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ARTHUR B. REEVE

CRAIG KENNEDY AND THE COMPASS
NORTH—SOUTH—EAST—WEST

NORTH

RGL e-Book Cover^©

First published in Flynn's, 13 Dec 1924

Reprinted in Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, 6 Sep 1925

Collected in "The Fourteen Points,"
Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1925

This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2022
Version Date: 2022-02-06

Produced by Art Lortie, Matthias Kaether and Roy Glashan

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

Click here for more Craig Kennedy stories

Flynn's, 13 Dec 1924, with "North"

"The Fourteen Points," Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1925

Illustration from "Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine."

In her eyes I fancied I discerned a pitiful
look— was this her fear of being trapped?

"IT'S mighty fine of you fellows, but I don't deserve this welcome." Stanley Kane, an old classmate at the university, had invaded Craig's laboratory, and Kennedy and I were delighted at the old-time reunion. "Really, I don't. I've been rotten, showed mighty little interest in you both since college. But war—and a wife kept me busy, you know."

A rather bitter smile flitted over Kane's face. "Yes. Doris and I have agreed to disagree. You know I married a beauty, a mighty fine girl, I thought. But now I'm living at the club; Doris is out at the old house, with the children. We don't seem to mix. Common enough story, these days, I guess. Things began to go to the dogs a couple of years ago. I suppose I wanted an old-fashioned wife, and Doris was too used to the freedom and privileges of married women during the war—and since." Kane had lighted a cigarette and dropped into an easy chair. "But that's not what I'm here for, Craig. I've been robbed. The Kane jewels have been stolen."

With a droll smile Kane stood up, flicking his cigarette. "Doris said the first time she missed them was last Friday night when she was dressing for the opera. She opened the wall safe and, to her horror"—another fleeting smile swept over his expressive face—"the jewels were gone—all of them, every thing! Some of them were family heirlooms, too, valued above their mere cost in money—but all are gone. Here it is Monday afternoon—and not a clue, yet." He spread out his hands in a sort of mocking manner as much as to Bay, "That's her story—but I don't believe it!"

Stanley Kane was tall, blond, and handsome, the kind of man, too, who knows he is tall, blond, and handsome. I regarded him rather closely. Certainly "war and a wife" had not aged him appreciably, nor brought any lines on his face. He looked, however, a little too absorbed in himself, too self-centered, I fancied, to make any woman really happy.

"Gosh, no! We always fight when we meet So Doris keeps out of sight when I go to see the children. I do that once a week—Wednesdays—to keep my eye on how things are going." He ended with a weak smile.

"Doris is going to get one, I believe. She and the children are going to Nevada, or Oregon, or some place, as soon as she can make up her mind. Kennedy, I don't like it. She is too blamed anxious for this separation, and all that. I don't believe it's all a gentle wounded spirit hurt by neglect and going on a rampage. I think there's a man in the woodpile—if I could only find him." His skepticism caused him to flick the ashes of his cigarette again so viciously that this time they went all over himself.

"Oh, I should say a quarter of a million, at present prices. The pearl necklace was worth over half of that, alone."

"Yes," said Kane bitterly. "I paid the premiums. Insured for a hundred and fifty-five thousand. The Ail-American Insurance Company."

"I see." Kennedy was considering. "You soy she kept them in a wall safe? Why not in a safety deposit vault?"

"She did. But the pearls—tat was the big thing—she was going to wear them to the opera, had them out of the bank, the day before, for some reason." He scowled. "In the wall safe, in her own boudoir, in the old Kane mansion where we lived before I went to the club here in the city."

"Oh yes. When Doris is in real trouble she kindly gives me a telephone call. That is the sort of husband I am to her. I was interested enough, naturally, to go right out there to Hempstead. Doris wasn't in, of course, when I entered my house, but the children and their nurse were home. I went up to the safe in my wife's room and looked it over. The queer thing about it, the part I don't understand at all, is that there is no evidence of tampering with the safe. It hasn't even been touched by a 'can-opener,' or 'soup,' or anything, as far as I can see."

Kennedy said nothing; just waited. Often I have seen him sit quietly and let the other people do the talking. Their rambling explanations of domestic unhappiness, of business troubles, furnish clues to many cases. Craig is a good listener.

One could easily see that Stanley Kane was not happy. When he spoke of his old home and of the children, there was an undertone of dissatisfaction, of unhappiness, in his well-bred inflection. And there was bitterness, too, a peeved bitterness, as of brooding over wrongs that were acts of omission rather than of commission by his beautiful and popular wife.

Kane leaned back in the chair, smoking another cigarette, thoughtfully. "It's this way, Craig. My wife has devilish extravagant habits. It takes a Kane fortune to keep her going—and she's not getting all of it, any more. But she has remained just as recklessly extravagant. So it seems, anyhow. Now, where is the money coming from?" He looked from one to the other of us shrewdly.

