The Big Book of Reel Murders: Stories that Inspired Great Crime

The Murders in the Rue Morgue EDGAR ALLAN POE

Original publication: Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine, April 1841; later published in 1843 in a slim pamphlet as a single story, The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe, No. 1, one of the rarest and most precious volumes of American literature; first collected in Tales (New York, Wiley and Putnam, 1845)

Among his numerous accomplishments, significant enough to cause numerous critics to regard him as the greatest American writer of the nineteenth century, Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) is widely recognized as the inventor of the detective story. His poems are among the most often read, quoted, enjoyed, and parodied of any American poet of the nineteenth century; he was a monumentally influential literary critic and editor; and his short stories are relentlessly anthologized and remain popular pleasure reading to the present day, especially his tales of the macabre and supernatural. Even schoolchildren are familiar with such masterpieces as “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Black Cat,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” often, perhaps, because so much of his work has served as the basis (albeit very loosely) for scores of horror films.

The detective short story was born with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Within a single story, Poe produced virtually all the significant tropes of the detective story. In C. Auguste Dupin, of course, he gave us the first eccentric genius detective (perfected by Arthur Conan Doyle forty-six years later when Sherlock Holmes burst upon the scene). The anonymous narrator of the story serves as the stand-in for the reader, marveling at his friend’s brilliance while asking the questions that the reader would otherwise ask. Poe gave us the seemingly impossible crime, the bungling police, the astute observations of clues invisible to others, and the deductions made from them. He called this story (and the two others featuring Dupin) tales of ratiocination (a word he invented). Note that he did not call Dupin a detective — because the word did not yet exist, nor did the position.

Only three Dupin stories were written because they garnered little interest and he quickly tired of the form. The second Dupin story, “The Mystery of Marie Roget” (1842), is a lengthy, rather dull description (mainly newspaper accounts) of the real-life murder of Mary Rogers, moved from New York to Paris by the author. The third and last, “The Purloined Letter,” is his masterpiece in the mystery genre.

Title: Murders in the Rue Morgue, 1932

Studio: Universal Pictures

Director: Robert Florey

Screenwriters: Robert Florey, Tom Reed, Dale Van Every, and John Huston

Producer: Carl Laemmle Jr.

• Bela Lugosi (Dr. Mirakle)

• Leon Waycoff, aka Leon Ames (Pierre Dupin)

• Sidney Fox (Mlle. Camille L’Espanaye)

• Bert Roach (Paul)

The motion picture adapted from “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” bears little resemblance to Poe’s story. Robert Florey, recently fired from Universal’s Frankenstein, wrote a screenplay that faithfully followed the original story. However, Universal had just enjoyed two very successful horror releases, Frankenstein (1931) and Dracula (1931), and ordered him to rewrite the script in order to follow those hits with another dark horror film, casting Bela Lugosi after his sensational performance as the vampire count.

Instead of being a detective story, Murders in the Rue Morgue turned into the tale of a mad scientist, Dr. Mirakle, who claims he can prove the theory of evolution by mixing the blood of humans and apes. Pierre Dupin and his friend Paul attend a carnival with their girlfriends where they see Mirakle and Eric, his caged ape. Noticing that Eric seems to fancy Mignonette, Paul’s girlfriend, Mirakle sets out to kidnap her but winds up with a streetwalker (played by Arlene Francis) instead. She dies during the experiment and her body is tossed into the river — the third such victim. Pierre, a medical student, discovers that all died because of a foreign substance in their bloodstreams and deduces that Mirakle and Eric are responsible.

There have been numerous adaptations of Poe’s tale, none bearing more than a soupçon of resemblance to Poe’s story, beginning with a 1914 silent, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, produced by Paragon Photo Plays and directed by Robert Goodman. In 1954, Warner Brothers released Phantom of the Rue Morgue, directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring Karl Malden. American-International Pictures produced Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1971; it was directed by Gordon Hessler and starred Jason Robards. A 1986 made-for-television film, Murders in the Rue Morgue, was directed by Jeannot Szwarc and starred George C. Scott.

THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE Edgar Allan Poe

The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talent into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension preternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition.

The faculty of re-solution is possibly much invigorated by mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations, has been called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyze. A chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound. The attention is here called powerfully into play. If it flag for an instant, an oversight is committed, resulting in injury or defeat. The possible moves being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such oversight are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten, it is the more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers. In draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are unique and have but little variation, the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left comparatively unemployed, what advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen. To be less abstract, let us suppose a game of draughts where the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can be decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherché movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect. Deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into the spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometimes indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation.

Whist has long been known for its influence upon what is termed the calculating power; and men of the highest order of intellect have been known to take an apparently unaccountable delight in it, while eschewing chess as frivolous. Beyond doubt there is nothing of a similar nature so greatly tasking the faculty of analysis. The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies a capacity for success in all these more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind. When I say proficiency, I mean that perfection in the game which includes a comprehension of all the sources whence legitimate advantage may be derived. These are not only manifold but multiform, and lie frequently among recesses of thought altogether inaccessible to the ordinary understanding. To observe attentively is to remember distinctly; and, so far, the concentrative chess-player will do very well at whist; while the rules of Hoyle (themselves based upon the mere mechanism of the game) are sufficiently and generally comprehensible. Thus to have a retentive memory, and proceed by “the book,” are points commonly regarded as the sum total of good playing. But it is in matters beyond the limits of mere rule that the skill of the analyst is evinced. He makes, in silence, a host of observations and inferences. So, perhaps, do his companions; and the difference in the extent of the information obtained, lies not so much in the validity of the inference as in the quality of the observation. The necessary knowledge is that of what to observe. Our player confines himself not at all; nor, because the game is the object, does he reject deductions from things external to the game. He examines the countenance of his partner, comparing it carefully with that of each of his opponents. He considers the mode of assorting the cards in each hand; often counting trump by trump, and honor by honor, through the glances bestowed by their holders upon each. He notes every variation of face as the play progresses, gathering a fund of thought from the differences in the expression of certainty, of surprise, of triumph, or of chagrin. From the manner of gathering up a trick he judges whether the person taking it can make another in the suit. He recognizes what is played through feint, by the air with which it is thrown upon the table. A casual or inadvertent word; the accidental dropping or turning of a card, with the accompanying anxiety or carelessness in regard to its concealment; the counting of the tricks, with the order of their arrangement; embarrassment, hesitation, eagerness, or trepidation — all afford, to his apparently intuitive perception, indications of the true state of affairs. The first two or three rounds having been played, he is in full possession of the contents of each hand, and thenceforward puts down his cards with as absolute a precision of purpose as if the rest of the party had turned outward the faces of their own.

The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis. The constructive or combining power, by which ingenuity is usually manifested, and to which the phrenologists (I believe erroneously) have assigned a separate organ, supposing it a primitive faculty, has been so frequently seen in those whose intellect bordered otherwise upon idiocy, as to have attracted general observation among writers on morals. Between ingenuity and the analytic ability there exists a difference far greater, indeed, than that between the fancy and the imagination, but of a character very strictly analogous. It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.

The narrative which follows will appear to the reader somewhat in the light of a commentary upon the propositions just advanced.

Residing in Paris during the spring and part of the summer of 18—, I there became acquainted with a Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin. This young gentleman was of an excellent, indeed of an illustrious family, but, by a variety of untoward events, had been reduced to such poverty that the energy of his character succumbed beneath it, and he ceased to bestir himself in this world, or to care for the retrieval of his fortunes. By courtesy of his creditors, there still remained in his possession a small remnant of his patrimony; and, upon the income arising from this, he managed, by means of a rigorous economy, to procure the necessities of life, without troubling himself about its superfluities. Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries, and in Paris these are easily obtained.

Our first meeting was at an obscure library in the Rue Montmartre, where the accident of our both being in search of the same very rare and very remarkable volume, brought us into closer communion. We saw each other again and again. I was deeply interested in the little family history which he detailed to me with all that candor which a Frenchman indulges whenever mere self is the theme. I was astonished, too, at the vast extent of his reading; and, above all, I felt my soul enkindled within me by the wild fervor, and the vivid freshness of his imagination. Seeking in Paris the objects I then sought, I felt that the society of such a man would be to me a treasure beyond price; and this feeling I frankly confided to him. It was at length arranged that we should live together during my stay in the city; and as my worldly circumstances were somewhat less embarrassed than his own, I was permitted to be at the expense of renting, and furnishing in a style which suited the rather fantastic gloom of our common temper, a time-eaten and grotesque mansion, long deserted through superstitions into which we did not inquire, and tottering to its fall in a retired and desolate portion of the Faubourg St. Germain.

Had the routine of our life at this place been known to the world, we should have been regarded as madmen — although, perhaps, as madmen of a harmless nature. Our seclusion was perfect. We admitted no visitors. Indeed the locality of our retirement had been carefully kept a secret from my own former associates; and it had been many years since Dupin had ceased to know or be known in Paris. We existed within ourselves alone.

It was a freak of fancy in my friend (for what else shall I call it?) to be enamored of the Night for her own sake; and into this bizarrerie, as into all his others, I quietly fell; giving myself up to his wild whims with a perfect abandon. The sable divinity would not herself dwell with us always; but we could counterfeit her presence. At the first dawn of the morning we closed all the massy shutters of our old building, lighting a couple of tapers which, strongly perfumed, threw out only the ghastliest and feeblest of rays. By the aid of these we then busied our souls in dreams — reading, writing, or conversing, until warned by the clock of the advent of the true Darkness. Then we sallied forth into the streets, arm in arm, continuing the topics of the day, or roaming far and wide until a late hour, seeking, amid the wild lights and shadows of the populous city, that infinity of mental excitement which quiet observation can afford.

At such times I could not help remarking and admiring (although from his rich ideality I had been prepared to expect it) a peculiar analytic ability in Dupin. He seemed, too, to take an eager delight in its exercise — if not exactly in its display — and did not hesitate to confess the pleasure thus derived. He boasted to me, with a low chuckling laugh, that most men, in respect to himself, wore windows in their bosoms, and was wont to follow up such assertions by direct and very startling proofs of his intimate knowledge of my own. His manner at these moments was frigid and abstract; his eyes were vacant in expression; while his voice, usually a rich tenor, rose into a treble which would have sounded petulant but for the deliberateness and entire distinctness of the enunciation. Observing him in these moods, I often dwelt meditatively upon the old philosophy of the Bi-Part Soul, and amused myself with the fancy of a double Dupin — the creative and the resolvent.

Let it not be supposed, from what I have just said, that I am detailing any mystery, or penning any romance. What I have described in the Frenchman was merely the result of an excited, or perhaps of a diseased, intelligence. But of the character of his remarks at the periods in question an example will best convey the idea.

We were strolling one night down a long dirty street, in the vicinity of the Palais Royal. Being both, apparently, occupied with thought, neither of us had spoken a syllable for fifteen minutes at least. All at once Dupin broke forth with these words:

“He is a very little fellow, that’s true, and would do better for the Théâtre des Variétés.”

“There can be no doubt of that,” I replied unwittingly, and not at first observing (so much had I been absorbed in reflection) the extraordinary manner in which the speaker had chimed in with my meditations. In an instant afterward I recollected myself, and my astonishment was profound.

“Dupin,” said I, gravely, “this is beyond my comprehension. I do not hesitate to say that I am amazed, and can scarcely credit my senses. How was it possible you should know I was thinking of—?” Here I paused, to ascertain beyond a doubt whether he really knew of whom I thought.

“—of Chantilly,” said he, “why do you pause? You were remarking to yourself that his diminutive figure unfitted him for tragedy.”

This was precisely what had formed the subject of my reflections. Chantilly was a quondam cobbler of the Rue St. Denis, who, becoming stage-mad, had attempted the rôle of Xerxes, in Crebillon’s tragedy so called, and been notoriously Pasquinaded for his pains.

“Tell me, for Heaven’s sake,” I exclaimed, “the method — if method there is — by which you have been enabled to fathom my soul in this matter.” In fact, I was even more startled than I would have been willing to express.

“It was the fruiterer,” replied my friend, “who brought you to the conclusion that the mender of soles was not of sufficient height for Xerxes et id genus omne.”

“The fruiterer! — you astonish me — I know no fruiterer whomsoever.”

“The man who ran up against you as we entered the street — it may have been fifteen minutes ago.”

I now remembered that, in fact, a fruiterer, carrying upon his head a large basket of apples, had nearly thrown me down, by accident, as we passed from the Rue C — into the thoroughfare where we stood; but what this had to do with Chantilly I could not possibly understand.

There was not a particle of charlatânerie about Dupin. “I will explain,” he said, “and that you may comprehend all clearly, we will first retrace the course of your meditations, from the moment in which I spoke to you until that of the rencontre with the fruiterer in question. The larger links of the chain run thus — Chantilly, Orion, Dr. Nichols, Epicurus, Stereotomy, the street stones, the fruiterer.”

There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives, amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of their own minds have been attained. The occupation is often full of interest; and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by the apparently illimitable distance and incoherence between the starting-point and the goal. What, then, must have been my amazement when I heard the Frenchman speak what he had just spoken, and when I could not help acknowledging that he had spoken the truth. He continued:

“We had been talking of horses, if I remember aright, just before leaving the Rue C—. This was the last subject we discussed. As we crossed into this street, a fruiterer, with a large basket upon his head, brushing quickly past us, thrust you upon a pile of paving-stones collected at a spot where the causeway is undergoing repair. You stepped upon one of the loose fragments, slipped, slightly strained your ankle, appeared vexed or sulky, muttered a few words, turned to look at the pile, and then proceeded in silence. I was not particularly attentive to what you did; but observation has become with me, of late, a species of necessity.

“You kept your eyes upon the ground — glancing, with a petulant expression, at the holes and ruts in the pavement (so that I saw you were still thinking of the stones), until we reached the little alley called Lamartine, which has been paved, by way of experiment, with the overlapping and riveted blocks. Here your countenance brightened up, and, perceiving your lips move, I could not doubt that you murmured the word ‘stereotomy,’ a term very affectedly applied to this species of pavement. I knew that you could not say to yourself ‘stereotomy’ without being brought to think of atomies, and thus of the theories of Epicurus; and since, when we discussed this subject not very long ago, I mentioned to you how singularly, yet with how little notice, the vague guesses of that noble Greek had met with confirmation in the late nebular cosmogony, I felt that you could not avoid casting your eyes upward to the great nebula in Orion, and I certainly expected that you would do so. You did look up; and I was now assured that I correctly followed your steps. But in that bitter tirade upon Chantilly, which appeared in yesterday’s ‘Musée,’ the satirist, making some disgraceful allusions to the cobbler’s change of name upon assuming the buskin, quoted a Latin line about which we have often conversed. I mean the line

I had told you that this was in reference to Orion, formerly written Urion; and, from certain pungencies connected with this explanation, I was aware that you could not have forgotten it. It was clear, therefore, that you would not fail to combine the two ideas of Orion and Chantilly. That you did combine them I saw by the character of the smile which passed over your lips. You thought of the poor cobbler’s immolation. So far, you had been stooping in your gait; but now I saw you draw yourself up to your full height. I was then sure that you reflected upon the diminutive figure of Chantilly. At this point I interrupted your meditations to remark that as, in fact, he was a very little fellow — that Chantilly — he would do better at the Théâtre des Variétés.”

Not long after this, we were looking over an evening edition of the “Gazette des Tribunaux,” when the following paragraphs arrested our attention.

“EXTRAORDINARY MURDERS. — This morning, about three o’clock, the inhabitants of the Quartier St. Roch were aroused from sleep by a succession of terrific shrieks, issuing, apparently, from the fourth story of a house in the Rue Morgue, known to be in the sole occupancy of one Madame L’Espanaye, and her daughter, Mademoiselle Camille L’Espanaye. After some delay, occasioned by a fruitless attempt to procure admission in the usual manner, the gateway was broken in with a crowbar, and eight or ten of the neighbors entered, accompanied by two gendarmes. By this time the cries had ceased; but, as the party rushed up the first flight of stairs, two or more rough voices, in angry contention, were distinguished, and seemed to proceed from the upper part of the house. As the second landing was reached, these sounds, also, had ceased, and everything remained perfectly quiet. The party spread themselves, and hurried from room to room. Upon arriving at a large back chamber in the fourth story (the door of which, being found locked, with the key inside, was forced open), a spectacle presented itself which struck every one present not less with horror than with astonishment.

“The apartment was in the wildest disorder — the furniture broken and thrown about in all directions. There was only one bedstead; and from this the bed had been removed, and thrown into the middle of the floor. On the chair lay a razor, besmeared with blood. On the hearth were two or three long and thick tresses of gray human hair, also dabbled with blood, and seeming to have been pulled out by the roots. Upon the floor were found four Napoleons, an ear-ring of topaz, three large silver spoons, three smaller of métal d’Alger, and two bags, containing nearly four thousand francs in gold. The drawers of a bureau, which stood in one corner, were open, and had been, apparently, rifled, although many articles still remained in them. A small iron safe was discovered under the bed (not under the bedstead). It was open, with the key still in the door. It had no contents beyond a few old letters, and other papers of little consequence.

“Of Madame L’Espanaye no traces were here seen; but an unusual quantity of soot being observed in the fire-place, a search was made in the chimney, and (horrible to relate!) the corpse of the daughter, head downward, was dragged therefrom; it having been thus forced up the narrow aperture for a considerable distance. The body was quite warm. Upon examining it, many excoriations were perceived, no doubt occasioned by the violence with which it had been thrust up and disengaged. Upon the face were many severe scratches, and, upon the throat, dark bruises, and deep indentations of finger nails, as if the deceased had been throttled to death.

“After a thorough investigation of every portion of the house, without farther discovery, the party made its way into a small paved yard in the rear of the building, where lay the corpse of the old lady, with her throat so entirely cut that, upon an attempt to raise her, the head fell off. The body, as well as the head, was fearfully mutilated — the former so much so as scarcely to retain any semblance of humanity.

