Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 36, No. 4, October 20, 1928

The Burned Match by H. B. Harrop

A Stranger on a Bus and a Battle in a Basement — and the Homecoming Millionaire Was Caught in a Net of Mystery.

A middle-aged man walked cautiously along the top of the careening Fifth Avenue bus, past several empty benches, and sat down in the seat next to Orrin Quire.

“Hello, son,” the middle-aged man said.

Orrin looked up, a little startled at being addressed by a stranger. The man, preoccupied, was staring straight ahead.

“Hello,” Orrin replied. The man paid no attention.

“Queer,” Orrin thought to himself. “Son,” he had found out, was a casual term here in America which any middle-aged man might apply to any other man younger, but why the stranger should accost him at all — Orrin puzzled awhile and finally put it down to the friendliness of these Americans.

Orrin forgot the man in his interest in the rushing traffic below and the mountainous buildings all around him.

This was his native country, but he felt like a foreigner. He had been taken to England when a baby — went to school over there, traveled awhile on the Continent, and now had returned to America, curious to see this land he belonged to.

He was excited — and there was a good reason for it. He was free at last.

He had landed in America only a few hours ago — with Aunt Cassie — always he had been with Aunt Cassie, ever since she had taken him to England under her wing when he was three years old. Now it was good to get away.

Poor old Aunt Cassie got appendicitis coming over on the boat and they had to carry her off at the pier and rush her to a hospital. Orrin had walked down the gangplank beside her stretcher.

“Orrie,” she had said to him. “You’re of age now — got your grandfather’s fortune — no one to depend on anymore if anything happens to me — you’re just an innocent boy, Orrie, but now you’ve got to be a man. But... but, remember, you’ll always be Aunt Cassie’s boy.”

Orrin, on top of the bus, smiled to himself. Good old Aunt Cassie. Of course she’ll pull through. Aunt Cassie pulled through everything. He would have gone to the hospital with her, but it would have done no good, and Aunt Mary had gone anyhow.

Orrin, immediately after seeing his aunts off to the operation, had taxied to his hotel, left his bags, and boarded a Fifth Avenue bus. He was keen to see New York, and thought, in the few hours before supper time, a bus ride would be a good way to see a considerable part of it quickly.

Aunt Cassie’s boy felt like an explorer. New York was a queer place, he decided. Merely getting around was an adventure. He was primed for excitement.

Coming over, Mrs. Frederick Topps-Jones had tried to tell him what it was like, but even that woman’s description had failed to give him any idea of the turmoil that he was now actually in.

“I am going to be late,” the man next to him said suddenly.

Orrin turned again. The stranger still had the preoccupied expression which certainly invited no conversation. A little resentfully Orrin decided not to make any comment.

He watched the man out of the corner of his eye. He saw him reach suddenly for an inside pocket, draw out a cigar and without clipping the end, stick it between his lips. He tried to light it. Apparently it wouldn’t draw, and with a gesture of disgust he hurled the cigar over the bus rail.

Orrin was amused. He wondered what kind of business this queer fellow was in. He noted that he was quietly dressed, wore a single gold ring on the left hand, and had the air of a professional man and the appearance of being a person of some consequence.

The bus slowed for the stop at the corner of the park. The middle-aged man said: “Here!” pressed something into Orrin’s hand, and left hurriedly. Orrin’s fingers closed instinctively.

When he opened his hand he discovered he held a burned match!

The bus moved on and Orrin laughed. “Odd,” he murmured, and stuck the match end in his vest pocket.

They were far uptown when Orrin decided he had done enough sight-seeing.

He dropped down the spiral stairs and said to the conductor:

“I’ll just step off here, if you don’t mind.”

“Help yourself, brother,” assented the conductor, reaching for the bell.

“I wonder if you could direct me back to the Hotel Belmont?”

“Sure!” The man grinned; his passenger was a foreigner — by token of manner and speech and obvious ignorance, but the conductor liked his face just the same. “ ’Cross town either way, just a few blocks, and you’ll find a subway station.”

The street was lined with trees, which threw dark shadows, but it was a good neighborhood and the houses were the solid, comfortable homes of well-to-do people.

Under a lamp at some distance a massive policeman stood idly. Beyond was a large public building, a school perhaps.

Orrin suddenly paused. His hand strayed to his pocket and he fingered the burned match. His eye was attracted by a gloomy pile amidst the trees directly opposite. Memory seemed to tug at him; the place reminded him of something out of his past, he could not tell when or where.

As he shook his head in frustration and started off, a sharp whistle sounded behind him and at the same instant two figures, one very tall and lean, the other short and dumpy, almost grotesquely fat, came running toward him from the shadows.

Their manner was so aggressive Orrin, surprised, braced himself for an attack.

One circled him, the other charged from the front. He feinted and in a second hands seized him from behind, pinioning his arms. Something voluminous and musty-smelling was slipped over his head and lashed around his elbows.

Orrin ducked and lunged, but hands were all over him; he felt himself being hustled off the sidewalk and across the smooth asphalt of the street; he stumbled up the opposite curb, shoved, pulled, half lifted by the grasping hands, and on to a grassy bank.