"I've done something you fellows may think I'm a cad for doing," he went on at length as Craig said nothing. "But, by Jove! I feel so up in the air that I'm trying to get my marital crisscross puzzle solved in almost any way—for the benefit of the children."

"Hired the nurse of the children to watch my wife. I suppose you'll call it spying and all that. But I want something to make out a counter suit. I think I'm entitled to it."

"No. Either she is careful—or there's mighty little to get. Louise Layton—that's the nurse—tells me my wife never entertains any men at home and never confides in her or even her own maid, Lucille, as to what she does or where she goes when she's out."

"Two. Two wonders. A boy and a girl. Stanley is five, born after the war, you know. We call him Junior. Dorothy—'Dot'—is only three. That's one big reason. Craig, I hate to think about those missing jewels. I wanted Dot to have those old Kane jewels when she grew up." He leaned forward eagerly.

"I'll have to Bee the place, Stan," remarked Craig. "I want to get in without anybody knowing that I am even interested in the jewel robbery. Keep that as quiet as possible. I'm glad the papers haven't found it out yet."

"I can give you a letter to Louise Layton, the nurse. She is working for me, anyhow. I'll tell her you are coming out to help me on my case against Doris. I'd better write it on the club stationery. I'll send it around, tonight."

"By the way," hastened Craig, "we'd better go out there under other names. Call me Carson; and Walter, oh, well, call him Johnson. And no one must suspect we are even from the insurance company, either."

STANLEY KANE soon left. He was too restless to stay in any one place long. It was easily seen, I felt, that he was still in love with his wife and too proud to tell her so. Many a marriage has gone on the rocks for that reason. He would let her go her way. That was big and sounded generous. He wouldn't stop her. She should be happy in her way. Yet he was secretly raging at Doris because she didn't come to him and fight to keep him. I thought of the millions of women who would feel a glow, a thrill, if their men were not quite such icicles. Such a girl would feel flattered if the man with the lofty modern generosity would forget it, come to her, take her arm as if he meant it, and whisper: "I love you! I need you! I won't take 'No' for an answer!"

"Poor old Stan!" exclaimed Craig as the outside door banged. "I wish I could help him find his jewels—and his happiness."

"Yes. They might have found out something by this time that they are not telling Kane."

AT the office of the All-American Insurance Company, late in the afternoon, we found the usual personnel. Two detectives assigned to the case had fortunately come into the office to make their reports. Schneider and Watson were both the usual type of exalted flatty, sure of themselves as sleuths.

"But how do you think it was done?" flattered Kennedy, after a few moments of conversation.

"An inside job!" exclaimed Watson, positively. "I s'pose you know the scandal in the Kane family? She has some expensive habits." The detective paused, hinting that Mrs. Kane might have done it herself for money sorely needed. "This here mah-jong ain't no improvement on bridge, y' know, either. She used to have some big debts, they tell us, in her bridge. Well, the East Wind can sweep away money just as fast!" He laughed immoderately at his own imagination.

"Yes. In that play, the society melodrama, 'The Ear in the Wall'? Gee! what a scene in the third act where he takes the dictograph that's been put in to catch the wife and opens the safe with it, listening to the fall of the tumblers by the microphone, until he gets it right!" He lowered his voice. "Well, Jack Rushmore is an intimate friend of Mrs. Kane." He drew back. "Did you know that?"

"Well, he is. A high flyer, too. Birds of a feather. You can exercise your own imagination!"

Kennedy thanked them very courteously, but even to me made no comment. Outside of a visit on the way uptown to Third Deputy O'Connor, our old friend at headquarters in charge of the detective force, and a confidential chat before we went to dinner and to a show, I could not see that Craig had the ease on his mind at all.

IT was not until the next morning that Kennedy seemed disposed to take it up. Along in the forenoon it was that we were approaching the fine old Kane mansion, out in Hempstead.

"I'd like to see Miss Layton—Louise Layton—if you please," Craig inquired at the door that seemed to be in the servant's quarters.

A pretty, saucy little face peeped over the broad shoulder of a substantial-looking cook who had come to the door. "I'm Louise Layton," she said, with the easy informality of the service end.

Kennedy bowed. "I have a letter to you, Miss Lay-ton, from a friend." Careful not to let the cook see the club monogram or the handwriting, he passed to Louise the letter Stanley Kane had sent around to us the night before.

Louise glanced at it "My word! Just when I'm busiest! It's time for the children to get dressed for that birthday luncheon party at the Walcotts'. Oh, well, I don't break rules—often. Come in."

The cook laughed good-naturedly. It was evidently an event to see visitors at the house, even at the service end.