“To this horrible mystery there is not as yet, we believe, the slightest clew.”

The next day’s paper had these additional particulars:

“The Tragedy in the Rue Morgue. — Many individuals have been examined in relation to this most extraordinary and frightful affair,” [the word “affaire” has not yet, in France, that levity of import which it conveys with us] “but nothing whatever has transpired to throw light upon it. We give below all the material testimony elicited.

“Pauline Dubourg, laundress, deposes that she has known both the deceased for three years, having washed for them during that period. The old lady and her daughter seemed on good terms — very affectionate towards each other. They were excellent pay. Could not speak in regard to their mode or means of living. Believed that Madame L. told fortunes for a living. Was reputed to have money put by. Never met any persons in the house when she called for the clothes or took them home. Was sure that they had no servant in employ. There appeared to be no furniture in any part of the building except in the fourth story.

“Pierre Moreau, tobacconist, deposes that he has been in the habit of selling small quantities of tobacco and snuff to Madam L’Espanaye for nearly four years. Was born in the neighborhood, and has always resided there. The deceased and her daughter had occupied the house in which the corpses were found, for more than six years. It was formerly occupied by a jeweller, who under-let the upper rooms to various persons. The house was the property of Madame L. She became dissatisfied with the abuse of the premises by her tenant, and moved into them herself, refusing to let any portion. The old lady was childish. Witness had seen the daughter some five or six times during the six years. The two lived an exceedingly retired life — were reputed to have money. Had heard it said among the neighbors that Madame L. told fortunes — did not believe it. Had never seen any person enter the door except the old lady and her daughter, a porter once or twice, and a physician some eight or ten times.

“Many other persons, neighbors, gave evidence to the same effect. No one was spoken of as frequenting the house. It was not known whether there were any living connections of Madame L. and her daughter. The shutters of the front windows were seldom opened. Those in the rear were always closed, with the exception of the large back room, fourth story. The house was a good house — not very old.

“Isidore Musèt, gendarme, deposes that he was called to the house about three o’clock in the morning, and found some twenty or thirty persons at the gateway, endeavoring to gain admittance. Forced it open, at length, with a bayonet — not with a crowbar. Had but little difficulty in getting it open, on account of its being a double or folding gate, and bolted neither at bottom nor top. The shrieks were continued until the gate was forced — and then suddenly ceased. They seemed to be screams of some person (or persons) in great agony — were loud and drawn out, not short and quick. Witness led the way up stairs. Upon reaching the first landing, heard two voices in loud and angry contention — the one a gruff voice, the other much shriller — a very strange voice. Could distinguish some words of the former, which was that of a Frenchman. Was positive that it was not a woman’s voice. Could distinguish the words ‘sacré’ and ‘diable.’ The shrill voice was that of a foreigner. Could not be sure whether it was the voice of a man or of a woman. Could not make out what was said, but believed the language to be Spanish. The state of the room and of the bodies was described by this witness as we described them yesterday.

“Henri Duval, a neighbor, and by trade a silver-smith, deposes that he was one of the party who first entered the house. Corroborates the testimony of Musèt in general. As soon as they forced an entrance, they reclosed the door, to keep out the crowd, which collected very fast, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour. The shrill voice, this witness thinks, was that of an Italian. Was certain it was not French. Could not be sure that it was a man’s voice. It might have been a woman’s. Was not acquainted with the Italian language. Could not distinguish the words, but was convinced by the intonation that the speaker was Italian. Knew Madame L., and her daughter. Had conversed with both frequently. Was sure that the shrill voice was not that of either of the deceased.

“—Odenheimer, restaurateur. This witness volunteered his testimony. Not speaking French, was examined through an interpreter. Is a native of Amsterdam. Was passing the house at the time of the shrieks. They lasted for several minutes — probably ten. They were long and loud — very awful and distressing. Was one of those who entered the building. Corroborated the previous evidence in every respect but one. Was sure that the shrill voice was that of a man — of a Frenchman. Could not distinguish the words uttered. They were loud and quick — unequal — spoken apparently in fear as well as in anger. The voice was harsh — not so much shrill as harsh. Could not call it a shrill voice. The gruff voice said repeatedly, ‘sacré,’ ‘diable,’ and once ‘mon Dieu.’

“Jules Mignaud, banker, of the firm of Mignaud et Fils, Rue Deloraine. Is the elder Mignaud. Madame L’Espanaye had some property. Had opened an account with his banking house in the spring of the year — (eight years previously). Made frequent deposits in small sums. Had checked for nothing until the third day before her death, when she took out in person the sum of 4000 francs. This sum was paid in gold, and a clerk sent home with the money.

“Adolphe Le Bon, clerk to Mignaud et Fils, deposes that on the day in question, about noon, he accompanied Madame L’Espanaye to her residence with the 4000 francs, put up in two bags. Upon the door being opened, Mademoiselle L. appeared and took from his hands one of the bags, while the old lady relieved him of the other. He then bowed and departed. Did not see any person in the street at the time. It is a by-street — very lonely.

“William Bird, tailor, deposes that he was one of the party who entered the house. Is an Englishman. Has lived in Paris two years. Was one of the first to ascend the stairs. Heard the voices in contention. The gruff voice was that of a Frenchman. Could make out several words, but cannot now remember all. Heard distinctly ‘scaré’ and ‘mon Dieu.’ There was a sound at the moment as if of several persons struggling — a scraping and scuffling sound. The shrill voice was very loud — louder than the gruff one. Is sure that it was not the voice of an Englishman. Appeared to be that of a German. Might have been a woman’s voice. Does not understand German.

“Four of the above-named witnesses, being recalled, deposed that the door of the chamber in which was found the body of Mademoiselle L. was locked on the inside when the party reached it. Everything was perfectly silent — no groans or noises of any kind. Upon forcing the door no person was seen. The windows, both of the back and front room, were down and firmly fastened from within. A door between the two rooms was closed but not locked. The door leading from the front room into the passage was locked, with the key on the inside. A small room in the front of the house, on the fourth story, at the head of the passage, was open, the door being ajar. This room was crowded with old beds, boxes, and so forth. These were carefully removed and searched. There was not an inch of any portion of the house which was not carefully searched. Sweeps were sent up and down the chimneys. The house was a four-story one, with garrets (mansardes). A trap-door on the roof was nailed down very securely — did not appear to have been opened for years. The time elapsing between the hearing of the voices in contention and the breaking open of the room door was variously stated by the witnesses. Some made it as short as three minutes — some as long as five. The door was opened with difficulty.

“Alfonzo Garcio, undertaker, deposes that he resides in the Rue Morgue. Is a native of Spain. Was one of the party who entered the house. Did not proceed up stairs. Is nervous, and was apprehensive of the consequences of agitation. Heard the voices in contention. The gruff voice was that of a Frenchman. Could not distinguish what was said. The shrill voice was that of an Englishman — is sure of this. Does not understand the English language, but judges by the intonation.

“Alberto Montani, confectioner, deposes that he was among the first to ascend the stairs. Heard the voices in question. The gruff voice was that of a Frenchman. Distinguished several words. The speaker appeared to be expostulating. Could not make out the words of the shrill voice. Spoke quick and unevenly. Thinks it is the voice of a Russian. Corroborates the general testimony. Is an Italian. Never conversed with a native of Russia.

“Several witnesses, recalled, here testified that the chimneys of all the rooms of the fourth story were too narrow to admit the passage of a human being. By ‘sweeps’ were meant cylindrical sweeping-brushes, such as are employed by those who clean chimneys. These brushes were passed up and down every flue in the house. There is no back passage by which any one could have descended while the party proceeded upstairs. The body of Mademoiselle L’Espanaye was so firmly wedged in the chimney that it could not be got down until four or five of the party united their strength.

“Paul Dumas, physician, deposes that he was called to view the bodies about daybreak. They were both then lying on the sacking of the bedstead in the chamber where Mademoiselle L. was found. The corpse of the young lady was much bruised and excoriated. The fact that it had been thrust up the chimney would sufficiently account for these appearances. The throat was greatly chafed. There were several deep scratches just below the chin, together with a series of livid spots which were evidently the impressions of fingers. The face was fearfully discolored, and the eye-balls protruded. The tongue had been partially bitten through. A large bruise was discovered upon the pit of the stomach, produced, apparently, by the pressure of a knee. In the opinion of M. Dumas, Mademoiselle L’Espanaye had been throttled to death by some person or persons unknown. The corpse of the mother was horribly mutilated. All the bones of the right leg and arm were more or less shattered. The left tibia much splintered, as well as all the ribs of the left side. Whole body dreadfully bruised and discolored. It was not possible to say how the injuries had been inflicted. A heavy club of wood, or a broad bar of iron — a chair — any large, heavy, and obtuse weapon would have produced such results, if wielded by the hands of a very powerful man. No woman could have inflicted the blows with any weapon. The head of the deceased, when seen by witness, was entirely separated from the body, and was also greatly shattered. The throat had evidently been cut with some very sharp instrument — probably with a razor.

“Alexandre Etienne, surgeon, was called with M. Dumas to view the bodies. Corroborated the testimony, and the opinions of M. Dumas.

“Nothing farther of importance was elicited, although several other persons were examined. A murder so mysterious, and so perplexing in all its particulars, was never before committed in Paris — if indeed a murder has been committed at all. The police are entirely at fault — an unusual occurrence in affairs of this nature. There is not, however, the shadow of a clew apparent.”

The evening edition of the paper stated that the greatest excitement still continued in the Quartier St. Roch — that the premises in question had been carefully re-searched, and fresh examinations of witnesses instituted, but all to no purpose. A postscript, however, mentioned that Adolphe Le Bon had been arrested and imprisoned — although nothing appeared to criminate him beyond the facts already detailed.

Dupin seemed singularly interested in the progress of this affair — at least so I judged from his manner, for he made no comments. It was only after the announcement that Le Bon had been imprisoned, that he asked me my opinion respecting the murders.

I could merely agree with all Paris in considering them an insoluble mystery. I saw no means by which it would be possible to trace the murderer.

“We must not judge of the means,” said Dupin, “by this shell of an examination. The Parisian police, so much extolled for acumen, are cunning, but no more. There is no method in their proceedings, beyond the method of the moment. They make a vast parade of measures; but, not infrequently, these are so ill-adapted to the objects proposed, as to put us in mind of Monsieur Jourdain’s calling for his robe-de-chambre — pour mieux entendre la musique. The results attained by them are not unfrequently surprising, but for the most part, are brought about by simple diligence and activity. When these qualities are unavailing, their schemes fail. Vidocq, for example, was a good guesser, and the persevering man. But, without educated thought, he erred continually by the very intensity of his investigations. He impaired his vision by holding the object too close. He might see, perhaps, one or two points with unusual clearness, but in so doing he, necessarily, lost sight of the matter as a whole. Thus there is such a thing as being too profound. Truth is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more important knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial. The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found. The modes and sources of this kind of error are well typified in the contemplation of the heavenly bodies. To look at a star by glances — to view it in a sidelong way, by turning toward it the exterior portions of the retina (more susceptible of feeble impressions of light than the interior), is to behold the star distinctly — is to have the best appreciation of its lustre — a lustre which grows dim just in proportion as we turn our vision fully upon it. A greater number of rays actually fall upon the eye in the latter case, but, in the former, there is the more refined capacity for comprehension. By undue profundity we perplex and enfeeble thought; and it is possible to make even Venus herself vanish from the firmament by a scrutiny too sustained, too concentrated, or too direct.

“As for these murders, let us enter into some examinations for ourselves, before we make up an opinion respecting them. An inquiry will afford us amusement,” [I thought this an odd term, so applied, but said nothing] “and besides, Le Bon once rendered me a service for which I am not ungrateful. We will go and see the premises with our own eyes. I know G—, the Prefect of Police, and shall have no difficulty in obtaining the necessary permission.”

The permission was obtained, and we proceeded at once to the Rue Morgue. This is one of those miserable thoroughfares which intervene between the Rue Richelieu and the Rue St. Roch. It was late in the afternoon when we reached it, as this quarter is at a great distance from that in which we resided. The house was readily found; for there were still many persons gazing up at the closed shutters, with an objectless curiosity, from the opposite side of the way. It was an ordinary Parisian house, with a gateway, on one side of which was a glazed watch-box, with a sliding panel in the window, indicating a loge de concierge. Before going in we walked up the street, turned down an alley, and then, again turning, passed in the rear of the building — Dupin, meanwhile, examining the whole neighborhood, as well as the house, with a minuteness of attention for which I could see no possible object.

Retracing our steps, we came again to the front of the dwelling, rang, and, having shown our credentials, were admitted by the agents in charge. We went up stairs — into the chamber where the body of Mademoiselle L’Espanaye had been found, and where both the deceased still lay. The disorders of the room had, as usual, been suffered to exist. I saw nothing beyond what had been stated in the “Gazette des Tribunaux.” Dupin scrutinized everything — not excepting the bodies of the victims. We then went into the other rooms, and into the yard; a gendarme accompanying us throughout. The examination occupied us until dark, when we took our departure. On our way home my companion stepped in for a moment at the office of one of the daily papers.

I have said that the whims of my friend were manifold, and that Je les ménagais: — for this phrase there is no English equivalent. It was his humor, now, to decline all conversation on the subject of the murder, until about noon the next day. He then asked me, suddenly, if I had observed anything peculiar at the scene of the atrocity.

There was something in his manner of emphasizing the word “peculiar,” which caused me to shudder without knowing why.

“No, nothing peculiar,” I said; “nothing more, at least, than we both saw stated in the paper.”

“The ‘Gazette,’ ” he replied, “has not entered, I fear, into the unusual horror of the thing. But dismiss the idle opinions of this print. It appears to me that this mystery is considered insoluble, for the very reason which should cause it to be regarded as easy of solution — I mean for the outré character of its features. The police are confounded by the seeming absence of motive — not for the murder itself — but for the atrocity of the murder. They are puzzled, too, by the seeming impossibility of reconciling the voices heard in contention, with the facts that no one was discovered upstairs but the assassinated Mademoiselle L’Espanaye, and that there were no means of egress without the notice of the party ascending. The wild disorder of the room; the corpse thrust, with the head downward, up the chimney; the frightful mutilation of the body of the old lady; these considerations, with those just mentioned, and others which I need not mention, have sufficed to paralyze the powers, by putting completely at fault the boasted acumen, of the government agents. They have fallen into the gross but common error of confounding the unusual with the abstruse. But it is by these deviations from the plane of the ordinary, that reason feels its way, if at all, in its search for the true. In investigations such as we are now pursuing, it should not be so much asked ‘what has occurred,’ as ‘what has occurred that has never occurred before.’ In fact, the facility with which I shall arrive, or have arrived, at the solution of this mystery, is in the direct ratio of its apparent insolubility in the eyes of the police.”

I stared at the speaker in mute astonishment.

“I am now awaiting,” continued he, looking toward the door of our apartment — “I am now awaiting a person who, although perhaps not the perpetrator of these butcheries, must have been in some measure implicated in their perpetration. Of the worst portion of the crimes committed, it is probable that he is innocent. I hope that I am right in this supposition; for upon it I build my expectation of reading the entire riddle. I look for the man here — in this room — every moment. It is true that he may not arrive; but the probability is that he will. Should he come, it will be necessary to detain him. Here are pistols; and we both know how to use them when occasion demands their use.”

I took the pistols, scarcely knowing what I did, or believing what I heard, while Dupin went on, very much as if in a soliloquy. I have already spoken of his abstract manner at such times. His discourse was addressed to myself; but his voice, although by no means loud, had that intonation which is commonly employed in speaking to someone at a great distance. His eyes, vacant in expression, regarded only the wall.

“That the voices heard in contention,” he said, “by the party upon the stairs, were not the voices of the women themselves, was fully proved by the evidence. This relieves us of all doubt upon the question whether the old lady could have first destroyed the daughter, and afterward have committed suicide. I speak of this point chiefly for the sake of method; for the strength of Madame L’Espanaye would have been utterly unequal to the task of thrusting her daughter’s corpse up the chimney as it was found; and the nature of the wounds upon her own person entirely precludes the idea of self-destruction. Murder, then, has been committed by some third party; and the voices of this third party were those heard in contention. Let me now advert — not to the whole testimony respecting these voices — but to what was peculiar in that testimony. Did you observe anything peculiar about it?”

I remarked that, while all the witnesses agreed in supposing the gruff voice to be that of a Frenchman, there was much disagreement in regard to the shrill, or, as one individual termed it, the harsh voice.

“That was the evidence itself,” said Dupin, “but it was not the peculiarity of the evidence. You have observed nothing distinctive. Yet there was something to be observed. The witnesses, as you remarked, agreed about the gruff voice; they were here unanimous. But in regard to the shrill voice, the peculiarity is — not that they disagreed — but that, while an Italian, an Englishman, a Spaniard, a Hollander, and a Frenchman attempted to describe it, each one spoke of it as that of a foreigner. Each is sure that it was not the voice of one of his own countrymen. Each likens it — not to the voice of an individual of any nation with whose language he is conversant — but the converse. The Frenchman supposes it the voice of a Spaniard, and ‘might have distinguished some words had he been acquainted with the Spanish.’ The Dutchman maintains it to have been that of a Frenchman; but we find it stated that ‘not understanding French this witness was examined through an interpreter.’ The Englishman thinks it the voice of a German, and ‘does not understand German.’ The Spaniard ‘is sure’ that it was that of an Englishman, but ‘judges by the intonation’ altogether, ‘as he has no knowledge of the English.’ The Italian believes it the voice of a Russian, but ‘has never conversed with a native of Russia.’ A second Frenchman differs, moreover, with the first, and is positive that the voice was that of an Italian; but, not being cognizant of that tongue, is, like the Spaniard, ‘convinced by the intonation.’ Now, how strangely unusual must that voice have really been, about which such testimony as this could have been elicited! — in whose tones, even, denizens of the five great divisions of Europe could recognize nothing familiar! You will say that it might have been the voice of an Asiatic — of an African. Neither Asiatics nor Africans abound in Paris; but, without denying the inference, I will now merely call your attention to three points. The voice is termed by one witness ‘harsh rather than shrill.’ It is represented by two others to have been ‘quick and unequal.’ No words — no sounds resembling words — were by any witness mentioned as distinguishable.