He was rather more thrilled than frightened, more offended at the indignity than overborne by a sense of helplessness. He laughed while he struggled and choked in the folds of the musty-bagging.

A lusty yell for help would bring the big policeman — but this was adventure.

An utter stranger had made him a present of a burned match; now he was being kidnaped; to-morrow, it might very well be, the newspapers would announce that he was held for ransom. These Americans made it interesting for you.

He was led stumbling across unkempt, weedy grass, and through shrubbery. He heard his captors talking excitedly together in whispers. They seemed to have been joined by more of the gang, and he heard one explain:

“We’ve got Van Dyl; we’re taking him to the haunted house.”

Another whispered excitedly: “The Kidder has made up a new Third Degree!”

Orrin had an inkling: he was the victim of mistaken identity.

His shoes scraped on a gravel drive and the scraping of many feet echoed in a cavernous place. There was a brief halt, with more excited whispering, and then three resounding raps on a door.

A voice, slightly tremulous with breathlessness, commanded: “Open, O Warden of the Outer Portal!”

Another voice, severely solemn, replied: “Who are ye who thus rudely demand entrance?”

“We are pilgrims just come from crossing the burning sands.”

“By what right do ye demand entrance?”

“We be all of the true faith.”

“Enter, then,” consented the Warden of the Outer Portal, “and prove yourselves to the keeper of the drawbridge.”

There was a forward surge followed by another halt when the voice of the keeper of the drawbridge, a thready voice, inclined to stutter, demanded: “What seek ye, O strangers?”

“Shelter from the stars, and a night’s rest.”

“Have ye brought food?”

“Three loaves.”

“How are they to be divided?”

“One for the landlord, one for the poor, and one for ourselves.”

“Enter, then, brethren, and welcome.”

They moved forward again, this time on a smooth cement floor. Some one giggled. Some one else protested: “Aw, shut up, Chub!” There were snickers and another voice chimed in gleefully, “Oi! Oi!”

Orrin Quire was not unfamiliar with schoolboy secret societies; he had memorized more than one ritual in England, and he had a vivid recollection of a particularly devilish initiation that had occurred to him the year he attended school in Zurich. He concluded that by virtue of a mistake in the dark street fate had selected him to personate an unwilling candidate.

Judging by the resonance, they were in a very large room, and again, judging by the persistent mixed odors of stale gasolines and lubricating oils, it must be a garage.

The whispering continued.

A crashing, soul-shaking roar, calculated to make any blindfolded man’s heart skip a few beats, quelled the secretive murmurs; it was only an automobile horn, but behind the closed doors it sounded like a dynamite blast.

There was a profound silence, then a herald proclaimed: “Bow to the exalted High Priest of Osiris!”

Chuckling to himself, Orrin submitted when they faced him around and ordered him to give ear.

“Candidate,” the high priest began, in a voice that roved from treble to base and back — the “changing” voice of a growing boy — “you have been initiated into the first two degrees of the Order of the Sacred Pyramid; you are now about to be introduced to the mysteries of the frightful Third Degree. Do you come of your own free will?”

They slipped the bagging off and by the vague light Orrin was able to see that he had been correct in taking the place for a garage. It was unusually large, with a mechanic’s bench and some small power machinery along the wall and a car in one corner.

The high priest, a ghostlike figure in a white robe, was flanked by two torches which burned very dimly and threw Orrin’s face into shadow. Orrin could just make out the rank and file of the order, also hooded, standing in a semicircle behind.

The candidate turned from a leisurely survey of his surroundings to face the high priest again.

“Well, rather,” he drawled. “I walked.”

“Well, rawther,” mimicked some one.

“Pie Face, I’ll get you for that!” threatened the high priest.

“Aw, I didn’t mean nuthin’, Kidder,” apologized Pie Face.

“Shut up!” ordered the herald.

“Candidate,” went on the high priest, “you will now be carried into the bowels of the Sacred Pyramid, there to sleep for a year and a day under the spell of the magic potion. Let the bearers of the holy fires lead on!”

Two hooded figures took up the torches, the high priest marched behind with stately tread, while herald, drawbridge keeper and other nameless dignitaries brought up the rear.

Orrin Quire, with a husky lad on either side securing his arms, was swept along by the brethren, who were still persuaded they were initiating somebody called Van Dyl.

They went down a narrow passage and into another cavernous room of which nothing was certainly visible in the faint blue light from the torches except that the floor was paved with white tile.

The wayward voice of the high priest rang out as though he were shouting into a cistern.

“Let the cup bearer administer the magic potion, and lower the mummy into the tomb!” he cried.

Orrin then realized that they were intent on forcing something pungent-smelling from a bottle between his teeth: and glutton for adventure though he was, declined to go further with the farce.

A jujutsu wriggle and his arms were free; the bottle crashed to the floor. The guards grabbed for him again, but they were no match for him. Some one jumped on his shoulders: somebody tackled knee high.

Jerked, bumped, clutched at and weighted down, Orrin dragged the footballer and the other assailant hanging to his neck.

The lad with the changing voice roared once more: “Lower the mummy into the tomb!”