"Come with me." Louise led us into a little room used by the servants for receiving their friends. "I guess you know I'm the nurse for the Kane children."

Now that she was alone, she read the note more carefully. A calculating expression on her piquant face betrayed the fact, I thought, that, in behalf of her real employer, she was not averse to spreading the net for Doris Kane's entanglement and embarrassment.

"It's this way, Louise," explained Craig in an undertone. "Mr. Kane wants some quick action and he has asked me to help you get the goods on his wife. Are you willing to help me?" Kennedy could be persuasive.

Louise felt the charm of his personality. "Certainly I'll help—if Mr. Kane wants me to help. But I have two children to dress for a party. They are up in their nursery waiting for me this moment. Mrs. Kane isn't coming home until just before lunch time to get them. You may come up to the nursery with me—for a few moments—while I get the children ready."

"I'd like that," agreed Craig. "It's a long time since I have played with kids."

"Well, these kids are brought up by rule and regulation. Strangers are tabooed. Germs and kidnappers come with strangers. There's only one thing their parents agree on. That is that the children must have the best of everything." Louise shrugged her slim little shoulders. "And that includes the best of care."

Even before we reached the nursery we could hear the merry sound of children playing, gay shrieks of delight intermingled with full round tones of laughter, a mirth too deep for words.

"They ought to be. Everything in the world they want. Their father would try to get the moon for them if they asked it." Louise said it proudly. There is a feeling among the help of a family of wealth, a detached feeling of pride in the welfare and good fortune of their employers, that sets those who work for such families a little higher in the world of domestic employment. Louise was proud of the Kanes. Their marital unhappiness was just a little spice in an otherwise monotonous routine of cares and responsibilities.

"I don't believe all that good nature is inherited," remarked Kennedy. "I imagine you spread some of that about you." He looked at the girl with evident approval, almost admiration.

Louise was not exactly beautiful. But her face was irresistible. Her features were too irregular to win a beauty contest. Yet I doubt whether any successful contestant would have got a second glance, afterward, if this pretty little nurse stepped into the room. She had that elusive quality of an attractive personality that is able to touch lightly each feature with a glow and radiance of feeling, life, romance, the stirring of the emotions that causes people to do things in this otherwise prosaic world.

Just a moment ahead of us Louise skipped into the room, almost like one of them to romp with the children.

"This is going to be your first party, Junior. I'm going to get you ready in a few minutes. But I want you to meet some friends of mine first. Come, Dot. I have brought you some visitors."

Taking the little ones, each by a hand, she led them up to us. A grave bow and a curtsy were our greeting.

Junior was serious, dark-eyed and brown-haired. Tight ringlets that held something of the glint of the sun in their highlights curled about his tiny ears and sun-browned neck. His was a countenance that showed ability to concentrate, even at that age. Dot was a merry golden-haired little girl hardly out of the chubbiness of babyhood. Both were dressed in little white play suits. It was hard to tell which of them was the more charming.

"What a tragedy!" I whispered, aside, to Craig.' "Two youngsters like that—and not to be able to live with them!"

The nursery was a large room with four big windows. Three of these made up one side of the room, a group under which was a window scat and toy boxes. About the room were toys enough for a department store or a kindergarten. The woodwork was a deep ivory and the walls showed a departure from the usual banal nursery decoration one sees in every department-store barber shop for children or the "nursery beautiful." The ceiling was of blue, the color of robins' eggs. Stars, golden stars, gleamed down on the children as they played. Also there was a glorious rainbow painted on one side wall arching over the single window. In front of this window rows of prisms hanging in the sunlight reflected the prismatic colors on the floor, on the wall, moving with the windblown glasses. By the bookcase was a painting of their mother, beautifully done. In her hand was a book, opened, and with the other she was beckoning the children to come and share the delights of the book world, represented in the little, low, well-filled book shelves below.

The walls were covered with plaster board and in various panels were shown simply the wonders of nature. All were beautiful, inspiring. A large square table, with very short legs, stood on one side of the room, up against the wall. On this was a shallow zinc tray with a rim about three inches around it, backing up the wood. Here the children could play in the sand, making mountains and hills, valleys and caves, as their imaginations stirred them. About the floor, under the table, were scattered the sand toys of Dot, just as she had left them.

On the other side of the room was Junior's manual-training bench, well equipped. Everything to amuse and stimulate the mind of a healthy, growing child seemed in that room. Doris Kane might have failed as a wife. But certainly there was judgment and discrimination in evidence here. She was a model society mother.

Mrs. Kane was late, but the children did not in the least mind waiting, in such a room.

"Mister, will you play smoking island with me?" Two big brown eyes were pleading with Craig. "I love to play with boys!"

Kennedy laughed outright. "Surely, my boy. Tell me how you play it." He leaned over and listened attentively.

