——"

"But Lorraine Sawtelle was at the dance. I saw her myself. Besides, she is married to a young man—Mr. deForest."

"Ah—so may be. Then Meestair Kaufman he must really be as he said gone on trip to the factory—up the state!"

"Well," ejaculated Kennedy under his breath as we left the elevator and turned into the Drive to walk the few blocks up to our own apartment in the driving morning sleet, "just a little bit more than usual of the bunk of the boulevard in this!"

CHAPTER II. — THE DIAMOND-MAKER

EARLY editions of all the afternoon papers were full of the million dollar diamond mystery the next day. All of them played it up but, as usual, the Star led all the rest. Following my tip, they turned the staff loose on it and obtained an interview with Loretta's husband, Kurt Kaufman, head of the Kaufman Power and Chemical Company, just as he arrived back in town on the Empire State express at half-past eight in the morning.

As I ran through the hastily concocted news stories, I could see that it was generally agreed that the two bootleggers, De Angeles and Ostroff, the real gunmen, were suspected. But there was not a paper that did not conclude from the facts that it had been an inside plot, engineered by the connivance of someone in the party or close to it. The question they could not answer and did not yet attempt to answer was the simple one: Who?

Neither Kennedy nor I were surprised as the morning wore along at the ringing of the laboratory buzzer. We had expected to be called in on the case, but whether by O'Connor or the district attorney or Mr. Kaufman himself remained to be seen.

A bustling young man, who looked as if he might be the efficiency expert of a large corporation, entered and plunged directly into his errand in a most businesslike manner.

"I represent the Metropolitan Burglary Insurance Company, Professor Kennedy," he introduced himself. "Detective Harry Clews, for the company." He handed Craig his card and a letter from an official of his company. "Mr. Thwaite of the International referred us to you, sir. And, of course, even though we are rivals, so to speak, we are familiar with your success for International Burglary in the Romanoff crown jewel case."

Efficiency stuck out all over Harry Clews. So much so, that there was no chance even for professional jealousy to intrude. He was frankly always telling you that above all things it was results that counted, not the individual. He seemed to me the type who would prove to you that six inches off bridal veils would clothe the South Sea islanders, and by cutting the gas consumption of hearses an Eskimo motor haulage would bring the Arctic Circle within the commuting area.

Kennedy was prone to accept the offer of the company, more from his interest in the case than even for the generous recompense promised. Consequently he listened in silence as Clews told him he was to have an absolutely free hand and then laid down the lines on which he personally thought Craig should proceed.

As nearly as I could determine from Clews' rapid-fire summary, he suspected everybody. If any more came into it, he would suspect them, too. Marshall deForest was broke. Lorraine Sawtelle being a revue vamp, was an adventuress and capable of anything. Cliff Ryerson was ambitious, in love with a show girl, and poor. That was enough. "Bull" Bullard, of course, as a tango tout of Broadway, might very properly be arrested at once. The same applied to his pal, Oscar Rasche. All show people were potentially unprincipled. Therefore Waverly Wayne had long been plotting a big haul.

"Yes," agreed Kennedy quietly, without contradiction, "someone is guilty. Now, I wouldn't for the world interfere in any line of action you deem proper. I have my own peculiar ways of working. They won't interfere. I am absolutely in accord with you. Results count; not individuals, not methods."

Clews nodded an efficient acquiescence. "By the way, there is just one other thing I am directed to call to your attention. We have learned something of Mr. Kaufman's experiments in his works over in Brooklyn in the manufacture of artificial diamonds under tremendously high pressures by the use of the electric furnace. We understand that it is in the experimental laboratory partly on this work that young Ryerson is employed." Clews turned indulgently to me, indicating his knowledge also of my business. "I think I see a newspaper science story in it—'Making Million-Volt Diamonds,' or some such thing. Mr. Kaufman's process, I believe, has really made little ones. He expects to make big ones soon. I thought it might interest you, sir." He bowed his way out as Kennedy thanked him.

"Where are you going to start?" I asked as the whirlwind of efficiency departed.

"Just where he thinks I am, so I can overtake him and get ahead of him on his own tracks. I am going over to Kurt Kaufman's laboratory. It's down by the river in Brooklyn. I don't know what it looks like, but I'd like to get in to Kaufman before he knows it."

It was another cold and windy day. Stinging blasts from the river made our faces smart and the wind almost took us off our feet as we struggled down to the Kaufman shops from the end of one of the bridges.

The shops were most modern reinforced concrete buildings that lapped over from one block to another. Craig made some general inquiries at the office on the ground floor, found that Mr. Kaufman was not there, and that the experimental laboratory was on the next block, toward the river. We saw a man enter and pass through a building down there, and followed. Back of it was an open space and at the far end a stalwart square building, also of concrete, isolated, one-story.

Kennedy turned the knob of the door to the little building. The door opened and we found ourselves in a little anteroom. There was no one to greet us or stop us and we had made no noise. On the other side of a partition we could hear the voices of two men.

"What's the use of quibbling, Ryerson? I hear that you were over at the Bliss plant looking for a position."

"I am not quibbling, Mr. Kaufman. I believe I am at liberty to work where I find it most congenial, in spite of the Kaufman scholarship I held at Tech. To be perfectly frank with you, I would prefer to be working on the production of helium by smashing the atoms of carbon in that searchlight than to be trying to put carbon atoms together in diamonds. I think there's a bigger field in working on atomic energy in that way than—well, there's too much talk about diamonds, here—that's all!"

We heard a fist banged down on the table and Kaufman's voice raised in anger. "Too much talk about diamonds, eh? That's what I thought this morning, young man, when I got off the train.... There weren't too many diamonds or too much energy for you, last night!"

"That is another matter. I went with Waverly Wayne because Mrs. Kaufman asked us. I wish I hadn't gone."

"You do, do you? Well, it's damn funny to me. All the men lost their diamonds, too—except you, Ryerson. Did Waverly lose anything?" The remark was quite pointed.

The younger man seemed to flare with anger restrained with difficulty. "No. Waverly had none to lose. I can't afford to give her diamonds.... What about Lorraine Sawtelle? She had some brilliants you gave her, mighty valuable ones. She left them all home. What do you make of that?"

"You young mud-slinger! She left her diamonds home, did she? Well, maybe she listens to reason. I've told her, I've told my wife, that some day they were going to get into a mess going out into the white lights like walking Tiffanys. She left them home. Well, Waverly brought her gun, all right. She didn't leave that home——"

"No, Kaufman, and the less you say about that, the better. Have you forgotten Detroit? Maybe you don't know I know. Well, once Waverly heard a chair placed against her door in the hall when she had retired for the night in her hotel. She sprang out of bed and listened. Outside she heard a man's heavy breathing. She could hear his hand reach for and turn the transom as he mounted the chair. She was trembling with rage and fright. She reached for her dressing gown and switched on the light. Then she screamed with terror as a hand came in through the transom. The hand slowly opened and a spark seemed to drop to the floor. It was a large diamond ring that flashed a thousand colors as it rolled toward her bare feet. She heard some one: 'Be quiet! That's a five carat diamond! Open the door!'

"You know who that was, Kaufman! You know Waverly refused your offer to be her 'angel.' But you made a hit with Lorraine—just as that foolish fortune of Marshall was dwindling. Kaufman, you're the kind that loves the ladies—but you don't like 'em!"

There was a sound as if a scuffle was imminent and Craig interrupted by turning the knob of the inner door. Instantly both men cooled in the presence of strangers. Kennedy pretended to have heard nothing, to have seen nothing. Apparently what he wanted first of all was to learn about Kaufman Process Diamonds as an opening for more pertinent questions.

"Well, that's the electric furnace," explained Kaufman, as Ryerson continued sullenly at work on something. "You see the electrodes at either end. When the current is on and led through them into the furnace, you can get the most amazing temperatures in the crucible. The most refractory chemical compounds can be broken up by that heat. What's the highest temperature you've obtained, Ryerson?"

"Oh, I've gone over three thousand degrees Centigrade," returned Ryerson, not even looking up.

"You see," Kaufman continued, with a sort of pride as he arranged everything, "here is a lump of sugar carbon. Diamonds, as you know, are composed of pure carbon crystallized under enormous pressure. Now, my theory is that if we can combine an enormous pressure and an enormous heat we can manufacture diamonds. The problem of pressure is the thing, for here in the furnace I believe we have the necessary heat. It occurred to me that when molten iron cools it exerts a tremendous pressure. That pressure is what I use. You know, solid iron floats on molten iron as solid water, ice, floats on liquid water."

He took a piece of pure sugar carbon and placed it in a soft iron cup. Then he screwed a cap on over the cup.

"Watch," he said. "I place this mass of iron scraps in the crucible of the furnace and start the furnace."

He turned a switch and long bluish sheets of flame spurted from the electrodes. It was weird, grew-some. One could feel the heat of the tremendous electric discharge. The furnace roared and vapors increased. As the vapors increased it became a better conductor of electricity and the roaring ceased. In almost no time the mass of iron scraps became molten. Suddenly Kaufman plunged the cast-iron cup into the seething mass. The cup floated and began to melt.

As it did so, he waited tensely until the proper moment. Then with a deft motion he seized the whole thing with a long pair of tongs and plunged it in a screened vat of running water. A huge cloud of steam almost exploded.

"I did that just to show you how it's done. As the molten mass cools and solidifies, we take it out of the water and then lay it on an anvil. Then my assistant begins to hammer it with careful sharp blows, chipping off the outside. You see, we have to get down to the core of carbon gently. First, rather brittle cast-iron, then hard iron, then iron and carbon, then some black diamonds, and in the very center the Kaufman process diamonds. I have not told you all of the trade secrets. There is one other. Soon we shall have the commercial artificial diamond." He smiled. "Every day in every way they are getting larger and larger!" I noticed, however, that he did not exhibit any.

I had been noting the sullen manner of Ryerson all through the interview, and the silent antagonism between Kaufman and himself. When Kennedy turned the conversation about to the robbery of the night before, there was nothing Kaufman would say beyond a remark with a covert sneer toward Ryerson.

"Mr. Kaufman," he exclaimed, laying down a small crucible he had been packing and deliberately unbuttoning his working apron, "I think this is the time to resent innuendoes about that affair last night. I hereby tender my resignation to take effect at once!"

Kaufman looked at him a moment, then a smile of mock deference covered his face, and he replied, as much for Kennedy's benefit as to answer Ryerson:

"I am afraid you cannot, Mr. Ryerson—until I accept it. You are under contract until the end of the year."

Ryerson flung down the apron resentfully. He realized that as a contract-breaker he would be virtually blacklisted.

"I retain you to be of whatever assistance you may be to Mr. Kennedy in clearing this matter up," added Kaufman, as he bowed himself out of the door. "I shall be happy to assist you at any time, gentlemen—good morning."

III. — SCANDAL-MONGERING

"THAT was very kind of Mr. Kaufman to put Ryerson at my disposal and I may take advantage of it before either of them realize it; but just now I wish he had been able to do the same with his wife," remarked Kennedy as we headed back over the bridge, leaving young Ryerson, his theatrics over, to pick up the stained apron he had so heatedly flung down.

The Kurt Kaufman apartment was in a splendid and imposing building. As we rode up in the elevator, I marveled at the co-operative luxury of wealth. The maid, Fifi, met us at the door. She seemed distressed, almost relieved, at seeing us.

Fifi answered with a quick nod. Her face was a picture of indignation. "There is man named Meestair Clews—he is worry Madame to distract. He speak—oh so cruel—to her. I feel so angree—she have enough trouble!" Her dark eyes snapped.

"Where are they?" inquired Kennedy, secretly elated with having gone over the ground and already caught up with Clews.

"In the breakfast room, just off Madame's boudoir. It is so sunny; it is good. Doctor Schultz, he tell her to sit there all day in the sun. But that man, he is no good for Madame to talk to—ver' bad." She threw up her hands expressively. Then, with a smile of coaxing, as if even if she were a maid she was a French woman, she took Kennedy's arm and whispered excitedly, "I take you in Madame's boudoir. You listen to this Meestair Clews—and if it get too terrible—you will stop heem—eh? I cannot do anything with that man. He is detectif. But you—ah—that will be different!"

Kennedy nodded, amused at the girl's loyalty to her mistress. We followed her softly into the boudoir. She indicated seats, curtsied, and left the room. I glanced at Craig apprehensively as I heard sobs, sobs of bitterness and pain, wrung from a woman who only the night before had been sorely wounded by a hold-up man and stripped of a fortune.

"Oh, Mr. Clews, please stop those vile insinuations! Is it for this I pay money to have my jewels insured—to be insulted by the first representative who calls to investigate?"

There was a plaintive note in it, but it struck wide of Clews. "Cut that out, Mrs. Kaufman. The open tear-bag may work with some. Not with me. Nor does it impress the company I represent."

I could hear him scratch a match and light a cigar, regardless of Mrs. Kaufman's feelings, as much as to tell her, "Here I am and here I propose to stay until you talk my way." Continued sobbing brought a scowl to Kennedy's face. Ruthlessness to any woman stirred him to anger. No woman was guilty, at least until it had been proved. Until then courtesy and consideration were his rules. Only his desire to hear the "third degree" kept him still.

Intently Craig listened and as he listened his eye traveled keenly about the room. It was a beautiful room, although it did not show much of the personality of the owner. It was rather a rich room, determined and completed by an exclusive interior decorator, who based its adornment not so much on the personality of the occupant as on the number of figures of the customer's bank account.

In one corner Craig saw a small desk. He tiptoed over silently and picked up an elaborately tooled rose leather diary. He opened it quickly, then took a small notebook from his waistcoat pocket and made several entries from the diary. I leaned over, too.

Under date of September 10, I read, "Kurt paid insurance—$12,000." Rapidly Craig turned and scanned the pages. Under the date of January 12, he noted, "Pledge on Czar's thousand carat aquamarine, due, at Plimson's.... Debts ... debts... debts.... Even if I can redeem it, that won't pay all the others!"

Kennedy elevated his eyebrows, closed the book, and listened more intently as the Clews bullyragging of Loretta Kaufman became more vehement. It seemed that Clews had leaped without warning into some smart society gossip of the relations of Loretta Kaufman and "Bull" Bullard.

"The company knows what you have been doing," he insinuated in a nasty nice tone. "They know that you have been chasing all over creation with this young Bullard.... That takes money, too."

"But Mr. Clews, Mr. Bullard has not had any of my money. Mr. Kaufman once paid him a salary for his work as a social secretary and I have given him a few presents. I tell you, it is only a business, a professional arrangement.... There is nothing in what you—you suggest!"

"All I can say is I doubt if you get a cent until you can prove that either you or this young Bullard did not pull off the whole affair with outside help!"

"Do you mean to tell me that you accuse me of taking my own jewels myself? ... Oh! ... if I were not ill ... you would pay for that remark!"

"You're not the first woman to get in a tight place for money and then try to fool the insurance company. But you don't count on the eyes that the company employs. Neither does Bullard. No, the insurance company will never pay a cent—under the circumstances. You were involved with Bullard, socially—ah—and we can prove it. You took risks, great risks. No court will make us pay. Depend on that. Now, Mrs. Kaufman ... when we have a client, a big client, we do not wait for a robbery to take place. Oh, no. We watch our client, gather information—about the habits, see who also associates and watches. Then, if anything happens—we are ready.... We know of debts—of losses at poker—at bridge—oh, we know a great deal!"

"Mr. Clews! I'll have to ask you to go. I can stand no more to-day. You don't understand it yourself, but I am far from well. I am almost in a faint now.... Please—go!"

"I can't! I will not! I'll answer nothing more—unless Mr. Kaufman is present!"

"He doesn't seem to be worrying very much. All he says is, 'I told her so!'——"

Kennedy decided he had let it go far enough. Hastily he coughed, then entered the breakfast room, bowing low to Mrs. Kaufman, with a curt nod in the direction of Clews. He moved over to the chaise longue on which the invalid had been resting, but on which now she had dropped in her exhausted nervousness. With a smile and a nod he straightened a pillow and placed it on the others.

As I looked at her frightened defiant face, I recalled at least one of Kennedy's cases where the woman herself had rigged the robbery—for the insurance company to pay. I glanced at Clews. He was cryptic. Loretta Kaufman had almost broken down as she became defiant over Bullard. Clews was in his element.

That was all he said, but I saw a look of relief pass over Mrs. Kaufman's face. Clews was inclined to be chagrined, to resist. But he swallowed his efficiency as he caught and could not counter Kennedy's eye.

Somehow as he withdrew, with ill grace, I could not resist the suspicion. Was Harry Clews for the Metropolitan Burglary really what Barker, formerly of the International Company, had been—head of a band of crooks, perhaps bootleggers, gunmen?

"Mrs. Kaufman," Kennedy reassured her, "my questioning may embarrass you—I know it will—but there is this feature that must be gone through in a robbery like this. No discourtesy is meant. It is only business exactness. I think you must understand."

She nodded timidly. Her white hand was opening and shutting nervously. Frequently she carried her other hand to her bandaged head as if to suppress the throbbing.

"You know, I have many sources of information, Mrs. Kaufman. In my profession, one must have. I have learned that you are more involved than Mr. Kaufman has any idea—and I think it has worried you. Am I right?"

She looked at Craig fearfully. His gentleness and seeming detachment from what provoked her financial embarrassment were encouraging, at least, after that terrible man, Clews. She nodded, merely—hardly even an affirmative. But I saw two tears steal slowly over her cheeks.

"Also, I have learned that you had the Czar's aquamarine pledged and that that money is due in two days. I believe that this, with your other debts, is almost more than you can stand."

Loretta sat up straight, a startled look in her eyes, fear. "Mr. Kennedy! You know that? ... What kind of man are you? What else do you know?" She was trembling like a leaf in an October blast. She pressed her hands to her face, moaned, sobbing, "Oh—the disgrace of it all! ... Why has he made me do it?"

It was almost as if my ears had gone up like a hound's. Was she admitting the fact that she was an accomplice?

"What did you mean by that, Mrs. Kaufman?" shot out Craig. "Did Bullard lead you on? Please tell me!"

At the mere mention of Bullard's name she seemed to gain a new control of herself. There was defiance in her manner, now.

"You may think what you please! I have not said I stole. I have admitted nothing. You all jump on that boy when he is down! What has Mr. Bullard done to anyone? I'll show the world that he has one defender—if I go down with him! ... I'm sick of hearing 'Bullard, Bullard, Bullard!' That is all you men think about in this case! ... Just watch some of the others. Don't waste all your energies on Mrs. Kaufman and Mr. Bullard!"

"I am not wasting energy," answered Kennedy, more cryptic than Clews had ever been.

"A very good idea, I would put it into immediate practice. Good morning, Mrs. Kaufman!"

Twenty minutes later we ran into Assistant District Attorney Peters down at Bullard's, questioning that gentleman on the spot, and to the chagrin of the newspaper men outside Peters invited us to sit in. Bullard seemed to have something venomous up his sleeve. At sight of Kennedy he seemed to decide to shoot it.

"If you gentlemen will look up the record," he said in an almost effeminate voice, "you will find that Cliff Ryerson bought that gun for Waverly Wayne—and when it came to getting her a permit under the Sullivan law to carry it, he took her around to the captain of the precinct and obtained the permit."

Bullard smiled quietly. "The gun was got because of Mr. Kaufman. It may have been used because of Mrs. Kaufman. Do I make myself clear? There was a million dollars in it—for someone!"

CHAPTER IV. — HEART BALM

BULLARD had just delivered his spiteful insinuation against Waverly and Cliff Ryerson to Assistant District Attorney Peters, and it seemed to me was very much satisfied with himself.

There was a smart rap at the door and Peters opened it himself, to be almost overwhelmed by breezy Tommy Thomas of the Record.

"Heard the latest?" Then without waiting, for he knew that we could not have heard, he spurted ahead. "Waverly Wayne has given the Revue French leave—disappeared—just like that—pouf!"

Bullard could not repress a smile. He looked about at us all for approval of his own detective acumen, seeming to say, "See? You can't fool this wise old owl!"

"At the Revue rehearsal. Everybody's talking about it down there. She didn't show up at the rehearsal and she even sent in her resignation—a letter, without any explanation except that she wanted to go away to rest." Tommy was bubbling over to tell it. "You should hear those twists! I learned more in five minutes from them than I could have learned in five weeks reading those very good exposes and sob stories your people are running in the Star, Jameson," he bandied.

"Oh, that she must have picked up a live one—that she must have struck a gusher. She was comparatively poor—depended on her two hundred a week from the show to live—and that won't buy many Rolls-Royces and Pic-Pics, like the rest of them have, or broadtails and Russian sables, and all that sort of thing. You don't throw up a good job for nothing when you've got nothing, they said; so what was it? ...

"Sawtelle was the real cat, though. I couldn't help but laugh at some of the things she said—for instance, 'Don't worry! Nobody's going to wear those sparklers where the police can give 'em the O.O.,' and I think I'd beat it, too, if they found my gun and my Johnny was the only man in the bunch that wasn't robbed!'"

Tommy had at least some puzzle in his news. The claque had it right. How could she afford to quit? It was suspicious. Was it a virtual confession? I thought of Ryerson's rather theatric offer that morning to resign from Kaufman. Could there have been any connection?

One of my own boys came in with the "Home" edition of the Star. We had our story, too, and it was a good one.

Loretta Kaufman had retained Max Friedman of Fisher and Friedman to look out for her interests, and Friedman was a notorious attorney for trying his cases in the papers. He had begun this case by giving out a statement from his client that she intended to institute proceedings against a certain Revue dancer now married to a famous philanderer of Broadway for alienation of her husband's affections.

"How's that?" I asked as I read it. "There's nothing actionable in that statement—but you know just as well as if Friedman had said it that it's Lorraine Sawtelle!"

It was apparent that the insurance company ultimatum and her husband's attitude toward her had driven Loretta far in fighting back. She was desperate, striking back and striking first for her good name and her fortune.

"This stage beauty," the statement went on, "is known to have squandered one man's fortune. Now she wants the fortune of another girl's man.

"According to well credited rumor on Broadway, not only has she squandered her husband's fortune but plunged him into debt. There are, according to these rumors, notes for a considerable amount about to become due.

"If she will do that with her own husband, I greatly fear she will do worse with another woman's husband. My purpose in instituting this action is merely to safeguard my rights before that happens."

Kennedy turned to Bullard, Loretta's jazz escort and professional partner, about whose head undoubtedly the storm from Kurt Kaufman would break next.

I drew Kennedy out in the hall and away from the others. My mind had been working quick. Flashed over me the innumerable campaigns the Star had conducted to warn foolish young millionaires who dissipated fortunes in a few weeks among the stage favorites of Broadway, revealing the secrets behind the scenes of how other silly youngsters of wealth had been entangled and ruined. Tommy Thomas's sarcasm had been in the way of showing how the thing was sinking in.

"I'm going to get Marshall deForest to do it for us, before anyone else thinks of it." I hastily outlined my plan to Kennedy. "Why, Craig, no matter what happens, even if he is guilty, it will be a big story for the Star.

It was not very difficult to locate Marshall de-Forest and, as was to be expected, we found him in the Spectrum, an afternoon and all night jazz palace. Marshall was the center of attraction, even if he was known to be broke. He was enjoying a brief notoriety—before either the police or the sheriff got him, whichever way it went—although in those circles it was no disgrace if one kept at least a couple of jumps ahead of either.

I had only to broach the subject of writing his life story to deForest to have him leap at it. I could see that there was not even going to be an argument over compensation For Marshall was not disposed, as far as Lorraine was concerned, to go into the discard quietly. There may not have been a chance to win her back by such a course as I proposed, and certainly his fortune was gone, irretrievably. But, lying back, I saw his idea. He might make it mighty uncomfortable for the illicit loves of Lorraine and Kaufman.

"New York Nights!" he repeated the title I had tentatively suggested for his autobiography of a moth. "That's good. Why not call it 'Snippy Stories'? That's the way I feel. To tell you the truth, I feel after my Broadway broadcasting like a little bean I saw in a movie on its trip from the pod to the puree. Now, I'm being canned! I was a sucker, I admit I deserve all I got. But I'm not out of the game—yet."

"What are you going to do—stay in New York, then?" asked Kennedy leading up to questioning about the notes.