One of the torches went over in the swirl, to a stench of doctored alcohol, and abandoning the ritual the ringleader shrieked at the top of his falsetto: “T’row him in de tank!”

The finish was sudden. The hands ceased to grasp, and Orrin was pushed, his feet finding no grip on the smooth tiles, until he felt himself going over a precipice. One last clutch at the edge and down he went, to land on his knees with a jarring thud.

A door above slammed and the uproar of voices was extinguished.

He had certainly thought to give a better account of himself. He was a prisoner — he had no idea where — in utter darkness, and in silence relieved only by his own hard breathing. His collar was unbuttoned, his overcoat partly turned wrong side out over one shoulder, and he had lost his hat.

He felt for a match box, but only encountered the burned match in his waistcoat pocket.

Creeping carefully around in the blackness, he examined his prison. The floor was smooth and hard — cement or tile; the wall was vertical and smooth and extended above his reach; a complete circuit showed that the place measured about ten yards by twenty. The floor sloped slightly and at the lower end there was a small round opening barred with a grating.

He was bending over it when a scraping sound grew out of the silence. Something hard poked him from above, something which his groping fingers told him was a ladder lowered into the pit. Some one was stealthily descending.

The intruder uttered a muffled squeal in his grasp, and Orrin became aware of soft curves and a suggestion of perfume, giving the lie to the heavy rough-coat and knickers.

“Ouch!” she cried. “You’re choking me, Orrie. Let go — it’s Lorraine. Are you hurt? I’ll get even with that Kidder Rashky, honestly I will. Don’t make a sound; they ran out through the garage, but I think they are waiting to make sure you don’t get away.”

She had called him “Orrie,” and she was bent on rescue. Orrin did not understand it, but he answered, in a guarded whisper: “Right-o!” and steadied the ladder for her to climb.

“I was with them all the time,” she said, “but they didn’t know me in the dark. Chub Smith’s sister Ellie told me this afternoon that Kidder Rashky was going to catch you and put you through a special third degree.

“I waited for you to come back from down town to warn you, but when you got off the bus alone they were hiding under the trees.

“There wasn’t a thing I could do but follow along. Oh, gosh! I was mad when they pushed you into the swimming pool. I tried to push the Kidder in, too, but I didn’t have any luck.”

So that was a swimming pool. Orrin was glad there had been no water in it.

They had scaled the ladder now and she was leading Orrin by the hand along the smooth tiled ledge that bordered the pool.

“Wait here,” she commanded. “I’ll slip out through the laundry and spy on them.”

A door clicked twice in the dark and Orrin was alone — but only for an instant. The lock clicked again, there was a hoarse cry, and then the door slammed and she was beside him, panting.

“They’re hiding in the laundry. I gave them a piece of my mind, anyway. I... I cursed them! I told them what I thought picking on a boy younger than they are!”

The knob of the door was being wrenched with futile violence while she was hurrying him toward the passage that led to the garage.

Feet suddenly sounded in the passage and a light flashed. She dragged him back, running; past the door of the laundry, around the end of the pool, and halted at bay in the farthest corner of the room. A beam of white light played across the empty swimming pool and found them.

Along the wall in that corner there was a row of steel lockers. Orrin’s hand, groping behind him, felt the lower hinge of the first locker. It moved, and suddenly the door of the locker swung open on its opposite edge.

“Here!” Orrin gasped. “This seems to be a way out.”

He stepped into and through the locker, drawing her after him, the steel door clanged shut, and they were in a small unfinished corridor very dimly lighted from without by leaded windows; a flight of skeleton steps led upward, while at the farther end of the corridor another narrow doorway, similar to the one by which they had entered, was disguised in identical manner by a backless locker.

Orrin squinted through the ventilating slots in the door of this second make-believe locker. The laundry, a spacious basement on the other side of the door, was fully visible in the light of an electric lantern standing on a bench. On one side of the laundry were windows and a door, all closed. Directly opposite another door opened on mysterious darkness. The room was deserted.

“Now we can dash out,” said Orrin. “Across the laundry and through the garage — with luck.” His hand sought and luckily found the trick latch and they edged through. Midway on the road to safety she stopped short, stared at him — and began to cry.

“There, there,” soothed Orrin. “Buck up; one more sprint and I’ll take you home.” She was pretty as a picture, despite her boyish gear, and very young.

“B-but,” she sobbed, “you are not Orrie. I thought you were my brother.”

Her brother, eh. What was it they called the lad for whom he had been mistaken? Van-Van Dyl — that was it. And she had called herself Lorraine. Lorraine Van Dyl!

“But I’m Orrie,” he insisted “That’s what they’ve called me since I was a little nipper—”

She broke away and darted out into the garage.

“I say!” he called, guardedly. No answer front the dark.

Instead, the door connecting with the swimming pool chamber burst open and a hard-looking youth in the uniform of a chauffeur and leggings raced through, whimpering, with two pursuers at his heels.

The foremost of the pursuing pair struggled with an automatic as he ran, trying to cock it. The second, who was disheveled and gasping for breath, cried: “Easy there with the loud speaker, Mike! Bean him!”