“I know not,” continued Dupin, “what impression I may have made, so far, upon your own understanding; but I do not hesitate to say that legitimate deductions even from this portion of the testimony — the portion respecting the gruff and shrill voices — are in themselves sufficient to engender a suspicion which should give direction to all farther progress in the investigation of the mystery. I said ‘legitimate deductions’; but my meaning is not thus fully expressed. I designed to imply that the deductions are the sole proper ones, and that the suspicion arises inevitably from them as the single result. What the suspicion is, however, I will not say just yet. I merely wish you to bear in mind that, with myself, it was sufficiently forcible to give a definite form — a certain tendency — to my inquiries in the chamber.

“Let us now transport ourselves, in fancy, to this chamber. What shall we first seek here? The means of egress employed by the murderers. It is not too much to say that neither of us believe in preternatural events. Madame and Mademoiselle L’Espanaye were not destroyed by spirits. The doers of the deed were material and escaped materially. Then how? Fortunately, there is but one mode of reasoning upon the point, and that mode must lead us to a definite decision. Let us examine, each by each, the possible means of egress. It is clear that the assassins were in the room where Mademoiselle L’Espanaye was found, or at least in the room adjoining, when the party ascended the stairs. It is, then, only from these two apartments that we have to seek issues. The police have laid bare the floors, the ceiling, and the masonry of the walls, in every direction. No secret issues could have escaped their vigilance. But, not trusting to their eyes, I examined with my own. There were, then, no secret issues. Both doors leading from the rooms into the passage were securely locked, with the keys inside. Let us turn to the chimneys. These, although of ordinary width for some eight or ten feet above the hearths, will not admit, throughout their extent, the body of a large cat. The impossibility of egress, by means already stated, being thus absolute, we are reduced to the windows. Through those of the front room no one could have escaped without notice from the crowd in the street. The murderers must have passed, then, through those of the back room. Now, brought to this conclusion in so unequivocal a manner as we are, it is not our part, as reasoners, to reject it on account of apparent impossibilities. It is only left for us to prove that these apparent ‘impossibilities’ are, in reality, not such.

“There are two windows in the chamber. One of them is unobstructed by furniture, and is wholly visible. The lower portion of the other is hidden from view by the head of the unwieldy bedstead which is thrust close up against it. The former was found securely fastened from within. It resisted the utmost force of those who endeavored to raise it. A large gimlet-hole had been pierced in its frame to the left, and a very stout nail was found fitted therein, nearly to the head. Upon examining the other window, a similar nail was seen similarly fitted in it; and a vigorous attempt to raise this sash failed also. The police were now entirely satisfied that egress had not been in these directions. And, therefore, it was thought a matter of supererogation to withdraw the nails and open the windows.

“My own examination was somewhat more particular, and was so for the reason I have just given — because here it was, I knew, that all apparent impossibilities must be proved to be not such in reality.

“I proceeded to think thus — à posteriori. The murderers did escape from one of these windows. This being so, they could not have refastened the sashes from the inside, as they were found fastened; — the consideration which put a stop, through its obviousness, to the scrutiny of the police in this quarter. Yet the sashes were fastened. They must, then, have the power of fastening themselves. There was no escape from this conclusion. I stepped to the unobstructed casement, withdrew the nail with some difficulty, and attempted to raise the sash. It resisted all my efforts, as I had anticipated. A concealed spring must, I now knew, exist; and this corroboration of my idea convinced me that my premises, at least, were correct, however mysterious still appeared the circumstances attending the nails. A careful search soon brought to light the hidden spring. I pressed it, and, satisfied with the discovery, forbore to upraise the sash.

“I now replaced the nail and regarded it attentively. A person passing out through this window might have reclosed it, and the spring would have caught — but the nail could not have been replaced. The conclusion was plain, and again narrowed in the field of my investigations. The assassins must have escaped through the other window. Supposing, then, the springs upon each sash to be the same, as was probable, there must be found a difference between the nails, or at least between the modes of their fixture. Getting upon the sacking of the bedstead, I looked over the head-board minutely at the second casement. Passing my hand down behind the board, I readily discovered and pressed the spring, which was, as I had supposed, identical in character with its neighbor. I now looked at the nail. It was as stout as the other, and apparently fitted in the same manner — driven in nearly up to the head.

“You will say that I was puzzled; but, if you think so, you must have misunderstood the nature of the inductions. To use a sporting phrase, I had not been once ‘at fault.’ The scent had never for an instant been lost. There was no flaw in any link in the chain. I had traced the secret to its ultimate result, — and that result was the nail. It had, I say, in every respect, the appearance of its fellow in the other window; but this fact was an absolute nullity (conclusive as it might seem to be) when compared with the consideration that here, at this point, terminated the clew. ‘There must be something wrong,’ I said, ‘about the nail.’ I touched it; and the head, with about a quarter of an inch of the shank, came off in my fingers. The rest of the shank was in the gimlet-hole, where it had been broken off. The fracture was an old one (for its edges were incrusted with rust), and had apparently been accomplished by the blow of a hammer, which had partially imbedded, in the top of the bottom sash, the head portion of the nail. I now carefully replaced this head portion in the indentation whence I had taken it, and the resemblance to a perfect nail was complete — the fissure was invisible. Pressing the spring, I gently raised the sash for a few inches; the head went up with it, remaining firm in its bed. I closed the window, and the semblance of the whole nail was again perfect.

“This riddle, so far, was now unriddled. The assassin had escaped through the window which looked upon the bed. Dropping of its own accord upon his exit (or perhaps purposely closed), it had become fastened by the spring; and it was the retention of this spring which had been mistaken by the police for that of the nail — farther inquiry being thus considered unnecessary.

“The next question is that of the mode of descent. Upon this point I had been satisfied in my walk with you around the building. About five feet and a half from the casement in question there runs a lightning-rod. From this rod it would have been impossible for any one to reach to the window itself, to say nothing of entering it. I observed, however, that the shutters of the fourth story were of the peculiar kind called by Parisian carpenters ferrades — a kind rarely employed at the present day, but frequently seen upon very old mansions at Lyons and Bordeaux. They are in the form of an ordinary door (a single, not a folding door), except that the lower half is latticed or worked in open trellis — thus affording an excellent hold for the hands. In the present instance these shutters are fully three feet and a half broad. When we saw them from the rear of the house, they were both about half open — that is to say, they stood off at right angles from the wall. It is probable that the police, as well as myself, examined the back of the tenement; but, if so, in looking at these ferrades in the line of their breadth (as they must have done), they did not perceive this great breadth itself, or, at all events, failed to take it into due consideration. In fact, having once satisfied themselves that no egress could have been made in this quarter, they would naturally bestow here a very cursory examination. It was clear to me, however, that the shutter belonging to the window at the head of the bed, would, if swung fully back to the wall, reach to within two feet of the lightning-rod. It was also evident that, by exertion of a very unusual degree of activity and courage, an entrance into the window, from the rod, might have been thus effected. By reaching to the distance of two feet and a half (we now suppose the shutter open to its whole extent) a robber might have taken a firm grasp upon the trellis-work. Letting go, then, his hold upon the rod, placing his feet securely against the wall, and springing boldly from it, he might have swung the shutter so as to close it, and, if we imagine the window open at the time, might even have swung himself into the room.

“I wish you to bear especially in mind that I have spoken of a very unusual degree of activity as requisite to success in so hazardous and so difficult a feat. It is my design to show you, first, that the thing might possibly have been accomplished: — but, secondly and chiefly, I wish to impress upon your understanding the very extraordinary — the almost præternatural character of that agility which could have accomplished it.

“You will say, no doubt, using the language of the law, that to make out my case, I should rather undervalue than insist upon a full estimation of the activity required in this matter. This may be the practice in law, but it is not the usage of reason. My ultimate object is only the truth. My immediate purpose is to lead you to place in juxtaposition, that very unusual activity of which I have just spoken, with that very peculiar shrill (or harsh) and unequal voice, about whose nationality no two persons could be found to agree, and in whose utterance no syllabification could be detected.”

At these words a vague and half-formed conception of the meaning of Dupin flitted over my mind. I seemed to be upon the verge of comprehension, without power to comprehend — as men, at times, find themselves upon the brink of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember. My friend went on with his discourse.

“You will see,” he said, “that I have shifted the question from the mode of egress to that of ingress. It was my design to convey the idea that both were effected in the same manner, at the same point. Let us now revert to the interior of the room. Let us survey the appearances here. The drawers of the bureau, it is said, had been rifled, although many articles of apparel still remained within them. The conclusion here is absurd. It is a mere guess — a very silly one — and no more. How are we to know that the articles found in the drawers were not all these drawers had originally contained? Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter lived an exceedingly retired life — saw no company — seldom went out — had little use for the numerous changes of habiliment. Those found were at least of as good quality as any likely to be possessed by these ladies. If a thief had taken any, why did he not take the best — why did he not take all? In a word, why did he abandon four thousand francs in gold to encumber himself with a bundle of linen? The gold was abandoned. Nearly the whole sum mentioned by Monsieur Mignaud, the banker, was discovered, in bags, upon the floor. I wish you, therefore, to discard from your thoughts the blundering idea of motive, engendered in the brains of the police by that portion of the evidence which speaks of money delivered at the door of the house. Coincidences ten times as remarkable as this (the delivery of the money, and murder committed within three days upon the party receiving it), happen to all of us every hour of our lives, without attracting even momentary notice. Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities — that theory to which the most glorious objects of human research are indebted for the most glorious of illustration. In the present instance, had the gold been gone, the fact of its delivery three days before would have formed something more than a coincidence. It would have been corroborative of this idea of motive. But, under the real circumstances of the case, if we are to suppose gold the motive of this outrage, we must also imagine the perpetrator so vacillating an idiot as to have abandoned his gold and his motive altogether.

“Keeping now steadily in mind the points to which I have drawn your attention — that peculiar voice, that unusual agility, and that startling absence of motive in a murder so singularly atrocious as this — let us glance at the butchery itself. Here is a woman strangled to death by manual strength, and thrust up a chimney, head downward. Ordinary assassins employ no such mode of murder as this. Least of all, do they thus dispose of the murdered. In this manner of thrusting the corpse up the chimney, you will admit that there was something excessively outré — something altogether irreconcilable with our common notions of human action, even when we suppose the actors the most depraved of men. Think, too, how great must have been that strength which could have thrust the body up such an aperture so forcibly that the united vigor of several persons was found barely sufficient to drag it down!

“Turn, now, to other indications of the employment of a vigor most marvellous. On the hearth were thick tresses — very thick tresses — of gray human hair. These had been torn out by the roots. You are aware of the great force necessary in tearing thus from the head even twenty or thirty hairs together. You saw the locks in question as well as myself. Their roots (a hideous sight!) were clotted with fragments of the flesh of the scalp — sure tokens of the prodigious power which had been exerted in uprooting perhaps half a million of hairs at a time. The throat of the old lady was not merely cut, but the head absolutely severed from the body: the instrument was a mere razor. I wish you also to look at the brutal ferocity of these deeds. Of the bruises upon the body of Madame L’Espanaye I do not speak. Monsieur Dumas, and his worthy coadjutor Monsieur Etienne, have pronounced that they were inflicted by some obtuse instrument; and so far these gentlemen are very correct. The obtuse instrument was clearly the stone pavement in the yard, upon which the victim had fallen from the window which looked in upon the bed. This idea, however simple it may now seem, escaped the police for the same reason that the breadth of the shutters escaped them — because, by the affair of the nails, their perceptions had been hermetically sealed against the possibility of the windows having ever been opened at all.

“If now, in addition to all these things, you have properly reflected upon the odd disorder of the chamber, we have gone so far as to combine the ideas of an agility astounding, a strength superhuman, a ferocity brutal, a butchery without motive, a grotesquerie in horror absolutely alien from humanity, and a voice foreign in tone to the ears of men of many nations, and devoid of all distinct or intelligible syllabification. What result, then, has ensued? What impression have I made upon your fancy?”

I felt a creeping of the flesh as Dupin asked me the question. “A madman,” I said, “has done this deed — some raving maniac, escaped from a neighboring Maison de Santé.”

“In some respects,” he replied, “your idea is not irrelevant. But the voices of madmen, even in their wildest paroxysms, are never found to tally with that peculiar voice heard upon the stairs. Madmen are of some nation, and their language, however incoherent in its words, has always the coherence of syllabification. Besides, the hair of a madman is not such as I now hold in my hand. I disentangled this little tuft from the rigidly clutched fingers of Madame L’Espanaye. Tell me what you can make of it.”

“Dupin!” I said, completely unnerved; “this hair is most unusual — this is no human hair.”

“I have not asserted that it is,” said he; “but, before we decide this point, I wish you to glance at the little sketch I have here traced upon this paper. It is a facsimile drawing of what has been described in one portion of the testimony as ‘dark bruises and deep indentations of finger nails’ upon the throat of Mademoiselle L’Espanaye, and in another (by Messrs. Dumas and Etienne) as a ‘series of livid spots, evidently the impression of fingers.’

“You will perceive,” continued my friend, spreading out the paper upon the table before us, “that this drawing gives the idea of a firm and fixed hold. There is no slipping apparent. Each finger has retained — possibly until the death of the victim — the fearful grasp by which it originally embedded itself. Attempt, now, to place all your fingers, at the same time, in the respective impressions as you see them.”

I made the attempt in vain.

“We are possibly not giving this matter a fair trial,” he said. “The paper is spread out upon a plane surface; but the human throat is cylindrical. Here is a billet of wood, the circumference of which is about that of the throat. Wrap the drawing around it, and try the experiment again.”

I did so; but the difficulty was even more obvious than before. “This,” I said, “is the mark of no human hand.”

“Read now,” replied Dupin, “this passage from Cuvier.”

It was a minute anatomical and generally descriptive account of the large fulvous Ourang-Outang of the East Indian Islands. The gigantic stature, the prodigious strength and activity, the wild ferocity, and the imitative propensities of these mammalia are sufficiently well known to all. I understood the full horrors of the murder at once.

“The description of the digits,” said I, as I made an end of the reading, “is in exact accordance with this drawing. I see no animal but an Ourang-Outang, of the species here mentioned, could have impressed the indentations as you have traced them. This tuft of tawny hair, too, is identical in character with that of the beast of Cuvier. But I cannot possibly comprehend the particulars of this frightful mystery. Besides, there were two voices heard in contention, and one of them was unquestionably the voice of a Frenchman.”

“True; and you will remember an expression attributed almost unanimously, by the evidence, to this voice — the expression, ‘mon Dieu!’ This, under the circumstances, has been justly characterized by one of the witnesses (Montani, the confectioner) as an expression of remonstrance or expostulation. Upon these two words, therefore, I have mainly built my hopes of a full solution of the riddle. A Frenchman was cognizant of the murder. It is possible — indeed it is far more than probable — that he was innocent of all participation in the bloody transactions which took place. The Ourang-Outang may have escaped from him. He may have traced it to the chamber; but, under the agitating circumstances which ensued, he could never have recaptured it. It is still at large. I will not pursue these guesses — for I have no right to call them more — since the shades of reflection upon which they are based are scarcely of sufficient depth to be appreciated by my own intellect, and since I could not pretend to make them intelligible to the understanding of another. We will call them guesses, then, and speak of them as such. If the Frenchman in question is indeed, as I suppose, innocent of this atrocity, this advertisement, which I left last night, upon our return home, at the office of ‘Le Monde’ (a paper devoted to the shipping interest, and much sought by sailors), will bring him to our residence.”

He handed me a paper, and I read thus:

“How was it possible,” I asked, “that you should know the man to be a sailor, and belonging to a Maltese vessel?”

“I do not know it,” said Dupin. “I am not sure of it. Here, however, is a small piece of ribbon, which from its form, and from its greasy appearance, has evidently been used in tying the hair in one of those long queues of which sailors are so fond. Moreover, this knot is one which few besides sailors can tie, and is peculiar to the Maltese. I picked the ribbon up at the foot of the lightning-rod. It could not have belonged to either of the deceased. Now if, after all, I am wrong in my induction from this ribbon, that the Frenchman was a sailor belonging to a Maltese vessel, still I can have done no harm in saying what I did in the advertisement. If I am in error, he will merely suppose that I had been misled by some circumstance into which he will not take the trouble to inquire. But if I am right, a great point is gained. Cognizant although innocent of the murder, the Frenchman will naturally hesitate about replying to the advertisement — about demanding the Ourang-Outang. He will reason thus: — ‘I am innocent; I am poor; my Ourang-Outang is of great value — to one in my circumstances a fortune of itself — why should I lose it through idle apprehensions of danger? Here it is, within my grasp. It was found in the Bois de Boulogne — at a vast distance from the scene of that butchery. How can it ever be suspected that a brute beast should have done the deed? The police are at fault — they have failed to procure the slightest clew. Should they even trace the animal, it would be impossible to prove me cognizant of the murder, or to implicate me in guilt on account of that cognizance. Above all, I am known. The advertiser designates me as the possessor of the beast. I am not sure to what limit his knowledge may extend. Should I avoid claiming a property of so great value, which it is known that I possess, I will render the animal at least, liable to suspicion. It is not my policy to attract attention either to myself or to the beast. I will answer the advertisement, get the Ourang-Outang, and keep it close until this matter has blown over.’ ”

At this moment we heard a step upon the stairs.

“Be ready,” said Dupin, “with your pistols, but neither use them nor show them until at a signal from myself.”

The front door of the house had been left open, and the visitor had entered, without ringing, and advanced several steps upon the staircase. Now, however, he seemed to hesitate. Presently we heard him descending. Dupin was moving quickly to the door, when we again heard him coming up. He did not turn back a second time, but stepped up with decision, and rapped at the door of our chamber.