"I'd like to beat it like Waverly Wayne did. I used to think she was the only decent kid in the bunch. But she was like all the rest—waiting for the big main chance. It's some Main Street we have here, eh? Say, do you think if I make it a good story, they'll put it in the movies? I guess I'd be as good as some of those chaps."

"And make as much?" added Craig. "It might help if you could get renewals on the notes that Mrs. Kaufman's lawyer says you have discounted. You might even pay them!"

Marshall's face fell. His was a mercurial disposition. The notes, or our knowledge of them, sent him down to zero. I hastened to repair the damage, now that Kennedy had got the admission that there were notes and that they were considerable.

"Yes, I think you're better than a lot of the movie chaps. Make your story strong; then if you get it in the movies, I'll put you in touch with a scenario writer who knows more than to get by with the censors, knows how to please them. If these censors don't look out, they won't let anyone warn young men and young women any more of their dangers by telling stories such as yours properly. By the time they get through, these censors will make vice attractive by taking the sting out of it. Now don't do that with those Star stories—see? Tell the whole truth about this new hokum."

"I will." Marshall regarded us with the pert air of Broadway that knows it is wise. "You go see my storm and strife—get an idea of her, her life—that's what I'm going to write about—the girls and the glitter I fell for, instead of the geometry and Greek!"

There was anger and pique on the part of Marshall over the loss of his Lady Lorraine. But the real bitterness was over old Kaufman. I wondered, incidentally, if that was to muddy up the water and hide his own nonchalant self. He was an easy loser. Was he too easy?

Kennedy himself wanted to see Marshall's "storm and strife." When we reached the theatre the show girls were resting from their rehearsal and Lorraine was surrounded by a group of golden-haired gold-diggers, most sympathetic.

Lorraine's brown eyes were snapping. She had a paper unfolded and was shaking it indignantly. "Have you seen what they dared to say about me? I would like to have Loretta Kaufman here—I'd—I'd wallop her other eye! They think they're clever, with their lawyers! Now I suppose Marsh thinks he has a case, too. Well, I'll show them a poor show girl can get just as good legal advice as they can! I'll get my sweetie to take me to the biggest attorney on Wall Street—that's his speed!"

As her voice rose strident, she spied Kennedy and me in the wings. The eternal feminine in her was always ready. She smiled. "You see? I'm all over the paper! They're giving me more advertising than I could buy if I owned this show. It must look pretty bad for Loretta-Kaufman if that's the best she can do—hit me!"

With a toss of her pretty head and a vindictive slender forefinger, she pointed to the paragraph about her propensity for going through other people's fortunes. "Do you see that? Well, she'll wait some time before she gets money out of Kurt Kaufman, after that!"

It was evident the insurance company bomb about Bullard had started them all going. Lorraine had been struck at; she now countered and struck back at Loretta. Or was it also Lorraine's only alibi, to fight back?

"When did you see Waverly Wayne last?" asked Craig looking about at the girls in the pulchritude show.

"Last night," she muttered with a look of disgust. "She's another one to go talking all over the place about Mr. Kaufman. Why, she says he even tried to be an 'angel' to her. Huh! He never thought of her seriously—after he saw me!" Her eyes opened wide as she warmed to her attack. "Say, you might like to know. When she didn't show up here for rehearsal at one o'clock I took a taxi over to her apartment to get her. It isn't far from the theatre. Before I could get out of the car, I saw Cliff Ryerson coming' out of the apartment house with a suitcase marked 'W.W. New York.' Well—you know Waverly's initials—now—have they both skipped?"

V. — THE DIAMOND-FAKER

"My office has just got in touch with me," he explained, "and they wanted me to get you. Mrs. Kaufman has been calling them up; wants to talk to you. You'd better call, if you don't mind."

Clews waited a bit, but as Kennedy did not seem disposed to move in his presence, climbed back into the cab and directed his driver to take him back to the Classy Club.

Not until then did Kennedy go into a pay station booth. Telephone booths may be sound-proof theoretically. However, I heard Kennedy through the closed door. "Very well, Mrs. Kaufman. I will be right up. Yes, I will bring Mr. Jameson."

"What's up now?" I inquired. "If there wasn't so much traffic on this street I wouldn't have had to ask. I heard the last. What does she want of me? If these people would only stay single or stay married, there wouldn't be so much trouble for detectives and newspapermen."

I couldn't help but snap at that bait. "Let's go! Before it's carried out. What's it about?"

"I believe they've threatened to steal the rest of her jewels if she doesn't shut up."

Fifi admitted us again and expressed even deeper anxiety over Mrs. Kaufman's condition before she ushered us in. "Madame is not well, Mr. Kennedy," she murmured in her musical, subdued voice as she took our hats and coats. "She worry—worry—all the time. Mr. Kaufman, he angry with her—ever'body angry—I feel so sorry! She so weak, she' get the nurse. I am willing, oh, so willing to help—but she is so kind. She is afraid it be too much work for me—and I not know all that a nurse know. She just lie all afternoon and cry—except when Mr. Bullard come to see her. She talk with him, but she not let the nurse leave room. She will see him not alone."

With a smile Fifi led us to Mrs. Kaufman's room. I thought she looked worse than she had in the morning, but, seeing us, she sat up excitedly, in spite of the nurse's protestations.

"Very well, Miss Maclntyre," she avoided, "just fix some pillows back of me—please—and stay in the room. I may need you. I am going to speak to Mr. Kennedy only about what you already have heard since I asked Dr. Schultz to send someone to me. So, it will be all right."

The last was to us, as she took a typewritten note out of a plain business envelope and passed it over to Craig. "It came only a little while after you left this forenoon. Fifi says that a messenger boy brought it and didn't even ask to have it signed for. I called up the Insurance Company—and I told them they need not send that impossible Mr. Clews up here. Then they suggested you—and I said that would be all right. I hope I haven't troubled you too much to come here. But it is important—to me."

With a negative nod of reassurance, Kennedy slowly read the note aloud to himself:

"No signature—no post mark—nothing to indicate where it came from," considered Kennedy, aloud.

As for me I did not know what to make of it but wondered if after all it might be a fake threat which she had had sent to herself.

"Is there anything about it that suggests anything to you?" Kennedy asked watching her face searchingly.

As for me, I am always looking out for a pretty face. It is a habit. No one ever turns a newspaper page without a look if there is a pretty face on it. I like a pretty face to accompany a story. Someone may read the story. The new nurse, Miss Maclntyre, had one of the prettiest faces I ever saw. A huge mass of auburn hair in great waves cropped out from under the stiff, formal white cap of her profession, skin white as snow, black eyebrows sweeping in a clean arch over beautiful blue eyes, red lips, and a profile that must have been the envy of all the would-be Pickfords in pictures. She moved deftly about the room, always on the watch for the comfort of her patient. I almost felt like letting Jiggs in on it so that he would know where to be sent the next time Maggie beat him up.

"No, not a thing," Loretta Kaufman repeated. "But this letter certainly must answer all the vile innuendoes of that Mr. Clews!' I just know that with this threat I can get the insurance company to pay up. It has been an outrage the way people have suspected me and Mr. Bullard."

She watched Kennedy closely and the thought flashed through my mind that it might be that she had asked us here to seek information, quite as much as to give it. If that were the case, Kennedy did not tell her much.

"Have you taken the proper precautions to guard your jewels that are left?" he asked.

"Yes—I have! No one knows where they are-except myself. It would be difficult to find them. Even Mr. Kaufman does not know. I trust no one—absolutely!"

She seemed slightly surprised and startled, but regained her poise immediately. "Why—no. He telephoned me once since I was hurt to ask how I was and if I had heard anything about the jewels-just the natural interest a young man working for my husband might show—and ordinary politeness that a lot of people don't show!"

Kennedy nodded. "I will let the company know about the threat. I cannot speak for them. But I will do my best in your behalf.... May I suggest that you obey Miss Maclntyre religiously and keep perfectly quiet? Worry will bring back nothing—and may start a lot of things!"

It was late in the afternoon, and no one at the Kaufman works had seen Ryerson since lunch.

Kennedy had the young man's address and we went there, scarcely expecting to find him. He was in, however, and did not seem surprised to see us.

"I suppose you think that you can ask me anything," he frowned, "after what Mr. Kaufman directed!" He was nervous and ill at ease. "Well, go ahead—maybe I will answer—maybe I won't."

"I've been told you were seen this noon down at the apartment of Waverly Wayne," hazarded Kennedy.

Ryerson was defiant. "That's one I won't answer. I don't have to. I may get in contempt of court—but I'm damned if I care whether I'm in contempt of Kennedy—or Kaufman, either!" He paused, considering whether he might have gone too far, then seemed to feel that he had. His next remark was rather ingratiating. "Say, Kaufman told me to talk to you. I'm ready to talk!"

Kennedy did not interrupt him, and Ryerson rattled on as if it were a current and a dam had broken. "I don't suppose you know. Only a few insiders, brokers, do know. Did you know that Kaufman was getting ready to take a plunge in Wall Street, in fact has been doing it in a quiet way, only now is framing a way to get the public in?"

Kennedy professed to be all interest and Ryerson went on. "He is seeking to promote his company, the reorganized company, by promises of fabulous wealth that he can make for it by his control of the diamond markets of the world!"

We did not need to pretend interest in a thing as vast as that, under the circumstances.

Ryerson's eyes narrowed and he leaned forward, speaking in a low voice. "It is all a fake—Kaufman process diamonds!" He paused. "I know where his process falls down—and I alone know!"

"Listen! Kaufman is already broke. The underwriters have got everything he had left after his other Wall Street fliers. He is really broke in his promotion before he starts ... and the promotion campaign itself' is based on a fake. Draw your own conclusions. I have told Mrs. Kaufman, too. She ought to know."

"I can't say a word—not a word more," answered Ryerson darkly. "But a word to a man like you ought to be sufficient."

As we left Ryerson, my mind was quickly building up an astounding new suspicion—Kurt Kaufman!

I asked myself, Why should he steal his own wife's gems? The theory that came glibly to my mind was equally astounding. Kurt Kaufman knew that they were insured, had seen that they were insured last September, and that she could not lose. He knew that he could sell them as manufactured by his own process. He was his own best "fence."

Lorraine had always boasted, like other Revue girls, that some day she would hook a big fish. Kaufman, poor fish, was the "angel" for Lorraine. Wall Street was breaking, had broken him. But he had to go on. To go on he must manufacture diamonds. To manufacture diamonds he would have to get them—to steal them! To steal them he had to have a gang and furnish the gang with an opportunity. So, had he framed "Bull" Bullard, jazz escort of his wife, of whom he was naturally jealous?

I could not resist trying it on Kennedy. His reaction was puzzling. I could make nothing of his reticence. Then, I thought I caught it. I recalled what Ryerson had said: "I know where his process falls down—and I alone know!"

If there was diamond faking, why rule him out? Did not everything that applied to diamond faking, apply with equal force to Cliff Ryerson?

CHAPTER VI. — BLACKLEGS AND BOOTLEGGERS

EITHER way in the possible diamond faking—Kaufman himself or Ryerson—there was still one question that must be answered, and if it were answered would tell the story. Who were the gangsters who actually pulled the million dollar diamond robbery off?

Kennedy returned, as we all did periodically, no matter what our promising leads, to the Classy Club. It seemed that I was not alone in my reasoning. In fact, it was so obvious that no one could be alone in it.

We found the police at the Classy Club and in the rooms over it going into the seamy side of the life of every habitue of the cabaret downstairs and the tenants upstairs—and most of all in regard to De Angeles and Ostroff, not a trace of whom had been unearthed. There was only one thing, in police estimation, to do and that was to search out the underworld clues to De Angeles and Ostroff—gunmen, bootleggers, and blacklegs.

All day they had been rounding up the customers of these bootleggers, hootch-hunting on the White Way. When we arrived they had just had Bullard and Oscar Rasche on the rack and again the little jazz escort and his pal, the female impersonator, had been grilled until it seemed that their private lives must have been turned inside out.

Now they had started on poor Jukes and between the police and his two smart young masters on the other side, Jukes was having a terrible time of it, tangling himself up in his broad "A's" and dropped "H's" until he didn't feel quite sure whether he was on Land's End or John o'Groat's.

In an unguarded moment one of O'Connor's men had made Jukes admit that he had heard his two neighbors below say that they were dealing with some rum-runners down the Jersey coast and that whatever other bootleggers might say or do, their stuff was all right and as the label represented. The labels were discolored by bilge water in the schooner's hold; one of the mustiest of bootleg alibis for just plain dirty water on counterfeit paper.

O'Connor's man, Frayne, was elated. "There," he muttered aside to us, taking Kennedy in, for old times' sake, "it may be that they got away that way, eh? We have every ship watched. The alarm has gone to every city. The railroads are watched. A rum-runner would be the safest secret get-away, understand? Run rum in. Run stolen jewels out!"

"That is, supposing the jewels have been taken from the country," commented Craig.

Kennedy nodded. "It's a good theory, but it doesn't catch any master mind that conceived the plot."

"The confounded little cockney!" Frayne with difficulty restrained venting the seven hundred years of Ireland's wrongs in one fell moment on little Jukes. "We're not through with you—you little cheese-head!" he blustered. "Just think it over—and the next time I ask you a question untangle that tongue and get the blubber out of that ivory dome of yours!"

Jukes just stared and muttered, "Yes, sir. I'll try, sir." Beyond the disparaging remarks on his nativity he was innocent of understanding Frayne's mixed slang, without some sort of Rosetta stone that has not been invented yet.

The grilling let up, at least temporarily, with the appearance of O'Connor himself. O'Connor selected a private dining room, called Frayne into conference, and clapped Craig on the back with a familiarity that made Kennedy's reputation with every employee of the Classy Club who didn't already read the Star.

"Now," began O'Connor, when he was sure that we were alone, "I have dug up one thing, Kennedy, that I think is very important and I'm going to let you in on it—on the usual conditions that apply to Jameson, here—get me?—pens lifted. I've had my men going rather closely over the wide swath that this gay young Marshall deForest cut through the Tenderloin in the last thirty or sixty days. We find that Marshall deForest has gone into a bootleg proposition to buy the whole cargo of a rum runner from Nassau. To cover it he had to discount his notes and it was done at the Maritime Trust at the time when he had most of his money still there. These notes are due on the fifteenth."

"But has that any connection with these guys De Angeles and Ostroff?" asked Frayne, rather eagerly, lest his own work go for naught.

"I think it has; you bet it has—De Angeles and Ostroff and the show girls—of course it has. They were very popular with show girls. Anybody with liquor and looks is, these days. Besides, the girls get a percentage on sales to the customers they bring in. And if they make sales themselves—well, then there's more in it for them."

O'Connor rolled his cigar over to the corner of his mouth. "Lorraine Sawtelle was one."

"So, our friend Marshall, with his own dear storm and strife, has figured in marketing one whole cargo of a rum runner. I guess I'm bad! That's another story he must tell for the Star or get docked! He's my employee, now, you know."

"There are a couple of others, Frayne, know them?" pursued O'Connor. "Agatha Maurer and Opal Perot. Now, it's my theory that there was one, possibly a couple or more agents of the gang to ascertain the habits and financial standing of possible victims."

Frayne was quite excited. "Same as that Potter thousand dollar stick-up at the New Year's Eve party—I'll bet it's the same gang!"

As we talked it over, I thought that I knew already something of Broadway blacklegs. But I found that the blackest legs were the visible female legs, that women were the most immune of bootleggers, as well as the most successful sales force.

They got the price, the highest price. Barnum had been right. We like our great American Boulevard of Bunk.

It was after dinner time when we broke up and Clews outside imparted the discovery that after the rehearsal he had trailed Lorraine and she had met Bullard in a Broadway resort. His judgment was that she was trying to vamp him away from Loretta Kaufman and that Bullard didn't vamp for a cent. It was Clews' theory that Bullard had letters from Loretta Kaufman, something that might be invaluable to Kurt Kaufman in fighting back against his wife's threatened proceedings.

Our store of perplexing information was further increased by learning that while we had been closeted with O'Connor and Frayne there had been a visitor in the Bullard apartment above us, the nurse, Miss Maclntyre. Bullard had been out. She had seen Rasche, but had waited only a little while, as it was not certain when Bullard would return. Rasche himself was gone, now.

In the apartment Kennedy looked around hastily, with O'Connor. He peered into the fireplace where a fire of cannel coal had been flickering when we were there. The coals were dead now. On top of them was a charred paper.

Kennedy lifted out the whole cast-iron grate into the light and bent over it, careful not to disturb the charred paper.

I followed as he traced with his pencil, still not touching the brittle charred paper.

Kennedy shoved the grate back. "I don't see any more charred paper—here. Maybe the message miscarried." He thought a moment, then bent over a table and wrote. Finally he handed the paper to me. "There's a statement I want given out to the press, Walter. Will you see that everybody gets it?"

There is no question that the robbery was the climax of a cunningly hatched plot of many weeks' standing. Many elements of similarity with the Potter robbery on New Year's Eve appeal to the police. I am particularly anxious to question a woman who has communicated with me anonymously. I want her to communicate with me directly and I will prevent disclosure of her identity.

"No; she's clever. You don't know. And I have promised to respect her secrecy, have I not? Just give that out. Try it on."

Directed by O'Connor, Craig and I for a hasty dinner made another little side excursion into the world of bootleg. We saw one "pinch" made by the famous Izzy Stein of the prohibition enforcement office and then had a chance to talk to the famous Izzy.

"I haven't been up there to the Classy Club myself," confided Izzy as he headed back to Broadway. "They all know me. You better not be seen with me, either. But my agents have been all through that place. They haven't got anything but affidavits from outsiders. There's something there, though, in a secret room, or under the floor, or on the roof, or somewhere. They can't take it out. And how was the Classy Club serving it, until this thing came up last night? Don't be surprised if you see us go through the place during the night—and what I get is at the disposal of you fellows, provided I get what I want—you know, Jameson—the big guy likes his picture in the papers. It looks well in Washington!"

CHAPTER VII. — THE ARSONETTE

IT was a fair enough offer of Stein and his enforcement agents. We had no authority to search, and with a warrant based on their quietly collected affidavits they had. We waited.

It must have been shortly after midnight when all was in full swing at the Classy Club with the after-theatre parties in full blast coaxed along by the jazz band but with the lid absolutely clamped on the activities of the waiters with liquor from their hidden source.

There was no fuss about it. Izzy Stein and his agents just simply walked into the place and took charge of it and we followed. It was the most polite raid I had ever seen. Everybody from the manager down to a majority of the guests knew the famous Izzy. There was consternation, a quick scurry by some few hip flask toters, and everybody seemed to be on their feet waiting for what would happen next as if it were the climax of a show. It was one of the spectacular additions to entertainment that the government pays for, a thing to talk about afterward, and increase the smartness of a habit that misguided reformers had dragged back from being considered by the public as falling into disrepute.

The shrill cry in a British accent was the only thing that could deprive the redoubtable Izzy from holding the center of the stage which he loved. There was a crowding and shuffling as Jukes, scared white, rushed down from the second floor, a small battered bucket in his hand. Already there was a penetrating odor of wood smoke in the air. Women stampeded for their wraps, men for the doors.

Breathless Jukes told his tale. He had been carrying down a bucket of garbage from the kitchenette of Bullard and Rasche, over which he presided for the purpose of getting breakfast in their rooms for his two young masters. He had emptied the bucket for the night collection of garbage and waste, stopped to talk with the cook in the basement of the Classy Club and then as he mounted from the second to the third floors, returning to his place on the fourth, he had almost got caught in the back draught of fire on the third. Mr. Bullard and Mr. Rasche were both out.

It seemed an incredibly short space of time when from every direction, as we gathered outside, we could hear the clanging of bells and the shrilling of sirens as New York's amazing fire apparatus began concentrating. I question whether the change from horses to motors has taken a thing away from the spectacular side of a fire. Certainly not to one who appreciates the stupendous power and appalling efficiency of what man's mind and hand have invented.

Each engine pulled up at its allotted hydrant for such an alarm. It was like a great war game. Every move had been plotted and planned by fire strategists even down to the hydrants that the engines should take.

Already the top two floors were aflame and glowing through the windows. In the rear glass must have been bulging and cracking, and the flames licking upward and shooting out in long streamers. Hose was coupled in an instant, the water on, and limp rubber and canvas became as rigid as a post with the high pressure of the water being forced through it. Company after company dashed up, urged on by hoarse orders from the battalion chief. But there was no unnecessary fluster, no hesitation. Everything moved as if by the clock. For that is the way with New York fire-fighters. They go straight to the heart of the fire.

Now and then a stream from a hose spat out of a window. About the ground floors the red-helmeted salvage corps were busy covering up what they could of the furniture and fittings with rubber sheets to protect them from water, so sure were they of what the fighters would do. It is just this sharp, scientific attack that nips what might any day be a historic conflagration.

A fire in the daytime is spectacular. But at night it is fearful and wonderful. All around I heard, "Is everybody out? Is everyone safe?" A huge red flame shot up from the back and revealed the inferno that must be within.

Just as it seemed that all the guests and tenants must be safe and we had settled back to watching and admiring the desperate winning fight of the men, there came a cry from the horrified crowd about us.

A ladder was shot up even before the shouts were stilled and "Smoky Jim" Watson, hero of the department, was up it like a man-monkey. It was breathless. It could have been only a few seconds after he leaped in, but it seemed an hour, before he appeared with a limp form of a man over his shoulders in the regulation way. He was out safely with his burden and down to the street amid a shout.

Kennedy and I hurried up to see who it was, to help if possible. Craig started in surprise, and I looked again to make sure. Before either of us could say a word a woman rushed past.

Kennedy caught Loretta Kaufman as she toppled and I helped get her to a taxi. The vivid redness of her heavy lined velvet evening cape made her face seem whiter than ever. I wondered at the mess of some people's lives. Here was wealth—the red cape alone cost more than many people have to support a whole happy family for a year—here was wealth and unhappiness.

As a newspaper story I saw the short item "Uptown Cabaret Wiped Out by Eire." The item; perhaps: "Eire in the building occupied by the Classy Club at ... West Fifty-Sixth Street routed out scores of theatrical people from their beds in neighboring houses and caused a damage of $60,000. A smouldering cigarette is believed to have caused the blaze. The flames spread so rapidly that a second alarm was turned in. The roof of the building crashed and several firemen narrowly escaped injury. More than two thousand people were attracted by the blaze in the middle of the night, as those in adjoining houses fled, wading in icy water, until the fire was under control."

But to me the excitement of the situation appealed. It was not only the fire-fighters and their amazing apparatus. But here were O'Connor and Frayne and their detectives, to say nothing of a couple of fellows from the District Attorney's office and ourselves. Added to that had come Izzy Stein and his booze raiders. Then there were the reserves, establishing fire lines. Now I heard the clang of an ambulance. A great show for the gaping two thousand!

At the height of the excitement I heard a fracas, loud voices along the Broadway end of the fire line. Two men from a taxi seemed to be in an argument with a burly policeman.

"I'll have your things sent out to you!" growled the policeman, weary of excuses, but with a grim humor.

Kennedy and I were over. It was Bullard and Rasche. We got them through. I thought, though, that they had seemed rather ostentatious about it all, for I am sure that with less bossing and more politeness they would have had no trouble. However, it was not their way. Did they not own the Boulevard of Bunk? I wondered, as Rasche trooped long with his suitcase, if it had all been to establish an alibi.

The fire was now practically out as any self-respecting fire should have been, after the tons of water that had been hurled on it. Besides, I thought whimsically, it must have accomplished its purpose, whatever that was.

As we were permitted at last to make our way in to see what had been left, we found that we had been preceded by Jukes, faithful to the last, searching in the ruins for the property of his young masters.

"I've got my costumes for the Revue in this grip to go to the cleaner's," growled Rasche. "Glad they weren't in this mess!"

In the ruined rear room of the third floor we found that it had been a big bedroom with an alcove. The hall door to the alcove had no handle and was locked. Inside I saw the reason. Where the doorway had been a big mirror had been placed, now smashed.

"Seven years of bad luck for some bally blighter!" exclaimed Jukes with his dry humor. "And 'e don't even know it!"