Orrin had dropped promptly behind a table at the alarm. The man called Mike swung his weapon in both hands and brought the butt down on the head of the fugitive, who pitched into a crumpled heap.

“That’s one,” puffed Mike, without other show of emotion, stooping to feel his prey. “Now find out where the skirt went.”

They ran back into the swimming pool chamber, and Orrin crawled under the table to the victim. Bloody froth oozed from nostrils and mouth, a pool of blood widened on the floor, and a clean slot-like depression in his skull showed that he was beyond help. Orrin switched off the light and shivered as he retreated with speed and caution into the garage.

Several uniformed policemen with flash lamps and drawn revolvers were disappearing into the passage connecting the garage directly with the swimming pool chamber.

A huge moving truck, of the type used for moving furniture, had backed into the garage, and stood with lights out, but engine purring. Orrin leaped into the driver’s compartment of the truck and pulled the door shut.

A small dash lamp illuminated the controls, which he examined with quick understanding; everything looked familiar except the left-hand drive, and that only puzzled him for a second.

He pushed the clutch pedal, tugged at the gear-shift, let go the clutch and pressed the accelerator. The engine roared and the huge bulk moved forward, out through the porte-cochère, and down the sloping drive. A chorus of shouts and a rattle of firearms resounded from the rear as the reckless driver changed to high and switched on his headlights.

A bullet or two whined past within earshot, but he swung joyously out of the grounds into the deserted street, the clamor of the chase diminishing with distance — down the street, past the lamp-post where he had seen the policeman, past the high school; now near a brightly lighted house with a festive awning across the sidewalk.

A blanket, heaped up in the other end of the driver’s seat, came to life and Orrin, startled, saw the little knickered Amazon who had salvaged him from the depths of the pit sit up.

“I want to get off here, please,” she said, with dignity.

To the squeal of brakes, while the driver labored with foot and hand, the truck slackened speed and came to a halt.

“I’m so sorry,” apologized Orrin. “Shall I back up — Lorraine?”

She faced him with defiant eyes, fumbling at the handle of the door on her side.

“Honestly,” she said, “I hope I shall never see you again!” and then, as the door came open and she stepped down to the sidewalk, she added, “Thanks for the lift — Orrie!”

“It has been a great pleasure — Miss Van Dyl,” answered Orrin, stiffly.

As quickly as she had left by the right-hand door, he slid out at the other side, watched her running back until she had disappeared under the awning, and then he turned the corner of the silent cross street and sauntered away with the leisurely gait of an honest citizen.

“Gad!” he exclaimed to himself. “For a man returned to his native land only a few hours I’ve had adventure enough already.”

Orrin found a hat shop and bought a hat to replace the one lost in the scuffle. There he committed a serious error — he asked the salesman about subways, and the best method of reaching his hotel. He underestimated the capacities of the police for painstaking detail.

His first act on arriving at his hotel was to telephone the hospital, to assure himself that his Aunt Cassie was out of danger and that neither she nor his Aunt Mary needed him. Immediately after that he left another footprint on the trail; he put in a call for Mrs. Frederick Topps-Jones.

When the operator had informed him, “Here’s your party,” Orrin asked, “Are you there?”

Mrs. Freddy’s lilt replied: “You bet your sweet life I’m here! How are you making out, old dear, and how do you like your native land?”

“Oh, ripping!” admitted Orrin. “These Americans — I mean to say, my countrymen — they take an int’rest in you, don’t you know; they make you little presents, and indicate you a good time, and keep you — int’rested, if you know what I mean. I’m learning the language, too. I can say, ‘T’row him in de tank!’

“But, look here, I’m going to ask a tremendous favor of you, dear Mrs. Freddy — something frightfully nervous, or is it nervish? You mentioned yesterday that if we landed in time you counted on attending this evening the birthday party of a niece — Laura, wasn’t it? or Laurel?”

“Lorraine Van Dyl, my favorite niece, yes. We are not included in the dinner arrangements because our arrival was too uncertain, though we expect to drop in for the dancing later in the evening.

“You want to go? You shall; be here by ten, not later. We are in Park Avenue, only four blocks from your hotel.”

Orrin unpacked, bathed and shaved with care, and rubbed hazeline on certain painful bruises. When he had arrayed himself formally he went down and dined, after which he donned coat and muffler, and with topper set just a little back on his curls and looking like a very young and very handsome Londoner of an unusually alert and intelligent type, he asked the doorman to direct him to the corner of Park Avenue and Thirty-Eighth Street, the address Mrs. Freddy had given.

He was going out when he noticed a beefy man in conference at the door of the manager’s office, not more than twenty paces away. The man was exhibiting a soft hat of familiar appearance. It was his own hat! And just then the head porter glanced his way and pointed.

The revolving door turned invitingly. Orrin stepped out on to the sidewalk. A taxi stood at the curb. Orrin gave the chauffeur a bill, grinned, and told him to drive once around the block and keep the change.

The beefy man came out through the revolving door, ran after the taxi, shouting, while Orrin Quire, already guilty of several misdemeanors and at least one felony, and now a fugitive from justice, went on his care-free stroll toward the Topps-Jones residence.