“Come in,” said Dupin, in a cheerful and hearty tone.

A man entered. He was a sailor, evidently — a tall, stout, and muscular-looking person, with a certain dare-devil expression of countenance, not altogether unprepossessing. His face, greatly sunburnt, was more than half hidden by whisker and mustachio. He had with him a huge oaken cudgel, but appeared to be otherwise unarmed. He bowed awkwardly, and bade us “good evening,” in French accents, which, although somewhat Neufchatelish, were still sufficiently indicative of a Parisian origin.

“Sit down, my friend,” said Dupin. “I suppose you have called about the Ourang-Outang. Upon my word, I almost envy you the possession of him; a remarkably fine, and no doubt very valuable animal. How old do you suppose him to be?”

The sailor drew a long breath, with the air of a man relieved of some intolerable burden, and then replied in an assured tone:

“I have no way of telling — but he can’t be more than four or five years old. Have you got him here?”

“Oh, no; we had no conveniences for keeping him here. He is at a livery stable in the Rue Dubourg, just by. You can get him in the morning. Of course you are prepared to identify the property?”

“To be sure I am, sir.”

“I shall be sorry to part with him,” said Dupin.

“I don’t mean that you should be at all this trouble for nothing, sir,” said the man. “Couldn’t expect it. Am very willing to pay a reward for the finding of the animal — that is to say, any thing in reason.”

“Well,” replied my friend, “that is all very fair, to be sure. Let me think! — what should I have? Oh! I will tell you. My reward shall be this. You shall give me all the information in your power about these murders in the Rue Morgue.”

Dupin said the last words in a very low tone, and very quietly. Just as quietly, too, he walked toward the door, locked it, and put the key in his pocket. He then drew a pistol from his bosom and placed it, without the least flurry, upon the table.

The sailor’s face flushed up as if he were struggling with suffocation. He started to his feet and grasped his cudgel; but the next moment he fell back into his seat, trembling violently, and with the countenance of death itself. He spoke not a word. I pitied him from the bottom of my heart.

“My friend,” said Dupin, in a kind tone, “you are alarming yourself unnecessarily — you are indeed. We mean you no harm whatever. I pledge you the honor of a gentleman, and of a Frenchman, that we intend you no injury. I perfectly well know that you are innocent of the atrocities in the Rue Morgue. It will not do, however, to deny that you are in some measure implicated in them. From what I have already said, you must know that I have had means of information about this matter — means of which you could never have dreamed. Now the thing stands thus. You have done nothing which you could have avoided — nothing, certainly, which renders you culpable. You were not even guilty of robbery, when you might have robbed with impunity. You have nothing to conceal. You have no reason for concealment. On the other hand, you are bound by every principle of honor to confess all you know. An innocent man is now imprisoned, charged with a crime of which you can point out the perpetrator.”

The sailor had recovered his presence of mind, in a great measure, while Dupin uttered these words; but his original boldness of bearing was all gone.

“So help me God!” said he, after a brief pause, “I will tell you all I know about this affair — but I do not expect you to believe one half I say — I would be a fool indeed if I did. Still, I am innocent, and I will make a clean breast if I die for it.”

What he stated was, in substance, this. He had lately made a voyage to the Indian Archipelago. A party, of which he formed one, landed at Borneo, and passed into the interior on an excursion of pleasure. Himself and a companion had captured the Ourang-Outang. This companion dying, the animal fell into his own exclusive possession. After great trouble, occasioned by the intractable ferocity of his captive during the home voyage, he at length succeeded in lodging it safely at his own residence in Paris, where, not to attract toward himself the unpleasant curiosity of his neighbors, he kept it carefully secluded, until such time as it should recover from a wound in the foot, received from a splinter on board ship. His ultimate design was to sell it.

Returning home from some sailors’ frolic on the night, or rather in the morning, of the murder, he found the beast occupying his own bedroom, into which it had broken from a closet adjoining, where it had been, as was thought, securely confined. Razor in hand, and fully lathered, it was sitting before a looking-glass, attempting the operation of shaving, in which it had no doubt previously watched its master through the keyhole of the closet. Terrified at the sight of so dangerous a weapon in the possession of an animal so ferocious, and so well able to use it, the man, for some moments, was at a loss what to do. He had been accustomed, however, to quiet the creature, even in its fiercest moods, by the use of a whip, and to this he now resorted. Upon sight of it, the Ourang-Outang sprang at once through the door of the chamber, down the stairs, and thence, through a window, unfortunately open, into the street.

The Frenchman followed in despair; the ape, razor still in hand, occasionally stopping to look back and gesticulate at his pursuer, until the latter had nearly come up with it. It then again made off. In this manner the chase continued for a long time. The streets were profoundly quiet, as it was nearly three o’clock in the morning. In passing down an alley in the rear of the Rue Morgue, the fugitive’s attention was arrested by a light gleaming from the open window of Madame L’Espanaye’s chamber, in the fourth story of her house. Rushing to the building, it perceived the lightning-rod, clambered up with inconceivable agility, grasped the shutter, which was thrown fully back against the wall, and, by its means, swung itself directly upon the headboard of the bed. The whole feat did not occupy a minute. The shutter was kicked open again by the Ourang-Outang as it entered the room.

The sailor, in the meantime, was both rejoiced and perplexed. He had strong hopes of now recapturing the brute, as it could scarcely escape from the trap into which it had ventured, except by the rod, where it might be intercepted as it came down. On the other hand, there was much cause for anxiety as to what it might do in the house. This latter reflection urged the man still to follow the fugitive. A lightning-rod is ascended without difficulty, especially by a sailor; but when he had arrived as high as the window, which lay far to his left, his career was stopped; the most that he could accomplish was to reach over so as to obtain a glimpse of the interior of the room. At this glimpse he nearly fell from his hold through excess of horror. Now it was that those hideous shrieks arose upon the night, which had startled from slumber the inmates of the Rue Morgue. Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter, habited in their night clothes, had apparently been occupied in arranging some papers in the iron chest already mentioned, which had been wheeled into the middle of the room. It was open, and its contents lay beside it on the floor. The victims must have been sitting with their backs toward the window, and, from the time elapsing between the ingress of the beast and the screams, it seem probable that it was not immediately perceived. The flapping-to of the shutter would naturally have been attributed to the wind.

As the sailor looked in, the gigantic animal had seized Madame L’Espanaye by the hair (which was loose, as she had been combing it), and was flourishing the razor about her face, in imitation of the motions of a barber. The daughter lay prostrate and motionless; she had swooned. The screams and struggles of the old lady (during which the hair was torn from her head) had the effect of changing the probably pacific purposes of the Ourang-Outang into those of wrath. With one determined sweep of its muscular arm it nearly severed her head from her body. The sight of blood inflamed its anger into phrensy. Gnashing its teeth, and flashing fire from its eyes, it flew upon the body of the girl, and imbedded its fearful talons in her throat, retaining its grasp until she expired. Its wandering and wild glances fell at this moment upon the head of the bed, over which the face of its master, rigid with horror, was just discernible.

The fury of the beast, who no doubt bore still in mind the dreaded whip, was instantly converted into fear. Conscious of having deserved punishment, it seemed desirous of concealing its bloody deeds, and skipped about the chamber in an agony of nervous agitation; throwing down and breaking the furniture as it moved, and dragging the bed from the bedstead. In conclusion, it seized first the corpse of the daughter, and thrust it up the chimney, as it was found; then that of the old lady, which it immediately hurled through the window headlong.

As the ape approached the casement with its mutilated burden, the sailor shrank aghast to the rod, and, rather gliding than clambering down it, hurried at once home — dreading the consequences of the butchery, and gladly abandoning, in his terror, all solicitude about the fate of the Ourang-Outang. The words heard by the party upon the staircase were the Frenchman’s exclamations of horror and affright, commingled with the fiendish jabberings of the brute.

I have scarcely any thing to add. The Ourang-Outang must have escaped from the chamber, by the rod, just before the breaking of the door. It must have closed the window as it passed through it. It was subsequently caught by the owner himself, who obtained for it a very large sum at the Jardin des Plantes. Le Bon was instantly released, upon our narration of the circumstances (with some comments from Dupin) at the bureau of the Prefect of Police. This functionary, however well disposed to my friend, could not altogether conceal his chagrin at the turn which affairs had taken, and was fain to indulge in a sarcasm or two, about the propriety of every person minding his own business.

“Let him talk,” said Dupin, who had not thought it necessary to reply. “Let him discourse; it will ease his conscience. I am satisfied with having defeated him in his own castle. Nevertheless, that he failed in the solution of this mystery, is by no means that matter for wonder which he supposes it; for, in truth, our friend the Prefect is somewhat too cunning to be profound. In his wisdom is no stamen. It is all head and no body, like the pictures of the Goddess Laverna — or, at best, all head and shoulders, like a codfish. But he is a good creature after all. I like him especially for one master stroke of cant, by which he has attained his reputation for ingenuity. I mean the way he has ‘de nier ce qui est, et d’expliquer ce qui n’est pas.’ ” [Rousseau — Nouvelle Heloise.]

The Five Orange Pips ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

Original publication: The Strand Magazine, November 1891; first collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (London, George Newnes, 1892)

Having published two novels about Sherlock Holmes — A Study in Scarlet (1887) and The Sign of Four (1890) — with only modest success, Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) came up with a new idea: a series of individual stories (not a serialized novel, as was common in that era) about a single character. H. Greehough Smith, the literary editor of The Strand Magazine, first published in the beginning of 1891, liked the idea and accepted the first Sherlock Holmes story, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” for the July 1891 issue. Smith, recognizing that he had found something special, called it “a gift from Heaven.” Every Sherlock Holmes novel and story from that issue on was published first in The Strand.

In “The Five Orange Pips,” several people receive an envelope marked K. K. K. that contains five orange pips (seeds). The response of the recipients is to flee but some cannot react quickly enough and die. It is one of only two stories in which Holmes cannot save the life of a client.

One of the most colorful and memorable lines of the canon appears in this story: “The wind cried and sobbed like a child in the chimney.”

Doyle ranked this story as number seven of his favorite Holmes stories for a list published in The Strand in 1927.

Title: The House of Fear, 1945

Studio: Universal Pictures

Director: Roy William Neill

Screenwriter: Roy Chanslor

Producer: Roy William Neill

• Basil Rathbone (Sherlock Holmes)

• Nigel Bruce (Doctor John H. Watson)

• Dennis Hoey (Lestrade)

• Aubrey Mather (Alastair)

No fictional character has inspired more motion pictures than Sherlock Holmes (if you believe Holmes to be fictional, that is). The films range from superb to awful, but the fourteen that featured Rathbone and Bruce were consistently enjoyable, and many movie aficionados still rank Rathbone as the best portrayer of the great detective to ever step in front of a camera. Scores of films were directly inspired by stories from the Doyle canon, some more closely than others, so selecting which stories and films to include in this collection was, admittedly, like pulling a ball out of a lottery jar, so I made a careful, thoughtful analysis and went with those I subjectively liked the most.

All of the backstory that provides a motive for the murders in the short story is absent in The House of Fear, the only vestige being the envelope of dried orange pips serving as the harbinger of death. It is a good mystery, even if Holmes is a bit slow about solving it, though listening closely to the film’s dialogue provides ample evidence that Conan Doyle’s words were not plagiarized for the film.

In one inauspicious moment, Holmes says, “I suspect no one and everyone,” a line used (almost verbatim, if memory serves) by Inspector Clouseau.

THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS Arthur Conan Doyle

When I glance over my notes and records of the Sherlock Holmes cases between the years ’82 and ’90, I am faced by so many which present strange and interesting features that it is no easy matter to know which to choose and which to leave. Some, however, have already gained publicity through the papers, and others have not offered a field for those peculiar qualities which my friend possessed in so high a degree, and which it is the object of these papers to illustrate. Some, too, have baffled his analytical skill, and would be, as narratives, beginnings without an ending, while others have been but partially cleared up, and have their explanations founded rather upon conjecture and surmise than on that absolute logical proof which was so dear to him. There is, however, one of these last which was so remarkable in its details and so startling in its results that I am tempted to give some account of it in spite of the fact that there are points in connection with it which never have been, and probably never will be, entirely cleared up.

The year ’87 furnished us with a long series of cases of greater or less interest, of which I retain the records. Among my headings under this one twelve months I find an account of the adventure of the Paradol Chamber, of the Amateur Mendicant Society, who held a luxurious club in the lower vault of a furniture warehouse, of the facts connected with the loss of the British barque “Sophy Anderson,” of the singular adventures of the Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa, and finally of the Camberwell poisoning case. In the latter, as may be remembered, Sherlock Holmes was able, by winding up the dead man’s watch, to prove that it had been wound up two hours before, and that therefore the deceased had gone to bed within that time — a deduction which was of the greatest importance in clearing up the case. All these I may sketch out at some future date, but none of them present such singular features as the strange train of circumstances which I have now taken up my pen to describe.

It was in the latter days of September, and the equinoctial gales had set in with exceptional violence. All day the wind had screamed and the rain had beaten against the windows, so that even here in the heart of great, hand-made London we were forced to raise our minds for the instant from the routine of life and to recognise the presence of those great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilisation, like untamed beasts in a cage. As evening drew in, the storm grew higher and louder, and the wind cried and sobbed like a child in the chimney. Sherlock Holmes sat moodily at one side of the fireplace cross-indexing his records of crime, while I at the other was deep in one of Clark Russell’s fine sea-stories until the howl of the gale from without seemed to blend with the text, and the splash of the rain to lengthen out into the long swash of the sea waves. My wife was on a visit to her mother’s, and for a few days I was a dweller once more in my old quarters at Baker Street.

“Why,” said I, glancing up at my companion, “that was surely the bell. Who could come to-night? Some friend of yours, perhaps?”

“Except yourself I have none,” he answered. “I do not encourage visitors.”

“A client, then?”

“If so, it is a serious case. Nothing less would bring a man out on such a day and at such an hour. But I take it that it is more likely to be some crony of the landlady’s.”

Sherlock Holmes was wrong in his conjecture, however, for there came a step in the passage and a tapping at the door. He stretched out his long arm to turn the lamp away from himself and towards the vacant chair upon which a newcomer must sit.

“Come in!” said he.

The man who entered was young, some two-and-twenty at the outside, well-groomed and trimly clad, with something of refinement and delicacy in his bearing. The streaming umbrella which he held in his hand, and his long shining waterproof told of the fierce weather through which he had come. He looked about him anxiously in the glare of the lamp, and I could see that his face was pale and his eyes heavy, like those of a man who is weighed down with some great anxiety.

“I owe you an apology,” he said, raising his golden pince-nez to his eyes. “I trust that I am not intruding. I fear that I have brought some traces of the storm and rain into your snug chamber.”

“Give me your coat and umbrella,” said Holmes. “They may rest here on the hook and will be dry presently. You have come up from the south-west, I see.”

“Yes, from Horsham.”

“That clay and chalk mixture which I see upon your toe caps is quite distinctive.”

“I have come for advice.”

“That is easily got.”

“And help.”

“That is not always so easy.”

“I have heard of you, Mr. Holmes. I heard from Major Prendergast how you saved him in the Tankerville Club scandal.”

“Ah, of course. He was wrongfully accused of cheating at cards.”

“He said that you could solve anything.”

“He said too much.”

“That you are never beaten.”

“I have been beaten four times — three times by men, and once by a woman.”

“But what is that compared with the number of your successes?”

“It is true that I have been generally successful.”

“Then you may be so with me.”

“I beg that you will draw your chair up to the fire and favour me with some details as to your case.”

“It is no ordinary one.”

“None of those which come to me are. I am the last court of appeal.”

“And yet I question, sir, whether, in all your experience, you have ever listened to a more mysterious and inexplicable chain of events than those which have happened in my own family.”

“You fill me with interest,” said Holmes. “Pray give us the essential facts from the commencement, and I can afterwards question you as to those details which seem to me to be most important.”

The young man pulled his chair up and pushed his wet feet out towards the blaze.

“My name,” said he, “is John Openshaw, but my own affairs have, as far as I can understand, little to do with this awful business. It is a hereditary matter; so in order to give you an idea of the facts, I must go back to the commencement of the affair.

“You must know that my grandfather had two sons — my uncle Elias and my father Joseph. My father had a small factory at Coventry, which he enlarged at the time of the invention of bicycling. He was a patentee of the Openshaw unbreakable tire, and his business met with such success that he was able to sell it and to retire upon a handsome competence.

“My uncle Elias emigrated to America when he was a young man and became a planter in Florida, where he was reported to have done very well. At the time of the war he fought in Jackson’s army, and afterwards under Hood, where he rose to be a colonel. When Lee laid down his arms my uncle returned to his plantation, where he remained for three or four years. About 1869 and 1870 he came back to Europe and took a small estate in Sussex, near Horsham. He had made a very considerable fortune in the States, and his reason for leaving them was his aversion to the negroes, and his dislike of the Republican policy in extending the franchise to them. He was a singular man, fierce and quick-tempered, very foul-mouthed when he was angry, and of a most retiring disposition. During all the years that he lived at Horsham, I doubt if ever he set foot in the town. He had a garden and two or three fields round his house, and there he would take his exercise, though very often for weeks on end he would never leave his room. He drank a great deal of brandy and smoked very heavily, but he would see no society and did not want any friends, not even his own brother.

“He didn’t mind me; in fact, he took a fancy to me, for at the time when he saw me first I was a youngster of twelve or so. This would be in the year 1878, after he had been eight or nine years in England. He begged my father to let me live with him and he was very kind to me in his way. When he was sober he used to be fond of playing backgammon and draughts with me, and he would make me his representative both with the servants and with the tradespeople, so that by the time that I was sixteen I was quite master of the house. I kept all the keys and could go where I liked and do what I liked, so long as I did not disturb him in his privacy. There was one singular exception, however, for he had a single room, a lumber-room up among the attics, which was invariably locked, and which he would never permit either me or anyone else to enter. With a boy’s curiosity I have peeped through the keyhole, but I was never able to see more than such a collection of old trunks and bundles as would be expected in such a room.