Kennedy looked in. In the space between the mirror and the locked, handle-less door were several bottles broken with the heat and contents gone. There was also a mass of correspondence—burned to a crisp. It had been a bootleg retail cache!

As we looked at the ruin, I fancied that Marshall deForest, who had been about with the rest, looked rather pleased at the wreck.

Now stories of the guests and servants began to be gossiped about as the excitement of the fire waned. The one most often repeated was of a girl, before the fire, a girl in a red cape, with a suitcase. It had point when Kennedy discovered at the back of the second floor unmistakable work of a firebug, where the draft would carry the fire surest upward and quick.

"I saw Cliff Ryerson here—not three minutes before the fire," volunteered Marshall then. "I thought he had been down to the kitchen."

"Oh," I exclaimed. "Get out! A loaf of bread! Say, Marshall, this is serious business. If you're going to write that way——"

Kennedy was busy fixing both the fact that it had been an actual case of arson and endeavoring to run down the reports of the arsonette.

VIII. — THE RED LADY

HE small boy in me stirred at the clang! clang! of an ambulance, hurrying up and nosing through the crowd. I had them all—fire-engines, cops, and the ambulance!

I turned quickly and gaped. The crowd scattered and the policeman pushed them back. The young doctor jumped down and in a few seconds Kurt Kaufman was receiving the necessary aid. It was not long before he was himself, but very reticent.

When Kennedy asked him why he had been up there in Bullard's apartment, Kaufman refused to answer. In fact, he was curt.

Just then Fifi darted out of the crowd and up to the cab where Mrs. Kaufman was leaning back, exhausted.

"Oh, Madame—but you shouldn't have gone out! What will Miss Maclntyre say? Oh, Madame!"

Fifi busied herself making Loretta Kaufman as comfortable as possible, patting her all over as if she might have been herself in the fire and have some broken bones or strained muscles. I did not wonder at Fifi's concern. In spite of orders from Dr. Schultz and the nurse, who must have been off duty for the night, Loretta, her head still bandaged but concealed as best it could be under the turban-like hat, had got out of her sick bed. She was here in the excitement—and, now I realized, wearing a red cape!

I had but a moment to speculate on that. I heard the strident tooting of a foreign automobile horn. A car nosed in, without stopping. They couldn't help but make way for it or be run down. I imagine I thought like the rest of the crowd—someone who owned the property must have rushed right down to the fire on hearing the news.

As the car stopped, the people gathered around in spite of the policeman. Curiosity craned many necks.

It was more than my humor could stand. I saw portly, dignified John Stewart Stillwell, the lumber king, richer than Rockefeller, helping the dainty and radiant Lorraine from his big gray Sunbeam.

As she stepped out, her evening cape of voluminous folds of white ermine parted at the neck and revealed a huge string of wonderful pearls. Her eyes sparkled as she saw us. Yet she was all dignity and hauteur. The look that flashed from her eyes seemed to mock us all. Advertising pays.

A scornful smile passed over her face. "I wonder why he was here?" Then, to the lumber king, "Isn't he the man you told me about being broke and trying to get some money out of your enterprises to float a new scheme? How very foolish—and ordinary!"

She put her little slim hand on Stillwell's arm and looked so babyish and helpless in his eyes that immediately he became the protector of a little, confiding beauty among so many beasts. Lorraine was a far-sighted lass.

Marshall deForest just stood in wonder and bewilderment, watching her. "My wife's a fast worker!" I heard him mutter. "My money—poor old Kaufman's—has landed her a guy who is so rich he can't go broke—even with her!"

Still Kennedy's failure to be impressed by anything or anybody or to turn aside from the one matter in his bulldog brain brought back to me the one query: Who was the Red Lady?

I could think only of Loretta Kaufman, until I heard one of the crowd: "Ain't she wonderful? Have yer seen her in that Red Riding Hood scene in the Revue?"

Then I recalled. In that scene they all had red capes. I drew Kennedy aside. He knew it, although we hadn't seen this year's Revelry.

"Lorraine—Waverly—besides Mrs. Kaufman's own red cape," I whispered excitedly.

"Oh, yes—Rasche, too. All but the wolf!" I glanced over at the suitcase. Could the red cape of the notorious female impersonator be in it, ready to go to the cleaner's?

A thousand speculations jostled through my mind as I thought of the Red Lady. Who was the anonymous girl who attempted to communicate with Kennedy and whom he wanted to see? Why?

Just then a messenger hunting about was directed over to Kennedy by O'Connor. They spoke aside a moment in an undertone, then Kennedy waved O'Connor over and in a loud voice remarked, "My scout posted down at Cliff Ryerson's apartment has sent up word that he saw Waverly Wayne go into the apartment with a grip—and that that insurance detective Clews is hanging about there, too. He'll keep her—them both—there till I come."

Kennedy looked about at the patrol wagon that had brought the reserves almost as soon as the fire apparatus had arrived; then he looked at the ambulance.

"They're the only things around here that will hold us all," he smiled grimly, "unless we commandeer one of those Fifth Avenue buses that go through Fifty-seventh street." He paused a moment, then added, "O'Connor, can you lend me your patrol wagon? It's got the 'Vacant' sign on it! I'll pay the tariff. What do you charge for the first half mile—and waiting time?"

Kennedy was always an enigma to O'Connor. But O'Connor knew better than to stand in the way of certain success. He nodded to take the wagon, even went over and spoke to the ambulance driver.

With O'Connor's burly authority, Kennedy piled them all in—Kaufman in the ambulance, already, with me, and then to my utter delight, Lorraine Sawtelle—after a quick snappy argument with her radiant friend of the Sunbeam.

"What a gross indignity!" she snapped as Kennedy assisted her up the steps, and she realized that old Kaufman was to be her companion.

Above the law in making his fortune, John Stewart Stillwell was behind the law when Kennedy took matters on, trailing along in his Sunbeam, sputtering, speechless.

In the patrol wagon with O'Connor Craig took with him Bullard and Rasche and Jukes, Loretta Kaufman, and the now indignant Fifi, all the lesser fry. I felt that I was highly honored as a conductor.

Our strange cavalcade in the middle of the night knowing no speed or traffic regulations came at last to Ryerson's apartment in Madison Square.

We found Clews, impatient, in an argument with Waverly Wayne, and both arguing with Kennedy's outpost who had sent the messenger and then had been forced to intervene before either of them could leave.

In the apartment of Ryerson in bags and grips were nearly all of Waverly's things, even the grip that Lorraine had seen Cliff take out when she had scurried around to Waverly's that noon.

There was one grip, however, that was not Waverly's and it was over this that Waverly and Clews argued.

Kennedy minced no words. He turned the grip up-end. On it were the initials of Loretta Kaufman!

To our amazed vision were disclosed, folded in some delicate mulberry underthings, Mrs. Kaufman's emeralds—jewels that must have represented the glittering remainder of the bauble fortune that had delighted Loretta!

Loretta Kaufman fairly screamed. Clews uttered the monosyllables, with a smirk, "Ah-ha!"

As for me, I could not but recall the threat to clean out Mrs. Kaufman of the rest of her invaluable gems. I wondered. Had the fire been set to divert attention of everybody from her apartment, or whatever hiding place she had chosen, while the master mind and the gang cleaned out the rest of her jewels?

As Waverly shut up like a mute before Clews, Kennedy alone could extract a word from her.

The telephone rang and Kennedy answered it. With a nod to O'Connor to hold everyone just as they were, he dashed out of the door and we heard the rata-tat-tat of the patrol gong as the wagon shot away.

In an incredibly few minutes Craig was back, flinging the door open as he ushered in Cliff Ryerson.

"I established a guard over Waverly Wayne's apartment, too," he announced. "I found Mr. Ryerson, there, waiting."

Under his arm, Craig had an almost whole loaf of bread. Over a library table he began digging at the soft center, where a part of the bottom crust seemed caved in.

"Waiting," he added, "with the jewels of the million dollar diamond hold-up hidden inside a loaf of stale bread!"

"Now, folks," shot out Kennedy, "do you want me to tell you what happened—or will you tell?"

CHAPTER IX. — THE ANONYMOUS GIRL

"Well, Jukes!" exclaimed Craig, "you cast your bread upon the waters and it returns to Mrs. Kaufman, after—not many hours, eh?—in spite of your friend Fifi!"

Jukes was sullen. He looked about under his lowered forehead. There was no escape. Fifi was stunned.

I saw it, now, at a glance. Ryerson had recovered the stolen diamonds; Waverly had saved the rest of the Kaufman gems from being stolen.

Then I saw a Titian wig in the suitcase and noticed the changed color of Waverly's eyebrows. The nurse, Miss Maclntyre, was Waverly Wayne, the anonymous girl.

"I knew I was suspected—Cliff was suspected," she shot back at Clews, discomfited. "The best answer was to get the stuff back myself—ourselves!"

Waverly had gone to the aid of the enemy of her bitterest enemy, Lorraine Sawtelle, and had saved the rest of Loretta's gems.

Then I saw that Kurt Kaufman had gone to Bullard's to bully or bribe Jukes and get the letters, had not seen Jukes, as that international crook was getting the gems out in the only way that would not be searched from the most unlikely place in the world to hide them, had searched for his wife's letters, and had been overcome in the sudden incendiary blaze. The fire had been not to destroy Mrs. Kaufman's letters to Bullard. It had been to destroy whatever bootleg evidence on Jukes and Fifi and their gang might fall into the hands of Izzy and us. The plot actually to divert attention while they cleaned up the rest of the Kaufman jewels had been forestalled by Waverly, who had gone to the Classy Club too late even to see Cliff Ryerson, who broke in on Jukes at the exact right moment and beat it.

"We're a couple of damn fools—victims of the Boulevard of Bunk! ... Will you forgive ... and forget...."

"I thought you said to meet me at your apartment, Waverly," I heard Cliff whisper.

"Well—there won't be any mistakes like that in the future. It will be our apartment!"

THE SOUL MERCHANT

CHAPTER I. — HELD FOR RANSOM

"WHATEVER the crime-master can devise, the crime-maker can circumvent. It is a race. The only way to win it is to be a fifth of a second ahead of the other fellow to the tape."

Kennedy was carefully winding a coil of copper wire and insulating it with some grayish substance between the coils of wire. He paused as he waited for the layer of the grayish paste to harden.

"Take the burglar alarms," he went on. "A scientific criminal can circumvent them all as fast as they are invented. Here's one that they'll circumvent—but not until they study it. It's a selenium cell."

"What is selenium?" I inquired vaguely. The name was familiar, but such facts do not always stick in my mind.

"A very curious element." He took down a jar from the shelf over his head and placed it on the table. From the jar he took a bit of the same grayish substance he had been using on the coil and turned to show me. "Under light it is a good conductor of electricity. In darkness, it is not; it is an insulator.... Now somewhere, some time a burglar must use light——"

A shot rang out in the hall. At the same instant there was a crash as a bullet pierced the door. The jar which Kennedy had placed on the table back of him was shattered into slivers of glass.

The next moment the laboratory door flew open, before we could even recover from the momentary start, and a man, a rather distinguished man, his coat and collar awry, his hat off, his hair rumpled, his face dazed, uncertain, almost fell in in a crouching position.

A glance was enough to assure Craig as the man straightened up that he was unhurt except for the shock. Kennedy was out into the hall and down the short flight of stairs to the front door of the Chemistry Building. There was no one in the hall, no one on the campus. The attacker had disappeared as if the air had swallowed him. Pursuit was useless; there was no one to pursue.

As Craig turned back to the laboratory door, on the other side of which our informal visitor stuck, he paused to examine the clean-cut bullet hole.

"I'm Commissioner Hunter, in charge of the State Narcotic Commission, created the first of the year," jerked out the visitor. "They followed me here!"

"They seem to have been ahead of you, here," corrected Craig, with a glance up the stone and iron steps to the next floor, "waiting up those stairs! The direction of this bullet was from above—not on the level or below. You must have caught some warning from the corner of your eye and ducked. That's what saved you."

It was some minutes before Commissioner Hunter could talk connectedly. I was uncomfortably shaken myself and the attack had not been aimed at me. When I am frightened I talk. Somehow the sound of my own voice steadies me. I was rattling away to Kennedy, who had come back to clean up the slivered glass and salvage his precious selenium.

"Take your time, Hunter. Get yourself together." I marveled at Craig's imperturbability.

Hunter mopped his forehead. But the more he regained his poise, the more terrifically worried he seemed. "Kennedy," he exclaimed, "nothing matters to me—except one thing. I need your help more than any other man in New York. My God, advise me what to do."

I thought the man had gone crazy. This did not seem like old "Lonehand" Hunter, whom the reporters knew when they had gone to interview him in the years when as a private citizen, before the state had acted in alarm, he had with limited private resources lobbied and fought against drugs. A jaw that was prominent, lips that met in a straight, determined line, iron gray hair, short and bristly, black, heavy eyebrows surmounting eyes as steel-blue as a gun—who and what could bring such a man to this state? It was not that shot, I thought; it was something more awful.

He strode over to Kennedy and clutched his arm. I could see that he didn't know how hard he was gripping. Kennedy put his hand out on Hunter's shoulder. "Steady, old man! Don't waste time!"

"She's gone!" said Hunter, huskily, straightening up. "My Maybeth—my little girl—five years old!"

He nodded as the words stuck. Kennedy bent forward. He was ready for the fight. The mere suggestion of a child's hazardous plight was enough to kindle all his fire in a case.

"I had the message over the telephone not a half hour ago—from my wife, who is frantic. We live up in New Epsom. My place is where the bay narrows down and bends around into the creek. Maybeth was out on the lawn with her nurse. She climbed down to the beach and the nurse stayed on the lawn. From around the bend came a speed boat. The tide was just right so they could nose in. One of the men in the boat jumped ashore, grabbed Maybeth, carried her to the boat,—they were off like that! The nurse screamed! The Shumans next door were out in their cruiser. They gave chase. But they hadn't a chance to overhaul this boat. I called up the police, the Mayor, the District Attorney. I have everybody I know in New Epsom hunting.... But, Kennedy, this was brought into my office by a messenger boy, not ten minutes ago. I read it and took a taxi directly here to you."

Hunter passed Kennedy a note, then dropped down on a chair, his elbows on his knees and his head between his hands, as the tears streamed down the rough cheeks of the man of iron will.

"I've had threats ever since I've been in it," muttered Hunter. "But never anything like this from those sallow-faced drug addicts! ... I cannot let up. The city Narcotic Division is in it. Federal agents are in it, now. I cannot call them off! What shall I do? They couldn't know that I have stopped, when so many are fighting it, even if I did stop.... Why did they have to vent their spite on my pretty little innocent girl? If I had the man who took her"—he brought his fingers together like a vise—"I would choke him! Why didn't they ask for money—all that I've got?"

Kennedy said nothing. I knew he was thinking it all over, where to begin. Such a case is like a spherical safe; no corner on which to take hold. Once loosed, Hunter's tongue poured out a flood of speculation, fear, conjecture.

"Why do I take such risks with such desperate people, you may ask? Well, I had an uncle once who went wrong with opium—became a veritable John Jasper. He used to go away for weeks. His wife died. Then he disappeared with his little daughter. He died, I've been told. But he left no trace until then. I guess the child died before he did. I was a young chap then. I often used to think—I might have been his Edwin Drood! ... Nowadays, the thing is spreading, spreading fast. For instance, do you know my latest tip?"

He shook his head. "Right in the old aristocratic Heights section of Brooklyn," nodded Hunter. "Greenwich Village started to move over—but the atmosphere didn't take—or something. Now, I've had this tip—a society opium joint—The Poppy,' I tell you—somewhere right in the old Heights, over the River, or the Bay. Maybe one of the addicts I employ as a stool pigeon squealed. I don't know. They stop at nothing. If you only knew them as I do—but then you mightn't want to help me!"

"I've always lived out of town, for the sake of the child. I have scores of pictures. But none of them right here."

"Many of them. But I have the most wonderful child photographer, Vail—you know Vail's Photo-Art Studio just off Fifth Avenue in the forties?"

"Well," decided Kennedy, "let's go downtown to the studio and get some of the plates."

The Vail Studio was at the back of an old four-story brownstone house, held by the company which owned the adjoining office building, in order to protect the light and air. All around were other office buildings. We walked up to the top floor of the old house, all of which seemed to have been converted to business, gowns, hair-dressing, stamps and coins—all sorts of things.

When we entered Vail's Studio we were met by Vail himself, a man of middle age with bushy dark hair, bushy eyebrows, and eyes that looked out at you from behind heavy dark tortoise-shell glasses, as if estimating not only your portrait value but how far there was any prospect of success in collecting for "Art" and a Fifth Avenue reputation.

At the mere hint of our mission, Vail introduced us to his daughter Eva Vail, who was seated at a small mahogany table delicately finishing some photographs.

I was startled by the beauty of the girl's face, a perfect oval with dainty coloring. Her hair was golden, with coppery threads running through it. She dressed it very plainly. A low brow of surpassing whiteness was surmounted by a mass of shiny waves of hair, simply parted and waved softly over her ears into a huge knot at the hollow of her neck. The dark blue of her gown accentuated her fairness. Everything about her denoted the simplicity of good taste.

At once she was excited at the appeal of our request. But it was, like everything else, a quiet excitement. What impressed me was her manner toward her father. Even in locating the negatives she consulted him, and her quiet gentle voice murmured acquiescence in every direction he gave.

When at last she found the latest negatives of the child and I held them up to the light to see the roguish, romping, little Maybeth, I could not but admire the picture Eva Vail made herself. When she raised her eyes there was a haunting wistfulness about them that somehow seemed to stir me, though I thought that they were strange eyes, with pupils so small as to be almost like a pinhead. There are some women who can stir the sympathy of a man, who can make one feel as if he should assume the role of protector. That is even more dangerous than the "come hither" look, as a disturber of equilibrium. It not only provokes all the thrill of passion but plays on vanity. Men love to feel they are protecting something at the same time they are loving it.

As we started uptown again, Hunter made as if to go with us, until Kennedy stopped him.

"I suspect you are followed all the time, Hunter," he cautioned. "Keep your eyes open in four directions. Be careful in crowds and more so when you are not. You had better have very little to do with me until I call on you."

Hunter agreed that we communicate through the University Club downtown, and we left him.

It was dusk when we reached the laboratory and as we came near the door, I saw a shapeless mass on the floor.

Kennedy turned the man over without a word to me. Through his back, in his coat, stuck a needle and a piece of paper. As Craig turned him, out of his hand under him rolled a gun. I picked it up. One shell had been fired.

"A hypodermic!" exclaimed Craig as he withdrew the needle gingerly and held the paper up to the light.

CHAPTER II. — DUAL PERSONALITY

FROM the laboratory by telephone Kennedy started any number of lines of action, besides that which took the body of the poor unidentifiable unfortunate to the Morgue. While we waited, Craig carefully plugged the hole in the door so that it could not be used with a wedge to split it open.

When at last we left, it was with meticulous care that we shook any possible shadows following us. I was so interested in Craig's various expedients for shaking loose from trailers that I did not notice until we were down in Forty-sixth Street just off Sixth Avenue that the Adams Costume Company was his objective. I knew the place, not so much for disguises as for furnishing about every theatrical costume and property imaginable, from a mandarin to a man in armor.

Kennedy selected the dress and by the aid of mascara and the help of an attendant whom he knew, soon had himself and me a couple of Panamanians, half Spanish, half Indian, mestizos.

"We'll hunt that place in Brooklyn, The Poppy, now," he muttered under his breath, as we brushed up the little Spanish we remembered and otherwise got into the manner of gawking at the wonders of a great city.

A new subway took us under the river and when we regained the surface and walked leisurely, hesitating like strangers from an adoptive country, we came at last to the street that is known as Columbia Heights. Many feet below the level of the backs of the houses lay the roofs of warehouses. Out on the bay I could see the lights, the tugs, the barges, the tramps and liners, the huge floating masses of light on the municipal ferryboats. Down the shore from the warehouses and up the shore in front of them were ships, ships, ships, from all over the earth and its seven seas, ships flying every known flag, steamships, sailing ships. Over there somewhere I knew were the old Erie Basin and India Wharf.

The subways and two bridges within a few blocks led to New York. This was surely out of the beaten track of Hunter and his dope crusaders. And it was within a stone's throw of the ships that in all probability smuggled the stuff in!

I was peering at the numbers of the houses all along. Kennedy was doing the same. "If there are any scouts or pullers-in about, they must think we are a couple of hop-heads. Act the part!"

All I could think of doing was to tremble for lack of the hop, as I had heard. Up the street now we could see a young girl walking aimlessly, yet watchfully. Her very manner told one to "Come on," as plainly as if she had broadcasted it.

Kennedy nudged me as we paused and he looked up at a dark house on the river side of the street. "That's the place, I tell you! Hurry! If I don't hit the pipe soon I'll fall apart!"

"Sh! Sh! What do you want to do? Get the place pinched? If you want it, don't shout for it! You or no one else will have a chance to smoke, if you don't look out. You'll land in the Kings County, or Riker's Island, see? I want a pill, too. Got any money?" She linked arms with both of us. "I know the place, boys... Only, please be quiet, will you? You'll bring on a raid and a pinch."

"Down my country," I rolled my Anglo-Saxon into a camouflage that might fool anyone but a Latin American, "we have no trouble. We know. But here, where for bunk and the dream? I need!" I held out my hand to let her see how I was shaking. In it I held a roll of bills that would have choked a pelican. There really were some bills—on the outside.

Both Craig and the girl laughed. She gave me a languishing look and squeezed my arm. "I will take my pipe with you, if Ona will let me. Let us have divans together."

"Call me Erne, Effie Barr, Rodolpho, until the second pipe—then you won't care!"

We stopped before a large dark brownstone mansion. With a start I recognized the old Rapelje house! So this was the Poppy, the opium house.

Effie gave five brisk knocks on the door and a long ring at the bell. The door opened slowly.

An old Chinaman, Chang, who seemed to run the place, met us in the old foyer hall. He looked us over most carefully with Oriental cunning. I was indeed now shaking all over as if with the ague; I had acted myself into a reality. Craig was talking to Effie, urging her to hurry up with: "You call it—the pipe—the yen—what is?—the yen houck?"

As he talked to her under the Chinese light I could not help noticing how large and lustrous were the pupils of the eyes of Effie, and what wonder there was in her hair, whether of itself or by those arts known as a transformation of which I wotted not. "A couple of customers!" It was the reverse of the bad old days with the "cadet" system of the red lights.

We must have passed the first inspection with flying colors because from the foyer hall we were shown into a room that seemed innocuous enough. It was quite American in its appointments, beautifully furnished, quite like the room a prosperous Brooklynite might have for the living room of his home. Only here and there was a touch of the Oriental. There was no one about and I gathered that this living room and a general atmosphere of "Furnished Rooms for Rent" was only a blind.

Effie seemed to respect our great craving for the drug, and hurried the proceedings as much as Chang permitted. Finally, she went out into a fit tie hallway that led from this room until she came to what looked like a well-appointed butler's pantry. She leaned against the pantry closet. It swung out far enough from the wall to show us a small doorway into another room.

Never shall I forget that room, the Chandu Room. Effie made an almost impish curtsy as she led us into it, and beckoned to a woman who was reclining on a divan in the far corner.

The Chandu Room was luxuriously Oriental. The walls seemed made of highly polished teak wood. There was little furniture about except small tables, extremely low divans, broad and comfortable, many lamps, lamps of dragons and serpents, soft, richly-colored cushions heaped on the divans and spilling over on the floor. Over our heads hung perhaps a dozen brilliant, rainbowed peacock tails, from the ceiling of old gold. The peacock feathers waved, gently, ever so gently in air currents that were imperceptible even to me. They floated out, they rose and fell, so marvelous in beauty and color and lightness, that already they fascinated me.

"Ona, come fix the pipes for three. It is my turn to dream, now. Chang told me to take it. I have earned it. We want them together, Ona dear, and don't disturb us—for hours!"

I watched the woman so endearingly addressed, for I thought I detected a false ring in Effie's voice. Now I was sure of it as I saw Ona of the underworld, pipe-fixer, the one who brought the visions that lure.

"A couple of 'spigottys!'" There was contempt in the undertone with which she addressed a couple on the other side of the weird room, contempt for Effie, contempt for us, Effie's supposed friends and customers.