"So! Right away he ropes you into that game!" Louise exclaimed, with an amused laugh. "Well, you see, he has had Swiss Family Robinson read to him so much that he imagines he is Fritz seeking the girl on the volcanic island. Come, Dot. I'll get you ready first, while brother entertains Mr. Carson and his friend."

Dot left the room under protest. She wanted to join in the search, too. "Let me see smoke, too—please! Don't knock it down!" she called back over her shoulder as Louise pulled her gently out of the room, upstairs in this wing of the house.

"My daddy uses a cigarette. I'll show you." He ran to the sand table by the side of the wall. Pulling up his little sleeves, he turned. "Now I'm going to make a big mountain."

The sand was piled quickly in a heap. "Light a cigarette, mister. There! Push it 'way down in the tap—not too far. Here! It keeps on smoking. See! I have a volcano—a smoking mountain!"

Delighted, he jumped about as Craig carried out his directions. "Now this is all water." He swept clean the bottom of the big sand-table. "Here comes Fritz! I'm Fritz—finding the girl lost on this island. Oh, don't you just love that book? Louise reads it to me every day."

So engrossed had I become in the game with Junior that it gave Craig a chance to observe the nursery, the general layout of that end of the house, the inclosed sun room like a sleeping porch, the grounds from the windows, and the hall outside the nursery, before Louise returned with Dot all ready to go to the birthday party with her mother.

While she was getting Junior ready, our chief trouble was to keep Dot up off the floor and from getting dirty. Dot soon tired of the smoking mountain in the clean sand. Hers was not an adventurous disposition, at least not for that kind of vicarious adventure. She inclined to the maternal instinct. Dolls were the crowning attraction to her. Soon we were surrounded by her family, all sorts and conditions of dolls.

As for Louise, it was a diversion, it seemed, a treat to her sense of humor, to have two strange men sent by the husband of her mistress to watch the latter—and now busily engaged playing dolls with the daughter of the house. It was interesting, too. Here were two men with whom she might find some entertainment. She was making the most of it while it lasted.

Junior's party preparations were soon over. Back to us he hurried, eager to be with men. I was sorry for that boy, sorry for that father. Each was missing the other.

Tired, even of seeking the lost lady on the island, Junior led Craig and me on a tour of inspection in which Dot joined. There were toys that talked, toys that walked, toys that flew. Kennedy entered into it with his whole soul.

Louise looked at us with amazement. "You should come to see me often. Say, I could leave you for a couple of hours to amuse these kids. They wouldn't even miss me. Where did you take your course in child training?" she laughed.

"Oh, look! Look what my father just bought me!" Out of a drawer Junior pulled a box still tied up. "Do you want to see it? What's in it? Guess!"

"No!" in disgust. "My father wouldn't buy me a Teddy bear—or a toy dog or horse. Not now. I'm too big for that. Wait!"

Quickly Junior worked. String and paper flew about, in his keen excitement. He drew the things forth from the package proudly as he sat on the edge of the sand table—a Boy Scout uniform, many sizes too big for him yet. But that was of small importance to Junior.

"No," he replied sadly. "I have to wait until I'm twelve, father says. But I'll be ready to join."

In the sand box the rest of the equipment had dropped—knife, hatchet, aluminum cooking utensils, and a compass—as he held up the hat and uniform. Craig looked at them all closely with a satisfying interest for the boy. As it slipped off his lap the glass cover over the compass came off and the needle dropped off in the sand. Kennedy was a long time cleaning it and putting the needle again on its pivot, adjusting it.

"Louise! Louise!" Up the stairs came a maid's voice. "I want you to sign for something from a New York store. Come down."

The nurse hesitated a moment, then decided we were worthy to be left alone with the precious children.

Like a flash Craig had tagged him and was in the hall. "Where is your mother's room, Junior?"

He allowed himself to be cornered; then took refuge in Doris Kane's room. Dot and I followed. It was the boudoir. Kennedy glanced over at the wall safe, as indicated by Stanley Kane when he visited the laboratory, then at me. I had to use diplomacy and help him.

Watching every movement he made, in case he needed immediate assistance, I managed somehow to divert the attention of the children from Kennedy to me. I made all the funny faces for which I was famous as a boy. I had the children red in the face from laughter.

Quickly Craig worked. With the combination which Stanley Kane had confided to him he opened the wall safe. No part of it he seemed to miss. Every mark, every inch of surface, inside and out, he examined, now and then tapping it. I was looking, too, and saw nothing wrong about the safe. It was more than strange. Some one must have taken the jewels who knew the combination—and most ladies with jewels do not recklessly publish about the combination of the safe. I wondered.