“One day — it was in March, 1883 — a letter with a foreign stamp lay upon the table in front of the colonel’s plate. It was not a common thing for him to receive letters, for his bills were all paid in ready money, and he had no friends of any sort. ‘From India!’ said he as he took it up, ‘Pondicherry postmark! What can this be?’ Opening it hurriedly, out there jumped five little dried orange pips, which pattered down upon his plate. I began to laugh at this, but the laugh was struck from my lips at the sight of his face. His lip had fallen, his eyes were protruding, his skin the colour of putty, and he glared at the envelope which he still held in his trembling hand, ‘K. K. K.!’ he shrieked, and then, ‘My God, my God, my sins have overtaken me!’

“ ‘What is it, uncle?’ I cried.

“ ‘Death,’ said he, and rising from the table he retired to his room, leaving me palpitating with horror. I took up the envelope and saw scrawled in red ink upon the inner flap, just above the gum, the letter K three times repeated. There was nothing else save the five dried pips. What could be the reason of his overpowering terror? I left the breakfast-table, and as I ascended the stair I met him coming down with an old rusty key, which must have belonged to the attic, in one hand, and a small brass box, like a cashbox, in the other.

“ ‘They may do what they like, but I’ll checkmate them still,’ said he with an oath. ‘Tell Mary that I shall want a fire in my room to-day, and send down to Fordham, the Horsham lawyer.’

“I did as he ordered, and when the lawyer arrived I was asked to step up to the room. The fire was burning brightly, and in the grate there was a mass of black, fluffy ashes, as of burned paper, while the brass box stood open and empty beside it. As I glanced at the box I noticed, with a start, that upon the lid was printed the treble K which I had read in the morning upon the envelope.

“ ‘I wish you, John,’ said my uncle, ‘to witness my will. I leave my estate, with all its advantages and all its disadvantages, to my brother, your father, whence it will, no doubt, descend to you. If you can enjoy it in peace, well and good! If you find you cannot, take my advice, my boy, and leave it to your deadliest enemy. I am sorry to give you such a two-edged thing, but I can’t say what turn things are going to take. Kindly sign the paper where Mr. Fordham shows you.’

“I signed the paper as directed, and the lawyer took it away with him. The singular incident made, as you may think, the deepest impression upon me, and I pondered over it and turned it every way in my mind without being able to make anything of it. Yet I could not shake off the vague feeling of dread which it left behind, though the sensation grew less keen as the weeks passed and nothing happened to disturb the usual routine of our lives. I could see a change in my uncle, however. He drank more than ever, and he was less inclined for any sort of society. Most of his time he would spend in his room, with the door locked upon the inside, but sometimes he would emerge in a sort of drunken frenzy and would burst out of the house and tear about the garden with a revolver in his hand, screaming out that he was afraid of no man, and that he was not to be cooped up, like a sheep in a pen, by man or devil. When these hot fits were over, however, he would rush tumultuously in at the door and lock and bar it behind him, like a man who can brazen it out no longer against the terror which lies at the roots of his soul. At such times I have seen his face, even on a cold day, glisten with moisture, as though it were new raised from a basin.

“Well, to come to an end of the matter, Mr. Holmes, and not to abuse your patience, there came a night when he made one of those drunken sallies from which he never came back. We found him, when we went to search for him, face downward in a little green-scummed pool, which lay at the foot of the garden. There was no sign of any violence, and the water was but two feet deep, so that the jury, having regard to his known eccentricity, brought in a verdict of ‘suicide.’ But I, who knew how he winced from the very thought of death, had much ado to persuade myself that he had gone out of his way to meet it. The matter passed, however, and my father entered into possession of the estate, and of some fourteen thousand pounds, which lay to his credit at the bank.”

“One moment,” Holmes interposed, “your statement is, I foresee, one of the most remarkable to which I have ever listened. Let me have the date of the reception by your uncle of the letter, and the date of his supposed suicide.”

“The letter arrived on March 10, 1883. His death was seven weeks later, upon the night of May 2nd.”

“Thank you. Pray proceed.”

“When my father took over the Horsham property, he, at my request, made a careful examination of the attic, which had been always locked up. We found the brass box there, although its contents had been destroyed. On the inside of the cover was a paper label, with the initials of K. K. K. repeated upon it, and ‘Letters, memoranda, receipts, and a register’ written beneath. These, we presume, indicated the nature of the papers which had been destroyed by Colonel Openshaw. For the rest, there was nothing of much importance in the attic save a great many scattered papers and note-books bearing upon my uncle’s life in America. Some of them were of the war time and showed that he had done his duty well and had borne the repute of a brave soldier. Others were of a date during the reconstruction of the Southern states, and were mostly concerned with politics, for he had evidently taken a strong part in opposing the carpet-bag politicians who had been sent down from the North.

“Well, it was the beginning of ’84 when my father came to live at Horsham, and all went as well as possible with us until the January of ’85. On the fourth day after the new year I heard my father give a sharp cry of surprise as we sat together at the breakfast-table. There he was, sitting with a newly opened envelope in one hand and five dried orange pips in the outstretched palm of the other one. He had always laughed at what he called my cock-and-bull story about the colonel, but he looked very scared and puzzled now that the same thing had come upon himself.

“ ‘Why, what on earth does this mean, John?’ he stammered.

“My heart had turned to lead. ‘It is K. K. K.,’ said I.

“He looked inside the envelope. ‘So it is,’ he cried. ‘Here are the very letters. But what is this written above them?’

“ ‘Put the papers on the sundial,’ I read, peeping over his shoulder.

“ ‘What papers? What sundial?’ he asked.

“ ‘The sundial in the garden. There is no other,’ said I; ‘but the papers must be those that are destroyed.’

“ ‘Pooh!’ said he, gripping hard at his courage. ‘We are in a civilised land here, and we can’t have tomfoolery of this kind. Where does the thing come from?’

“ ‘From Dundee,’ I answered, glancing at the postmark.

“ ‘Some preposterous practical joke,’ said he. ‘What have I to do with sundials and papers? I shall take no notice of such nonsense.’

“ ‘I should certainly speak to the police,’ I said.

“ ‘And be laughed at for my pains. Nothing of the sort.’

“ ‘Then let me do so?’

“ ‘No, I forbid you. I won’t have a fuss made about such nonsense.’

“It was in vain to argue with him, for he was a very obstinate man. I went about, however, with a heart which was full of forebodings.

“On the third day after the coming of the letter my father went from home to visit an old friend of his, Major Freebody, who is in command of one of the forts upon Portsdown Hill. I was glad that he should go, for it seemed to me that he was farther from danger when he was away from home. In that, however, I was in error. Upon the second day of his absence I received a telegram from the major, imploring me to come at once. My father had fallen over one of the deep chalk-pits which abound in the neighbourhood, and was lying senseless, with a shattered skull. I hurried to him, but he passed away without having ever recovered his consciousness. He had, as it appears, been returning from Fareham in the twilight, and as the country was to him, and the chalk-pit unfenced, the jury had no hesitation in bringing in a verdict of ‘death from accidental causes.’ Carefully as I examined every fact connected with his death, I was unable to find anything which could suggest the idea of murder. There were no signs of violence, no footmarks, no robbery, no record of strangers having been seen upon the roads. And yet I need not tell you that my mind was far from at ease, and that I was well-nigh certain that some foul plot had been woven round him.

“In this sinister way I came into my inheritance. You will ask me why I did not dispose of it? I answer, because I was well convinced that our troubles were in some way dependent upon an incident in my uncle’s life, and that the danger would be as pressing in one house as in another.

“It was in January, ’85, that my poor father met his end, and two years and eight months have elapsed since then. During that time I have lived happily at Horsham, and I had begun to hope that this curse had passed away from the family, and that it had ended with the last generation. I had begun to take comfort too soon, however; yesterday morning the blow fell in the very shape in which it had come upon my father.”

The young man took from his waistcoat a crumpled envelope, and turning to the table he shook out upon it five little dried orange pips.

“This is the envelope,” he continued. “The postmark is London — eastern division. Within are the very words which were upon my father’s last message: ‘K. K. K.’; and then ‘Put the papers on the sundial.’ ”

“What have you done?” asked Holmes.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“To tell the truth” — he sank his face into his thin, white hands — “I have felt helpless. I have felt like one of those poor rabbits when the snake is writhing towards it. I seem to be in the grasp of some resistless, inexorable evil, which no foresight and no precautions can guard against.”

“Tut! tut!” cried Sherlock Holmes. “You must act, man, or you are lost. Nothing but energy can save you. This is no time for despair.”

“I have seen the police.”

“Ah!”

“But they listened to my story with a smile. I am convinced that the inspector has formed the opinion that the letters are all practical jokes, and that the deaths of my relations were really accidents, as the jury stated, and were not to be connected with the warnings.”

Holmes shook his clenched hands in the air. “Incredible imbecility!” he cried.

“They have, however, allowed me a policeman, who may remain in the house with me.”

“Has he come with you to-night?”

“No. His orders were to stay in the house.”

Again Holmes raved in the air.

“Why did you come to me?” he cried, “and, above all, why did you not come at once?”

“I did not know. It was only to-day that I spoke to Major Prendergast about my troubles and was advised by him to come to you.”

“It is really two days since you had the letter. We should have acted before this. You have no further evidence, I suppose, than that which you have placed before us — no suggestive detail which might help us?”

“There is one thing,” said John Openshaw. He rummaged in his coat pocket, and, drawing out a piece of discoloured, blue-tinted paper, he laid it out upon the table. “I have some remembrance,” said he, “that on the day when my uncle burned the papers I observed that the small, unburned margins which lay amid the ashes were of this particular colour. I found this single sheet upon the floor of his room, and I am inclined to think that it may be one of the papers which has, perhaps, fluttered out from among the others, and in that way has escaped destruction. Beyond the mention of pips, I do not see that it helps us much. I think myself that it is a page from some private diary. The writing is undoubtedly my uncle’s.”

Holmes moved the lamp, and we both bent over the sheet of paper, which showed by its ragged edge that it had indeed been torn from a book. It was headed, “March, 1869,” and beneath were the following enigmatical notices:

“4th. Hudson came. Same old platform.

“7th. Set the pips on McCauley, Paramore, and John Swain, of St. Augustine.

“9th. McCauley cleared.

“10th. John Swain cleared.

“12th. Visited Paramore. All well.”

“Thank you!” said Holmes, folding up the paper and returning it to our visitor. “And now you must on no account lose another instant. We cannot spare time even to discuss what you have told me. You must get home instantly and act.”

“What shall I do?”

“There is but one thing to do. It must be done at once. You must put this piece of paper which you have shown us into the brass box which you have described. You must also put in a note to say that all the other papers were burned by your uncle, and that this is the only one which remains. You must assert that in such words as will carry conviction with them. Having done this, you must at once put the box out upon the sundial, as directed. Do you understand?”

“Entirely.”

“Do not think of revenge, or anything of the sort, at present. I think that we may gain that by means of the law; but we have our web to weave, while theirs is already woven. The first consideration is to remove the pressing danger which threatens you. The second is to clear up the mystery and to punish the guilty parties.”

“I thank you,” said the young man, rising and pulling on his overcoat. “You have given me fresh life and hope. I shall certainly do as you advise.”

“Do not lose an instant. And, above all, take care of yourself in the meanwhile, for I do not think that there can be a doubt that you are threatened by a very real and imminent danger. How do you go back?”

“By train from Waterloo.”

“It is not yet nine. The streets will be crowded, so I trust that you may be in safety. And yet you cannot guard yourself too closely.”

“I am armed.”

“That is well. To-morrow I shall set to work upon your case.”

“I shall see you at Horsham, then?”

“No, your secret lies in London. It is there that I shall seek it.”

“Then I shall call upon you in a day, or in two days, with news as to the box and the papers. I shall take your advice in every particular.” He shook hands with us and took his leave. Outside the wind still screamed and the rain splashed and pattered against the windows. This strange, wild story seemed to have come to us from amid the mad elements — blown in upon us like a sheet of sea-weed in a gale — and now to have been reabsorbed by them once more.

Sherlock Holmes sat for some time in silence, with his head sunk forward and his eyes bent upon the red glow of the fire. Then he lit his pipe, and leaning back in his chair he watched the blue smoke-rings as they chased each other up to the ceiling.

“I think, Watson,” he remarked at last, “that of all our cases we have had none more fantastic than this.”

“Save, perhaps, the Sign of Four.”

“Well, yes. Save, perhaps, that. And yet this John Openshaw seems to me to be walking amid even greater perils than did the Sholtos.”

“But have you,” I asked, “formed any definite conception as to what these perils are?”

“There can be no question as to their nature,” he answered.

“Then what are they? Who is this K. K. K., and why does he pursue this unhappy family?”

Sherlock Holmes closed his eyes and placed his elbows upon the arms of his chair, with his finger-tips together. “The ideal reasoner,” he remarked, “would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it. As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after. We have not yet grasped the results which the reason alone can attain to. Problems may be solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to utilise all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment. It is not so impossible, however, that a man should possess all knowledge which is likely to be useful to him in his work, and this I have endeavoured in my case to do. If I remember rightly, you on one occasion, in the early days of our friendship, defined my limits in a very precise fashion.”

“Yes,” I answered, laughing. “It was a singular document. Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud-stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin-player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco. Those, I think, were the main points of my analysis.”

Holmes grinned at the last item. “Well,” he said, “I say now, as I said then, that a man should keep his little brain-attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it. Now, for such a case as the one which has been submitted to us to-night, we need certainly to muster all our resources. Kindly hand me down the letter K of the ‘American Encyclopaedia,’ which stands upon the shelf beside you. Thank you. Now let us consider the situation and see what may be deduced from it. In the first place, we may start with a strong presumption that Colonel Openshaw had some very strong reason for leaving America. Men at his time of life do not change all their habits and exchange willingly the charming climate of Florida for the lonely life of an English provincial town. His extreme love of solitude in England suggests the idea that he was in fear of someone or something, so we may assume as a working hypothesis that it was fear of someone or something which drove him from America. As to what it was he feared, we can only deduce that by considering the formidable letters which were received by himself and his successors. Did you remark the postmarks of those letters?”

“The first was from Pondicherry, the second from Dundee, and the third from London.”

“From East London. What do you deduce from that?”

“They are all seaports. That the writer was on board of a ship.”

“Excellent. We have already a clue. There can be no doubt that the probability — the strong probability — is that the writer was on board of a ship. And now let us consider another point. In the case of Pondicherry, seven weeks elapsed between the threat and its fulfilment, in Dundee it was only some three or four days. Does that suggest anything?”

“A greater distance to travel.”

“But the letter had also a greater distance to come.”

“Then I do not see the point.”

“There is at least a presumption that the vessel in which the man or men are is a sailing-ship. It looks as if they always send their singular warning or token before them when starting upon their mission. You see how quickly the deed followed the sign when it came from Dundee. If they had come from Pondicherry in a steamer they would have arrived almost as soon as their letter. But, as a matter of fact, seven weeks elapsed. I think that those seven weeks represented the difference between the mail-boat which brought the letter and the sailing vessel which brought the writer.”

“It is possible.”

“More than that. It is probable. And now you see the deadly urgency of this new case, and why I urged young Openshaw to caution. The blow has always fallen at the end of the time which it would take the senders to travel the distance. But this one comes from London, and therefore we cannot count upon delay.”

“Good God!” I cried. “What can it mean, this relentless persecution?”

“The papers which Openshaw carried are obviously of vital importance to the person or persons in the sailing-ship. I think that it is quite clear that there must be more than one of them. A single man could not have carried out two deaths in such a way as to deceive a coroner’s jury. There must have been several in it, and they must have been men of resource and determination. Their papers they mean to have, be the holder of them who it may. In this way you see K. K. K. ceases to be the initials of an individual and becomes the badge of a society.”

“But of what society?”

“Have you never—” said Sherlock Holmes, bending forward and sinking his voice — “have you never heard of the Ku Klux Klan?”

“I never have.”

Holmes turned over the leaves of the book upon his knee. “Here it is,” said he presently:

“ ‘Ku Klux Klan. A name derived from the fanciful resemblance to the sound produced by cocking a rifle. This terrible secret society was formed by some ex-Confederate soldiers in the Southern states after the Civil War, and it rapidly formed local branches in different parts of the country, notably in Tennessee, Louisiana, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. Its power was used for political purposes, principally for the terrorising of the negro voters and the murdering and driving from the country of those who were opposed to its views. Its outrages were usually preceded by a warning sent to the marked man in some fantastic but generally recognized shape — a sprig of oak-leaves in some parts, melon seeds or orange pips in others. On receiving this the victim might either openly abjure his former ways, or might fly from the country. If he braved the matter out, death would unfailingly come upon him, and usually in some strange and unforeseen manner. So perfect was the organization of the society, and so systematic its methods, that there is hardly a case upon record where any man succeeded in braving it with impunity, or in which any of its outrages were traced home to the perpetrators. For some years the organisation flourished, in spite of the efforts of the United States government and of the better classes of the community in the South. Eventually, in the year 1869, the movement rather suddenly collapsed, although there have been sporadic outbreaks of the same sort since that date.’

“You will observe,” said Holmes, laying down the volume, “that the sudden breaking up of the society was coincident with the disappearance of Openshaw from America with their papers. It may well have been cause and effect. It is no wonder that he and his family have some of the more implacable spirits upon their track. You can understand that this register and diary may implicate some of the first men in the South, and that there may be many who will not sleep easy at night until it is recovered.”

“Then the page we have seen—”

“Is such as we might expect. It ran, if I remember right, ‘sent the pips to A, B, and C’ — that is, sent the society’s warning to them. Then there are successive entries that A and B cleared, or left the country, and finally that C was visited, with, I fear, a sinister result for C. Well, I think, Doctor, that we may let some light into this dark place, and I believe that the only chance young Openshaw has in the meantime is to do what I have told him. There is nothing more to be said or to be done to-night, so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget for half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable ways of our fellow-men.”