However, it was all in the night's work. Ona proceeded with yen-hok and lamp and all the paraphernalia of the opium queen to "cook" a "pill."

What was visible of the floor was covered with a wonderful Persian carpet. There was a lattice built on one side of the room over the teak wood wall and entwined through it were the most marvelous artificial flowers I have ever seen. They were redolent with musk and the perfumes of the East. It was seductive, even the sickish odor of the opium. Perhaps ... if Kennedy had not been there ... I might have succumbed to the lure of the dreamy eyes of Ona and Effie and really smoked the pipe of dreams.

All about me were things to entrance the eye and seduce the senses. Effie went over to the farthest corner while Ona was busy and began moving a huge Chinese screen.

"I'll get the divans ready," she murmured, with a reckless use of the beautifully scented pillows. "I like to wake up comfortable. The more pillows, the more gentle the dream awakening!"

I had followed her over, but as I did so, I saw that Chang had entered the luxurious Chandu Room and was now talking to the couple on the divans behind no screen. A ray of light fell on the face not only of the squat, swart Chinese but on the others. I started violently when I recognized Cora Carew, the scenario writer for so many fantastic productions in the pictures, and near her Paul Page, the motion picture star in rugged "Westerns." I could scarcely believe that this pasty face was Paul's when he was made up. As for Cora, her face was permanently made up; I know not what was under the face enamel.

So, I thought, that was how, hitting the pipe, this pair dreamed their dreams and so got the stories Paul played! I learned later that he had taken cures innumerable, but that now he had got to a truly Oriental tolerance and limited habit. As for Cora, she depended on it too much to let it run to excess—yet.

Into the curiously carved Chinese pipes Ona had dropped the glowing "pill," one in each of the three, and in the far corner stood the lacquered box from which with the spatula she had dipped out of the gummy mass three times to "cook" in the flame of the weird spirit lamp as the vapors of the drug curled and rose. The outfit was there, because by concealed buttons in many parts of the room she or the proprietor, Chang, if there were a raid, could make it disappear as neatly as any magician.

Kennedy as he approached had rearranged the screen so that both of us might seem to smoke, without inhaling, and with as little absorption of the seductive vapor as possible, yet seem to succumb quickly to its pleasures. At the same time we might see and hear all that took place.

It was not long before a very slender, rather short fellow appeared at the other end of the room. By the deference of Ona I supposed he was a star customer. But as Chang later appeared with equal deference, I was at a loss to make out whether this was a gunman from our own underworld or the owner of this and a veritable chain of opium dens.

Paisley was the name, I caught. Effie must have gained a tolerance for the opium, for one pipe had not put her in the dream sleep. The moment she heard Paisley's name, she was slowly, sinuously on her feet, moving toward him as he talked with Chang, Ona beside him.

I did not hear the words that passed between Ona, the opium queen of the inside and Effie, the lure, on the outside, who brought the smokers in. But I gathered that there was bitter jealousy between the two as to Paisley. There was no loudness; just a biting, catty scratching and hair pulling, that resulted in a nose bleeding from Erne, before Chang and Paisley could separate the two.

Kennedy, pipe apparently half finished, staggered over to them, put his arm about Effie and drew her toward our corner, while Paisley, seeing the opportunity, withdrew from the Chandu Room altogether, leaving only Chang as guardian of the two women. Craig drew Effie down on the couch beside him, and passed his pipe to her. As I watched narrowly I saw that the large lustrous eyes of Effie seemed to be changing. The pupils already seemed almost like pin-heads. Kennedy was particular about his large white handkerchief as he held her head back and stopped the bleeding nose. He placed the handkerchief carefully folded in his pocket.

"The electronic buzz?" I teased dreamily, "Dr. Abrams' occilloclast? Is she facing west? Maybe you can tell her religion by the buzz-blood test!"

I would not have ventured it except in a whisper and seeing her eyes now closed. Craig frowned silence at me and I shut up.

Suddenly I was aware that the lattice on the teak-wood wall was but a cover for a part of the wall that slid, that back of it was still another room, and that it was open, as Ona made her way there in response to some summons.

Chang seemed volubly excited in several languages and his English was quite "pidgin." As nearly as I could make out, a ship, the Manchu Queen, was in port. Chang had heard bitter complaints down in the bunks. "In bunks, in cellar." It was accompanied by a gesture to the nadir. So—there were old-time Chinatown bunks in the cellar of this house, I thought. Then I thought of the roofs of the warehouses many feet below that, of the streets below even that. I could imagine many things.

There were the complaints. Messages in code had come that counterfeit money had been paid for the last shipment.

"It is a game!" said Nichi, in a guttural tone. "Money no good? They want money—two times? ... Is opium always good?"

The answer did not satisfy Chang. Or else was Chang with true Oriental guile trying to pass the buck to Nichi and alibi himself? At any rate, this was clear. The drug runner gang was being paid in counterfeits! It told nothing about the little Maybeth. But it opened a wide field. Who was the man higher up who was doing this thing? Who was trying to "shove" the "queer" abroad where it was safer than here?

Nichi changed the subject to a Grand Jury investigation up in the old Post Office Building in the Federal Court for the Eastern District of the state, the new laws of the second Opium Conference, many things....

Try as I would I could not keep from inhaling a certain amount of the sickish medicinal wisps of fumes, not only from my pipe but from that of Kennedy and the numerous pipes that Effie called for before she succumbed to them, to say nothing of the now heavily laden atmosphere from Cora Carew, Paul Page, and some others who had come in. I began to feel it. The waving peacock feathers from the ceiling wafted me along on a golden sea—and I lived over all I had ever known east of Suez.

It was far into the early morning hours of darkness when I felt Kennedy rousing me and I querulously followed him. I looked about. Effie was gone. Craig, too, had succumbed, almost as had I. We staggered out into the misty morning air that rose from the bay and its two rivers that met out beyond us. The air seemed to do me good, but I realized that it needed more than air; it needed Nature and time to eliminate that poison from my system.

Kennedy shook his head as we shuffled toward the subway. "I don't know ... but I know one thing."

"The dressing changed. You forget what a difference it is if a girl shows her ears or covers them."

"Yes," he agreed, "the eyes. That is it. Large and shining pupils once—small as a pinhead, again. That I must study. That is a clue." He paused as we waited for the infrequent morning trains. "As I see it, I must merge these two personalities—then the real Eva-Effie may lead us to the Soul Merchant!"

III. — LIKE THE LOTUS

IT was rather later than usual the next morning after seizing a few hours of recuperating sleep that Craig and I dropped around to the laboratory, our minds still full of the recollection of the insidious Poppy house.

There were waiting for Kennedy positives from the negatives from the Vail studio of little Maybeth Hunter, which Craig had already sent down to Deputy O'Connor to have developed and sent out broadcast by the police in the official search for the little girl. With the copies also came a brief summary of the activity, so far fruitless, of the Bureau of Missing Persons.

A mere glance was enough to stir the sympathy of the veriest stranger. What a beautiful child it was! Out of most of the photographs peeped a chubby little face with the most beguiling baby smile. Only five, Maybeth had retained the innocent baby wonder-look in her deep-set eyes. In another picture she was lying on a rug looking at a picture book. It was such a profile as would have made the movie producer rave. Like a cameo her features were well defined and clear cut. Her little curls hung down her cheeks and over her shoulders, and her little fat legs were up in the air, while her head was resting on her hands with her elbows on the rug as the fairyland of the book entranced her.

Kennedy had been impressed by the little girl, but his emotions had caused him to plunge directly into some work that he had had to postpone, while I continued to sort over and gaze at the prints, as I figured out ways of giving the story the widest publicity and enlisting millions of child-lovers as our helpers. I had, of course, telephoned a story in to the Star and in the morning edition it had received a great spread with one of the pictures sent to headquarters, as well as the picture of "Lonehand" Hunter himself.

"It was the poison in that needle left in his coat that killed that poor devil last night," volunteered Craig.

"A new and little-known poison to us, though I believe it has been known to Oriental science. Ricin is derived from the shell of the castor-oil bean. Of course the Germans, being great chemists, have been able to get pure ricin. Professor Ehrlich stated at that time that one gram of pure ricin would kill 1,500,000 guinea pigs. The pure ricin has been isolated by Professor Robert of Rostock, but it is seldom found except in an impure state, though even then it is deadly. It surpasses strychnine, prussic acid, and other drugs that we class as dangerous in most minute amounts."

"It shows how desperate and resourceful they are," I remarked still thinking of the art of poisoning as it had reached its high state of perfection in the Orient.

As it was, I was still so logy from my chandu cheer, that I had not had any desire for breakfast. I suggested to Craig that we have an earlier lunch than usual. He laughed at my looks and I suppose I was a sad specimen. Opium and I were such strange bedfellows that I showed my embarrassment still.

Perhaps half an hour later I was still fussing around nervously when the buzzer on the laboratory door sounded.

"Answer it, Walter," murmured Craig abstractedly from another test into which he had plunged.

"All right." But to tell the truth I had no mind for it. After what had happened, I think I may have been pardoned for being nervous about anything. I turned the knob gingerly and stood behind the protection of the door as I opened it. Before I could see who it was, I heard a voice that had a familiar ring.

I was considerably relieved when I saw it was Vail, the baby photographer. I nodded and asked him in, though I could not resist a timorous look out into the hall and up the stairs to the next floor whence had come the sudden attack on our last visitor.

Craig, who had reached a point where he could interrupt his work at the other end of the laboratory, came down and greeted Vail also.

"Mr. Kennedy," began Vail in a sort of apologetic voice, as his eyes glowed warmly in their crows-feet behind his big round spectacles, "I couldn't get the thought of that little child out of my head. Eva and I talked about the pity of it when you and Mr. Hunter left yesterday. Woman-like, Eva was almost in tears over it.... To take a little child away from its mother like that is a devilish thing.... I wonder why they did it? Was it Black Hand—money?" Vail shook his head dismally as he contemplated the outrage, then leaned back in his chair and sighed. "Mr. Kennedy, you don't know the worries a parent has raising a girl these days."

"Well, Mr. Vail," rejoined Kennedy, forced to admit the lack of personal worry, "I'll admit that the little ones like Maybeth Hunter need careful watching to bring up—but I think the older ones, the modern girl when she has passed the stage of childhood, are fully capable of taking care of themselves. What would worry me would be if I had a boy."

"You may be right; you may be right. Heaven knows, your experiences must have been so varied, you ought to know.... But worry over my own daughter's safety makes me feel for Mr. Hunter. I have printed a dozen copies from each of the other negatives for Mr. Hunter's use. Only, I didn't know where to reach him. I couldn't get him at his home—and I—I wanted to see you.... I was going to give these to help—just one father to another."

The kindly smile on his face and in his voice seemed to indicate that he wanted to go further. But still he hesitated. Finally, he summoned up courage and without a word moved over toward Craig, tremulously taking his arm.

"We all have our troubles," he murmured softly. "My Eva worries me. At work with me during the day, before people, she seems all that I could wish a girl to be. But, Mr. Kennedy, I have no control over her at home or at night. I can't be at home every evening; there is so much to attend to.... She does just what she pleases. She goes out all hours of the night. I come home, and she is never there. Thank heaven, she hasn't taken to staying away all night. I have tried everything but the law—and I can't do that. I don't know where she goes or what she does—but—my God!—help Mr. Hunter clean up this beautiful city and I'll work with you—hoping the best for Eva!"

Kennedy showed his sympathy for the bowed man and shook hands with him encouragingly at the door. Vail's confidences over Eva seemed to have unnerved him, so that I hesitated to let him go alone. However, I reasoned, he was safer alone than either Kennedy or I would be.

"I've been analyzing that blood on my handkerchief last night when Effie's nose was bleeding—apropos of Eva," he remarked quickly, "the blood that you were so imaginative about as to suggest the wonderful occilloclast where binding posts are connected to nothing at all and volts are ohms!"

"I find that there must be some twilight sleep drug that is being used on her—on Eva-Effie, I suppose I should say. You recall that twilight sleep was supposed to steal away the memory?"

"Yes—I remember my Anabasis, 'I fear lest like the lotus-eaters we forget the homeward journey.'"

"Then," continued Kennedy, "after Eva is under it, I gather that her personality is changed ... she gets the opium. You recall the eyes of Effie when we met her were large and lustrous? That was from some mydriatic alkaloid like that used in twilight sleep. Then they contracted to pinheads, under the opium. Did you notice the eyes of Eva yesterday, the pupils strangely small? I suspect that is from the opium hang-over—until someone gives her this memory-destroying, Jekyll and Hyde alkaloid."

CHAPTER IV. — THE ANTHRAX BOMB

I COULD appreciate the effort to get at the "other self" of Eva Vail—the Effie self—and it was with no small anticipation that I accompanied Craig to the studio.

Eva Vail was alone. When she saw us she smiled quietly. I was startled now that Kennedy had discovered the resemblance and had called my attention to it—Eva Vail with her quiet, gentle ways and Effie Barr with her laughing, good-natured vivacity.

"How are you feeling this morning, Miss Vail?" greeted Craig cheerfully, as he was careful to close the door.

Eva lifted two beautiful deep blue eyes to us with rather a questioning glance, as if inquiring our business. I wondered. Did she as Eva, even dimly, recall us from the night before? Or had our disguises left nothing to be carried over from the Effie personality to Eva? I found myself becoming rather tangled in my hasty thinking of the two and decided to listen to Kennedy conduct the proceedings.

"Didn't you receive the pictures?" she asked naively. "Father left this morning with them. I helped get them off as quickly as I could.... We felt so sorry for Mr. Hunter." I wondered, again. Was she a great actress—or was her mind really a blank?

"Yes; they are fine. Only ... I came up to see if that was all the negatives you found."

"Oh, Mr. Kennedy, yes—that is all." She said it with her firm quiet tone and it sounded like dismissal. But Craig was not taking it so.

"Oh, nothing ... but it might seem dull to some girls, being away from everything as much as this studio is."

"Well, I have many questions to answer during the day—and that and my work keep me so busy I don't have time to be dull."

I mentally muttered, "Squelch for you, Craig!" But Craig was undeterred. His persistence was always remarkable with a recalcitrant, unwilling witness.

"What do you do in your spare time, Miss Vail ... continue your studies in photography? I have some mighty fine books on the subject ... if you would like me to send them up."

"No, I never accept anything from strangers. It is father's wish." She lowered her eyes on her work as plainly as if she had said, "Good morning."

Undismayed, Craig tackled it from another angle. "Your father and I had quite a chat this morning. We may go into a—a little business together, and I expect to see more of you, then. I'm sure he wouldn't mind your talking—just a little bit—to me, Miss Vail." He lowered his chin a little and looked with laughing eyes at her.

Eva could not help smiling back. "Mr. Kennedy, you're persistent! I didn't know you were so friendly with my father. Of course, then.... But father scolded me this morning," she confided. "He said I was too—too wild and unruly ... to be more reserved. I was only trying to obey him."

"You—wild—unruly!" I could not help blurting it out, although Kennedy gave me a look that plainly meant to shinny on my own side.

It did not disturb Eva's good humor, however. "Thank you, Mr. Jameson; that was the surest kind of compliment."

"Yes, Miss Vail," cut in Craig, "your idea of being wild and unruly does seem amusing."

She looked at Kennedy with a quick anxiety. "In the morning I must admit I am mean and disagreeable—to him; to everybody. But I feel tired. I don't want to get up so early. I'm afraid I should have been a millionaire's daughter ... I feel so little inclined to anything in the morning."

"H'm," considered Craig. "Do you feel all right—physically? I mean, have you had any medical advice? How do you feel in the evening?"

"Oh, I feel better in the evening. In fact I feel the way I should feel. When I go home, I often walk all the way. I have lots of energy and verve."

Kennedy laughed. Eva looked at him and flushed. "Why are you laughing? Isn't it a good word?"

"Perfectly good. But you girls! You feel fine at night. I suppose you go out and dance all night or go to the theatre and supper afterward. No wonder you are tired. You're burning the candle at both ends."

Eva turned suddenly to me as a champion. "Mr. Jameson ... really, I don't. You don't believe him ... do you? Father goes out in the evenings and I am home almost every night. We have a few friends who call usually only in the early part of the evening. I see them or father does and I am usually in bed early." She looked reproachfully at Kennedy and shook her slender finger. "Now don't think I'm a giddy, irresponsible person. I'm not."

Craig hastened to reassure her. "Really, I don't, Miss Vail. I can't help teasing—a little.... Who calls on you every evening?" insinuated Craig, with a wink at me so she could see it.

"There, Mr. Kennedy, you're all wrong! It isn't any man. I know what you are thinking.... Well, it's usually a girl... there's a woman who has a position with the stamp and coin company downstairs, for instance. She often drops in to see me»... After that I read a while ... or go to bed. So, there! You'll find no sweetheart in my young life!"

We laughed, kidding. Again I wondered. For I knew that Craig had held her in his arms the night before on a divan with an opium pipe in her mouth—and she had been willing!

She looked at her wrist watch on its black silk band against her white skin. "Really—I am very busy—all alone here, now. If I don't get this work done, father'll have another grievance."

"Do you understand that girl?" I asked as we threaded our way downstairs. "Looks like a deep one to me."

At the University Club, which we had agreed with Hunter to use as a "post-office," we dropped in and inquired at the desk. There was a note for Craig and he tore it open and read:

Will be at your laboratory with Captain Payne of New Epsom at three o'clock. He has found the speed boat, he says.

Kennedy frowned. "I wish he'd stay away. It will be the death of him yet, the risks that man takes. Can we get there in fifteen minutes?"

In the hall, which they were watching very carefully, we came upon Hunter and the bearded, grizzled old salt, Captain Payne, who seemed to be a friend of his. Whether he was or not, as Kennedy said later, it made little difference. Suppose Payne had located the speed boat abandoned off City Island? That proved nothing.

"But," objected Hunter to the latter part of Craig's objection as he voiced it then, "I can call up the Customs House and get the name of the owner. The Captain has the registry number." Hunter started to open the locked laboratory door.

With curt directions not even to touch the knob and leaving me to see that they did not, Kennedy went outside and circuited the Chemistry Building, so that even if Payne were not all he represented himself to be he would have no clue to the secret entrance Craig had installed from the storeroom below up back of the new electric furnace.

When he opened the door, which was after time enough to have done so half a dozen tunes, I saw a peculiar look on his face. On a table stood a contraption of sheet iron and glass, with wires running from it nowhere.

"Someone's been in here," exclaimed Craig. "That thing was connected so that when the door was opened it would explode. I've been expecting a threat to me, danger to the laboratory. Only I didn't know what form it would take—arson, a bomb, or what."

Forgetting the speed-boat, he set to work with his X-ray and fluoroscope, studying the interior of the deadly engine he had disconnected before admitting us.

The X-ray enabled him to take it slowly and carefully apart piece by piece, until he cautiously lifted out a thin glass tube that had been placed directly over the explosive, also in thin glass. In fact all about was glass, except for the light container. Under the microscope he studied a drop of the contents, compared it with a colored plate in a book on bacteriology, then faced us.

"That's the sort of thing you may expect in the next war, gentlemen—bacteria, disease, death! That was an anthrax bomb. It might not strike you down at once, by chance. But a scratch from that glass and—well, you have heard of that disease—deadly?"

"Devilish!" I muttered as I thought things over. "Devilish war engine—like a Jap!"

V. — RAMIFICATIONS

SINCE in his utter nervousness, Hunter could not control his restless desire to be on the go, doing something, no matter what it was, Kennedy shipped him off down on a personal visit to the Customs House to look up the history and lineage of the speed boat Payne had discovered, ownerless. He did so with a parting aside to Hunter to be careful, to watch even Payne himself. Then he closed the laboratory and we walked over to our apartment, again going through all Craig's elaborate manner to discover and elude shadowers.

It was scarcely four o'clock and we had not been in our apartment on the Drive half an hour before the little bell at the door tinkled. This time Kennedy answered it.

It was a smiling, good-natured-looking woman about fifty years old, who in some way had got up without being encountered by the hall boy at the entrance.

"And are you Mr. Kennedy?" she inquired, giving Craig a frankly admiring glance.

She looked up at him, her smile changing to a look of intense anxiety. Her motherly face seemed to be drawn in lines of worry. "Mr. Kennedy," she began as she sat down carefully in a big chair, "my name is Mrs. Emilie Picard and I keep quite a large rooming house on Ninety-seventh Street." She mentioned the number, near the Park. "In the Star this morning I read that you were helping Mr. Hunter to find his little daughter. I feel awful bad over it all. Maybe you think it strange; but I'm just one of those who get a lot of their emotions out of the newspapers—since I lost my all—Mr. Picard and then my baby.... The Star seemed to suggest that the reason back of the kidnapping was the animosity of the drug ring that Mr. Hunter has been fighting. Do you think so?"

Kennedy nodded but said nothing. I was going to speak but Kennedy silenced me by quickly waving his hand back of him, clasped by the other. I felt that if I were back again in the old rooming house days I couldn't have helped liking Mrs. Picard for a landlady. She was jovial, rather stout, not a Mrs. Prune, but of that other boarding house type, who seem to feel that they have a mission to perform.

"Mrs. Picard," hastened Kennedy, "why do you come here? ... Do you know anything?"

"I can't tell, Mr. Kennedy," she began with that air of one imparting something Delphic, oracular. "I can't tell whether or not I know anything—directly—but some strange things have happened in my house in the last few months. Somehow, I manage to attract the young people, boys and girls, alike. The poor things! They have no parents; all alone in the world. I make it as much a real home for them as I can."

She smiled genially at us. I couldn't help thinking that if there were only more rooming house keepers with a little sympathy in their hearts, how much better it would be for many of the young people.

"I've always taken an interest in my boys and girls. I watch them carefully. When I see they are wholesome and good, I try to keep them so. Well, I had three brothers living with me. At first everything was all right. Then they began to be secretive and have strange visitors. These people always came to the boys' room at night, and were never brought down to meet the other folks. I didn't like it and I told the boys so. Then finally the boys took to staying away all night. But always one of them would be home. I never could clean their room right. One of them would even be in it all through the sweeping.

"That sort of ruffled my temper. And then when one of the boys started to take one of the dearest little girls I had with me out nearly every night ... I was sick! The whole atmosphere about the place seemed changed. Suspicion and an unaccountable secrecy enveloped me, and I was so worried that my other boys and girls noticed it.

"Well, finally I spoke to these young men, and they tried to laugh everything off. But somehow I wasn't fooled. I managed to get Frank—that was the youngest—to promise me he would leave little Carrie alone. I felt responsible for her. That was a week ago. Carrie had begun to look pale and haggard and so nervous! I thought the poor little thing was eating her heart out over the loss of Frank's friendship. I was bothered, I'm telling you." Here Mrs. Picard drew out a handkerchief and dabbed silently at her eyes.

"Did you see anything definitely strange?" questioned Kennedy, eager to get down to something tangible in her sea of words and emotions. "Did you ever find any letters or anything else about their rooms—in the waste baskets?"

"That's the funny part," she returned eagerly. "There never was anything in the waste that came down. But the way they carried suitcases in and out was mighty queer.... Well ... this Hunter kidnapping took place. My young folks were talking about it downstairs and when I went out in the hall suddenly I found Frank eavesdropping. I never let on I noticed it, but I made up my mind then and there that there'd be no more spying. I would stop it by putting them out.

"Now, here's something mighty strange. I didn't have to put them out. This forenoon when I went to their room, they had gone and the month's rent for the next month was on the table! I hurried over to Carrie's room. She was gone, too. There wasn't a thing in the boys' room but under the mattress in Carrie's room was this. I think I know what it is but I am not sure."

She drew from a large reticule a complete little lay-out for smoking opium—pipe, spatula, box, lamp, and all. Also there were three or four "decks" of either heroin or cocaine. I thought it looked like peddling the stuff, as well as using it.

"But is that all?" Craig's face was gravely earnest. "I don't see, though, what that has to do with the kidnapping."

"Why, just one more thing," she hastened, for she was the kind that have to get at a thing in their own way if they go all around Cape Horn. "In the boys' room there were a lot of recent newspapers, all the papers this morning. Everything about the Hunter case was cut out. Why did they do that? Why have they gone, right after it? I left the room just as they left it. Please come over to the house—help me. Maybe they've left some fingerprints—or something you might know that I don't, of course.... Oh, I want to get that little Carrie back!"