Looking about me, I realized the amount of money it must take to live like this. Certainly Doris Kane had an incentive to take the jewels. In that respect I felt the insurance detectives might be right. I half expected to see a framed photograph of Jack Rushmore. But there was none—nor of Stanley Kane.

Craig was silent, thinking. It was only for a few seconds. Once again he was the jolly playmate romping in the hall and back to the nursery. There we were making more noise than was necessary and apparently did not hear Louise when she came back from downstairs. Her face now wore a slightly harassed expression.

"Mrs. Kane has come home—unexpectedly early!" she whispered. "She'll be sure to find you. Then I'll be in bad—with both of them. I'm going to call you my brother, Walter," she added, with a nervous laugh.

I nodded quietly. Already I could hear the click of high heels coming down the hall and stopping quietly for several moments before the open door of the nursery.

"Madame, my brother Walter. He is going to sail soon with his friend—and he wanted to see me before he went away for so long a time. He has a good job. The family are taking him abroad with them, as a courier. This is his friend, Mr. Carson, a commissioner."

Craig and I bowed. It was really homage to beauty. Doris Kane was one of the most beautiful women I have ever met. She was the most beautiful little girl of my childhood memories, the most bewitching comic-opera star of my college dreams, the most marvelous Madonna I saw in my rambles through the cathedrals and art galleries of Italy—all in one dainty woman.

She had eyes that, while she stood quietly before us, showed childish curiosity, a teasing luster of the dilated pupils, a snap and fire possibly over our intrusion, and yet with the gentleness of the mother as she looked at her children, as well as at the assumed sisterly affection Louise was bestowing most generously on me.

It was Craig who smoothed things over deftly. "Mrs. Kane, we shouldn't have bothered Louise. But Walter sails Thursday, and he cares a great deal for his sister. He hasn't seen her much for years. We heard the children and begged to see them. They are irresistible. We forgot, and were children, too. They are wonderful. I trust that we may be pardoned?"

It was Craig's way with the ladies. I who try so hard to attract, to please them, see all my efforts wasted, when a few words from Craig in his own inimitable manner make them forget my very existence.

"I'm sorry, Louise. I misunderstood. It will be all right for you to see your brother. You are entirely welcome. I shall be ready in about quarter of an hour, Louise."

Doris Kane's hair was like that of her son, dark and curly. Dressed in a quaint pink organdie with a large but soft-brimmed hat trimmed simply with a wreath of roses, she looked like the spirit of youth. No wonder the children ran to her with outstretched arms! I would have liked to do that, myself.

Some people one remembers with difficulty. Others it is easy to recall. Doris Kane was one you could never forget, one of those souls that possess that essence of life which they seem to radiate about them. I thought, What a woman!

INTERMITTENTLY that evening and the next morning Kennedy seemed at work in his laboratory on some analysis, both chemical and with a super-microscope. It was not until the middle of the following afternoon that he received a telephone call from O'Connor and turned to me after a hasty conversation, his end of which I could not make out.

"I'm going out to the Kane mansion, Walter," he decided. "I'd like to have you come along. You know to-day Stanley Kane visits his children. I'm going to try to arrange things to meet Doris Kane."

I had been thinking of the differences between Stanley and Doris. "You've dealt yourself a job that needs tact and diplomacy, I'm thinking," I ventured. "You may be successful in detecting crime. Do you think you're going to be capable of making other folks detect a love to which they willfully shut their eyes, which they refuse to see?" I was skeptical. As a bachelor I made it a point to keep out of the difficulties of my married friends. I believed in playing safe.

Craig begged the question. "I hear Doris Kane is going to a mah-jong party this afternoon. That will leave me free to do a little more looking about in her rooms before she gets back."

I regarded Craig silently. Had he made any progress at all in this case? To me he seemed more interested in the reunion of the Kanes than in the robbery. Possibly he thought that if Doris and Stanley were reunited the jewels might turn up of themselves. The motive to sell them would be lacking. All of the Kane money would establish the managing of the Kane mansion on a sound basis. It was too much for me.

Stanley Kane himself must have been expecting us, for it was he who let us in the house. He was even more excited than when he had visited us first.

"Well, Craig, what did you find?" he asked, anxiously. "Louise has told me you were here yesterday."

"Two mighty fine children, Stan, and your beautiful wife—as well as a very devoted nurse and a good-natured cook."

"I saw what you saw. Apparently, just as you said, the safe had not been tampered with. I opened it without any trouble, using the combination you gave me. You didn't see any sign of violence about it, did you?"

He was about to continue the quizzing. It was nearly five o'clock. Up the walk came Louise and the children.

When Dot and Junior caught sight of us, nothing could restrain them. Dot catapulted herself at me with a violence equaled only by Junior's impetuous reception of Craig. Louise nodded, colored a little, and proceeded indoors.