Freddy Topps-Jones earned a fortune every year prescribing art for the decoration of interiors; the function of Mrs. Freddy, who was less than half his age, was to think up the most delightful ways of spending the annual fortune. They were on the best of terms, and very happy.

There were visitors when Orrin appeared and somebody suggested bridge, so that the evening was well advanced when the car was summoned to go to the Van Dyls.

When they stopped before the awning, guests were still arriving in numbers and lines of waiting cars stood on both sides of the street. Orrin was interested to note that the truck in which he had fled from the haunted house was gone.

Mrs. Freddy presented him to her sister, Mrs. Van Dyl, a friendly little woman, who welcomed him as an expatriate likes to be received.

Judge Van Dyl was pressing his hand warmly, telling him how glad they all were to have him home again, “now that he had grown into such a fine, upstanding young man, who would doubtless” — but Orrin lost the rest of it in the sudden realization that here was the queer man who had handed him the burned match.

“This,” said Mrs. Van Dyl, patting the shoulder of a frightened youth, much too large for his fourteen years, “is our son, Orton. Mr. Quire, as a very, very little boy, lived in the big place over the way. Orrie, before you were born.

“And this,” drawing forward a ravishing vision in something filmy, “is our little girl. Lorraine.”

Great blue eyes, wide with suspense, looked into Orrin’s. What was that awful phrase Americans used when introduced for the first time? Oh, yes, to be sure.

“Pleased to meet you!” said Orrin, and the blue eyes twinkled and thanked him.

Orrin really wanted to dance, but he must pay court first to Grandma Van Dyl. She sat on a sofa like a dais and pointed an ear trumpet at him.

“Know you among a thousand,” she shrilled. “Picture of your grandfather when he was your age.” She gathered the skirt of her modish dress, with the absent-minded movement that an age of petticoats had made habitual, scowled when she realized that there was nothing to gather, and pounced at him.

“Now I suppose you are going to open the old Quire place and carry on just as your grandfather did. After your mother died and Cassie took you to England, he lived all alone in the big house with his Japanese servants, his secret passages, his orchids and his zoo, entertaining impossible people, associating with prize fighters, backing musical shows, betting on horses and gambling in Wall Street, and getting richer all the time.”

Then, ignoring Orrin she turned on Mrs. Freddy: “Where are his blessed aunts?”

“Cassie is in the hospital, with appendicitis. And Mary is with her.”

“Of course. Mary never called her soul her own. Nobody could with Cassie. Most stubborn, willful creature I ever knew.”

Mrs. Freddy spoke confidentially into the trumpet, while Orrin sidled away unnoticed.

Guided by the music he found the ballroom and cut in as soon as he could locate Lorraine Van Dyl.

“So we are twins,” said Orrin. “Your birthday, my birthday.”

“Twins!” echoed Lorraine. “I like that: and you practically a grown man. Honestly — why, I am only seventeen.”

A youth cut in, whereupon Orrin retreated to the side lines awaiting another chance. The butler whispered to him: “If you are Mr. Orrin Quire, there are two gentlemen at the side door with a message for you. This way, sir, please.”

As Orrin stepped out on to the porch the two gentlemen received him strategically, one on either side, securing his arms in a firm grasp and marching him down the steps.

“Police,” growled one with terse economy of words; “come along quiet and don’t make a fuss.”

The drivers of the waiting cars stared after the hatless guest.

The other detective, the beefy man who had traced him to his hotel, spoke. “Now look-a-here, bo, you come clean and maybe we can do you good,” he began amicably. “But you gotta come across, see?”

Orrin digested this and concluded that no reply was required of him, for they were already crossing the street.

“You gotta come across,” repeated the big man, with more insistence.

“Quite so,” agreed Orrin, and fell silent.

“You come clean,” wheedled Orrin’s friend; “for the State, eh? Self-defense or something, wasn’t it? You’re a friend of the prosecutor. That ’ll help.”

“My dear fellow,” Orrin said patiently, “sometimes words make sense when there is no real thought conveyed or intended like in nonsense rimes. Just what do you mean?”

“He’s a nut, Swarts,” volunteered the other detective.

“One more chance,” said Swarts, halting and speaking slowly as to a child. “Maybe you’re a foreigner that don’t understand English good. Here’s what’s what.

“After you give the driver the works you hop the load of bootleg and lam down the street a coupla blocks, and then park and walk away. We find your hat in the garage and look for a bareheaded man walking across town for a subway, not forgetting to ask in hat stores. You was sap enough to tell the hat store clerk you wanted to get to the Belmont Hotel.

“I go to the Belmont and ask. That was easy because your name was in your hat all the time. When I flag you what do you do? Send me running after an empty taxi, and walk off again.

“Smooth, ain’t you? But the telephone girl keeps a record. I try the hospital and draw a blank. Then I get to whatsisname Jones’s and find you have left there and gone to the prosecutor’s own house. What for? I ask you. To give yourself up, or did you think that was the last place we would look for you?”