She took Craig's hand. Almost she was crying over it as if little Carrie had been her own and all the time she was asking him questions about whom to go to to find out about this "drug ring," how they acted, what Kennedy knew, and was he of the opinion that Carrie had been made a victim. I thought she would never go until Kennedy faithfully promised to look up her house that night. It must have taken twenty minutes to dam the flood of emotion, even then.

Mrs. Picard had scarcely gone at last, and we were sure of it, when Kennedy called O'Connor.

"Don't go!" came back that genial Irish voice. "My men get into more trouble from the volunteers than you ever heard of. They're spies, I tell you. You'll get in trouble. They'll frame you!"

"You make me more determined than ever to follow her up," laughed Craig, actually in earnest, as the conversation changed.

"O'Connor has been looking up that Paisley and Ona as well as Effie in the records," Craig imparted as he hung up and turned to me. "Paisley has a record; so has Ona. They've each done time in the Federal penitentiary for drug selling—fine places to learn more about it, too! It's like teaching thugs boxing at Sing Sing—or giving them revolver practice! Paisley served the longer term; there was a charge for corrupting the morals of a young girl."

I thought of Effie; of this new one, Carrie. "Do you think that Mrs. Picard was a spy?" I queried.

"She asked me enough leading questions," returned Craig sententiously. "Some day I'll tell you what I've learned about them after a long study with the Commissioner of Correction over on Riker's Island where they're committed. Drug addiction will never be eradicated by treatment. Prevent the addict from getting supplies, or you'll always have a menace to the community. Why, there's nothing these addicts and the drug sellers will stop at to——"

The door flew open. I must carelessly have left it unlatched on my last excursion to the hall, to see if Mrs. Picard had really gone.

In his hands he held a little pasteboard box, not in one hand, but in both. The stare in his eyes was as if he had himself been rioting at Riker's for more drugs. He was speechless. How he ever got through the streets without being arrested I do not know.

Without a word, with trembling fingers, and fixed stare, he laid the box on our library table and tore of the brown paper wrapping loose about it. Then he held up the box.

VI. — WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS

"THAT'S—Chinese!" I blurted out, horrified at the ferocity of the thing as I thought of some of the cruel and unusual punishments I had read of in the Orient.

"Where was your baby born—at home?" asked Kennedy quickly, as his mind sped like a lightning flash over the whole affair.

"No," groaned Hunter, "no. My wife came to the city—the best medical attendance—the best nurses—the Burnham Maternity."

Kennedy nodded. Then he stopped pacing, grabbed his hat, and almost reverently wrapped up the package.

"Oh, Mr. Kennedy!" appealed Hunter, as he saw Craig taking away the little foot, and a shudder went over him as if he was parting with Maybeth's body itself. "I must do something—anything. This is killing me! Already I am a madman!"

Kennedy passed the package to me, then put both his hands on Hunter's shoulders, as the tears welled up in his own eyes. "Just one big effort, Hunter, man! I'm going as fast as I can. Trust me! After we get under way to-night someone will swing for this!"

"Yes," cried Hunter, "but will it bring Maybeth—" he started, then forced the words—"what is left of her—back to me? What good will it do if someone swings—if my baby is—lost?"

"They do not know that I am prepared to act as swift as a thunderbolt to-night. I doubt if Jameson knows. It will sweep them by surprise. I must have six hours—and then ." Craig clenched his hands as if he were throttling a demon.

"Go over to Brooklyn, if you must do something. See the Federal District Attorney there. Find out all the dope cases—all—that he is presenting to the Grand Jury, You can even get him to tell you of the cases he is preparing—and don't forget the cases pending. They tell me there are almost as many as there are Volstead cases—and that's enough business for one court to handle alone. Now, Hunter, just one big pull—and we'll put this thing over—save Maybeth!"

I do not suppose any other man in the world could have calmed the frantic father, who had not dared even to share his woe with the mother. No other than Kennedy could have reassured me. The tentacles of this drug thing, that had been created by the generally lawless condition that reform had brought about, burned itself into me until I saw how futile, how fatal had been the misguided attempt to make people good by sumptuary legislation that suddenly uprooted all regulated habits of thousands and thousands of years.

"It's no use," muttered Kennedy, when we had seen Hunter off in front of the apartment in a taxi in which we knew he would be safe. "They've found me here at my own home. I might as well go back to the laboratory. At least there I have around me the stuff that I can use in any action I find necessary."

An idea occurred to him. Varying his manner of shaking shadows, he dived into a drug store where there was a telephone booth and put in a hurried call, as I stood watch in front by the windows. Then we resumed our walk. But not for long. Even before we came to the next public booth, Craig had thought of something else. Again he started lines of action. Four separate times did this occur on the short walk to the Laboratory.

We let ourselves in through the secret cellar way, not even then without some trepidation, for there seemed to be nothing too uncanny for these criminals to learn or to do.

It was not very long after our arrival when the buzzer sounded, as Craig had almost predicted. What could not be predicted, though, was who would sound it. We were now a storm center, with literally hundreds of thousands of people trying to help us, mothers praying for us, and newspapers besieging us, over the wire.

It was Vail again. He seemed bursting to tell something and Kennedy did not prevent him, for he wanted to listen, clear the track, and be ready to shoot ahead at a moment's notice.

"That woman she said dropped in to see us nights. She told me you were there and asking questions. Eva doesn't know that you are trying to help her—but I do—and I think it's wonderful to have a mind and heart that can turn aside even a moment on a big case like this to help a little man like me—even if Eva is such a big thing in my life. She told me she gave you a pretty good account of her daily life. It's true, just as she told it.... But this woman.... Eva didn't tell you, but she once worked for us. Now she's downstairs in the Brown Stamp and Coin Company—er—rather doubtful people, I should say. What I'm getting at is that for a long time I've been wondering if she might not in some way be responsible for Eva—going out with her—or something——"

"Oh, my, no. How could she, and work there? She's got money; money invested in the business, I believe. She wanted to invest in my business. But I couldn't see it. It would have been like the Arab, the camel, and the tent. I would have been out on the desert—like the Arab. If I had been in the tent—well, if you take a woman in partnership, it's usually matrimony."

"Yes, I suppose so," cut off Kennedy. "Is there a rooming house at that number on Ninety-seventh Street?" he asked, mentioning the address she had given.

"Well, Vail," encouraged Kennedy taking his hand and at the same time gently walking to the door, for the old man seemed in danger of anchoring with his fears for his daughter, "thank you for your information. To-morrow I'll learn more about the woman and the place, too."

Vail had scarcely gone when a messenger boy with a long envelope came. Kennedy signed for it and retired in the rear of the laboratory with the gruesome package in the pasteboard box.

I never saw time roll so rapidly as it does when things are happening fast. It seemed incredible that Hunter could have returned in the space of time that he did, until I looked at my watch.

"Yes." The voice was colorless. It would not have made much difference if he had learned that his whole lifework had been crowned by success. The one thing that mattered had gone terribly wrong.

Hunter started, then drew back as if shot, for Craig was holding that terrible object—the child's foot. Hunter's hands went to his eyes; he nearly staggered.

"I have the footprints from the Burnham Maternity," persisted Craig. "They take them as they do in lots of lying-in hospitals now for identification, to prevent babies from getting by any chance mixed up. This little foot here is not Maybeth's!"

"It is the foot of some child who was already dead at the time it was cut off. I know enough from autopsy work to determine that."

Hunter grabbed me in his relief. He began talking, wildly, excitedly. Before he knew it he was into an account of the cases before the federal grand jury in the eastern district of New York over in Brooklyn.

"You know the special permit system in regard to import of opium adopted at the second Opium Conference held at Geneva?" he rattled on. I know his mind was on Maybeth, though his tongue was following a pent-up stream of ideas. "The regulations came into force in European countries September first last year and in Japan the first of January this year. According to this agreement, those who intend to import opium must obtain an import permit from their government. This permit must be sent with any order for opium and certified by the government of the exporter.... Now, the quantity of opium manufactured in Japan or imported into Japan is much larger than the actual needs. The big case preparing over in Brooklyn now is against one Nichi, who by forged special permits and other trickery is building up a great international business." ... He paused as Kennedy still regarded the little foot before him. Then, as he looked from the foot to the footprints from the Burnham, the relief caused the two streams of thought to merge again. "But—where is—Maybeth?" he asked simply.

Kennedy was ready. "The postmark, which you didn't notice, of course, was the General Post Office in Brooklyn. That's why I sent you over there. Everything—even the diversion of my own attention over here to some perhaps mythical place on Ninety-seventh Street—points to one place, the Poppy, on the Heights, in Brooklyn!"

CHAPTER VII. — THE OPIUM QUEEN

A MURKY night. Fog from the upper bay where it met the rivers. Whistles, sharp, deep-lunged, quick, steady, frightened, warning. Long fingers of searchlights pointing out, waving, lost in the fog. A drizzle on the streets. Skidding cabs. A solitary figure, collar up, shivering, shuffling into the old Rapelje house.

Around the corner on a street that started at Fulton Street with banking and big business based on solid trust, threaded through wealth and cooperative living on the scale of wealth and ended down here high over the river, Kennedy, Hunter, and I waited with O'Connor and one of his addicts, who as stool pigeon got his dope by betraying his fellows, waited while another slunk into the Poppy House to give the signal. Around the other corner, within call on the next block, lurked others of O'Connor's men, waiting. Back of us, where the street graded down to the river, cautiously approached still others, federal agents. The police of the greatest city, the state commission of the greatest state, the forces of the greatest nation Kennedy had combined to raid and crush the viper of the Poppy House.

Hunter clenched my elbow as he saw the gathering of forces. They might win. But what of little Maybeth? He nerved himself. It was his zero hour.

No art about this raid. Just a sudden swoop and a crash. It was all in the surprise and the speed. Axes. The door splintered.

Silent, massed, wedged, we forced ourselves into the foyer hall, into the former living room. Kennedy led, down to the old butler's pantry. The blind door to the Chandu Room opened.

The signal had converged all the forces. There were men all over the house, swarming, overwhelming.

"Watch the roof!" came the strident order from O'Connor. "Up, men! Measure with your eyes for secret rooms.... Look out for traps!"

I had not been a fraction of a second behind Kennedy and Hunter into the Chandu Room. We were all only just in time to catch the last glimpse of Chang and Nichi, as they disappeared through the lattice to the room where I had heard them talking the night before.

Before the lattice Paisley with his arm about Effie was trying to carry her from a disordered divan. Her weight hindered him. Suddenly Ona, with all the venom of a python, wrapped her arms about the half-conscious girl, literally tore her from Paisley, and pushed him through as we catapulted forward—and stopped against the closing wall.

Kennedy quickly searched for the hidden spring in the Chandu Room while I seized Ona as Hunter faced her, and a policeman grabbed Erne. Paisley was safe on Ona's sacrifice!

As men flashed past with disjointed reports, I realized the escape of Chang and Nichi, of Paisley probably, even as Craig found the spring in a few seconds and the wall back of the lattice swung open.

We had captured Effie and Ona and a couple of addicts. I looked about. There were Paul Page and Cora Carew still. They had not even gone out. It had been at least a two days' smoke.

In the room beyond the lattice, Hunter, with the other arm of Ona, leaned over her tensely. "If you show us to the child's room—-it won't go so hard with you!" he shot out. I could see he was using every bit of self-control he had to keep from throttling the boldly sneering she-devil.

"Yes—the child's room!" threatened O'Connor. "We've traced her here—by two addicts—verified it. No use looking so innocent. The game's up!"

With a contemptuous shrug and a lightning flash of her black eyes Ona accepted. "Follow me, then. I will take you."

"No tricks, young woman!" Kennedy had taken from me the arm I was holding. "What happens to me happens to you!"

I must confess we followed rather timidly down what had been a servants' stairway until we came where it ended nowhere, had been walled. The wall needed painting or papering badly.

"Give that baseboard a push with your feet—no, there. It will open." She smiled malignantly.

"Oh, my God!" groaned Hunter. "To think that woman has been anywhere near my child! What an experience! Kennedy, hurry—I can't wait—let me in!"

The plaster-board wall slid back quietly and slowly and we all rushed into what had once been a huge laundry. There was a crib in the corner and hiding all but the foot of it from our view was a high screen—a real work of Oriental art. Wonderful birds had been woven in its inky black surface in threads of gold and brilliant hues. It was just the thing to attract a child.

I looked at Hunter with commiseration as he sat on the edge of the little bed, his head bowed and his face in his hands, the picture of grief and disappointment. From him I looked down at Ona. She was laughing wickedly at all of us.

Suddenly Hunter could stand it no longer, made a lunge at her, his hands clenched. She broke from me and ran to a corner, straightening, her back to the wall, imperious, scornful, the opium queen.

Ona laughed exultantly, with devilish glee, as she faced us, in the corner, her back to the wall. There was something unconquerable about this female fiend.

Ona seemed suddenly to sink out of sight, out of the room. The floor in the corner seemed to open, to yawn, to swallow her. Her pressure as she threw her head back imperiously had released in the wall a lever that shot back the false floor and she was standing on a little platform that dropped down a chute. A wave of the hand as she dropped and a mocking laugh back from the depths were all, as Kennedy grabbed Hunter just in time to keep him from toppling into the thing. The floor closed.

In spite of the tenseness I almost laughed at O'Connor. He was standing, arms akimbo, eyes bulging, staring at a hole in the floor, then at a floor over the hole. All he said was three apropos words, very expressive but quite limiting one's vocabulary, "I'll-be-damned!"

Inaction on O'Connor's part was only for an instant. He grabbed an ax from one of his raiders and hacked at the floor as the blows reverberated down the chute. It was only a matter of minutes to uncover the chute and the mechanism that moved the floor. A few feet below, the empty platform on which Ona had sunk to safety came to a sudden stop, jammed by the smashing of the mechanism, as it rose again under hydraulic or pneumatic pressure.

It explained the escape of the others. There had been no use in surrounding the block, in cutting off roofs and cellars. This chute down the face of the height, alongside or even to the roof of the warehouse below, was their get-away.

Hunter was mechanically turning over the things he saw in the room that belonged to his little Maybeth.

"Look, Jameson, here are her beads—little tiny gold beads. I bought them for her birthday."

"Some dolls," I pointed. "Crackers in this box. There's some consolation. We know she was all right. They've evidently been half-way decent to her!"

"Yes ... yes ... but where is she now? What will they do to her, now they're cornered? Will they wreak their vengeance on my little girl?" I knew he was thinking of the warning little foot, of what a sharp knife might do in an instant to a throat. "I'm crazy about it! That Chinaman will feel that she has been the cause of the raid—may put her out of the way!"

I tried to calm him the best I could. But what do words mean in a situation like that? The only thing that counts is the loved one.

Back in the Chandu Room, we took stock. Ona, even, had got away. All we had was Erne and three or four servants and attendants, a pair of addicts in that room, a longshoreman and two negroes from the bunks below—perhaps ten thousand dollars' worth of opium and some five hundred dollars in small silver coins that belonged to the queen of the drug sellers.

Maybeth was gone. Where? With whom? There was no restraining Hunter's chagrin. But Kennedy was undeterred.

CHAPTER VIII. — THE COUNTERFEIT PLANT

HUNTER, Craig, and I surrounded Effie as she lay restless, silent now on her favorite divan among the disordered pillows.

I did not have time to do much thinking about the experiences of the night before here. The Chandu Room looked much the same. There was no great confusion. Evidently our raid had been unexpected enough to make them leave in a hurry sufficient only to save themselves. But they lived in constant preparation for that.

Effie was still very much under the influence of the opium. Her eyes looked colorless and the pupils were mere pinheads.

Off the Chandu Room was a tiny room I had not noticed before. It, too, was furnished with pillows and small taborets of teak wood inlaid with ivory. On one a huge copper kettle of water was boiling merrily and tea caddies were standing on the small table in the corner.

"What's this, Kennedy?" I asked. "A blind? Is it to make visitors think it is a tea-room instead of a hop joint?"

Kennedy, with Hunter, had carried Effie into this room and placed her on a divan in the other corner. She was in a condition not so difficult to manage.

"No, Walter. It's easy to see you haven't smoked. When addicts come out of a prolonged smoke, they give them strong tea—as strong as they can make it. It helps them. It's the theine in it—the alkaloid—somewhat of an antidote. I suspect your artistic friends in there were going to be brought out. I'm going to make Effie drink some of it now."

Effie drank the tea peacefully, continued drinking it as Kennedy held the cup. Suddenly he looked up and his face brightened as he spied something on another carved teak table.

"Fine!" He rose quickly and brought back a big glass ball, a crystal gazing ball, such as the fakirs love.

He placed it on a small table drawn up beside the divan on which Effie had sipped cup after cup of the strong tea.

Hunter nudged me. "Look at him," he whispered. "Does he believe in that? Look!" I almost gasped with him.

Effie looked up timidly. Craig's face was stem, his eyes compelling, his voice commanding. "You must see what I tell you! You must remember what I command! You cannot fail!"

"Look in the crystal ball! There is Eva—Eva! Do you see her? Tell me what you see!"

"Eva ... Eva is ... like me ... oh, so much! It's strange. I seem to see somebody taking down my hair—a woman. She is putting my things in a bag. Now she is fixing—Eva's hair—with things out of the same bag.... We both know her! What is it? ... I see Eva ... and then I see myself fade into Eva.... Why?... Why?..."

The girl swallowed with difficulty. "It's ... Mrs.... Picard.... She knows me.... She knows Eva. I see Eva on a narrow bed. Mrs. Picard is bending over her.... I—no, Eva, is asleep. Mrs. Picard takes a needle, jabs with it ... Eva—no, I feel it! ... How can that be?" The girl stopped, hesitating.

"I feel the jab of that needle! ... Oh! ... can it be? ...I am Eva—was Eva—sometime!"

Again the girl thought hard. "She was here! She has the little girl. She left in a hurry when the police came. They have gone to the Hwang-Ho, the chop suey restaurant, with the others."

I could scarcely hold Hunter. "Kennedy, you're great! I couldn't have believed it!" Kennedy silenced him.

"Effie—you are Eva.... As Effie ... you must take us to this Hwang-Ho, wherever it is. As Eva you have got to lead us to that child!"

I was as amazed as O'Connor at the heroic hypnotic effort of Craig to merge the two personalities of Effie and Eva to lead to Maybeth. He had seemed to win.

In a big closed car Effie-Eva directed us until we came to the Hwang-Ho, a Chinese chop-suey joint on the West Side of New York in the fifties, near Columbus Circle.

We pulled up with a rush and swooped upstairs with a rush. But again we were too late. There were only frightened Chinese and a few midnight patrons left.

Over the restaurant we found cans of opium in a bale of raw silk, a fortune in itself. Otherwise the loft had been completely ransacked of everything suspicious and portable.

From the frightened Chinese we gathered that they, whoever "they" may have been, were preparing for a get-away—out of the country—to Canada. They had known that the water front and all ships were being watched.

Under Kennedy's questioning a sullen Chinese, who must have belonged to another tong than Chang, admitted that there was only one thing yet for them to get—a trunk full of yellow-backs!

"Counterfeits!" was Kennedy's observation outside on the sidewalk as we split up.

Kennedy and I with Hunter and Effie were to take up the kidnapping chase as Kennedy saw it. O'Connor after a hasty whispered conference left in another car to set guards at the Grand Central, the Pennsylvania, every outlet by which they might get by railroad within striking distance of the frontier or the lakes.

Whatever my misgiving, I was convinced as we drew up down the street and I saw a light in the Brown Stamp and Coin Company's place so far after midnight.

It seemed that the neighborhood brought the Eva personality to the fore, as with Kennedy she led the way up the stairs. No matter how careful, we could not make them noiseless.

At the door of the stamp and coin company we paused. There was still a light in the place. No one had gone out. No one could have passed us on the stairs and there was no elevator. Had they been there and got away? Were we too late?

He drew his gun and blazed away at the lock until it was smashed and the wood about it was splintered. Then the three of us forced the door, expecting to be met by another fusillade.

But in the room farthest to the rear we came upon as complete a little counterfeiting plant as any crook could want. Scattered about were dies and half finished treasury notes. There were the press, the ink, the paper, a splendid bond. And in the closet, open, was a trunk full of yellow-backs in every denomination up from ten dollars.

"They didn't get away with that!" I exclaimed. "We must have been in time to stop that!"

Kennedy smiled as he pointed to a couple of empty suitcases. "In time to stop filling those, you mean. If that trunk was full of bundles, they have taken out about two other suitcases full, at least. Where are they?"

There were unmistakable sounds above us. He darted out into the hall, on rubber soles and heels, and listened.

We could hear a woman in a harsh voice trying to quiet the child. The child cried again. Suddenly it was muffled. Was it a hand over the mouth—or something worse?

Kennedy turned to Eva. "That is further up—in the studio, I think. Have you the key?"

Nervously she reached for a little reticule she had been carrying and opened it.

I thought of Mrs. Picard, of any that might have taken the studio key, of Ona. Craig tiptoed up the next flight and we followed gingerly.

Silently we glided into the studio darkness. There was no one in the reception room. We tiptoed on into the big studio itself with its glass roof overhead.

Craig stopped. What was that—a noise of someone crossing the roof? There was a bang of the studio door behind us, like a shot, followed by the banging of the door into the hall.

Craig sprang to the studio door. It was locked—there was some brace that had been placed on the outside!

He hurled himself against it. So did I—and Hunter. It was too stout to yield. Someone had lured us up there—and locked us in. Craig looked at his gun before I could even suggest.

"I may splinter that lock out—but there's the brace on the other side—and the outside door, too!"

"This thing's dead—wires cut!" I exclaimed as I flung down the useless telephone, in anger.

There was an unmistakable, choking smell of chlorine in the air. I knew the deadly fumes too well!

IX. — THE SELENIUM CELL

WE were trapped in the Vail studio, Craig, Hunter, myself, and Effie-Eva. Bang as we might and shoot at the locks of the first door that imprisoned us, as well as the second to which we could not get yet, there were those deadly chlorine fumes that I had learned to dread when the Germans released them years before.

Already I had tried the telephone. Those wires were cut. Overhead on the roof we could hear the vibrations of someone—escaping. Centered as my mind was on our own danger, I noted that I heard no crying or other sound of a child now.

She hesitated, in a high state of nerves, gasping in the fumes as they slowly gathered density. I fumbled about with a little pocket flashlight until I found a switch, and pressed it. Eva had not answered yet. Was Effie again in the ascendant?

Still, Effie-Eva was silent. Craig stuffed a wet handkerchief futilely to his nose as he searched. At last he found them. The studio was suddenly flooded with the ghastly light from mercury vapor tubes, two banks of them, like a motion picture studio. We might have been trapped like rats, but it was not in a dark hole.

Craig found a window pole, or perhaps it was a pole to move the Cooper-Hewitt bank that was on a sliding track overhead, a pole such as they call a "sky-hook" in the studio where the lights are the artificial sun. He began poking—smash—smash—smash at the costly glass roof. The mercury vapor light showed us the swirling fumes. Now, as Craig smashed the glass, all but one row toward the office building, I could see that the down draft from the building was driving them out of the windows I flung open. At least like rats we were not compelled to remain close to the floor, where the heavy vapors rolled thickest.

As I looked out in the glare that was rapidly dispelled in outside darkness, I realized again that the studio, in the back of the top floor of an old house, was as far away from civilization in that business section at night, surrounded by deserted office buildings, as if we were fifty miles out to sea.

I found time even to wonder about Effie-Eva. Had indeed the Effie personality triumphed over the Eva personality? It looked to me as if the lone Effie personality was stronger than the dawning merger of Effie into Effie-Eva. What, then, of Eva? Had Effie fooled Craig? Had she led us into this trap?

I looked at Hunter and I could see that he was nervous, too, and dubious about the whole thing. Craig, as he paused in smashing the glass, was watching the girl anxiously. She had seemed unwilling to answer his questions. Was she unable? She seemed really ill. Her head had fallen forward. She was drooling at the mouth, as pale as death.

Craig went over to her, supporting her by the shoulders. "Erne!" he called. "Do you hear me?" She merely nodded. Craig spoke the words decisively in her ears. "When you are Eva this time, you must remember all you experienced as Erne. Mrs. Picard drugged you. You know that. Remember your dreams—dreams—I command you!"