It had cleared in the morning, and the sun was shining with a subdued brightness through the dim veil which hangs over the great city. Sherlock Holmes was already at breakfast when I came down.

“You will excuse me for not waiting for you,” said he; “I have, I foresee, a very busy day before me in looking into this case of young Openshaw’s.”

“What steps will you take?” I asked.

“It will very much depend upon the results of my first inquiries. I may have to go down to Horsham, after all.”

“You will not go there first?”

“No, I shall commence with the City. Just ring the bell and the maid will bring up your coffee.”

As I waited, I lifted the unopened newspaper from the table and glanced my eye over it. It rested upon a heading which sent a chill to my heart.

“Holmes,” I cried, “you are too late.”

“Ah!” said he, laying down his cup, “I feared as much. How was it done?” He spoke calmly, but I could see that he was deeply moved.

“My eye caught the name of Openshaw, and the heading ‘Tragedy Near Waterloo Bridge.’ Here is the account:

“Between nine and ten last night Police-Constable Cook, of the H Division, on duty near Waterloo Bridge, heard a cry for help and a splash in the water. The night, however, was extremely dark and stormy, so that, in spite of the help of several passers-by, it was quite impossible to effect a rescue. The alarm, however, was given, and, by the aid of the water-police, the body was eventually recovered. It proved to be that of a young gentleman whose name, as it appears from an envelope which was found in his pocket, was John Openshaw, and whose residence is near Horsham. It is conjectured that he may have been hurrying down to catch the last train from Waterloo Station, and that in his haste and the extreme darkness he missed his path and walked over the edge of one of the small landing-places for river steamboats. The body exhibited no traces of violence, and there can be no doubt that the deceased had been the victim of an unfortunate accident, which should have the effect of calling the attention of the authorities to the condition of the riverside landing-stages.”

We sat in silence for some minutes, Holmes more depressed and shaken than I had ever seen him.

“That hurts my pride, Watson,” he said at last. “It is a petty feeling, no doubt, but it hurts my pride. It becomes a personal matter with me now, and, if God sends me health, I shall set my hand upon this gang. That he should come to me for help, and that I should send him away to his death—!” He sprang from his chair and paced about the room in uncontrollable agitation, with a flush upon his sallow cheeks and a nervous clasping and unclasping of his long thin hands.

“They must be cunning devils,” he exclaimed at last. “How could they have decoyed him down there? The Embankment is not on the direct line to the station. The bridge, no doubt, was too crowded, even on such a night, for their purpose. Well, Watson, we shall see who will win in the long run. I am going out now!”

“To the police?”

“No; I shall be my own police. When I have spun the web they may take the flies, but not before.”

All day I was engaged in my professional work, and it was late in the evening before I returned to Baker Street. Sherlock Holmes had not come back yet. It was nearly ten o’clock before he entered, looking pale and worn. He walked up to the sideboard, and tearing a piece from the loaf he devoured it voraciously, washing it down with a long draught of water.

“You are hungry,” I remarked.

“Starving. It had escaped my memory. I have had nothing since breakfast.”

“Nothing?”

“Not a bite. I had no time to think of it.”

“And how have you succeeded?”

“Well.”

“You have a clue?”

“I have them in the hollow of my hand. Young Openshaw shall not long remain unavenged. Why, Watson, let us put their own devilish trade-mark upon them. It is well thought of!”

“What do you mean?”

He took an orange from the cupboard, and tearing it to pieces he squeezed out the pips upon the table. Of these he took five and thrust them into an envelope. On the inside of the flap he wrote “S. H. for J. O.” Then he sealed it and addressed it to “Captain James Calhoun, Barque ‘Lone Star,’ Savannah, Georgia.”

“That will await him when he enters port,” said he, chuckling. “It may give him a sleepless night. He will find it as sure a precursor of his fate as Openshaw did before him.”

“And who is this Captain Calhoun?”

“The leader of the gang. I shall have the others, but he first.”

“How did you trace it, then?”

He took a large sheet of paper from his pocket, all covered with dates and names.

“I have spent the whole day,” said he, “over Lloyd’s registers and files of the old papers, following the future career of every vessel which touched at Pondicherry in January and February in ’83. There were thirty-six ships of fair tonnage which were reported there during those months. Of these, one, the ‘Lone Star,’ instantly attracted my attention, since, although it was reported as having cleared from London, the name is that which is given to one of the states of the Union.”

“Texas, I think.”

“I was not and am not sure which; but I knew that the ship must have an American origin.”

“What then?”

“I searched the Dundee records, and when I found that the barque ‘Lone Star’ was there in January, ’85, my suspicion became a certainty. I then inquired as to the vessels which lay at present in the port of London.”

“Yes?”

“The ‘Lone Star’ had arrived here last week. I went down to the Albert Dock and found that she had been taken down the river by the early tide this morning, homeward bound to Savannah. I wired to Gravesend and learned that she had passed some time ago, and as the wind is easterly I have no doubt that she is now past the Goodwins and not very far from the Isle of Wight.”

“What will you do, then?”

“Oh, I have my hand upon him. He and the two mates, are as I learn, the only native-born Americans in the ship. The others are Finns and Germans. I know, also, that they were all three away from the ship last night. I had it from the stevedore who has been loading their cargo. By the time that their sailing-ship reaches Savannah the mail-boat will have carried this letter, and the cable will have informed the police of Savannah that these three gentlemen are badly wanted here upon a charge of murder.”

There is ever a flaw, however, in the best laid of human plans, and the murderers of John Openshaw were never to receive the orange pips which would show them that another, as cunning and as resolute as themselves, was upon their track. Very long and very severe were the equinoctial gales that year. We waited long for news of the “Lone Star” of Savannah, but none ever reached us. We did at last hear that somewhere far out in the Atlantic a shattered stern-post of a boat was seen swinging in the trough of a wave, with the letters “L. S.” carved upon it, and that is all which we shall ever know of the fate of the “Lone Star.”

The Blue Cross G. K. CHESTERTON

Original publication: The Saturday Evening Post, July 23, 1910 (under the title “Valentin Follows a Curious Trail”); first collected in The Innocence of Father Brown (London, Cassell, 1911)

It has been widely and perhaps accurately stated that Father Brown is the second greatest English detective in all of literature, surpassed only, it is superfluous to say, by Sherlock Holmes. What separates him from most of his crime-fighting colleagues is his view that wrongdoers are souls in need of redemption rather than criminals to be brought to justice. The rather ordinary-seeming Roman Catholic priest possesses a sharp, subtle, sensitive mind, with which he demonstrates a deep understanding of human nature to solve mysteries.

Father Brown is a logical creation of Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936), a converted and extremely devout Catholic who believed that religion was the world’s only refuge. There were five collections of stories about the gentle little priest: The Innocence of Father Brown (1911), The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914), The Incredulity of Father Brown (1926), The Secret of Father Brown (1927), and The Scandal of Father Brown (1935); The Father Brown Omnibus, assembled in 1951, added a stray story, “The Vampire of the Village,” that was discovered in Chesterton’s papers after his death.

His was a significant voice when he turned to social criticism as a prolific and opinionated journalist at the turn of the nineteenth century, taking liberal positions until he became an ardent distributist, advocating the distribution of land and property to those who had little. Chesterton was also an important literary critic for much of his writing life, producing biographies that focused on the writings of such diverse figures as Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, William Blake, and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Chesterton wrote many other stories and novels about various types of crime, notably the allegorical The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), and several volumes of stories that displayed his love of paradox and whimsicality, such as The Club of Queer Trades (1905), The Poet and the Lunatics (1929), and The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond (1936).

Title: The Detective, 1954

Studio: Columbia

Director: Robert Hamer

Screenwriters: Thelma Schnee, Robert Hamer, Maurice Rapf (uncredited)

Producer: Paul Finder Moss

• Alec Guinness (Father Brown)

• Joan Greenwood (Lady Warren)

• Peter Finch (Gustav Flambeau)

• Cecil Parker (The Bishop)

• Bernard Lee (Inspector Valentine)

Oddly, there were two films about the sleuth — both based on the same tale, “The Blue Cross,” the first Father Brown story: Father Brown, released in the United States as The Detective (1954), with Alec Guinness in the titular role, and Father Brown, Detective (1934) starring Walter Connolly. The Connolly version certainly has its charm but few actors could compete with Guinness in taking over a role and making it his. Both films have a similar story line, closely following Chesterton’s short story.

Father Brown’s greatest challenge in his attempts to reform criminals is Flambeau. A colossus of crime, a Frenchman of prodigious intelligence, and a master of disguise, he is notorious throughout Europe. He gives the police advance notice that he is going to steal a priceless and sacred cross from the church. Father Brown crosses the channel to France to foil the theft and reform the criminal.

It is interesting to note that Father Brown did have a successful conversion. Alec Guinness became a Roman Catholic soon after he completed filming The Detective.

THE BLUE CROSS G. K. Chesterton

Between the silver ribbon of morning and the green glittering ribbon of sea, the boat touched Harwich and let loose a swarm of folk like flies, among whom the man we must follow was by no means conspicuous — nor wished to be. There was nothing notable about him, except a slight contrast between the holiday gaiety of his clothes and the official gravity of his face. His clothes included a slight, pale grey jacket, a white waistcoat, and a silver straw hat with a grey-blue ribbon. His lean face was dark by contrast, and ended in a curt black beard that looked Spanish and suggested an Elizabethan ruff. He was smoking a cigarette with the seriousness of an idler. There was nothing about him to indicate the fact that the grey jacket covered a loaded revolver, that the white waistcoat covered a police card, or that the straw hat covered one of the most powerful intellects in Europe. For this was Valentin himself, the head of the Paris police and the most famous investigator of the world; and he was coming from Brussels to London to make the greatest arrest of the century.

Flambeau was in England. The police of three countries had tracked the great criminal at last from Ghent to Brussels, from Brussels to the Hook of Holland; and it was conjectured that he would take some advantage of the unfamiliarity and confusion of the Eucharistic Congress, then taking place in London. Probably he would travel as some minor clerk or secretary connected with it; but, of course, Valentin could not be certain; nobody could be certain about Flambeau.

It is many years now since this colossus of crime suddenly ceased, keeping the world in a turmoil; and when he ceased, as they said after the death of Roland, there was a great quiet upon the earth. But in his best days (I mean, of course, his worst) Flambeau was a figure as statuesque and international as the Kaiser. Almost every morning the daily paper announced that he had escaped the consequences of one extraordinary crime by committing another. He was a Gascon of gigantic stature and bodily daring; and the wildest tales were told of his outbursts of athletic humour; how he turned the juge d’instruction upside down and stood him on his head, “to clear his mind”; how he ran down the Rue de Rivoli with a policeman under each arm. It is due to him to say that his fantastic physical strength was generally employed in such bloodless though undignified scenes; his real crimes were chiefly those of ingenious and wholesale robbery. But each of his thefts was almost a new sin, and would make a story by itself. It was he who ran the great Tyrolean Dairy Company in London, with no dairies, no cows, no carts, no milk, but with some thousand subscribers. These he served by the simple operation of moving the little milk-cans outside people’s doors to the doors of his own customers. It was he who had kept up an unaccountable and close correspondence with a young lady whose whole letter-bag was intercepted, by the extraordinary trick of photographing his messages infinitesimally small upon the slides of a microscope. A sweeping simplicity, however, marked many of his experiments. It is said that he once repainted all the numbers in a street in the dead of night merely to divert one traveller into a trap. It is quite certain that he invented a portable pillar-box, which he put up at corners in quiet suburbs on the chance of strangers dropping postal orders into it. Lastly, he was known to be a startling acrobat; despite his huge figure, he could leap like a grasshopper and melt into the tree-tops like a monkey. Hence the great Valentin, when he set out to find Flambeau, was perfectly well aware that his adventures would not end when he had found him.

But how was he to find him? On this the great Valentin’s ideas were still in process of settlement.

There was one thing which Flambeau, with all his dexterity of disguise, could not cover, and that was his singular height. If Valentin’s quick eye had caught a tall apple-woman, a tall grenadier, or even a tolerably tall duchess, he might have arrested them on the spot. But all along his train there was nobody that could be a disguised Flambeau, any more than a cat could be a disguised giraffe. About the people on the boat he had already satisfied himself; and the people picked up at Harwich or on the journey limited themselves with certainty to six. There was a short railway official travelling up to the terminus, three fairly short market gardeners picked up two stations afterwards, one very short widow lady going up from a small Essex town, and a very short Roman Catholic priest going up from a small Essex village. When it came to the last case, Valentin gave it up and almost laughed. The little priest was so much the essence of those Eastern flats; he had a face as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling; he had eyes as empty as the North Sea; he had several brown paper parcels, which he was quite incapable of collecting. The Eucharistic Congress had doubtless sucked out of their local stagnation many such creatures, blind and helpless, like moles disinterred. Valentin was a sceptic in the severe style of France, and could have no love for priests. But he could have pity for them, and this one might have provoked pity in anybody. He had a large, shabby umbrella, which constantly fell on the floor. He did not seem to know which was the right end of his return ticket. He explained with a moon-calf simplicity to everybody in the carriage that he had to be careful, because he had something made of real silver “with blue stones” in one of his brown-paper parcels. His quaint blending of Essex flatness with saintly simplicity continuously amused the Frenchman till the priest arrived (somehow) at Tottenham with all his parcels, and came back for his umbrella. When he did the last, Valentin even had the good nature to warn him not to take care of the silver by telling everybody about it. But to whomever he talked, Valentin kept his eye open for someone else; he looked out steadily for anyone, rich or poor, male or female, who was well up to six feet; for Flambeau was four inches above it.

He alighted at Liverpool Street, however, quite conscientiously secure that he had not missed the criminal so far. He then went to Scotland Yard to regularise his position and arrange for help in case of need; he then lit another cigarette and went for a long stroll in the streets of London. As he was walking in the streets and squares beyond Victoria, he paused suddenly and stood. It was a quaint, quiet square, very typical of London, full of an accidental stillness. The tall, flat houses round looked at once prosperous and uninhabited; the square of shrubbery in the centre looked as deserted as a green Pacific islet. One of the four sides was much higher than the rest, like a daïs; and the line of this side was broken by one of London’s admirable accidents — a restaurant that looked as if it had strayed from Soho. It was an unreasonably attractive object, with dwarf plants in pots and long, striped blinds of lemon yellow and white. It stood specially high above the street, and in the usual patchwork way of London, a flight of steps from the street ran up to meet the front door almost as a fire-escape might run up to a first-floor window. Valentin stood and smoked in front of the yellow-white blinds and considered them long.

The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen. A few clouds in heaven do come together into the staring shape of one human eye. A tree does stand up in the landscape of a doubtful journey in the exact and elaborate shape of a note of interrogation. I have seen both these things myself within the last few days. Nelson does die in the instant of victory; and a man named Williams does quite accidentally murder a man named Williamson; it sounds like a sort of infanticide. In short, there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the paradox of Poe, wisdom should reckon on the unforeseen.

Aristide Valentin was unfathomably French; and the French intelligence is intelligence specially and solely. He was not “a thinking machine”; for that is a brainless phrase of modern fatalism and materialism. A machine only is a machine because it cannot think. But he was a thinking man, and a plain man at the same time. All his wonderful successes, that looked like conjuring, had been gained by plodding logic, by clear and commonplace French thought. The French electrify the world not by starting any paradox, they electrify it by carrying out a truism. They carry a truism so far — as in the French Revolution. But exactly because Valentin understood reason, he understood the limits of reason. Only a man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without petrol; only a man who knows nothing of reason talks of reasoning without strong, undisputed first principles. Here he had no strong first principles. Flambeau had been missed at Harwich; and if he was in London at all, he might be anything from a tall tramp on Wimbledon Common to a tall toastmaster at the Hôtel Métropole. In such a naked state of nescience, Valentin had a view and a method of his own.

In such cases he reckoned on the unforeseen. In such cases, when he could not follow the train of the reasonable, he coldly and carefully followed the train of the unreasonable. Instead of going to the right places — banks, police stations, rendezvous — he systematically went to the wrong places; knocked at every empty house, turned down every cul de sac, went up every lane blocked with rubbish, went round every crescent that led him uselessly out of the way. He defended this crazy course quite logically. He said that if one had a clue this was the worst way; but if one had no clue at all it was the best, because there was just the chance that any oddity that caught the eye of the pursuer might be the same that had caught the eye of the pursued. Somewhere a man must begin, and it had better be just where another man might stop. Something about that flight of steps up to the shop, something about the quietude and quaintness of the restaurant, roused all the detective’s rare romantic fancy and made him resolve to strike at random. He went up the steps, and sitting down at a table by the window, asked for a cup of black coffee.

It was half-way through the morning, and he had not breakfasted; the slight litter of other breakfasts stood about on the table to remind him of his hunger; and adding a poached egg to his order, he proceeded musingly to shake some white sugar into his coffee, thinking all the time about Flambeau. He remembered how Flambeau had escaped, once by a pair of nail scissors, and once by a house on fire; once by having to pay for an unstamped letter, and once by getting people to look through a telescope at a comet that might destroy the world. He thought his detective brain as good as the criminal’s, which was true. But he fully realised the disadvantage. “The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic,” he said with a sour smile, and lifted his coffee cup to his lips slowly, and put it down very quickly. He had put salt in it.

He looked at the vessel from which the silvery powder had come; it was certainly a sugar-basin; as unmistakably meant for sugar as a champagne-bottle for champagne. He wondered why they should keep salt in it. He looked to see if there were any more orthodox vessels. Yes; there were two salt-cellars quite full. Perhaps there was some speciality in the condiment in the salt-cellars. He tasted it; it was sugar. Then he looked round at the restaurant with a refreshed air of interest, to see if there were any other traces of that singular artistic taste which puts the sugar in the salt-cellars and the salt in the sugar-basin. Except for an odd splash of some dark fluid on one of the white-papered walls, the whole place appeared neat, cheerful and ordinary. He rang the bell for the waiter.