Through the mist of strange words Orrin was beginning to get a very clear understanding of the delicate position in which he found himself, but he kept silent and maintained his pose of bewilderment.

The other man said with impatience, “Aw, come on, Swarts. It’s too cold to stand here talking. The captain’s across the street looking over the job and he said to bring this guy to him as soon as you made the pinch.”

“I was going to take him to the Ten Eyck Avenue station and book him,” said Swarts, “but it’s all one to me so long as I get the credit for it. It’s my pinch, and the first time I’ve had a murder.”

They walked Orrin up the drive, circling the gloomy house, to the farther side and under the porte-cochère beyond which was the garage, its wide doors open.

There was an atmosphere of repressed excitement about them, the glittering buttons of uniformed officers striking flashes of fire in the light of lanterns, several police cars, some of them with engines chugging, men in citizen’s clothes who looked at Orrin professionally, and younger men — reporters Orrin thought — who asked personal questions.

A policeman said to Swarts: “The chief is inside razzing Honest Gus Ginsberg. You better go right in.”

He made way for Orrin and the detective, but blocked the doorway, grinning, in the face of the reporters.

Inside, a white-haired, red-faced man in police captain’s uniform sat at a flattop desk, at his left sat a stenographer intent on his notebook. In another chair on the opposite side of the desk, lounging with an air of good humor, an overfed citizen smirked and gesticulated as he protested, “And I don’t know another thing about it, cap. Don’t you believe me?”

“Sure I believe you, Ginsberg. Ain’t you called Honest Gus?” snarled the captain. He paused to glare at Orrin, motioning Swarts to herd his prisoner into a corner and wait.

“You was just looking in, Gus, to pass the time o’ day with your old pal, Mike Laffy, and everything happened before you came in. You just walked into trouble by chance, Gus. But I’m going to hold you just the same! Go outside now.”

“Oh, all right. Captain O’Down,” agreed Honest Gus, amiably; “you know your own business best — and you’ve got your job to look out for.”

In spite of Ginsberg’s oily, smooth manner his last words suggested a veiled threat.

A fourth man, a clear-eyed, quiet, observant man, with the air of a scholar rather than of a policeman, half-seated on a low bookcase a little behind the captain, was pulling thoughtfully on a cold brier.

“Am I right, chief?” asked O’Down, substituting respect for his truculent manner.

The quiet man, who had been casting-swift, appraising glances at Orrin, replied only with an indifferent lift of eyebrows and one shoulder and strolled out. The detective, Swarts, must have caught a private signal, for he followed, leaving Orrin alone in his corner.

Orrin had been looking about him with interest, speculating on the identity of the several actors and studying the setting. The room was half library and half office, sumptuously furnished, with a door — that by which they had entered — leading into the garage, and another, a double one, connecting perhaps with the main hall giving on the porte-cochère. Across this latter door stood a camp cot with a pillow and some tumbled blankets.

Captain O’Down glared at Orrin, biting at one corner of his ragged white mustache as though about to burst into a torrent of words. He growled at the stenographer, “Get me the caretaker.”

The stenographer went to the door and called out into the garage, “Send in Mike Laffy.”

In a moment the fellow stood impudently before the desk and the captain began with withering scorn: “Mike, you’re not only a liar but a dumb-bell! You can’t remember your story long enough to tell it twice alike. How long have you been caretaker here?”

“About six weeks — since the 1st of November,” answered Mike readily.

“Whose house is this?”

“Squires’, or Squares’, or something; I don’t know.”

“Huh! You don’t know! You’re a bird of a caretaker.”

“It belongs to a rich young fella that lives in Europe and spends his time with dukes and earls and shooting pheasants. I ain’t a caretaker, anyhow; I’m a kinda watchman. I don’t know nothing about the house.

“I was hired by the agents, Judson Brothers, and all I have to do is sleep here every night — something about insurance and not being occupied. They gimme the keys to the garage, and a part of the basement, and this room; that’s my bed over there.”

The captain’s ill temper increased. He was not succeeding in shaking the man’s nerve as he had expected, and he was evidently a poor loser.

“Sure it’s your bed. And you was sound asleep and didn’t hear a word of this jamboree.”

“I wasn’t asleep — I wasn’t here at all. I got here a little late this evening, and when I was coming up the drive all of a sudden this here truck come tearing down and nearly run over me, and there was a lot of shooting and yelling and when I ran in to see what it was all about the bulls grabbed me, There ain’t any other story because that’s what happened.”

“Ya-a-a!” Captain O’Down’s scorn redoubled. “But we’ve got your pal and he don’t tell the same story at all.” The captain pointed dramatically at Orrin.

Mike spun around with blanched face, but after one look he leered cunningly and retorted, “Cap, I never saw this guy before.”

The captain’s red face darkened to purple.

“Get out of here!” he roared. “Get out! Take him away, and send in Swarts — on the jump! Now, you,” whirling on Orrin with a great show of ferocity, “come here and sit down in that chair where I can see you.”

Orrin sat as directed, an electric lantern shining painfully in his eyes, his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets. “This will be the genuine third degree,” he said to himself.

“It’s your turn; speak your piece,” the captain barked as Swarts came in with alacrity.