Craig looked up at us, a moment later. "She's all right. She is recovering from two drugs—the twilight sleep drug and the opium. She'll be an alarmed Eva in a few minutes, with mental anguish and memories that will be enough to unbalance her. Keep quiet!"

Suddenly we saw her seize Kennedy's arm piteously and bend her head over it. She was cowering in shame and bewilderment.

"Take me—home!" she sobbed in a most pitiful tone. "I cannot forget—now! How could I have done all those things? Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Kennedy, what do you think of me? What does everyone think? What will my father think? He was right—there must be a Jekyll and Hyde in every woman—if someone brings them out! ... Oh, God in heaven, take me!"

I turned away and seized the "sky-hook," to smash out the last of the glass toward the office building.

"Why?" I asked sourly in our own danger, thinking of someone somehow getting away to safety with the little girl.

"What of it? What good?" I looked up at the empty offices frowning in the blackness above.

"The glare of the light makes the selenium cell on the glass roof a good conductor of electricity—my burglar alarm by light!"

"Yes, you remember—of course, you couldn't remember—when you burst into my laboratory yesterday I was at work on it. This afternoon I had it installed, a peculiar little cell with wires, on the glass roof of this studio by letting it down gently from a window of the office building high over your head. Then the wires run down the elevator shaft to the basement of the building there, around the corner, on Fifth Avenue. O'Connor sent his men to the railroad terminals. He himself went to that building around the corner. It was as much for my safety as it was a blind to deceive our opponents."

"I only hope—she—is!" prayed Hunter, alarmed at the sudden silence and its continuance after the first cries of the child.

Kennedy leaped to the door and began banging at the lock alternately firing a shot at it, then jamming the door to see if it were weakened. There was a noise outside in the hall, a lot of noise.

Excitement grew as they worked at the braces outside, smashing them and the doors to splinters. Craig was as busy on his side. Suddenly, with a furious kick, the last lock gave way.

The fumes of the chlorine had become dissipated into an unpleasant, gaspy odor. The quantity had been sufficient for a closed room, but not for the air that rushed in down that canyon of office buildings.

I was ready to jump out to see who was there when I stopped, suddenly brushed aside by Hunter.

Through the open door a little figure bounded—stopped a moment—choked a bit—then with a scream of joy ran.

Maybeth was swallowed up in two eager arms. Hunter could frame only two words—"Maybeth—your mother!"

Forgetting us all, the little girl was crying gently on her father's shoulder, with her arms tightly clasped about his neck. He could not talk. Only the big hands trembled, smoothing each little curl.

Suddenly the child stopped crying. "Daddy, take me home! I want Mother! I'm so tired!" Then a moment later as she laid her head down, "Will you tell me that story about the Chinaman and his lamp? ... I'll tell one about the Chinaman I saw. He gave me a pretty screen to look at.... I want Mother, Daddy!"

She was nodding on her father's shoulder. It had been too much for her. The merciful sleep of childhood had drawn the curtain on what was to be to her only a dream, a story.

One of the police in the doorway pulled off his big coat. "Put it around the little girl.... She'll need it more than I do!"

I thought ... all big men ... but as I looked about at them there was not a throat that had not a lump in it.... Of such are "The Finest!"

Then I remembered, as I heard an oath out in the dark hall. I strained my eyes to penetrate the darkness. O'Connor had shouted that he had the dastard. Who was the prisoner—the infamous merchant of souls?

CHAPTER X. — THE ROUND-UP

"I HAD the block surrounded—not a man on the block itself, to scare them off," ground out O'Connor, as he shoved someone forward out of the shadows for Kennedy to see in the glare of the Cooper-Hewitts.

I was as amazed as Eva Vail, herself. The soul merchant, the man higher up in the counterfeiting drug plot was Vail himself, as his own studio lights, by which the expert photographer had been able to do the first photographic work on his counterfeit notes, glared on him.

"I'd like to break it more gently, Miss," said O'Connor, modulating his rough voice, "but I'm glad to tell you you are not his daughter. He adopted you from an asylum when you were too young to remember, but I've got the whole record for Mr. Kennedy. He was a dope fiend then, as he is now—careful. Your father was not so careful.... That man, with the little gurrl, over there, is your furrst cousin!"

I could scarcely credit it. Vail had really been the head of a counterfeit gang to shove the "queer" over on drug runners and bootleggers, to be passed abroad, where it was safer. The counterfeit plant downstairs had been Vail's, really; Mrs. Picard his creature. As for Ona, she had not been jealous of the Effie personality and Paisley. She was really jealous of the Eva personality and Vail. Effie was nothing to her and Paisley was nothing. Really she cared about Eva and Vail, for Vail was amassing a huge fortune and she would gladly have risen from opium queen to queen of the old man's ill-gotten money.

"We got Ona and Mrs. Picard here with the kid—and him," nodded O'Connor. "My men got Chang on the tube to Newark and that Jap, Nichi, at the Grand Central. They dug up Paisley in a speakeasy. We've landed 'em all."

He turned to Hunter. "Lonehand" Hunter had won his fight in the great opium clean-up. But he was smiling only down at the sleeping little May-beth on his shoulder.

"I'm send in' up that screen to your house in New Epsom, sir," he smiled broadly at Hunter as Craig, with his hand on Eva Hunter's shoulder, also smiled at her and led her over to the man with the little girl in his arms, "with the compliments of the Police Department!"

BUCCANEERS OF BOOZE

CHAPTER I. — "THE DEIL'S AWA' WI' THE EXCISEMAN!"

"KENNEDY, if half that goes on beyond the three-mile limit was told, it would fill all the story books."

Boyle of the Prohibition enforcement office stood by Craig's laboratory table and looked at his watch as if expecting someone who was late.

"And the other half that goes on on land," I volunteered, "would fill all the newspapers."

Kennedy smiled. "I suppose you leave the movies to the detectives—moonshine comedies?"

Boyle sobered. "Well, there's no comedy to this case. Listen. If you had a tip, you'd take it and keep your eyes peeled. Well, I did. I was looking for some rum runners just about due from Nassau. We sighted a fifty-foot cruiser that had been lightering the stuff to shore—drifting helpless, crew-less, down off the Jersey coast, somewhere near Long Branch. When we got up to it, the decks were awash. Someone had opened the sea-cocks— or something. The cruiser sank and we marked the spot with a buoy."

The enforcement agent paused, dropped his watch back in his pocket. "We raised it.... Two hundred and forty cases of Scotch and other stuff—at forty dollars a case out on the fishing banks, nearly ten thousand dollars investment—at a hundred in New York, almost twenty-five thousand.... In the cabin we found the dead body of a beautiful girl."

The outside door banged. But there was no tap at our door nor burr of the buzzer.

"Ill bet that's this Tessie Tantum, now." Boyle strode out into the hall, leaving us to ponder his startling introduction.

Outside I heard voices, the other of a girl who betrayed none of the qualities of culture or refinement. Her shrill giggle and the excessive amount of it made Craig wrinkle up his forehead.

"Another cackling chicken come to roost," I muttered, then checked my uncomplimentary murmur as Boyle, accompanied by a flashily dressed young person who might have been pretty if she had left some of the artificialities to older women, came in.

"Kennedy, I told you I was going to bring a witness along. I thought you would like to hear what Miss Tessie Tantum has to say, first hand. I believe she knows some of the people involved better than anyone else."

Tessie laughed some more. Among other things that she was not she was not embarrassed. As we were introduced, I saw that she was looking at Craig's hands, also at mine. They evidently did not meet with her approval.

"Come up to the Hotel Surrey—in the barber shop. I'll give you a real manicure. That's my business. I'm there every day. Get me?"

"Just a minute, Tessie," interrupted Boyle. "Let's not discuss business—yet. You remember, Kennedy—maybe Jameson does anyhow—reading of a Mrs. Warner who reported the disappearance of her daughter, Hazel Warner——"

"Hazel was manicurist in the beauty parlor at the Surrey," interrupted Tessie. "Some kid—jazz-crazy!"

"You knew this Hazel Warner?" began Craig, in an endeavor to get down to the facts.

"Sure! You bet I did. Us girls must stick together!" and Tessie laughed her raucous laugh. "Jazz crazy. I took her down to the Toddle Tea Room, myself."

My ears went up at that. The Toddle Tea Room had been raided a short time before and the Star had made quite a feature of it, high-school flappers, young college chaps, and all. I looked at Tessie with a little more interest and wondered why she was telling anything. If it had been a man, it might have been the barber's itch for money. I had been with Craig long enough to realize that there is a motive back of all actions by all people, though some of them don't even know it. I wondered what Tessie's was and it didn't take me long to figure it out. It was the motive that fires a good many of the crimes and most of the petty meannesses of women—jealousy of a girl prettier than herself.

She had a shrewd little face and an important manner. I recall that, just to jolly her, as I always do with manicure girls who may not be brainy but are always breezy, I asked her if a detective made her nervous.

"Not much—not after I have held the hands of bankers and politicians with a pull—and any number of editors." Her emphasis was clearly to put me in my place. "I told you, Mr. Kennedy, that this girl that I palled with was another manicurist up at the Surrey, in the beauty parlor. I liked her a lot at first. She was a good sport. But Hazel was jazz crazy—jazzing around all her time off."

Tessie's face clouded. "Too—darn pretty. I ought to-a-known better. I introduced her to my Buddy—and I lost him!"

There was vexation over her tactical and unusual error. When girls pal, if they are as pretty as Tessie, the other one usually is fat enough for the reduction works, or something—the more especially if the girl expects to introduce her foil to the fellow. Tessie was vexed because she had not followed her instinct.

"How did that happen, Tessie?" inquired Craig, contriving to loosen her tongue by dwelling on the fatal step. "I thought all girls were wise enough to keep one man away from the other girls they knew—at least."

Tessie chewed viciously at a small piece of gum, sometimes concealed cleverly in the back of her mouth. "Oh, I took Hazel Warner down to the Toddle Tea Room—that's all. You know the place. We call it the Toddle and Toddie, sometimes. Hazel was all dolled up, with her curly brown hair and big blue eyes.... She just had all the boys after her down there. She had a way with her, too. You know what I mean. The boys like her before she even speaks....

"My friend used to be a waiter down there. They call him De Luxe Don, but his real name is Donato, with a wop first name, Beniamino—Dopey Ben, I'd call him! Well ... he was a big tall fellow, good-looking and I liked him—but it's all off, now. Do you know what that guy did? As soon as he saw Hazel with me, he came right up; she got the service, not me. What do you know about that? But I haven't got them eyes that won't behave—and my hair is straight and black and shiny."

"Quit kiddin'! I'm through with the men—through with the men!" But I noticed she rubbed her shiny locks appreciatively. I felt it was not for long. "This Don is quite a sport, see? He never misses a fight at the Garden and he knows the name and past performances of every race horse in the country. He's always following them treacherous ponies. But the last one he picked is going to lead him some race, some race—she is!"

Her black eyes snapped impishly. "We hadn't been in the tea room very long, see, when it was raided, understand, by a bunch of reformers. Some association—I read they was trying to end the tawdry tea-room iniquity—whatever that is. It's a bunch that can't make a living 'cept by watching what other people do and drawing a salary to stop 'em....

"I was sitting with Hazel and this Don was standing by the table when these people crashed us. But Don led us out through the back way. I never knew they had such an exit before. We got out into the backyard and from that into an alley. You bet we done some hustling.

"And there was a taxicab waiting as nice as you please. We jumped in because the driver was a friend of Don. Don just shoved us in, he was in such a hurry to beat it. But, say, you'd ought-a-seen another couple rush up. It was that Lotus Leon—maybe you read about her getting a divorce in the papers?—she comes up to the Surrey Beauty Parlor and Hazel knows her—and that young fellow, E-vander Robb," she dwelt on the first syllable as if in doubt whether the old name was not an initial, and added, "She calls him Ev. Well, they just naturally piled into the taxi, too, and then this here, now, Manny Lusk, that's the driver, he looped it uptown as fast as he could and never got no ticket, neither. Some driver!" She considered the recollection with animation. "We was all laughing and joking. We had jammed in in such a hurry, it was hard to tell where our legs was or where they belonged—believe me, there wasn't nothing in its right place!"

Here Boyle interrupted the reminiscence to get back to facts. "They went up to an uptown jazz joint that is said to pay for protection—though that's bunk—unless they mean the fines they pay, until we put a padlock on the door, some day. There was this De Luxe Don, Hazel, and Tessie, and when they got there they invited the driver in with them, this Manny Lusk."

"Yeh," resumed Tessie, eager to tell it herself. "We sat down over some highballs and got talking. Don says he's had some money down on a pony, a thirty to one shot, what runs under the wire a length and a half ahead of the field and he's got $300. He's rich. This Manny says he just had an offer of $450 for his taxi and is going to sell it in the morning. Well, then Hazel, she says she has saved up $250 in the bank. Then they got to talking what they had on 'em, and the cash was forty-five dollars. They said they was rich—and they was pretty well fixed between 'em—$1,045. Then Don, who's been a waiter and knows the ins and outs, says, 'Why work?' and the others says, 'But how live?' and he says, 'Rum runnin', of course; everybody's doin' it!'"

She paused for breath and I paused to think how the raid to make Hazel good had sent her certainly wrong, branded by the reformers who saved her soul. Before Tessie could get her second wind, Boyle took the floor.

"You know this Evander Robb, young so-called millionaire clubman—with actually an allowance of two thousand a month? He has never broken any law worse than signing a falsified income tax return and hunting ducks on Sunday. Well, according to what I get, he said he had a friend on the bootleg curb market around Longacre Square who told him that it was reported there were a hundred thousand cases of all kinds of booze on the docks at Nassau—ten million dollars' worth at New York prices. Someone had told him that a tanker was bringing some of it, ten thousand cases, that another tanker was needed and there weren't any available, but that there was an auxiliary schooner under the British registry, the Grant's Town, that was available and could carry twenty-five hundred cases, maybe more. This fellow wanted him to go in it and make some money.

"Then this Lotus Leon girl—you recall she divorced Frank Leon because he lived for his polo and his ponies and his mother, too much mother-in-law—told them that she had her little estate somewhere between Rumson and the shore over in Jersey and she had a station wagon and a sport car, with a real trunk to go on the baggage rack. She said rum-running was more sport than hunting big game in Africa, Everybody was doing it—from Eastport, Maine, to Key West, Florida, from Seattle to San Diego, and from Detroit to Tia Juana.... Sometimes I think she's right. Well, these two groups began to get together—also another fellow named Marty Mason and his girl, Agnes Ascher, who had begun hanging out in this joint."

"Yeh!" interrupted Tessie again, a little peeved at not holding the stage, "De Luxy and Hazel and E-vander and Lotus, they was having a great time over the fortune they was going to make in a hurry. They didn't pay much attention to me. They thought I didn't amount to much; I ain't got two hundred and fifty cents in no bank. And Don, he was groggy over Hazel.... But I got something that they forgot and that's my tongue! It wasn't long before I got the hunch to blow the works to the prohibition enforcement, for the dirty deal they handed me. They had plenty of hootch and the party got sloppy, specially after this other couple, this Marty Mason and Agnes Ascher, met up with them. This Marty was a good spender, jolly, and he seemed to know everybody in town. He says he could take orders to-night with Agnes, for the whole hundred thousand cases, if they could bring it in. It wasn't long before this Marty says he will come in and go along on the trip, and Agnes, she was to stay right here and be something like a guard or watch or something, besides taking some advance orders. They had it all arranged and planned down to spending the money, see?

"But by this time Hazel began showing her claws to me, and I won't take it from no cat. We had an awful battle—just words, understand?—and Don backed her up in everything she said and as much as told me to beat it while the beating's good. Huh! When I was getting up, mad, I heard this Lotus say that now they could really talk. Her back was toward me but I was mad and I slapped her, good, on the shoulders. Then I flings my gloves that I was carrying, the fingers, right in Hazel's face and I does beat it. You couldn't see me for legs.... And the first thing I does the next day, when I see Hazel don't show up on her job no more, was to blow it all to Mr. Boyle here, who says he'll wait until they actually get back and do something, then he'll crash 'em, and I'll get some reward for spilling their dam' beans!"

Tessie was genuinely angry now, but Boyle calmed her long enough to tell of the fifty-foot cruiser, the Regina, that Evander Robb owned and that was often anchored in the Shrewsbury River when he visited Lotus Leon and other friends in the Rumson country, of the Leon place not far from the river, the station wagon, the sport car, and finally of a friend they mentioned that they'd have to take in. This friend was Anne Thropp, whose father had the big Thropp bungalow on the beach near the Shrewsbury; closed in the winter and spring, where Anne had an amateur wireless of her own.

"Their plan was simple," he continued. "Donato, the financier with the thousand, engaged to get the schooner somehow. Robb and Lotus Leon were to finance the booze. Robb's cruiser was to lighter it to shore, huckster it, they call it, from the fishing banks, out beyond the three-mile limit, and this Anne Thropp was to get their wireless and send them news, while Agnes stayed and took orders and Manny Lusk got the transportation by car ready. Evander Robb knew the Bahamas and he was pilot, and Lotus Leon was supercargo, or something. She says she can do anything—knock a mutinous sailor for a goal with a belaying pin or something like that. It was a nice party!"

"Yes, Boyle," cut in Kennedy quietly, "you've told me all the details of how it was framed up.... Who was the dead girl you found on the boat?"

CHAPTER II. — THE BOOZE BARRAGE

KENNEDY had hardly time to find out whether the boat was running so early in the season to Atlantic Highlands, where the Regina had been towed with the body of Lotus Leon or whether we would have to go roundabout by rail, when there was a very excited call on the telephone.

"It was Anne Thropp," he told me. "We'll wait for her. I know her father, Irvin Thropp, president of the Airline National Bank. She wants to come up to me to help her. She has been arrested by revenuers in her car for carrying a case of liquor on the Stat en Island ferry. She gave a fictitious name. But they have the car and of course they'll look up the license number, find her real name, confiscate the car—and she doesn't know what will happen to her after that. She left her diamonds as bail. They were kind enough to fingerprint her and let her out with the jewels as bail, because it was a girl. I don't think a man would have had such an easy time."

It wasn't long before a very excited girl, scarcely in the debutante age, burst in on us. She was undoubtedly pretty, with a mass of golden hair, which she constantly brushed up with a small white hand in graceful, quick, nervous motions.

"You know, Mr. Kennedy, I've been in a rum-running scheme—just for the excitement of the thing. Ev Robb told me there was no particular danger in it, so I went in, just for the lark. But it seems as if we were wrong."

As I studied Anne Thropp, I couldn't help wondering at the young girl of to-day. Here was one with unusual beauty, wealth, and social position. She lacked thrills and excitement. The movies no longer supplied the thrills; she was blasé on pictures. Racing cars, fast motor boats, and much time on their hands were splendid foundations on which booze brokers might build capable bootlegging accessories when there was a certain smartness in defying law. Craig said nothing of what he already knew, but let her talk ahead.

"I started in by agreeing to go down to our bungalow on the Shrewsbury and use my wireless, about the time they expected to anchor on the fishing banks. They had a pretty good set on the schooner, one that could send up to twenty-five miles, or so. Then I got deeper and deeper in it. It was thrilling, y'know."

It must have been. She was nervously balling and unballing her gloves, plucking at the fingers, as she talked. "But, Mr. Jameson," she appealed to me, "you'll keep me out of the papers—just a little—-won't you? Do you know, I am more afraid of Dad than the law. Somehow or other I respect him—but the law.... I hate to say it, Mr. Kennedy, but nobody seems to think much of that any more. All the best people are laughing at the eighteenth commandment!"

Craig looked at this seventeen-year-old girl in amazement. His face quickly assumed a serious cast. "I am glad you came here, Miss Thropp. You are not the first person here to-day to see me on this affair. I know your father and I feel that I ought to do something to ... lighten the blow, if I can. The government is already at work. Now, over the telephone you told me you were framed. How do you mean? You must tell me all you know; otherwise I cannot work so quickly. Just tell me—is there anything that makes you think you will be implicated in this murder of Lotus Leon?"

Kennedy stopped, his face resting on his hand, and he looked at Anne Thropp with eyes that would not accept a lie. She startled as he said it.

"Oh! ... Then you know about that?" She turned from looking out of the window, as if fascinated, her eyes transfixed by Kennedy's searching gaze, then tremulously spoke of her fears. "One of our crowd yesterday told me that they were worried over Lotus's not getting to shore. She had over two hundred cases of the stuff on the Regina, Ev's boat, with Captain Staley. He's an old fisherman down there. I'll tell you about him more, later. We were worried; no word about Lotus all night; and a revenue boat out there. This morning I heard some youngsters talking about a boat that had just come up to the public dock. I questioned them. The captain of the boat had seen the revenuers raise another boat that had sunk and on it they had found a murdered woman.

"You can imagine I hurried down to the dock. There I saw a man I know, a friend of Dad's, and he told me that the dead girl was Lotus Leon—and that my father's shotgun, his ten-gauge old blunderbuss Greener that he uses for ducks, had been found in the cabin near the body. He told me to go to Dad and get a lawyer."

"Your father's fowling-piece—on the cruiser?" repeated Kennedy. "How could that be?"

"Oh, it was in the gun room with a lot of other old guns at the Bungalow. I suppose 'most anyone might have got in the gun room," she answered glibly. "But, Mr. Kennedy, I was afraid to go to Dad. I was worried over that gun. So I decided to see a lawyer, myself. Everybody was gone at the bungalow. I never looked at a thing but the gas in my sport car. I just hopped in and beat it up here for the city. I wanted advice before my name was dragged all over like an aniseed bag. But before I even got off the ferry I was stopped by some revenue agents. They showed their badges and wanted to look over my car. I told them to go ahead. I was completely floored when they found a case of Scotch under where the extra rear seat folds over.

"I didn't know it was there. I told them it must be a frame. But they only laughed. 'That's what they all say!' One of them was mighty fresh. He said, 'You're a pretty little liar!' The other told me he knew something better than bootlegging and tried to make a date with me, if he didn't arrest me. I was more afraid of him that I was of either Dad or the law."

Her sophistication was only a cover; underneath Anne was almost in tears. "Oh what a day it has been, Mr. Kennedy! To lose one of my dearest friends, to have the feeling that I'm to be mixed up in a murder, some way, and to be arrested for transporting a case of Scotch. Oh, why did Ev ask me into the thing? You'll help me, Mr. Kennedy? I feel as if I had enemies all over. Who would take father's gun from the empty bungalow and leave it on that boat—and who would put that hootch in my car this morning when we worked all day yesterday to get as much as we could ashore and all last night to get it away from the bungalow? ... I came to you. I thought I needed you more than I needed a lawyer.... Who wanted me to get arrested? Who hates me that much?"

"Or who fears you that much?" added Kennedy. "Now, you poor foolish little girl, after you leave here, I would get in touch with your father, if I were you. Tell him everything and keep quiet; go to a quiet hotel and stay there." He paused, reassuring her. "Now, you've done most of the talking. Let me ask you what happened down there yesterday. Who came to the bungalow? Who would have a chance to get the shotgun?"

"Oh, all of them." Then she added hastily. "Except Ev. He only came in on one trip; the rest of the time he stayed out on the schooner as supercargo, or whatever you call it. You know, we got a tip that a revenue cutter was due up there to-day. The rum-smuggling has been going pretty strong lately. So everybody was working hard to get as much of the stuff ashore as we could safely yesterday. We had four boats huckstering for us—that's what they call it—huckstering, like selling garden truck. There was some excitement in our crowd."

"Yes—but the revenue cutter, you know. I had a small motor boat, half decked over, and this Manny Lusk, the chauffeur, who understands all about gas engines, said he would take it out to the schooner and bring in some cases if someone would help him. We wanted to get it all ashore before the revenuers came and we would have got it, if this terrible ... shooting hadn't happened on the Regina, which could carry most and was fastest."

"One trip. Hazel Warner made the others. You know we could take only about thirty cases on it."

"Well, you see, we got a good deal of it ashore yesterday.... But the cutter came up then—a day ahead. I guess the tip was a blind. Then we decided it was dangerous to leave the stuff in the bungalow. Manny got a motor truck and moved it up to a warehouse here in the city, over on the West Side. It's there now. But Manny's gone!"