When that official hurried up, fuzzy-haired and somewhat blear-eyed at that early hour, the detective (who was not without an appreciation of the simpler forms of humour) asked him to taste the sugar and see if it was up to the high reputation of the hotel. The result was that the waiter yawned suddenly and woke up.

“Do you play this delicate joke on your customers every morning?” inquired Valentin. “Does changing the salt and sugar never pall on you as a jest?”

The waiter, when this irony grew clearer, stammeringly assured him that the establishment had certainly no such intention; it must be a most curious mistake. He picked up the sugar-basin and looked at it; he picked up the salt-cellar and looked at that, his face growing more and more bewildered. At last he abruptly excused himself, and hurrying away, returned in a few seconds with the proprietor. The proprietor also examined the sugar-basin and then the salt-cellar; the proprietor also looked bewildered.

Suddenly the waiter seemed to grow inarticulate with a rush of words.

“I zink,” he stuttered eagerly, “I zink it is those two clergymen.”

“What two clergymen?”

“The two clergymen,” said the waiter, “that threw soup at the wall.”

“Threw soup at the wall?” repeated Valentin, feeling sure this must be some singular Italian metaphor.

“Yes, yes,” said the attendant excitedly, and pointing at the dark splash on the white paper; “threw it over there on the wall.”

Valentin looked his query at the proprietor, who came to his rescue with fuller reports.

“Yes, sir,” he said, “it’s quite true, though I don’t suppose it has anything to do with the sugar and salt. Two clergymen came in and drank soup here very early, as soon as the shutters were taken down. They were both very quiet, respectable people; one of them paid the bill and went out; the other, who seemed a slower coach altogether, was some minutes longer getting his things together. But he went at last. Only, the instant before he stepped into the street he deliberately picked up his cup, which he had only half emptied, and threw the soup slap on the wall. I was in the back room myself, and so was the waiter; so I could only rush out in time to find the wall splashed and the shop empty. It don’t do any particular damage, but it was confounded cheek; and I tried to catch the men in the street. They were too far off though; I only noticed they went round the next corner into Carstairs Street.”

The detective was on his feet, hat settled and stick in hand. He had already decided that in the universal darkness of his mind he could only follow the first odd finger that pointed; and this finger was odd enough. Paying his bill and clashing the glass doors behind him, he was soon swinging round into the other street.

It was fortunate that even in such fevered moments his eye was cool and quick. Something in a shop-front went by him like a mere flash; yet he went back to look at it. The shop was a popular greengrocer and fruiterer’s, an array of goods set out in the open air and plainly ticketed with their names and prices. In the two most prominent compartments were two heaps, of oranges and of nuts respectively. On the heap of nuts lay a scrap of cardboard, on which was written in bold, blue chalk, “Best tangerine oranges, two a penny.” On the oranges was the equally clear and exact description, “Finest Brazil nuts, 4d. a lb.” M. Valentin looked at these two placards and fancied he had met this highly subtle form of humour before, and that somewhat recently. He drew the attention of the red-faced fruiterer, who was looking rather sullenly up and down the street, to this inaccuracy in his advertisements. The fruiterer said nothing, but sharply put each card into its proper place. The detective, leaning elegantly on his walking-cane, continued to scrutinise the shop. At last he said, “Pray excuse my apparent irrelevance, my good sir, but I should like to ask you a question in experimental psychology and the association of ideas.”

The red-faced shopman regarded him with an eye of menace; but he continued gaily, swinging his cane, “Why,” he pursued, “why are two tickets wrongly placed in a greengrocer’s shop like a shovel hat that has come to London for a holiday? Or, in case I do not make myself clear, what is the mystical association which connects the idea of nuts marked as oranges with the idea of two clergymen, one tall and the other short?”

The eyes of the tradesman stood out of his head like a snail’s; he really seemed for an instant likely to fling himself upon the stranger. At last he stammered angrily: “I don’t know what you ’ave to do with it, but if you’re one of their friends, you can tell ’em from me that I’ll knock their silly ’eads off, parsons or no parsons, if they upset my apples again.”

“Indeed?” asked the detective, with great sympathy. “Did they upset your apples?”

“One of ’em did,” said the heated shopman; “rolled ’em all over the street. I’d ’ave caught the fool but for havin’ to pick ’em up.”

“Which way did these parsons go?” asked Valentin.

“Up that second road on the left-hand side, and then across the square,” said the other promptly.

“Thanks,” replied Valentin, and vanished like a fairy. On the other side of the second square he found a policeman, and said: “This is urgent, constable; have you seen two clergymen in shovel hats?”

The policeman began to chuckle heavily. “I ’ave, sir; and if you arst me, one of ’em was drunk. He stood in the middle of the road that bewildered that—”

“Which way did they go?” snapped Valentin.

“They took one of them yellow buses over there,” answered the man; “them that go to Hampstead.”

Valentin produced his official card and said very rapidly: “Call up two of your men to come with me in pursuit,” and crossed the road with such contagious energy that the ponderous policeman was moved to almost agile obedience. In a minute and a half the French detective was joined on the opposite pavement by an inspector and a man in plain clothes.

“Well, sir,” began the former, with smiling importance, “and what may—?”

Valentin pointed suddenly with his cane. “I’ll tell you on the top of that omnibus,” he said, and was darting and dodging across the tangle of the traffic. When all three sank panting on the top seats of the yellow vehicle, the inspector said: “We could go four times as quick in a taxi.”

“Quite true,” replied their leader placidly, “if we only had an idea of where we were going.”

“Well, where are you going?” asked the other, staring.

Valentin smoked frowningly for a few seconds; then, removing his cigarette, he said: “If you know what a man’s doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess what he’s doing, keep behind him. Stray when he strays; stop when he stops; travel as slowly as he. Then you may see what he saw and may act as he acted. All we can do is to keep our eyes skinned for a queer thing.”

“What sort of queer thing do you mean?” asked the inspector.

“Any sort of queer thing,” answered Valentin, and relapsed into obstinate silence.

The yellow omnibus crawled up the northern roads for what seemed like hours on end; the great detective would not explain further, and perhaps his assistants felt a silent and growing doubt of his errand. Perhaps, also, they felt a silent and growing desire for lunch, for the hours crept long past the normal luncheon hour, and the long roads of the North London suburbs seemed to shoot out into length after length like an infernal telescope. It was one of those journeys on which a man perpetually feels that now at last he must have come to the end of the universe, and then finds he has only come to the beginning of Tufnell Park. London died away in draggled taverns and dreary scrubs, and then was unaccountably born again in blazing high streets and blatant hotels. It was like passing through thirteen separate vulgar cities all just touching each other. But though the winter twilight was already threatening the road ahead of them, the Parisian detective still sat silent and watchful, eyeing the frontage of the streets that slid by on either side. By the time they had left Camden Town behind, the policemen were nearly asleep; at least, they gave something like a jump as Valentin leapt erect, struck a hand on each man’s shoulder, and shouted to the driver to stop.

They tumbled down the steps into the road without realising why they had been dislodged; when they looked round for enlightenment they found Valentin triumphantly pointing his finger towards a window on the left side of the road. It was a large window, forming part of the long façade of a gilt and palatial public-house; it was the part reserved for respectable dining, and labelled “Restaurant.” This window, like all the rest along the frontage of the hotel, was of frosted and figured glass; but in the middle of it was a big, black smash, like a star in the ice.

“Our cue at last,” cried Valentin, waving his stick; “the place with the broken window.”

“What window? What cue?” asked his principal assistant. “Why, what proof is there that this has anything to do with them?”

Valentin almost broke his bamboo stick with rage.

“Proof!” he cried. “Good God! the man is looking for proof! Why, of course, the chances are twenty to one that it has nothing to do with them. But what else can we do? Don’t you see we must either follow one wild possibility or else go home to bed?” He banged his way into the restaurant, followed by his companions, and they were soon seated at a late luncheon at a little table, and looking at the star of smashed glass from the inside. Not that it was very informative to them even then.

“Got your window broken, I see,” said Valentin to the waiter as he paid the bill.

“Yes, sir,” answered the attendant, bending busily over the change, to which Valentin silently added an enormous tip. The waiter straightened himself with mild but unmistakable animation.

“Ah, yes, sir,” he said. “Very odd thing, that, sir.”

“Indeed? Tell us about it,” said the detective with careless curiosity.

“Well, two gents in black came in,” said the waiter; “two of those foreign parsons that are running about. They had a cheap and quiet little lunch, and one of them paid for it and went out. The other was just going out to join him when I looked at my change again and found he’d paid me more than three times too much. ‘Here,’ I says to the chap who was nearly out of the door, ‘you’ve paid too much.’ ‘Oh,’ he says, very cool, ‘have we?’ ‘Yes,’ I says, and picks up the bill to show him. Well, that was a knock-out.”

“What do you mean?” asked his interlocutor.

“Well, I’d have sworn on seven Bibles that I’d put 4s. on that bill. But now I saw I’d put 14s., as plain as paint.”

“Well?” cried Valentin, moving slowly, but with burning eyes, “and then?”

“The parson at the door he says all serene, ‘Sorry to confuse your accounts, but it’ll pay for the window.’ ‘What window?’ I says. ‘The one I’m going to break,’ he says, and smashed that blessed pane with his umbrella.”

All three inquirers made an exclamation; and the inspector said under his breath, “Are we after escaped lunatics?” The waiter went on with some relish for the ridiculous story:

“I was so knocked silly for a second, I couldn’t do anything. The man marched out of the place and joined his friend just round the corner. Then they went so quick up Bullock Street that I couldn’t catch them, though I ran round the bars to do it.”

“Bullock Street,” said the detective, and shot up that thoroughfare as quickly as the strange couple he pursued.

Their journey now took them through bare brick ways like tunnels; streets with few lights and even with few windows; streets that seemed built out of the blank backs of everything and everywhere. Dusk was deepening, and it was not easy even for the London policemen to guess in what exact direction they were treading. The inspector, however, was pretty certain that they would eventually strike some part of Hampstead Heath. Abruptly one bulging and gas-lit window broke the blue twilight like a bull’s-eye lantern; and Valentin stopped an instant before a little garish sweetstuff shop. After an instant’s hesitation he went in; he stood amid the gaudy colours of the confectionery with entire gravity and bought thirteen chocolate cigars with a certain care. He was clearly preparing an opening; but he did not need one.

An angular, elderly young woman in the shop had regarded his elegant appearance with a merely automatic inquiry; but when she saw the door behind him blocked with the blue uniform of the inspector, her eyes seemed to wake up.

“Oh,” she said, “if you’ve come about that parcel, I’ve sent it off already.”

“Parcel!” repeated Valentin; and it was his turn to look inquiring.

“I mean the parcel the gentleman left — the clergyman gentleman.”

“For goodness’ sake,” said Valentin, leaning forward with his first real confession of eagerness, “for Heaven’s sake tell us what happened exactly.”

“Well,” said the woman a little doubtfully, “the clergymen came in about half an hour ago and bought some peppermints and talked a bit, and then went off towards the Heath. But a second after, one of them runs back into the shop and says, ‘Have I left a parcel?’ Well, I looked everywhere and couldn’t see one; so he says, ‘Never mind; but if it should turn up, please post it to this address,’ and he left me the address and a shilling for my trouble. And sure enough, though I thought I’d looked everywhere, I found he’d left a brown paper parcel, so I posted it to the place he said. I can’t remember the address now; it was somewhere in Westminster. But as the thing seemed so important, I thought perhaps the police had come about it.”

“So they have,” said Valentin shortly. “Is Hampstead Heath near here?”

“Straight on for fifteen minutes,” said the woman, “and you’ll come right out on the open.” Valentin sprang out of the shop and began to run. The other detectives followed him at a reluctant trot.

The street they threaded was so narrow and shut in by shadows that when they came out unexpectedly into the void common and vast sky they were startled to find the evening still so light and clear. A perfect dome of peacock-green sank into gold amid the blackening trees and the dark violet distances. The glowing green tint was just deep enough to pick out in points of crystal one or two stars. All that was left of the daylight lay in a golden glitter across the edge of Hampstead and that popular hollow which is called the Vale of Health. The holiday makers who roam this region had not wholly dispersed; a few couples sat shapelessly on benches; and here and there a distant girl still shrieked in one of the swings. The glory of heaven deepened and darkened around the sublime vulgarity of man; and standing on the slope and looking across the valley, Valentin beheld the thing which he sought.

Among the black and breaking groups in that distance was one especially black which did not break — a group of two figures clerically clad. Though they seemed as small as insects, Valentin could see that one of them was much smaller than the other. Though the other had a student’s stoop and an inconspicuous manner, he could see that the man was well over six feet high. He shut his teeth and went forward, whirling his stick impatiently. By the time he had substantially diminished the distance and magnified the two black figures as in a vast microscope, he had perceived something else; something which startled him, and yet which he had somehow expected. Whoever was the tall priest, there could be no doubt about the identity of the short one. It was his friend of the Harwich train, the stumpy little curé of Essex whom he had warned about his brown paper parcels.

Now, so far as this went, everything fitted in finally and rationally enough. Valentin had learned by his inquiries that morning that a Father Brown from Essex was bringing up a silver cross with sapphires, a relic of considerable value, to show some of the foreign priests at the congress. This undoubtedly was the “silver with blue stones”; and Father Brown undoubtedly was the little greenhorn in the train. Now there was nothing wonderful about the fact that what Valentin had found out Flambeau had also found out; Flambeau found out everything. Also there was nothing wonderful in the fact that when Flambeau heard of a sapphire cross he should try to steal it; that was the most natural thing in all natural history. And most certainly there was nothing wonderful about the fact that Flambeau should have it all his own way with such a silly sheep as the man with the umbrella and the parcels. He was the sort of man whom anybody could lead on a string to the North Pole; it was not surprising that an actor like Flambeau, dressed as another priest, could lead him to Hampstead Heath. So far the crime seemed clear enough; and while the detective pitied the priest for his helplessness, he almost despised Flambeau for condescending to so gullible a victim. But when Valentin thought of all that had happened in between, of all that had led him to his triumph, he racked his brains for the smallest rhyme or reason in it. What had the stealing of a blue-and-silver cross from a priest from Essex to do with chucking soup at wall paper? What had it to do with calling nuts oranges, or with paying for windows first and breaking them afterwards? He had come to the end of his chase; yet somehow he had missed the middle of it. When he failed (which was seldom), he had usually grasped the clue, but nevertheless missed the criminal. Here he had grasped the criminal, but still he could not grasp the clue.

The two figures that they followed were crawling like black flies across the huge green contour of a hill. They were evidently sunk in conversation, and perhaps did not notice where they were going; but they were certainly going to the wilder and more silent heights of the Heath. As their pursuers gained on them, the latter had to use the undignified attitudes of the deer-stalker, to crouch behind clumps of trees and even to crawl prostrate in deep grass. By these ungainly ingenuities the hunters even came close enough to the quarry to hear the murmur of the discussion, but no word could be distinguished except the word “reason” recurring frequently in a high and almost childish voice. Once over an abrupt dip of land and a dense tangle of thickets, the detectives actually lost the two figures they were following. They did not find the trail again for an agonising ten minutes, and then it led round the brow of a great dome of hill overlooking an amphitheatre of rich and desolate sunset scenery. Under a tree in this commanding yet neglected spot was an old ramshackle wooden seat. On this seat sat the two priests still in serious speech together. The gorgeous green and gold still clung to the darkening horizon; but the dome above was turning slowly from peacock-green to peacock-blue, and the stars detached themselves more and more like solid jewels. Mutely motioning to his followers, Valentin contrived to creep up behind the big branching tree, and, standing there in deathly silence, heard the words of the strange priests for the first time.

After he had listened for a minute and a half, he was gripped by a devilish doubt. Perhaps he had dragged the two English policemen to the wastes of a nocturnal heath on an errand no saner than seeking figs on its thistles. For the two priests were talking exactly like priests, piously, with learning and leisure, about the most aerial enigmas of theology. The little Essex priest spoke the more simply, with his round face turned to the strengthening stars; the other talked with his head bowed, as if he were not even worthy to look at them. But no more innocently clerical conversation could have been heard in any white Italian cloister or black Spanish cathedral.

The first he heard was the tail of one of Father Brown’s sentences, which ended: “...what they really meant in the Middle Ages by the heavens being incorruptible.”

The taller priest nodded his bowed head and said:

“Ah, yes, these modern infidels appeal to their reason; but who can look at those millions of worlds and not feel that there may well be wonderful universes above us where reason is utterly unreasonable?”

“No,” said the other priest; “reason is always reasonable, even in the last limbo, in the lost borderland of things. I know that people charge the Church with lowering reason, but it is just the other way. Alone on earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason.”

The other priest raised his austere face to the spangled sky and said:

“Yet who knows if in that infinite universe—?”

“Only infinite physically,” said the little priest, turning sharply in his seat, “not infinite in the sense of escaping from the laws of truth.”

Valentin behind his tree was tearing his fingernails with silent fury. He seemed almost to hear the sniggers of the English detectives whom he had brought so far on a fantastic guess only to listen to the metaphysical gossip of two mild old parsons. In his impatience he lost the equally elaborate answer of the tall cleric, and when he listened again it was again Father Brown who was speaking:

“Reason and justice grip the remotest and the loneliest star. Look at those stars. Don’t they look as if they were single diamonds and sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire. But don’t fancy that all that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a noticeboard, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ ”

Valentin was just in the act of rising from his rigid and crouching attitude and creeping away as softly as might be, felled by the one great folly of his life. But something in the very silence of the tall priest made him stop until the latter spoke. When at last he did speak, he said simply, his head bowed and his hands on his knees:

“Well, I still think that other worlds may perhaps rise higher than our reason. The mystery of heaven is unfathomable, and I for one can only bow my head.”

Then, with brow yet bent and without changing by the faintest shade his attitude or voice, he added:

“Just hand over that sapphire cross of yours, will you? We’re all alone here, and I could pull you to pieces like a straw doll.”