Both the children refused to let us go. "Come up—come up and have supper with us!" Junior pleaded with Craig as we went in.

It was hard to resist Louise was a little shy in the presence of Stanley Kane and held a neutral attitude on the idea of the invitation. She neither urged nor objected.

Kennedy settled it. "All right, Junior, I'll come up. I hope you have a good supper. I'm as hungry as two bears!"

With screams of delight the children ran ahead, while Louise stayed below to order supper for two nursery guests.

Stanley Kane followed us up and stood in the door, watching. Craig always had been supple, athletic, kept in training. Cartwheels, handsprings, and standing on one's head may not seem good form in a sack suit, but the thrills they furnished Dot and Junior more than made up for the lack of gym clothes. Louise was almost run over by Craig as she entered the nursery door. He was giving the children a new kind of ride, for them. On his hands and feet, with head up, toward the ceiling, and back to the floor, with both Dot and Junior on his chest, he was walking about the room. It was no easy task, at best. Handicapped by the weight of the children it was a feat. Even Louise had to applaud.

I was amazed at Kane's face. It was roost serious, as if he felt that Kennedy should have been working openly on the ease, instead of performing gym stunts for the children. Possibly he might have been envying Craig's versatility, though.

Louise soon had the children dressed in their night clothes. It was an attractive sight to see the kiddies frisking about in their little white sleeping garments.

Then Louise made them sit down quietly a few minutes before eating. But it was hard to suppress them. They were ready for a lark.

Meanwhile, the supper was brought up. When Stanley Kane saw that preparations had actually been made for us to eat with the children, his disgust was intense.

Passing me, he confided, quietly: "What's the matter with Kennedy? He may be a detective that loves kids. But as a detective that solves cases, he is getting nowhere. He hasn't a thing yet on—anybody." I felt sure he was going to say "Doris," but had checked himself and changed it in time. "Tell him if he wants to talk over the case with me when he is finished playing with the children, I'll be out there on the porch. I'm going to have a smoke." With this last fling of irony he disappeared, and I could hear him walking heavily on the sleeping porch adjoining.

"Mister, you sit next to me." Craig laughed and allowed himself to be appropriated by Dot.

Junior next drew up a table before them. Silently we watched this methodical little old-fashioned boy. He pulled another chair over to the table and called: "Louise! Louise!"

It was a simple meal—soup, graham bread, milk, and fruit. But the hospitality of the children was pretty. It was so evident that we were welcome.

"You had better join us," I coaxed Louise. "Sit down in my place and let me wait on you."

"No; I can wait I don't feel hungry to-night, anyhow. No, Junior, you finish. Louise has no appetite." She looked at me nervously and whispered. "I hope Mrs. Kane is late, doesn't find you here to-night, too. She will be furious with me for allowing such a thing while her husband is here. Mr. Kane never stays as late as this, either—and when they meet there are fireworks!" A pretty shrug of her shoulders indicated her apprehension of the impending pyrotechnic display of tempers.

"Don't worry, Louise," assured Kennedy. "I'll smooth things over with Mrs. Kane, as I did yesterday."

But Louise refused to see it that way. She showed plainly that she wanted us out before her mistress returned.

Craig refused to take the hint. Instead, he turned toward Junior and Dot. "Who can get to bed first? I'll give the one who gets under the sheets first a big dollar!" He was balancing a shining cart-wheel silver dollar.

The children jumped about with excitement. "Just a moment, Junior. Dot's the smaller. I think a big boy like you ought to give her a handicap. Here; you start from the table; let Dot start from the door."

Craig gave the signal as soon as Louise had reached the sleeping rooms. There was a wild scamper up the stairs. A moment and we heard Dot's treble calling down in triumph: "I'm in bed! I'm in bed!"

It was followed by Junior's call. "I let her win! She's a girl. I had to let her win!"

We were alone then in the nursery with Louise. She was fidgeting, but sat down on a little chair, waiting for us to go. I felt that there was little chance now for Craig to enter Doris Kane's boudoir again.

Suddenly the face of Louise startled. There was a slight slam of the outer door below, then the sound of light steps running up the stairs.

"She's here already! Now see what I get!" Louise looked reproachfully at us in a manner demanding that, as we had placed her in such a false position, it was up to us to get her out of it.

Doris Kane was standing in the doorway, a picture of offended dignity. With a haughty glance she swept the room, passing us with do sign of recognition. I dropped my eyes before her indignation. Louise was sullen. Craig was silent.

Doris Kane was about to reprimand Louise for our second intrusion into her children's nursery, when she stopped suddenly. The slight quiver of her sensitive nostrils showed plainly that she had caught the odor of her husband's cigar wafted in from the porch. For a second or so she stood with a frightened indecision as she saw Stanley Kane's tall form pacing up and down the porch. Then a suppressed gasp following a flash of anger startled us. She clutched the breast of her gown almost frantically. Her face was colorless. In her eyes I fancied I discerned a pitiful look, almost like one asking for help. Her emotion roused my sympathies.