The detective recounted tersely the circumstances of the raid and his subsequent investigations.

Acting on information which had come to the department that a valuable truckload of bootleg was being dispersed from the old place on the corner of Ten Eyck Avenue and Boswell Street, and under instructions issued directly from the prosecutor’s office, he had arrived in company with three other men in plain clothes from headquarters and six uniformed officers from the Ten Eyck Street station just after dark.

They had approached the house quietly through the trees, and had found a truck standing in the garage, with engine running, but before they had even begun to examine its cargo had been startled by cries and the sound of a scuffle in the basement of the house.

As they turned in the direction of the disturbance, somebody in the truck whose presence they had not suspected sent it down the drive into the street at a speed that made pursuit on foot hopeless.

Inside the basement they had found no one but an unidentified dead man in a chauffeur’s uniform. There was conflicting opinion about the number of persons in the house at the moment the police rushed the entrance of the basement; it was even said that a woman’s voice had been heard, screaming, “But you will not hurry!” or perhaps, “But you are not sorry!”

The only captures were Mike Laffy, caretaker, and Gus Ginsberg, well-known character — outside, not inside the house — both of whom claimed to have arrived at the moment. The officers pursuing the truck had found it abandoned two blocks up the street.

He, Swarts, had discovered on the garage floor a hat with the name “Orrin Quire” on the sweatband, and after some gumshoe work, whose ingenuity he emphasized, had located his man at the home of Judge Van Dyl. The prisoner, so far had refused to tell the story of the killing or reveal the motive or the identity of the victim.

“Now you’re going to talk,” asserted O’Down, turning fiercely on Orrin once more when Swarts had finished his statement. “We’ve got you dead to rights and all we need to know is, who is this man you killed and why you done it.”

Orrin had been doubting whether it would profit him to say anything about the crazy encounter with the schoolboys to explain his presence in the house. On one point he was quite determined: he wouldn’t tell about the angel in knickers who had rescued him from his predicament.

He trembled with cold, for he was clad as he had emerged from the ballroom — without hat, overcoat or gloves. The other men wore heavy coats buttoned tight, breath making little clouds of steam in the chill air.

Swarts towered over him, an ugly blackjack displayed carelessly, and gritted: “And if he don’t, I’m going to bean him.”

Orrin made an involuntary attempt to gain his feet, having already seen an illustration of the meaning of the verb “to bean,” but collapsed into his seat as quickly, under the impulse of a flat-hand shove which the detective applied in the center of his white dress shirt.

The scholarly man whom the captain called chief came back at this critical moment. He laid an officer’s overcoat across Orrin’s knees with a brief impersonal nod, and going around to the other side of the desk grew up a chair and sat down beside the captain.

Orrin accepted the offer of the coat gratefully, but mutely, snuggled into the coat with a sigh of relief, while O’Down explained to the chief: “This is the fellow that did the killing; it was a hi-jacking job, just as I said. We were asking him some questions.”

The chief looked at Orrin a moment in silence.

“It might be best all around if you were to tell me just what happened,” he said. “What did you see? Take your time.”

Orrin knew that this was a man of another order, that his technique would be different from the browbeating methods of the subordinates. He decided to begin with his sensations when he stepped off the bus and felt the bag drawn over his head.

The policeman on guard at the door interrupted at that moment, calling in a stage whisper: “His nibs is just outside. He’s coming in — the prosecutor!”

There was a confused sound of footsteps and Judge Van Dyl entered, with three boys — a tall, thin one, a grotesquely dumpy one, and Master Orton Van Dyl — all very ill at ease. Crowding behind came the gentlemen of the press.

“Good evening, Mr. Prosecutor,” the chief said politely.

“Good evening, Fred,” Judge Van Dyl replied genially. “The interests of public health and safety lead us to keep irregular hours, eh?”

The reporters began pulling up chairs to the big desk and producing writing materials, grinning maliciously at the captain who scowled at them, but stood up and gave his seat by the chief to Judge Van Dyl.

“I am told,” went on the prosecutor, beaming into the assembled faces, “that our information proved trustworthy, netting us a truckload of adulterated product valued at five thousand dollars. Unfortunately one more murder has been added to the list of violences growing out of the evil traffic.

“I know you will pardon the interruption, chief, when I explain how I happened to look in. These two boys, schoolmates of my son — ‘Kidder’ and ‘Chub’ — called on me a few minutes ago to tell a strange story.

“They allege they have been making use of the Quire place, which they call the ‘haunted house,’ for the initiations of their high school secret society, having found the key of the garage in the lock one day recently. According to their confession, they abducted my son, Orton, this evening and imprisoned him in the empty swimming pool.

“Later, when they returned to free him, they found the police in possession of the house; and after spending some hours dodging around in the shrubbery, they came to me in tears.

“But the fact is, Orton knew nothing whatever of this, being safely at home where we have been giving a little birthday party.”

Judge Van Dyl sought a rhetoric effect by pausing to take a cigar from his case, requesting casually of Orton, who was backed against the wall with his schoolmates: “Your pocketknife, son.”