"Oh, he has a cabin cruiser, the Highlands, that he used to rent out for deep-sea fishing. He's making a lot of money running stuff in with it, now. Oh, I guess he's rich out of it. Anyhow, when I told them about Staley they said to get him, even if he charged ten dollars a case for lightering the stuff. So we did. The first trip, Staley's boat came in piloted by Marty Mason alone. It had about fifty cases. Agnes Ascher was there at the wireless at the cottage with me. He took her back for company. That must have been about the time that Lotus started from the schooner in the Regina with Captain Staley and the big load, the two hundred and forty cases; there were about twenty-five hundred on the schooner. They never arrived at shore. She was picked up, dead. Staley has disappeared— maybe drowned."

"Oh, yes. Out there in the fleet—there were sixteen anchored on the banks including our schooner and the tanker—Captain Staley went over to a friend of his on another schooner and borrowed a big motor dory that would hold oh, twenty cases or so, covered up with tarpaulin—fish would have been better, but we didn't have any.

"Donato—this DeLuxe Don as they call him—made one trip in this with Hazel Warner, but she quit. It was too wet. You know Hazel is as jealous as a cat, anyway. She stole Donato from another girl, I hear, and they told me Lotus was pretty stuck on Don during the trip. Some of her own medicine to Hazel."

She looked at him keenly, as if he were guessing her secret. "I haven't any affairs. I only care for Ev Robb. He's older than I am, but he keeps telling me we'll get married when I am eighteen. Ev's such a good fellow, all the girls like him. Lotus went out with him more than I liked. I was hoping she wouldn't go to Nassau on the boat with the rest—but she did."

I fancied it troubled Anne to answer, too. It is hard for a girl to confess that the man she loves is a philanderer. It is too much like saying, "I'm a simp to stay, but I can't help it."

"Oh, Agnes Ascher had a crush on him, too, I guess. She never said much about it—not to me, anyhow. But she had his picture and kept talking about the time 'when Ev comes back from Nassau.' I didn't like it much, but Ev never bothered her. He didn't even write to her. I think he really cares for me and wouldn't let me go because he didn't want me to be in danger on the schooner. I've succeeded in getting into enough of it though, it seems.... But the funny part of that was that Agnes and I liked Ev, and Ev thought a lot of Lotus. Then Lotus got a crush on this De Luxe Don.... Some of us are funny...."

"I'll say we did. We might have got it all landed but for that, in spite of the revenue boat being a day ahead."

"No, Manny got a motor truck and moved it to the warehouse that the broker told us about."

"A man named Deutz, in the office building that used to be the Burridge Hotel—the man who told Ev Robb about the hundred thousand cases on the wharves at Nassau in the first place."

"Y-yes ... but, oh, you're not going by your own name are you, Mr. Kennedy? He'd recognize you. I'll tell you. You be Mr. Kendrick and Mr. Jameson be Mr. Johnson with a hotel up in the Orange Mountains or some place. You want to buy some good stuff. Mention Father's name. He sells stuff to Father; does business at the bank!"

III. — THE BOOTLEG CURB MARKET

KENNEDY made a radical change in his plans and we sought out the syndicate bootlegger, Deutz, in the Burridge Building. He was there, all right, doing business under the name of a law firm whose name was on the door and whose sheepskins and leather books were in the outer office.

What interested me was the number of girls about as we entered the building. It was in the district where there are many theatrical and motion picture enterprises. But I felt that that did not wholly account for it. Here was an alliance of flappers and bootleggers.

We had not so much as got to the elevator when Kennedy turned aside and greeted a girl who had been talking to a tang tadpole in a belted coat, tailored up to the minute. It was Tessie Tan turn.

"Sure," she said, sliding the gum back into some sort of pouch in the back of her mouth, "when I saw how easy it was to make money, I went into it, too. You bet. And all I learns from Mr. Boyle's talk—that helps. Don't you know girls make mighty good retail salesmen for hootch—the best? Naw—I haven't given up my manicure work. Betcha life. That's my office—the hotel barber shop. I got lots of customers."

There was much to reflect on in that as we rode up in the elevator. But there was more coming before the afternoon was over.

Deutz was a stocky fellow of medium height with a sharp, weasel nose. I don't know how it is, but Kennedy could sell Panama hats to Eskimos. He sold himself to Deutz without even the trouble of calling Thropp at the bank. Not only that, but he led the conversation around until we got to the Bahama whisky fleet and he even knew from some fellow clubman about Ev Robb. It wasn't long before Deutz opened up and told us he knew where the stuff that Robb was bringing in was.

Deutz laughed. "Well, it's a schooner, ain't it?" Then he laughed some more at Robb's humor. "He was going to name it the Scuttle of Suds, but it was too suggestive for the rotten old tub, he wrote me from Nassau. Oh, I'm getting lots of the stuff from those boats out there on the banks. But, being as you're friends of Mr. Robb and Mr. Thropp, too, I'll tell you that that stuff he's bringing in is the best. Lots of it gets cut down with water while they're bringing it up—and after it's landed, too."

"And some of it's never from the Bahamas at all, I understand," I put in. "They tell me there are ships with gigantic stills, copper coils that mount up from the hold to the deck, that turn out a couple of hundred gallons a day—with labels, bottles, corks, seals, carried out to the ships."

But I set it down in the same category as the prohibition director's denial in an interview to me once that there were any considerable number of rum-running boats until the Star hired a tug, sent a photographer out there, and snapped fourteen of them.

Kennedy had been pondering the question. "Where is this stuff? Can I see it—sample it?"

Deutz, who had an office full by this time waiting to see him, nodded. "Sure, if you want to run over to the warehouse. It's the Atlantic Furniture Warehouse on West Street. Wait, I'll give you a card. Only, be a little careful, will you please? Go over to the warehouse, then take dinner with me tonight and we'll talk turkey on price."

We called a taxicab and rode over within a block of the place, then paid the man off and walked the rest of the way.

Suddenly Kennedy halted. "Did you see that fellow hanging around up there by the market?"

"I'll bet that's Manny Lusk, from the description. Wonder what he's doing here? Maybe they don't trust each other."

We entered and back of the grimy windows of the blackened brick warehouse I saw such sights as might have made a feature story any Sunday. There was precious little from Grand Rapids in this furniture warehouse.

It seemed that there were two classes of stuff. Some, like that Evander Robb had brought in, was going to wealthy connoisseurs who were constant customers and whose trade was not only constant but valuable. This stuff was let alone. But there was much that was not. I had heard of the new re-fillable bottle, cutting the bottom out of bottles, fusing the glass again after they had been filled with half water or all rot-gut. But these people had the science of it. No bottle was non-refillable to them. The label was all right; the seal was all right. But they got better than two for one on the contents, with the aid of the excellent city water supply. As for the remainder, there were bottles with names blown in them, labels counterfeited, seals duplicated, so well that it took us a long time to get down to the real ostensible purpose of our visit.

In fact, we never did get to it. There was a sudden outcry, a clanging and smashing—and on Kennedy's first visit to a whisky warehouse under the present régime, he found himself with me captive in a raid by the enforcement forces!

"Say—Boyle!" I muttered, under my hand as I saw our friend, who had evidently been engineering the raid.

"For the love of Pete!" Boyle eyed us in the miscellaneous group that were herded by a couple of his armed men in the bookkeeper's office.

"Did you pinch Anne Thropp?" asked Kennedy, as Boyle contrived to separate us from the others on some plausible pretext.

"No; but my men tell me the office got a tip—underground—same as this tip was. How did you get here?"

Kennedy did not enlighten him to the point of decreasing any of Boyle's respect for his omniscience.

We had crossed wires on that trail. Kennedy and I went back to dinner with Deutz in a rather famous restaurant that conformed to the law.

It was Deutz's loss, but he did not seem to be much worried by the raid. To him it was just an unfortunate hazard in the course of an extrahazardous undertaking. Besides, his partners were really lawyers. There was always a chance.

"Wish I could get insured in Lloyd's!" he exclaimed. "But you can't kick when you lose sometimes. Think of what you win. I'm for Coue! Every day in every way we're getting this thing better and better. For instance, those fellows out there"—he waved his hand in the general direction of the Atlantic Ocean—"pay an average of, say, fifteen dollars a case in Nassau. They may average forty dollars out there on the banks. That's a hundred and fifty per cent profit, and no great risk; none from the law; it's all on the high seas. Well, suppose these other fellows that bring it from them get a hundred a case ashore—that's two hundred and fifty per cent profit to them. They have the risk."

"H'm," considered Kennedy, with his pencil figuring on the tablecloth. "That's fifteen ... one hundred ... nearly six hundred per cent profit from Nassau to New York."

The broker laughed. "It's a great business, slaking the national thirst! ... More money in it than anything I ever tackled and I've been one of the bookies, in movies, oil, 'most everything. It's just like any other industry. The middleman is getting all the profits. The producer has to shave his close—and the consumer's the sucker! ... Now come back to my terms? Half down—the other half when delivered."

The broker laughed at Craig's scepticism. "Not a chance! We can put a revenue man on every truck if you want! You take your chance after delivery, of course—just like the rest of us—just like you saw this afternoon—but from the time the stuff is landed—not a chance—not with this bird!"

"You know I didn't get an opportunity to sample any of it. That confounded Boyle jumped in there before I got to it. But I saw a lot of fake labels and such stuff. Now, I cater in that hotel up there to a mighty fastidious trade. I really must taste the stuff before I go in for any considerable buy."

The broker Deutz considered. "No trouble at all," he said. "Take you out to the fleet, if you don't mind the cold and the water and the risk!"

CHAPTER IV. — ARGOSIES OF HOOTCH

DOWN at the Battery, Deutz led us along a wharf until we came to a launch, the Here's How, tossing in the swirl of late winter tides.

"There are three of the ships in the rum fleet that I have been doing business with," remarked Deutz, "lying about fifteen miles out from here, I should say, with pretty full cargoes of the stuff. You say you're most interested in the stuff that Ev Robb has brought in. Well, we'll see that, too."

On the other side of the slip I noticed in the rising moonlight another small boat tossing, evidently waiting for someone. As an arc fight on the other wharf swung in the wintry night wind, it revealed the face of one man on the boat. It was the same face that Kennedy and I had seen watching on the corner as a lookout just before the raid on the warehouse.

I called Craig's attention to him, but as the fellow did not seem ready to move and was certainly not watching us, there was nothing but to let him alone. We forgot him as soon as we were under way, slipping out into the choppy waves, down past Governor's Island to the left and the Statue of Liberty to the right.

As we were slipping along through the Narrows and in the Upper Bay we passed a couple of police-boats on the hunt for smugglers. Kennedy had been talking an order of a thousand cases and now expressed his fear that it would never get through.

Deutz laughed. "Delivery guaranteed at ten dollars a case added to what you pay out here for it—F.O.B.!"

"Not me," protested Deutz. "I'll run it ashore—somewhere—get it on four trucks—my trucks carry about two hundred and fifty cases each—and deliver it anywhere you say—ten dollars a case for delivery."

I marveled at the organization of it. Of course everyone was taking a chance. But this man talked of it as though the science of booze blockade-running had reduced the thing to a state where he could quote liquor like cotton.

Still, as we chug-chugged along down in the expanse of the lower bay and around Sandy Hook, I was convinced that some at least of the swift moving craft we saw now and then were revenue boats, fast cruisers of the dry navy. Nothing shook the confidence of Deutz, who continued to descant on the quality of his goods, his reputation for prompt and satisfactory service. Every statement called forth an acquiescent nod from the skipper of the Here's How, a thick-handed, blond, progeny of Norse Vikings.

It was not quite three hours after we started and some seven miles southeast of Ambrose Lightship when we sighted a part of the liquor fleet, as free as if it were no man's sea out here within the beams of Scotland Lightship and Sandy Hook Lightship.

I counted almost a dozen of them as we ran along, and there were more than that, which I could not see. This was the Bahama rum fleet just off shore in the safety zone, hove to, or riding saucily at anchor. As our Norse skipper ran us close to some of them we were mistaken for buyers and greeted with offers of varied and assorted liquors at prices that fell sharply under international competition.

Here and there I saw a steamer, a trawler at anchor, looking mighty expectant as they smudged the horizon further out. But for the most part the fleet outside the three-mile limit were schooners and the stuff they had for sale was Scotch and Canadian and Bahaman liquors.

I learned from the skipper that there were many Nova Scotian and New England vessels, that some came down from Canada to unload, then went on to the Bahamas for a new cargo, coming back and going on again to Canada for more, swinging around the big circuit. They were migratory birds.

Whether all the smaller fishing boats through which we threaded a tortuous way were interested in the merchandising of whisky, we could not say definitely. Some must have specialized in it. Others may have fished. But, as Anne had hinted, what might be under the fish, even then?

I had heard a great deal of talk about the fleet being mythical, press-agent talk to promote bootleg sales: But what of this schooner, a slate-gray craft from Halifax? Why was it down from the neighborhood of the Great Banks, where fish are about as plentiful as anywhere in the world, to cast its nets in waters off New York, where fish are so pitifully few?

The skipper changed his course and swung into the trough of a restless sea. She plunged her nose into the swells that mark the deep water some-twenty miles or so out from the Battery. We were approaching a schooner now with no topmasts, all stripped down to what you might call racing rig, ready for any gale.

"I'm going to take you aboard a West Indian, the Fer-de-Lance, a Frenchman, in charge of a negro who calls himself L'Hibouette—the little owl. You know the fer-de-lance—that very deadly little snake down in Martinique?"

Kennedy nodded. We had had experience with the actual reptile itself on our trip down the east coast of South America and back along the west.

"They call Hibouette the king of the smugglers," went on Deutz familiarly. "Wait till you get up alongside. You'll see he has signs hung out quoting prices—like gasoline— twenty-eight cents! If he gets competition he cuts the price to meet it, and posts it. The government has been trying to get him a long time. He's a past master, a wonder in his line. The eels of the ocean aren't much slicker than he is. He's the one they want most of all."

We had now run alongside the Fer-de-Lance and I saw the signs. A couple of cargo booms swung out from the masts and over the side hung ice-coated rope fenders as inviting as a door mat with "Welcome" worked on it. The lookout shouted, but I could not make out what he called, nor the reply of our Viking, but a couple of other muffled figures appeared on deck and stolidly watched us until we came around to the lee, then helped us aboard.

Down in a cabin, with my eyes wide, I saw that guns were everywhere, and knives. It was the mangiest-looking crew imaginable. Hibouette was not visible at first, but at last he came in, a burly, scarred, frayed black man, who greeted Deutz cagily in West Indian Anglo-French-American.

Hibouette ordered three specimens brought to the cabin, a bottle of Haig & Haig, of Johnny Walker, and Maryland Club. He set the price of the first two at $38, and the rye at $40, explaining that as it had had to be shipped out from Baltimore to St. Pierre and then back the price would be two dollars higher. Deutz repeated the offer of ten dollars a case for delivery. Kennedy apparently wavered between five hundred cases of Haig & Haig and five hundred of Maryland Club, discussing his requirements, and the prices he might be quoted on other ships. Hibouette gruffly assured him that they would go no lower for good stuff, that he was setting the price for the others; they had to meet him, not he them. Still, Kennedy found other excuses for not closing the deal.

All the while I was watching the ratty crew and wondering who besides those we saw might be under cover down below in the hold or up in the fo'castle.

Questions about the schooner of Robb and his crowd and about the captured cruiser Regina elicited nothing but gruff grunts. It was an invitation to keep off the secrets of the business.

"I'm glad to have had the chance to see the deep-sea men, from Nassau and St. Pierre, Miquelon," remarked Kennedy to Deutz, as we were preparing to go over again the perilous side into our launch. "I see it's the landlubbers that do the huckstering to shore."

"Don't make any mistake about that term rum huckster," replied Deutz. "As a matter of fact, very little of the better class stuff off Atlantic Highlands is fetched here haphazardly. Most of it is ordered in advance. I know because I order it myself. A syndicate wants ten thousand cases. The money is posted. The captain is told that the moment he presents a receipt for the delivered goods on his boat at Nassau he has his money for carrying it. Fiscal agents and banks take care of paying for the stuff; he gets his and pays his crew out of it. Then we arrange here to take the stuff off. Why, there's more than a million gallons a year that come from the Bahamas. The government there collected a duty on its last year of a million, eight hundred thousand dollars, they tell me! Everybody's making money except the United States—and these people are all thumbing their noses at your Prohibition Commissioner!"

I thought it over. It was a system that had reaped fortunes for those in it. It seemed to bid fair to demoralize the fishing industry of the New England coast, as it had already the little fishing industry down there around the Highlands. Not a law was violated so long as the big boats remained outside the three-mile limit—and if the three-mile limit were extended, incalculable international complications all over the earth would result. The real violators were the mosquito fleet of tiny sloops and power boats that plied between the big fleet and the shore. Perhaps some of the larger schooners had "flivvers" that might run in to the shore from the "mother ship" for water and provisions—and with other things. That was a violation, if any of the stuff was landed that way.

As we pulled away, practically assuring Hibouette that we would come back to do business, I thought of something one of our own editors on the Star had written, that the Atlantic was a busy ocean, never so busy since Drake, when bold English seamen pirates lay in wait for Spanish galleons. The new piracy was less romantic than the old, but more active—and a lot more money in it than in galleons, besides being safer.

CHAPTER V. — THE THREE-MILE LIMIT

OUR skipper knew the boats by their middle names. He headed down to the south'ard and pointed as we came up to a shovel-nosed tub of a schooner, if anything, more disreputable-looking than all the rest. I wondered if it would hold together until we got aboard.

A lookout in olive drab once issued by a supply officer in the army of the United States, stiff with cold, flapped his arms about himself in a vain attempt to beat off the freezing wind that was shrieking through the rigging above him.

"How much for Scotch?" shouted Deutz, the inveterate joker, seizing a little megaphone.

The lookout did not seem to care whether they sold or kept. He knew they had other outlets than through chance jobbers. Contemptuously he took out a black bottle, ostentatiously tipped it up as he threw his head back, drained the dregs that had been left in it, then flung it overboard into the lacy crest of a wave that slunk along the lifting hull of the schooner.

Our Viking guffawed. Just then a rather athletic-looking chap in a sheep-lined khaki reefer came from below. I saw that this was Robb himself. After him came a dapper fellow in a smart cloth polo cap greatly in favor on Broadway between Longacre Square and Columbus Circle. That I took to be De Luxe Don. Everything but the boat here was de luxe, in contrast with the Fer-de-Lance.

I looked back across the water at the Fer-de-Lance perhaps a quarter of a mile away. In the cold moonlight on the water we could see a small boat come up but we were too far away to see who made the transfer to the ship of the Little Owl.

Our Viking laughed. "Cap'n Hibouette has customer already! I gass we bane bring him luck."

"These fellows in small boats have their nerve, with the revenuers all on the watch," I observed.

"Nerve?" answered Deutz. "They have no nerves, you mean. They don't know what fear is."

We had difficulty getting over the side of the Suds, as Ev Robb had named his schooner that looked to me like a ship that would founder herself. The name "Haugesand: Norway," a little fishing village, had been painted out, in spite of the bad luck to change a boat's name. These were no ordinary sailors, however. The bark of a police dog, whom Robb ordered back below so that he might help us aboard unhampered, showed that.

As Deutz, Kennedy, and I came over the rail, we saw that there were several others poking their heads out of a cabin hatch. Young Robb himself seemed to be overjoyed to see somebody. In a general clatter of tongues Kennedy managed to gloss over his acquaintance as "Mr. Kendriek" with Robb, so that Deutz saw nothing suspicious in it and Robb let it pass without comment. I flattered myself that we were more than ordinarily welcome to two girls whose faces I saw in the cabin hatch.

"Things have been a little quiet to-day, Deutz," remarked Robb. "The revenuers are snooping around and since this—er—this mixup yesterday, nothing—doing. I got a notification from the bank that your certified check was deposited, as agreed. But, good Lord, how glad I'll be to get back on solid ground again." Robb shook his head in the depths of his sheepskin collar, as he clutched at a shroud of the mainmast, to steady himself in the pitching.

"Humph! It's a good thing that it's a custom of the trade—and you have your check!" growled Deutz. "The warehouse was raided by Boyle's men not ten hours after the stuff was in it—and I'm the goat.... Hut ... you have to expect those little things, now and then." Deutz laughed as lightly as even a big operator may over some sixty thousand dollars or more.

Down in the cabin I thought that the two girls were more bored than Robb. It looked as if time were hanging heavy on a crowd who were eager to get away—could it be?—from each other.

Hazel seemed to keep pretty close to DeLuxe Don and there didn't seem to be anything else for Agnes but to make up to Marty Mason. Robb only spoke to her when she spoke to him, and I thought it was rather often. I could see none of the enthusiasm that Tessie Tantum had been telling us of that existed the night they made up to go to Nassau for the hootch.

"I've brought out a couple of customers—these friends of yours, Robb," said Deutz finally, when we got settled in the cabin. "Before they buy they want to do a little tasting. Their clientele in their hotel want nothing but the best and they must get it. I'll be responsible for getting the stuff ashore, if they buy."

Robb went over to a cabinet, opened it, and brought out a couple of bottles, both five-starred. Kennedy and I sampled them. They were the real stuff; there was no doubt about that. I would have been enthusiastic in praising the mildness and smoothness of it except for the fact that I knew a sale would tax the combined resources of Kennedy and myself if it ever went through. I lay low. Robb seemed a bit more pleased with life, a little brighter, a quality that, I reflected, had almost fled from millions ashore.

"Pity the poor landlubbers on a night like this!" exclaimed Deutz, always extracting some humor to lighten life. He did not drink, however. He poured a couple of drops in the hollow of his palms, rubbed them together, then held both, cupped, up to his nose to smell the bouquet. It was an action I had not seen for many a day with liquor salesmen. Then he took just a sip in his mouth, rolled it about, tasted it, and spit it out.

I turned to Marty and Agnes, who seemed the most silent and glum, and asked them what they thought about living on a boat. They murmured something about not liking it; too slow.

But it started things, reminiscences from Hazel. It seemed that a week ago, with $37,000 worth of whiskies, wines, gins, and rare cordials in the hold, and a blue sky overhead with soft, mellow breezes about, it had been different. I gathered that before the week was out the cargo had been less by several cases.

I saw a picture of canned music on a portable talking machine, even of jazz music over the wireless from New York, dancing by moonlight, kisses pledged with quarts of Pol Roger and chased by clinkers of Cliquot, in the land where thousands were vacationing. This was buccaneering par excellence. I felt that the author of Treasure Island, if he were alive to-day, would not lack for new and bizarre, material.

But up north, on the wrong side of the turbid Gulf Stream, in the winter winds—it was different.

"You see," unburdened Marty further, "my job up here has been, a good deal, to cart the stuff to shore. Most of the time Ev's been sort of supercargo, out here. But we can't do that now. It seems they're watching our end, most. It's too risky. Then someone has to stay here with the girls. We don't want to leave them alone out here." He faced in the general direction of the fo'castle and waved a hand generally toward the fleet. "Something might happen."

Hazel and Don joined in and their questions skirted on queries as to what the authorities were doing over the murder of Lotus Leon.

"Mr. Johnson," Hazel addressed me, "I don't sup-post you know, but have they seen or heard anything of Anne Thropp since she disappeared? It seems mighty funny to me that she should have run away just at this time. We'd know more if she could send on some wave length on that wireless of hers. Seems to me I'd-a stayed and seen it through." Hazel looked at Don for appreciation, but she didn't receive much heart balm in that direction. Don seemed preoccupied and ill at ease.

"This thing has cast a gloom over the whole business!" exclaimed Hazel. "Before that, everything was fine. It's too darn bad!" Yet did I detect a sort of relief in this girl over the demise of Lotus, rather than depression? "Let's not talk about it. Let's cut the gloom stuff."

"Well, then," noticed Hazel quickly, "I wish some of you men would start something. It's a great life—if you don't weaken!"

Marty looked up. "Yes ... I think the less we think of that murder, maybe, the better off we'll be.... It seems darn funny Manny hasn't shown up out here. I wonder what he's up to?"