Was this her fear of being trapped? Had she discovered, intuitively, that we were detectives, and not the relatives and friends of Louise, the nurse?

Without a word she turned from the doorway. Up the stairs to the bedroom of the children she hurried.

The answer must have been satisfactory. It seemed only a few seconds when we heard her flit desperately back to her own boudoir. She slammed the door shut, but it did not catch; it was not tight enough to prevent the sound of something like sobs from being heard in the nursery.

There was an awkward, constrained silence among us all, as if we were waiting to see how Stanley Kane would expose his pretty young wife. Kane had stopped pacing the porch. But he did not come in.

KENNEDY seemed to be the only one who maintained his poise or his ability to act. It was like a bit of a dramatic pantomime, that entrance and exit of Doris Kane. And, like most classical pantomimes, it wasn't clear. What had been Doris Kane's feelings, what conflicting emotions had prompted her anger and her apparent fears? We needed an explaining pamphlet of the play.

I felt like a fool, personally. Here was Craig, with no evidence that I knew about, holding the center of the stage. I hoped that he had at least in his keen mind the ability to save this home from going the way so many others have gone in these days of easy divorce.

Nonchalantly Kennedy walked over toward the sand table. He raised the lid of a box. Without turning back toward us he remarked, "It seems that Junior's father has been initiated into the mysteries of the Boy Scout's uniform and equipment, too."

Smiling to himself, he lifted slowly out of the box all the boy's treasures, so recently acquired—knife, hatchet, cooking utensils, compass, everything.

Thoughtfully he picked up the compass and examined it, played with it, much as a small boy might play with a compass, keeping up a constant fire of remarks on the children, their toys, as if to divert us from our own disturbing thoughts.

Several times, carelessly, the compass dropped from his hands into the sand table. The situation was so tense that I actually started each time it fell.

It seemed as if the five of us in that house feared to leave the positions we were in, feared we would start the thing, whatever it was, that seemed as if it must happen any minute.

Absent-mindedly Craig picked up the compass. I was amazed to see him take off the glass cover, lift the needle carefully off the pivot. What was he going to do next? He looked at the little needle carefully and at length. What was there in that thing that demanded so much attention? Louise was sitting quietly near me. The sobbing from the next room was stilled. The aroma of cigar smoke was still wafted in from the porch outside, but the pacing had ceased.

Kennedy leaned over calmly, with a smile, hands in his pockets, seeking where it had fallen. He took one hand from his pocket, poked around the sand with his finger, pushing the little needle about.

Suddenly he tired of that diversion and just stared at the wall before him—vacantly, I thought. The table happened to be placed against the wall, on the boudoir side.

His coolness was exasperating. Even Louise began to feel tired of the childish actions. Stanley Kane on the porch was becoming more restless. He might have been wondering how he was to make his get-away without those customary verbal pyrotechnics. He had taken to coughing, a dry, significant cough. He wanted to go—but was afraid of starting a fight, hysteria, trouble of some kind. No man lightly starts something he knows he is unprepared to finish.

Again Kennedy leaned over the sand-box. I moved across impatiently, by his side, touched his arm.

Craig merely looked incomprehensively at me. "This is interesting, Walter. I haven't played with a compass like this for ages. Look in the sand box."

Bored, I leaned over impatiently. I could see nothing thrilling or particularly entertaining in that table of sand and a needle. I was fed up on nurseries.

Everything was so quiet that even the softly-modulated tones of Craig's voice were carried out of the room. I knew, because everything was so quiet on the porch that the occupant of the porch must be listening to every syllable that was said. Of one thing I felt sure. He wasn't hearing much. Nor was the occupant of that boudoir, listening through the slightly open door.

I looked again. It was true. Three or four particles of black sand had adhered to the needle. Kennedy was studying the particles carefully.

"It's only the usual black sand one sees in the white beach sand," I remarked. "Nothing very wonderful in that. I used to go down to the shore with my horseshoe magnet, when I was a kid, and pick up the black sand grains in the white."

Craig regarded me, absorbed in the needle and the sand, apparently oblivious to the drama that was going on in the old Kane house.

"Yes, it is black sand. Black sand has some iron in it. That's what makes the magnet pick it up. Yes. But not the usual black sand. I noticed it yesterday when I was here, too, when the top of the compass fell off and the needle dropped in the sand. It gave me an idea. I picked off several grains, under my finger nail, analyzed a few of the particles up in the laboratory, this morning. These," he added, with provoking calmness, "are little vanadium steel filings. And Mrs. Kane's safe is made of vanadium steel!"