“You didn’t give it back to me the last time, father,” protested Orton.

“Tut! I returned it to you on the bus.”

“No, father, you didn’t — you could not. I wasn’t on the bus. There was a crowd, and I didn’t get on the bus before it started. I met a fellow I knew, and we went to the pictures and I just got home in time for dinner.”

“In that case,” concluded Judge Van Dyl, biting off the end of his cigar, “I gave your knife to some other passenger.”

Orrin thought suddenly of the burned match.

The reporters, who had always found the absent-minded prosecutor good copy, dependable at any time for a column or so, smiled and waited.

“Where are you telephoning from?” one whispered to his neighbor.

“All night drug store just around the corner.”

“Where did they take the hootch?”

“Hootch, you sap? It was bootleg cream and butter, run in from the Jersey side.”

“And so,” went on Judge Van Dyl, taking up the thread of his story, “I thought I would run over to see if we could be of any assistance.”

He suddenly recognized Orrin wrapped in the policeman’s overcoat.

“Bless my soul!” he cried in amazement.

Captain O’Down seized the opportunity to come back to business.

“This is the fella that done the murder, Mr. Prosecutor. He made his getaway in the bootleg truck, but he left his hat and we traced it and caught him. We always catch ’em. The chief was asking him some questions.”

“Poppycock!” the judge exploded. “This is Mr. Orrin Quire, grandson of Henry Quire III; he is the heir to the Quire estate and owns this house. You arrested him because you found a hat of his here in his own house? By George, captain, I can’t tell you — Poppycock! I wish I could think of a stronger word.”

The reporters leaned forward eagerly. Here was a story! A man arrested because his hat was in his own house. But they didn’t know half of it, Orrin thought to himself.

His own house! That was why he had the feeling he was looking at something familiar when he saw the old pile from the street — but now he was thinking of something else.

Here was a murder to be solved — and a murder in his house.

Orrin jumped suddenly to his feet.

“Will you pardon my interrupting?” he cried. “I’ve an idea.”

He knew some things as an eyewitness that the others could not know; he had appreciated the unsuccessful effort to stampede Mike. The attempts of the police to get admissions by threat amused him at the same time that they suggested better methods. “If I might be permitted a word with the man Ginsberg and the watchman, sir” — the chief nodded to him almost imperceptibly — “I think I can untangle this mystery.”

“Certainly, my dear boy,” the prosecutor said cordially: “Whatever we can do in the interests of justice!”

Orrin opened the door. “Send in Mike Laffy and Honest Gus!”

Ginsberg came in first, to be motioned by Orrin with scant courtesy to the chair he had just vacated in the light of the brightest lantern. Next came Laffy; immediately behind him an officer with another prisoner, a small person in a huge raccoon coat.

“Here’s a jane we caught snooping around in the bushes,” the policeman said. It was Lorraine.

Orrin sprang between her and her father, hiding her from his view.

Orrin groped behind him. She slipped her hand into his, whispering: “The butler told me you were arrested. I just had to come!”

Without answering her, Orrin began to talk quickly to Mike Laffy. The others in the room watched. He talked so low they could not hear. He seemed to threaten, to cajole; he darted glances which said clearly Ginsberg was the object of their barter.

Honest Gus had dropped his oily, good-humored pose. The newspaper men forgot their boredom and craned forward, interpreting the unheard bargaining and losing nothing of its effect on Ginsberg; the prosecutor’s lips moved, translating what he saw into soundless words.

Suddenly Honest Gus stood up.

“It’s a lie! It’s all a lie!” he screamed. “I didn’t raise my hand. Mike bashed him with the butt of his gun. I saw it and I can swear to it!”

Mike Laffy’s answer was almost a scream. “You’re a liar! I only did what you told me to! You said he double crossed us and he knew about the other guy we bumped off!”

“I’ll talk,” gasped Gus; “let me talk! I’ll tell everything just as it happened — for the State.”

Swarts already had the handcuffs on Laffy. Officers who had come in on the run at the first sound of uproar, were holding Ginsberg, explaining, promising and choking for breath.

When Ginsberg had exhausted himself and collapsed, moaning, Mike Laffy, whose surly temperament had more quickly recovered, turned on the shattered fat man.

“You yella cur,” he sneered, “I always thought you was there with the brains. I didn’t think you was fool enough to fall for that movie stuff. Why, I wasn’t telling the boy nothin’ — nothin’ at all!”

He scowled at the corner where Orrin had stood. But Aunt Cassie’s boy and Lorraine had slipped out.

Hours later the chief’s car stopped in front of the prosecutor’s house. The guests had all gone.

“A good night’s work,” said Judge Van Dyl, with undimmed enthusiasm. “The boy certainly handled his little demonstration in applied psychology!”

“Too well,” returned the chief, in his thoughtful, quiet way. “He knew the whole story before they confessed. I am convinced that he was there. You would need him for a witness if it were not for the eagerness of the two crooks to tell on each other.”

The prosecutor entering his roomy front veranda was startled to see a young girl bundled in his favorite winter coat and a young man in a policeman’s blue coat sitting together in the hammock. He had to cough twice before they heard him.