"Maybe he's hunting up Anne," joined in Agnes. "Maybe they're in together." She elevated her eyes in a superior manner.

I could see that Kennedy was listening in on this interchange and at the same time doing his best to satisfy Deutz and Robb as they discussed quality, quantity, price, and delivery. He was trying to shade the price on the basis of twenty-five hundred cases costing $37,500 in Nassau and selling for $100,-000 here, with a price of $250,000 for them in the city.

On the subject of the murder of Lotus none seemed to want to talk much. Was there a feeling of mutual suspicion?

"I'm afraid I'd be so interested to know who got her," joined in Craig, "that I'd forget about the hootch. Was she pretty?"

The little party looked at each other. There was a return to the former constraint. No one seemed to want even to think what was in their minds.

"Did she have a quarrel with anyone—or anyone have a quarrel over her?" I switched, recalling some things Anne had told.

"Say," broke in Don angrily, "It's bad enough to have it happen—but that's a little fresh—from an outsider. Let it drop. Let the police do the work!"

Just then there was a series of explosions outside. We poked our heads out. Any news out there is like a special extra. It was the Fer-de-Lance getting under way with her gas-kicker.

"I wonder if they've repealed the Volstead Act—or the navy's going to raid the high seas?" queried Deutz, trying to be jocose.

CHAPTER VI. — THE SKY'S THE LIMIT

DEUTZ'S joke fell flat. The Fer-de-Lance kicker got the schooner under way. But instead of going out to sea or moving up the line for a better mooring, she ranged over toward us.

Suddenly there was a volley of pistol and rifle shots and the glass of the cabin windows was shattered.

With a muttered oath Robb drew an automatic and returned the compliment, but the range was just a little too great and the slippery, heaving footing of the Suds was not for good marksmanship. Don fired wildly. He was a tea room gunman. At least he seemed so.

"Give us that stuff of yours!" came a pretty clear voice in a megaphone, borne by the wind.

There was no immediate reply. For a small boat, one on a sort of shopping expedition, some private cruiser, ranged along. It was full of well-bundled-up fellows and girls, singing—and they were carrying a good deal, not in the hold. They were, as you might say, haif-seas over. Evidently they had heard of the bargains and had come out for the lark, doing their summer shopping early. They ranged up nearer to see the fun. Not a befuddled head seemed to realize what it was all about.

"Is this a private fight—or can anybody come in?" shouted one, trying to be funny.

There were screams, male and female—a general ducking for the cabin, such a mixup of legs and bloomers and arms as only a panic could produce. The helmsman, who was guiding them out where the hootch was cheap, swung her helm hard about, got into the trough of the sea, and almost capsized. They shipped more water than would have chased all they had had to drink—and fled.

But this time the demand had been repeated and sullenly Robb, Don, the crew, and the rest of us allowed the mangy, ratty pack of the Fer-de-Lance to swarm over the rail, almost falling into the fairly heavy seas. There was nothing else to do, with a little Lewis staring you in the eyes.

Then as the ill-smelling crew came to us and the Little Owl recognized Deutz, he muttered, "No—just take their guns!"

Both Craig and I were armed and we hated to see those pretty little automatics get out of our possession. But there was nothing else to it in this fight between roughneck rum pirates and these silk-stockinged bootleggers.

It was thrilling to me, I admit. It was something to bring back recollections of swashbuckling eighteenth century days when suspicious luggers lurked in every port under the Dover cliffs.

Only then did I realize that these exploits of rum-runners to-day are revealing a chapter in modern ocean romance which has no equal this side of the days of Blackbeard, Kidd, Sir Henry Morgan, and the other worthies of the Spanish Main.

But this, again, was something else. Manny Lusk, the taxi driver, was indeed the fellow we had seen waiting in the slip on the other side when we had started. The passenger, or at least one, for whom he had been waiting, was Tessie Tan turn.

It might have been piracy on the high seas. But it was different. For here were Tessie and Hazel, the manicure girls, and such young ladies, as I have said, are rarely dull.

When Hazel saw Tess climb over the rail and board the Suds, followed by Manny Lusk, her face and Don's were studies. Beauty and the tea-room manner didn't count for much against a Lewis gun. Tessie and Manny had been about the last to come over.

Confidence, a man upon whom she knew she could depend, and revenge made Tessie actually handsome. Her gown was in the latest Broadway fashion for sport wear, and the fur coat she had on must have cost a small fortune. The two girls on our boat looked on in fear and envy. By this time Robb, Marty, Don, and the crew had been bound, trussed up so that there was not a fight in all of them.

Then I saw that it was twentieth-century-primeval. All the men on the Fer-de-Lance were much for Tess and her ability. I could hear them say, "Tess, will see 'em ashore," "Leave Tess manage that guy." It was a plain case of a shrewd girl crook who had made herself solid with as wicked-looking a group of cutthroats as had ever scuttled a ship on the ocean in the old days of romance. Tessie was thriving on such adulation. She knew how to put any one of them in his place if he got fresh—and they liked it.

With a devilish look in her eyes and a sneer on her lips, Tessie came up to Hazel, who was leaning, half stunned, against the after cabin. Posing defiantly, she placed her hands on her hips and with arms akimbo surveyed Hazel up and down with a leer. Then she looked at De Luxe Don, unheroically bound, with another contemptuous chuckle.

"So! ... You thought you could steal my man and get away with it, heh? ... Well, I found out you haven't taken my heart when you took the excess baggage! You told me to beat it. That's what I'm telling you—beat it! You can't beat it. If I wanted to have 'em do it, those men'd throw you overboard—put you in a small boat and set you adrift—make you walk the plank—if we had a plank! I ought to do it!"

Hazel flashed back, dry of eye. She was a curious spectacle of bluffing bravado. She was scared. And Tess knew it. But Hazel wasn't going to admit she knew Tess knew it.

"What have you got to say, you cat?" screeched Tess in her ear. "Don't you hear me? Are you deaf? Where's your tongue?"

Hazel was quick-tempered, too. Suddenly she turned and brought her open hand with a resounding whack across Tess's cheek. There was a general roar from Manny and the other men. I expected momentary violence from them at Hazel's imprudence.

"Take that," Hazel had hissed out. "And that—for the slap with the fingers of your glove that you gave me that night. I haven't forgotten!"

I didn't understand Tessie. She turned from Hazel, with the livid marks of Hazel's hand still on her face.

With a shimmy step up to Manny, Tess told him to stay where he was and keep quiet. She waved her hand. "This is my party! You can cheer when it's over!"

Tessie never glanced at Hazel. But she took off her fur coat and tossed it lightly to a man who I had just realized was with them as I heard his name—Captain Staley.

She undid her sport skirt, with a shout from the men, and appeared in neat and trim knickers. By this time her face was pale. Intense anger shone through her eyes. But it was all done quietly and coolly. And it was getting on Hazel's nerves.

Pulling her sleeves up and feeling her hair, Tess suddenly made one wild jump. With the yell of some deadly female of the species, she landed on Hazel and bore her clown to the deck.

"You said it ... was empty fingers ... the other night ... Take that ... and that ... and that ... you ... thief!"

I made a move to separate them, but Kennedy and I were covered by half a dozen guns like a flash. The men were shouting and yelling. Manny was dancing up and down with glee. All the troglodyte instincts were loosened. It was his woman at the face of her enemy. "Go to it, Tess! That's right! Spoil her mug!"

Tess was indeed a wild woman, oblivious of everything but her struggling rival. Blood was streaming down Hazel's face from the scratches.

Sitting on Hazel's breast as the boat rocked in the long swells, Tess held her head and ground it into the grimy deck.

"Now ... you smart vamp ... don't you wish you had let things alone? Sharp nails ... the way I cut 'em, for this, in the hotel... are better than empty glove fingers ... you ..."

With a whack on each cheek and moans from Hazel, Tess picked her up and flung her, not as she had threatened, overboard, but, as the schooner careened, toward Don, so that she dropped in his lap, uncaught by his trussed-up hands.

Hazel was all in, but not seriously hurt. She was whipped publicly and it was galling.

Tess made a grand curtsy. "Count—ten—men!" She turned. "Is there a doctor in the house?"

Manny came over and kissed her—which seemed an incongruity until I considered Manny and his curb-cruising breed. "You're great, Tess! No fuss—just a good mill!"

Of such is the kingdom of Amazon. On the high seas it once made leaders. The setting changes. But the game is the same.

"Now just wait a minute," was the deep-sea counsel of the Little Owl. "Send these others ashore first. What they don't see, won't worry them. They can't tell so much!"

The colored pirate looked at Deutz, then decided it was better to do so. He even went further.

Deutz was still the humorist. "And get pinched with it?" He looked over at our Viking and the launch riding off stern. "Ships that touch liquor shall never touch mine!"

Deutz whispered to us: "We'd better beat it while it's good. Nothing'll happen to the others—if they give up. I told you—it's an extra-hazardous business!"

As we buffeted our way back toward the Battery, I drew in a long breath of biting salt sea air.

CHAPTER VII. — RAGS TO RICHES

"JAMESON and I will be along in an hour. Tell Anne to dress warmly. We're going down in my ear. Yes. I'll do what you say. But I don't think it's really necessary. I think she has had scare enough. Well, all right. I'll do my best."

Fagged by the nearly all-night trip out to the Bahama fleet, the freezing wind, the excitement and suspense, I was wakened by Kennedy telephoning early in the morning to Thropp. There was nothing but to hustle out, if I did not want to miss the trip to the Highlands where the boat and the body had been taken.

Anne Thropp made even the car attractive in her big squirrel coat. Her eyes were bright, her coloring the healthy rose of perfect health and ordered rest.

"Oh, Mr. Kennedy, I'm so excited.... I wonder if I shall see Ev?" She colored, but added, "I hope so."

"I should think you'd be sore at him for getting you mixed up in all this," I suggested. We were crossing to Staten Island on the ferry.

She thought a moment. "Well—I went in it—for him. But I didn't have to go in. He didn't point a gun at me or hold a knife over me. No, we both have the same bug—excitement. I wanted him to think I was game. I wanted to seem daring. And I didn't think. No, that part of it was more my fault than his.... I'm only a kid, as Dad says, but it makes me tired when I read the papers. Everybody is passing the buck. They must have learned it in the army.... The little boy that steals blames the movies. The girl who goes wrong blames some fellow for betraying her trusting heart. The man who steals blames his extravagant wife. They didn't have to do it. I blame no one. I went into it myself. I take the blame."

Kennedy had been listening to her straightforward words with frank admiration. "You may be a 'kid,' Anne, but you have the right idea, that most of the older people miss to-day. There's too much coddling—and blaming others."

We were on the forward end of the boat and the wind whipped our faces and brought the rose of Anne's face to a wonderful scarlet. I liked the gameness of the girl and her viewpoint.

"This is a very serious business," Craig replied, his eyes set far away out on the water, where we had seen a great deal the last night. "This law you have been disrespecting so much is wide-awake and reaching out for everyone concerned in any way with this murder."

He intended it to be blunt. I saw the girl's color fade; then she stiffened as she eagerly scanned Craig's face.

"I am going to see the Regina first. I may find something there that will help. The person who planted the shotgun might have unintentionally planted something else. They often do." Anne smiled wistfully at the glint of hope. "Mr. Boyle will be down later. But they are not going to interfere with us."

A sigh of relief escaped her. "But, Mr. Kennedy, I didn't kill Lotus and I'm sure Ev didn't. I don't know who did."

"Well, even if they don't try to hold you for the murder, they may for the bootlegging."

"Perhaps—if you come clean—help the authorities clear things up. It always helps."

"I can't see any special brand of loyalty handed out to you, now that you mention it. They got you in bad with the case of hootch hidden in your car. They planted your father's gun in the cabin with a dead woman. They haven't bothered much about coming to your help when you got in trouble and disappeared."

"Yes—I know all that—and it hurts. I wouldn't have been like that with them.... But, if telling the truth and coming clean will help Ev Robb, I'll do all I can!"

It had been impossible for us to follow on shore those on the Suds. There were so many places where they could have been landed if the piracy had gone through, that all Craig could do was to notify Boyle and have him watch the best he could.

Bootleg hucksters at Highlands were not very talkative. Some dories were chugging about, however, seemingly in preparation for trips at night. The boastfulness of the past weeks when the same clan had landed thousands of cases had disappeared.

Still, as Craig went among the old-style fisher folk along the docks, I found it an interesting study of rags to riches. Some of them had been getting rich, as rich as if each had found Captain Kidd's treasure or used a can-opener to crack Davy Jones's locker. Nowadays there was wealth in a greasy fishing smack. These people were a queer nouveaux riches.

I recall that we found one tattered old clam digger from the Shrewsbury who had come over for curiosity. He was frayed and there were holes in his boots—to let the water out, he said with a dry smile, while I looked at the icy tide.

It was from him, after gaining his confidence, that we learned that Robb and the rest must have been put ashore in the cold gray of dawn. They had broken up, each going a separate way. But where? I saw that Kennedy was looking at Anne from the corner of his eye. Might she know where Robb was at least? Would she tell?

As we went down the steps that led into the cabin of the Regina, Anne stopped and with a little cry clutched my arm. "I can't help it, Mr. Jameson—but I'm thinking of poor Lotus all the time. That last fight of hers must have been terrible. When you know a person as I knew Lotus and something dreadful like this murder happens to her with all her experience, there must be something, some Power, that protects me. Oh, God, I wish I could have been there to help her!"

"You can thank your God you weren't," rejoined Kennedy. "Do you recognize that gun?"

She went over gingerly to it where an officer was guarding it, shutting her eyes as she stepped around some stains on the floor. "Yes—that is Dad's. I can't deny the monogram on it. It's the one I told you about.... I wonder who would have taken it?" She wrinkled up her brow in perplexity.

We looked about the boat, in the hold, on the decks, in the cabin, the wet lockers, the ruined kitchenette, at the cases that were being removed, everywhere. But we could find nothing that suggested a clue to the crime. Nothing seemed to have happened, nothing had been left or touched or moved that had the least relation to it.

"It's bad that we couldn't give Captain Staley the third degree out there last night," observed Kennedy. "There isn't much here to clear up a mystery."

My spirits had cooled considerably and I could see that Anne's face wore a harried look. She was very quiet, answering, very docilely, all Kennedy's questions, some very personal ones at that. Without a word she took his admonishment, his criticism, and I thought sometimes when I saw her lips tremble that he was rubbing it in. But he meant it to be a good lesson to her. And something else. Finally, he played his trump.

We climbed back into the car and motored up to the business part of the town. Anne paled again as he locked his brakes before an undertaking establishment.

Anne got out slowly and thoughtfully. With heavy feet she followed us across the sidewalk and into the office. Only once she looked at me and gasped, "Must I?"

I shook my head. I was following Kennedy. I knew he must have a purpose back of it all. Always Craig was kindliness and chivalry to all women. I thought I saw his higher kindness to her.

After a quiet word to the undertaker, he took Anne by the arm and led her into a darkened rear room that was the private morgue.

Agony was written on her face. There by an open window was all that had been poor beautiful Lotus. Anne cried out and I think Kennedy never felt more sorry for anyone than for that little girl that moment. But he had promised her father to do something. And he had his own purpose.

Craig put his arm around Anne. "There," he said in a hushed tone, "is a girl who defied the law, defied the rules of society, defied all the things that have come down to us as good through the world's experience. There she lies—little Anne.... Such defiance, such disrespect isn't very successful, is it? Your father asked me to do this. It is the best sermon he can think of."

Holding his arm, the girl shook with sobs. Craig led her back into the fresh air, to the car.

"I want you to take my car and find him. If he comes clean now it will help you both. Later—is too late. Remember I am the only friend either of you have among all these men." He waved at officers now teeming in the town. "When you find him, take him to the bungalow. That's where I'm going next."

As she swung away, he turned to me. "She wasn't killed with that shotgun. That was a plant. She was shot by a pistol.38."

"This time," he said, "it isn't just rum running. The Admiralty is interested in piracy and crime committed on the high seas. Besides, I have our position protected, because the English consul joins in apprehending the criminals."

Boyle smiled. "I didn't know it myself. They were underground agents, with a commission from Washington. Down there they have a lot of them—to make examples of bootleggers."

I was thinking of Manny Lusk, of Tessie Tantum, and Captain Staley when by some queer quirk of coincidence one of Boyle's cutters docked. Three men came up with Manny Lusk and Tessie, sullen and silent captives in a huckster boat.

"We took this off him," nodded one man to Boyle, extending a revolver in his left hand. Kennedy took it, broke it, examined it. It was a .38.

"That's one of them guns what we took from the guys on the Suds.... That ain't his."

CHAPTER VIII. — BROADCASTING JOHN BARLEYCORN

ANNE had Craig's car. Therefore in Boyle's car with Marty Mason and Agnes Ascher we rode down to the Thropp bungalow, followed by a couple of operatives in another car with Manny and Tessie. It seemed to be Craig's idea to go down the Shrewsbury to see the wireless and the shore end of the rum running plot, which we had had no chance to visit in the rapid-fire events of yesterday.

As we drove up the private roadway leading to the bungalow, I was impressed by the size and probable comfort of it. A huge porch was all around and the main entrance led one into a spacious hall that extended through to a garden in the rear. Big rooms opened off the hall and a narrow hall divided the rooms front and back and opened into a wing built on either side.

My first idea was the incongruity of such a case taking such a house as a background. It was essentially homelike, built for love and quiet and children—-not for lust and bootleggers. People were gathered there that should never have polluted its hospitality.

As we searched the empty bungalow on the beach, I watched Marty and Agnes narrowly. I had not much respect for prohibition agents, anyhow. But the agent provocateur is just a little bit worse. I hate stool pigeons.

I think they felt their position. Red spots on Marty Mason's cheeks showed it as he faced the others. He had declined to ride with Manny and Tessie. Agnes Ascher dropped her gaze, even when she was speaking to Boyle.

I imagined they wished they were assigned to some other case. In court it might have been different. But here they were forced to stand the gaff, accusing former pals.

Boyle, however, was inexorable. There had been so much criticism of his office that he was going to do anything in his power to bring this case out successfully, no matter how distasteful it might be to any mere secret agents.

We were searching about and found that no trace of the cases of hootch had been left, save where trucks had run up the broken stone drive, to load it in the night.

Craig's car—and Anne and Ev Robb—arrived. Robb's look of happiness vanished as he saw Boyle and the others.

Coming up the steps he had had his arm through Anne's and they had been smiling at each other. Now he suddenly turned to the girl with a hurt look.

"What have you let me in for, Anne?" he said, dropping her arm. "I trusted you when you came over to Barney's and I let you coax me to take a ride with you over here. Barney was always a good leuth in college; he said to be careful. Why—why did you do this?"

Half laughing, half crying, Anne put her hand on his arm again. "You got me into it, Ev now I'm getting you out!"

"It wouldn't have been long before they would have found you, anyway, Ev. By coming clean and saving them the trouble you only make your case better. Mr. Kennedy is my friend. He advised me and I am advising you."

"Mr. Kennedy?" Robb recognized the name, and looked sheepishly at Craig and me as he recognized Mr. Kendrick and Mr. Johnson. He said nothing to us but, turning to Anne, he asked her how long we had been helping her.

"Carrying hootch in your car? Why, I told everybody to keep you out of danger. Who got you to carry it?"

"Nobody. It was a plant. But it worked. I was pinched. It looked as if the agents were waiting for me!"

De Luxe Don had a studied, bored, theatrical look when he and Hazel were led into the living hall of the bungalow. He had not been prepared, however, to see Manny and Tessie, who had turned the tables on them the night before.

Hazel's face showed the marks of Tessie's fingers. But she wore a veil that concealed the scratches slightly. Her animation increased and even Don's spirits took a jump when he caught sight of those who had caused them all the humiliation and loss.

As she passed Tessie, Hazel turned a moment just long enough to shoot out sarcastically, "Why don't you beat it? Why don't you make me walk the plank?"

Tessie maintained her silence. Manny's hands clenched, but he said nothing. They had made it up, I figured, out of their low cunning. It was their protection. Manny now and then looked at Kennedy and me sullenly. We had seen the fight and he knew it. He knew we could swear to their boarding the Suds even if we hadn't seen them take any of the stuff off.

Gradually we got the story. It seemed they had all been put ashore just as daylight was breaking. The devils of the Fer-de-Lance had chosen the Shrewsbury, hoping that their victims might get caught. Marty and Agnes, it seemed, had got up to the city by train and had sought the first place to square themselves—the enforcement office. Robb had gone to his roommate's to hide, because he was well known in that part of the country. But Don and Hazel had gone somewhere to get Hazel's face fixed up and then had bummed a ride with a chauffeur in a car going to the city. They had been picked up at the Perth Amboy ferry by Boyle's men posted there. Hazel's effort to protect her good looks had got them caught.

"Who put that case of hootch in Anne's sport car under the back seat?" demanded Robb generally, but particularly of Manny.

Anne had been looking at Tessie. "It doesn't seem right," she murmured to me, "to have that awful girl sitting in mother's favorite chair!"

Kennedy had been tinkering with the wireless outfit, a mighty good one, near the French doors that opened out on one sweep of the porch.

"Only Staley can clear this thing up—quick," put in Kennedy, still adjusting. "You certainly had an excellent land station for your whisky wireless, Robb," he added.

"We've sent the Geronimo out there," considered Boyle. He looked at his watch. "They must have taken him off the Fer-de-Lance by this time.... We may not be able to seize their stuff—yet. But, by golly, we'll jolly well take off a criminal when we have a warrant. I'll take that chance, anyway."

"What wave length on the Geronimo?" asked Kennedy, ignoring the ethics, whether it was legal or extra-legal.

Kennedy raised his hand for silence. Then he adjusted the amplifier. There was a voice.

"But they're a dirty bunch on that mangy boat. We couldn't take him, exactly. But they gave him up. One less to divide with. We're bringing him."

"Put him on," he cried out over the ether waves. "He can clear up something—very important!"

CHAPTER IX. — WHO WILL REFORM THE REFORMERS?

CLEAR and distinct came the voice of the old sea-dog out of the amplifier, talking rapidly, eagerly, as far as he could to clear himself of the murder.

"Them double-crossing devils—Mis' Lotus—she found 'em out! They tells me you has a .38. Yeh—that's what they used, a .38. We took it from him on the Suds last night. Naw, I wouldn't keep it meself on a bet. I give it to Manny Lusk!"

"Them revenooers! That there Marty Mason and the gal, Agnes Ascher. They was goin' for to get that last thousand cases for theirselves. They took me and Manny and his gal, Tessie, in. But I switched when they done that murder on that Lotus."

The voice came back. "How was it done? Easy enough. Marty and that there gal was comin' back empty for more in my boat, the Highlands. I was goin' in with this Mis' Lotus on the Robb boat. They signaled an' got aboard. They had a shotgun. She put up a game fight when they accused her of findin' out who they was. Some gal, that. None o' the rest knowed it. But she's wise. I ain't got nothin' to say. He drawed and fired. Then when they wanted me to come on in, I says 'No thanks.' Right there I switched. I was goin' to jump over, but I seen the tender. I got in that and started to row away. They fired at me, soon as they fixed things on the Regina, but just then that there Revenoo boat shows up. They're frightened. They beat it. I don't know why the revenooers don't see me tossing about, but they don't. I beats it to Hibouette—an' lets Manny and Tessie on shore know that we changed our plans and to tell Deutz the revenooers ain't in it no more if they tries to sell to him!"

Slowly as Cap'n Staley told it with some show of pride and virtuosity at what he would not stand for, I saw it. The first double-crossing had been planned by Marty and Agnes, with Staley, Manny, and Tessie to get the last thousand cases. But Marty and Agnes had been discovered by Lotus. They had killed her. But Staley would not stand for that. He had gone over to Little Owl, taking the thousand cases, leaving the whole mess of them to shift for themselves. Marty and Agnes had done the informing. At least they were going to appear to be on their job. But Marty wanted money. Agnes wanted a man. As for Manny, he had planted the case in Anne's car and called up Boyle's men on his own, to make one less in the gang.

The relief of Anne and Robb was overwhelming, as the two thoroughly frightened young people stood beside Kennedy.

Boyle put one clenched fist on each hip as he stood, legs wide apart, before Marty and Agnes.

THE END