If it had been quiet before, the silence now was such that one could feel it thunder.

My exclamation sounded like the bursting of a shell, to my own strained feelings. I fancied, too, I heard some one in the next room, the boudoir. Doris Kane must be near the door. Was she listening in palpitating fear? Even Louise seemed interested at last. She had turned and was watching Kennedy as closely as I had been. Out on the porch I could almost feel the con-straint.

Kennedy was through with the sand box. He sauntered over to the manual-training work-bench, his interest now seemingly galvanized on the tools. Some he picked up and discarded quickly. Others he left in a little pile by themselves.

"These tools don't belong to the other set," he motioned, as he pointed with a quizzical smile to some he had placed by themselves. "You see, these are really for children. But these—are rather mature—and not so new. Quite a heavy hammer to have for a boy. And this chisel has had recent strenuous use—possibly not by a child."

Fascinated, I watched Kennedy. I might have known him better. Always before, when his actions had seemed most vapid, most stupid, he had suddenly burst forth with a brilliant light that dispelled the darkness.

"Even Junior noticed the presence of these alien tools, as I may call them, although he said nothing about them to me, when he was showing me about the nursery."

I listened to the sounds in the next room. Some one there was evidently straining to listen better through the crack of the door.

"When he came to the work-bench he quietly separated the tools, as I am doing now. His he put away. These he left to be put away by some one else later, as he thought, evidently. Even a child will lead us to a clue." Kennedy smiled gently toward Louise and me, the only ones in the room he could see or talk to, directly.

My patience was being strained to the breaking point. I wanted to know who had taken the jewels. Would he never get to it?

Quietly he picked up the hammer and the chisel from the little pile of tools he had laid to one side. He walked slowly across the room. Suddenly he hit the plaster board a sharp blow. It sounded ominous—a fateful blow for some one involved in the crime. I expected Doris Kane to shriek. Instead there was a significant silence on the other Bide, in the boudoir.

"This plaster board is easy for same one with determination, a fair amount of strength, persistence, and a sufficient motive to take down—and put up again—as has been done here....

"You see, Walter, this has been tampered with. The lath has been removed—and then replaced. I'll show you."

Stepping lightly up on the sand table, Craig set to work. In a short time he had removed the section of plaster board that was on the other side, back of Doris Kane's wall safe. Plainly now, as he had reasoned, could be seen the work of the thief.

"The back of the safe has been drilled with an electric drill," he pointed out. "Some one must have reasoned, 'Who ever will look closely at the back of a wall safe?' From this side the jewels have been removed. Then the back has been replaced, cemented on, merely, held there from the outside, the whole back."

He wiped his face slowly with his handkerchief, then turned to us. "Now, I know I'm right. It was an inside job!"

With cool deliberation Kennedy stooped and picked up the little needle from the sand in the sand box at his feet. He replaced it on its pivot, still with the grains of steel filings on it. It swung again, slowly, but without difficulty.

He stepped off the table. In a second Kennedy was the man of action, the quick thinker.

"Jack Rushmore's valet,—the gentleman's gentleman, —has a record as a cracksman." He bowed. "Your husband, Louise—alias Layton. You have a little record, too, at headquarters. My friend, Deputy O'Connor, with the description of the jewels from the insurance company, has located, identified the pearls, unstrung, and the other stones, unset, in the possession of old Mandelbaum, the fence. Mandelbaum says they were sold to him by a man and a woman, Sunday afternoon, Sunday was your day out. The descriptions tally, too."

He was not looking at Louise. Rather he seemed absorbed in the needle of the compass, watching it until it came to rest.

"This needle points north—and north of this city, up the river, is Sing Sing, too!"

For the first time he looked her squarely in the eye, the bobbed-haired safe-cracker.

"Please don't tell anyone! Don't let my mistress know!" Some think of curious non-sequiturs in a crisis.

"Craig," I whispered, fearfully, "she'll get away!" He shook his head. "No other exit in this part of the house."

"She may commit suicide—jump," I persisted. He shrugged, as if he would leave that open if she preferred it.

"O'Connor assures me," forestalled Craig, "that the police will get the stuff back, all of it, from the fence, Mandelbaum." He paused. "But even that won't settle things... will it?"

Kennedy put his band on Kane's shoulder. "Stan—for me—please go in—tell Doris—tell her how you really feel—not your pose, Stan—how you really feel."

The door of the boudoir moved, then stopped. A hand had pushed it out. But the hand did not close the door again.

THE END

ARTHUR B. REEVE

CRAIG KENNEDY AND THE COMPASS NORTH—SOUTH—EAST—WEST

NORTH

THE END

CRAIG KENNEDY AND THE COMPASS
NORTH—SOUTH—EAST—WEST