The utterly unaltered voice and attitude added a strange violence to that shocking change of speech. But the guarder of the relic only seemed to turn his head by the smallest section of the compass. He seemed still to have a somewhat foolish face turned to the stars. Perhaps he had not understood. Or, perhaps, he had understood and sat rigid with terror.

“Yes,” said the tall priest, in the same low voice and in the same still posture, “yes, I am Flambeau.”

Then, after a pause, he said:

“Come, will you give me that cross?”

“No,” said the other, and the monosyllable had an odd sound.

Flambeau suddenly flung off all his pontifical pretensions. The great robber leaned back in his seat and laughed low but long.

“No,” he cried, “you won’t give it me, you proud prelate. You won’t give it me, you little celibate simpleton. Shall I tell you why you won’t give it me? Because I’ve got it already in my own breast-pocket.”

The small man from Essex turned what seemed to be a dazed face in the dusk, and said, with the timid eagerness of “The Private Secretary”:

“Are — are you sure?”

Flambeau yelled with delight.

“Really, you’re as good as a three-act farce,” he cried. “Yes, you turnip, I am quite sure. I had the sense to make a duplicate of the right parcel, and now, my friend, you’ve got the duplicate and I’ve got the jewels. An old dodge, Father Brown — a very old dodge.”

“Yes,” said Father Brown, and passed his hand through his hair with the same strange vagueness of manner. “Yes, I’ve heard of it before.”

The colossus of crime leaned over to the little rustic priest with a sort of sudden interest.

“You have heard of it?” he asked. “Where have you heard of it?”

“Well, I mustn’t tell you his name, of course,” said the little man simply. “He was a penitent, you know. He had lived prosperously for about twenty years entirely on duplicate brown paper parcels. And so, you see, when I began to suspect you, I thought of this poor chap’s way of doing it at once.”

“Began to suspect me?” repeated the outlaw with increased intensity. “Did you really have the gumption to suspect me just because I brought you up to this bare part of the heath?”

“No, no,” said Brown with an air of apology. “You see, I suspected you when we first met. It’s that little bulge up the sleeve where you people have the spiked bracelet.”

“How in Tartarus,” cried Flambeau, “did you ever hear of the spiked bracelet?”

“Oh, one’s little flock, you know!” said Father Brown, arching his eyebrows rather blankly. “When I was a curate in Hartlepool, there were three of them with spiked bracelets. So, as I suspected you from the first, don’t you see, I made sure that the cross should go safe, anyhow. I’m afraid I watched you, you know. So at last I saw you change the parcels. Then, don’t you see, I changed them back again. And then I left the right one behind.”

“Left it behind?” repeated Flambeau, and for the first time there was another note in his voice beside his triumph.

“Well, it was like this,” said the little priest, speaking in the same unaffected way. “I went back to that sweet-shop and asked if I’d left a parcel, and gave them a particular address if it turned up. Well, I knew I hadn’t; but when I went away again I did. So, instead of running after me with that valuable parcel, they have sent it flying to a friend of mine in Westminster.” Then he added rather sadly: “I learnt that, too, from a poor fellow in Hartlepool. He used to do it with handbags he stole at railway stations, but he’s in a monastery now. Oh, one gets to know, you know,” he added, rubbing his head again with the same sort of desperate apology. “We can’t help being priests. People come and tell us these things.”

Flambeau tore a brown-paper parcel out of his inner pocket and rent it in pieces. There was nothing but paper and sticks of lead inside it. He sprang to his feet with a gigantic gesture, and cried:

“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe a bumpkin like you could manage all that. I believe you’ve still got the stuff on you, and if you don’t give it up — why, we’re all alone, and I’ll take it by force!”

“No,” said Father Brown simply, and stood up also, “you won’t take it by force. First, because I really haven’t still got it. And, second, because we are not alone.”

Flambeau stopped in his stride forward.

“Behind that tree,” said Father Brown, pointing, “are two strong policemen and the greatest detective alive. How did they come here, do you ask? Why, I brought them, of course! How did I do it? Why, I’ll tell you if you like! Lord bless you, we have to know twenty such things when we work among the criminal classes! Well, I wasn’t sure you were a thief, and it would never do to make a scandal against one of our own clergy. So I just tested you to see if anything would make you show yourself. A man generally makes a small scene if he finds salt in his coffee; if he doesn’t, he has some reason for keeping quiet. I changed the salt and sugar, and you kept quiet. A man generally objects if his bill is three times too big. If he pays it, he has some motive for passing unnoticed. I altered your bill, and you paid it.”

The world seemed waiting for Flambeau to leap like a tiger. But he was held back as by a spell; he was stunned with the utmost curiosity.

“Well,” went on Father Brown, with lumbering lucidity, “as you wouldn’t leave any tracks for the police, of course somebody had to. At every place we went to, I took care to do something that would get us talked about for the rest of the day. I didn’t do much harm — a splashed wall, spilt apples, a broken window; but I saved the cross, as the cross will always be saved. It is at Westminster by now. I rather wonder you didn’t stop it with the Donkey’s Whistle.”

“With the what?” asked Flambeau.

“I’m glad you’ve never heard of it,” said the priest, making a face. “It’s a foul thing. I’m sure you’re too good a man for a Whistler. I couldn’t have countered it even with the Spots myself; I’m not strong enough in the legs.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” asked the other.

“Well, I did think you’d know the Spots,” said Father Brown, agreeably surprised. “Oh, you can’t have gone so very wrong yet!”

“How in blazes do you know all these horrors?” cried Flambeau.

The shadow of a smile crossed the round, simple face of his clerical opponent.

“Oh, by being a celibate simpleton, I suppose,” he said. “Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hear men’s real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil? But, as a matter of fact, another part of my trade, too, made me sure you weren’t a priest.”

“What?” asked the thief, almost gaping.

“You attacked reason,” said Father Brown. “It’s bad theology.”

And even as he turned away to collect his property, the three policemen came out from under the twilight trees. Flambeau was an artist and a sportsman. He stepped back and swept Valentin a great bow.

“Do not bow to me, mon ami,” said Valentin, with silver clearness. “Let us both bow to our master.”

And they both stood an instant uncovered, while the little Essex priest blinked about for his umbrella.

Recipe for Murder VINCENT STARRETT

Original publication: Redbook Magazine, November 1934; first collected in The Case Book of Jimmie Lavender (Chicago, Gold Label, 1944)

Charles Vincent Emerson Starrett (1886–1974) was one of America’s greatest bookmen, producing countless essays, biographical works, critical studies, and bibliographical pieces on a wide range of authors and bookish subjects, all while writing the “Books Alive” column for the Chicago Tribune for many years. His autobiography, Born in a Bookshop (1965), should be required reading for booklovers of all ages.

The daughter of the distinguished bibliophile offered the best tombstone inscription — “The Last Bookman” — for anyone who is a Dofab, Eugene Field’s useful acronym for a “damned old fool about books.” Once, when a friend called at his home, Starrett’s daughter answered the door and told the visitor that her father was “upstairs, playing with his books.”

It cannot be argued — Starrett’s most outstanding achievements were his writings about Sherlock Holmes, most notably The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1933) and “The Unique ‘Hamlet,’ ” described by Sherlockians for decades as the best pastiche ever written. It was selected for Queen’s Quorum, Ellery Queen’s selection of the one hundred six most important volumes of detective fiction ever written.

Starrett wrote numerous mystery short stories and several detective novels, including Murder on “B” Deck (1929), Dead Man Inside (1931), and The End of Mr. Garment (1932). His short story, “Recipe for Murder,” was expanded to the full-length novel, The Great Hotel Murder (1935), which was the basis for a film of the same title.

Title: The Great Hotel Murder, 1935

Studio: Fox Film Corporation

Director: Eugene Forde

Screenwriter: Arthur Kober

Producer: John Stone

• Edmund Lowe (Roger Blackwood)

• Victor McLaglen (Andrew W. “Andy” McCabe)

• Rosemary Ames (Eleanor Blake)

• Mary Carlisle (Olive Temple)

The film was based on this short story, “Recipe for Murder,” which was the working title for the motion picture while it was in production. Starrett had liked the plot of his story so much that he expanded it into a novel titled The Great Hotel Murder (1935). The motion picture follows the novel’s plot moderately closely, though Jimmie Lavender, the gentleman detective of the story, does not appear in the film.

In one of San Francisco’s most elegant hotels, house detective Andy McCabe flirts with women on the staff as well as guests but is rejected regularly as they all seem to have their sights on the debonaire mystery writer Roger Blackwood. When a guest is murdered, McCabe figures he can solve the mystery better than the writer can because, he reasons, anyone can solve a crime if they provide their own answers.

As was true of so many mystery films of the era, as much emphasis is placed on comedy as on crime-solving which, to be fair, is a good thing because both the motive for the murder and the method in this movie were a bit murky.

RECIPE FOR MURDER Vincent Starrett

No Hard Feelings FREDERICK NEBEL

Original publication: Black Mask, February 1936

Pulp writers working in the midst of the Great Depression were famously prolific, but few could match Frederick Nebel (1903–1967), who produced prodigious amounts of mystery fiction, primarily in several long-running series, mainly in Black Mask and its closest rival, Dime Detective, in a career that essentially ended after a single decade (1927–1937). His crime-fighting heroes are tough and frequently violent, but they bring a strong moral code to their jobs, as well as a level of realism achieved by few other pulp writers. He was often described as Black Mask’s best writer after Dashiell Hammett stopped writing for it and before Raymond Chandler did.

He pounded out hard-boiled stories about such fixtures of their era as Cardigan, the hard-as-nails Irish operative working for the Cosmos Agency in St. Louis, nearly fifty in all, which ran from 1931 to 1937 in the pages of Dime Detective; the best of them were published in The Adventures of Cardigan (1988).

A popular series featured Donny “Tough Dick” Donahue of the Interstate agency, with twenty-one adventures, all in Black Mask, that ran from 1930 to 1935; a half dozen of the best were collected in Six Deadly Dames (1950).

Perhaps most significantly, Nebel wrote the hugely popular, long-running series about Captain Steve MacBride and the ever-present local reporter, Kennedy, who frequently takes over a story and does as much crime solving as the official member of the police department. Nebel sold the MacBride series to Warner Brothers, which made nine films.

Other films were also based on Nebel’s work, notably his only two novels; Sleepers West (1941) was a Mike Shayne film based on Sleepers East (1933) and Fifty Roads to Town (1937) was based on his 1936 crime novel of the same name. He also wrote the story for The Bribe (1949), which starred Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Charles Laughton, and Vincent Price.

Title: Smart Blonde, 1937

Studio: Warner Brothers Pictures

Director: Frank McDonald

Screenwriters: Kenneth Garnet, Don Ryan

Producers: Jack L. Warner, Hal Wallis

• Glenda Farrell (Torchy Blane)

• Barton MacLane (Steve MacBride)

• Wini Shaw (Dolly Ireland)

• Craig Reynolds (Tom Carney)

Nebel sold the rights to the MacBride and Kennedy characters to Warner Brothers, which made the first film in the series, Smart Blonde, less than one year after “No Hard Feelings” was published in Black Mask. However, in the film version, Kennedy is changed to a perky, wisecracking, female reporter for The Morning Herald named Teresa “Torchy” Blane, who is in love with McBride, a detective.

Glenda Farrell and Barton MacLane were teamed as Torchy and Steve in seven of the nine films in the series, which ran until 1939. Lola Lane and Paul Kelly played the roles in the 1938 film Torchy Blane in Panama and Jane Wyman and Allen Jenkins took over the roles in the last film in the series, Torchy Plays with Dynamite.

Director Frank McDonald knew from the outset that he wanted Glenda Farrell to play Torchy Blane. She had already created the template for the hard-boiled female reporter four years earlier as the heroine of Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), directed by Michael Curtiz. Discovered on Broadway, the Oklahoma native made an impression in Hollywood when it transitioned to sound films with her rapid-fire delivery; it was determined that she could speak nearly four hundred words per minute.

In a letter to Time magazine in 1988, Superman cocreator Jerry Siegel admitted that he and partner Joe Shuster had based Clark Kent’s Daily Planet colleague and love interest Lois Lane on the indefatigable Torchy, with Glenda Farrell serving as the physical model while the character’s surname came from Torchy Blane in Panama star Lola Lane.

The story was adapted again as the 1941 film A Shot in the Dark. The movie’s working title during filming was No Hard Feelings, just as it had been for Smart Blonde.

The radio series Meet MacBride, based on Nebel’s Black Mask series, made its debut on CBS on June 13, 1936.

NO HARD FEELINGS Frederick Nebel

The House in Turk Street DASHIELL HAMMETT

Original publication: Black Mask, April 15, 1924; first collected in Hammett Homicides (New York, Lawrence E. Spivak, 1946)

The argument could be made that Samuel Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961) was the most important writer in the history of the private eye novel, the most significant twentieth-century author of American detective fiction, and, ultimately, the most influential American author of the twentieth century. As writers turned from the orotund style of Henry James and his Victorian predecessors to lean and swift prose, scholars have pointed to the undeniably profound force of Ernest Hemingway, but it would not be difficult to make the case that it was Hammett who influenced the great Papa to develop that style.

Publishing dates are hard facts, not esoteric theories. Hammett’s first Continental Op story appeared in Black Mask on October 1, 1923. The quintessential hard-boiled private eye appeared frequently in the ensuing years. Hemingway’s first book, In Our Time, was published in Paris in a limited edition in 1924 and then issued with a tiny print run of 1,335 copies in the United States in October 1925, by which time Hammett was already well established and a highly popular regular contributor to the most important pulp magazine of its time, while Hemingway had only a tiny coterie of readers.

The Continental Op, the relentless private eye in “The House in Turk Street,” was a bald, overweight, middle-aged, but very tough private eye who worked for San Francisco’s Continental Detective Agency and remained nameless in all the works about him, including most of Hammett’s short stories and novellas, as well as his first two novels, Red Harvest (1929) and The Dain Curse (1929).

The Op had a lot of Hammett in him and many of his cases were based on Hammett’s experiences as a Pinkerton detective, but the prime model for the tough dick was James Wright, assistant superintendent of Pinkerton’s Baltimore office and Hammett’s former boss.

In addition to the nameless operative of the Continental Detective Agency, Hammett created Sam Spade, the hero of the most famous American detective novel ever written or filmed, The Maltese Falcon (1930), which had been serialized in Black Mask, as were all of his novels excepting the last, The Thin Man (1934).

Title: No Good Deed, 2002

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Director: Bob Rafelson

Screenwriter: Christopher Canaan, Steve Barancik

Producer: Barry M. Berg, David Braun

• Samuel L. Jackson (Jack Friar)

• Milla Jovovich (Erin)

• Stellan Skarsgård (Tyrone)

• Doug Hutchison (Hoop)

Although a very good romantic film noir, there are a few differences in the plot of the movie compared to Hammett’s original story. In both, the Continental Op stumbles across a gorgeous woman involved with a gang of thieves who capture and tie him up. In the original, they are a bunch of grifters who use the beauty to seduce a banker, convince him to steal $100,000 (in 1924 money!), and run away with her. In the film, the gang is planning a bank robbery and, while they are out of the house, leaving Erin behind, she finds the detective, actually an ex-cop named Jack Friar in the film, irresistible.

Bob Rafelson was nominated for a prize for his direction at the Moscow International Film Festival.

THE HOUSE IN TURK STREET Dashiell Hammett

I had been told that the man for whom I was hunting lived in a certain Turk Street block, but my informant hadn’t been able to give me his house number. Thus it came about that late one rainy afternoon I was canvassing this certain block, ringing each bell, and reciting a myth that went like this:

“I’m from the law office of Wellington and Berkeley. One of our clients — an elderly lady — was thrown from the rear platform of a street car last week and severely injured. Among those who witnessed the accident was a young man whose name we don’t know. But we have been told that he lives in this neighborhood.” Then I would describe the man I wanted, and wind up: “Do you know of anyone who looks like that?”

All down one side of the block the answers were: “No,” “No,” “No.”

I crossed the street and started on the other side. The first house: “No.” The second: “No.” The third. The fourth. The fifth—

No one came to the door in answer to my first ring. After a while, I rang again. I had just decided that no one was at home, when the knob turned slowly and a little old woman opened the door. She was a very fragile little old woman, with a piece of grey knitting in one hand, and faded eyes that twinkled pleasantly behind goldrimmed spectacles. She wore a stiffly starched apron over a black dress.

“Good evening,” she said in a thin friendly voice. “I hope you didn’t mind waiting. I always have to peep out to see who’s there before I open the door — an old woman’s timidity.”

“Sorry to disturb you,” I apologized. “But—”

“Won’t you come in, please?”

“No, I just want a little information. I won’t take much time.”

“I wish you would come in,” she said, and then added with mock severity, “I’m sure my tea is getting cold.”

She took my damp hat and coat, and I followed her down a narrow hall to a dim room, where a man got up as we entered. He was old too, and stout, with a thin white beard that fell upon a white vest that was as stiffly starched as the woman’s apron.

“Thomas,” the little fragile woman told him; “this is Mr.—”

“Tracy,” I said, because that was the name I had given the other residents of the block; but I came as near blushing when I said it as I have in fifteen years. These folks weren’t made to be lied to.

Their name, I learned, was Quarre; and they were an affectionate old couple. She called him “Thomas” every time she spoke to him, rolling the name around in her mouth as if she liked the taste of it. He called her “my dear” just as frequently, and twice he got up to adjust a cushion more comfortably to her frail back.

I had to drink a cup of tea with them and eat some little spiced cookies before I could get them to listen to a question. Then Mrs. Quarre made little sympathetic clicking sounds with her tongue and teeth, while I told about the elderly lady who had fallen off a street car. The old man rumbled in his beard that it was “a damn shame,” and gave me a fat cigar.

Finally I got away from the accident, and described the man I wanted.

“Thomas,” Mrs. Quarre said; “isn’t that the young man who lives in the house with the railing — the one who always looks so worried?”

The old man stroked his snowy beard and pondered for a moment.

“But, my dear,” he rumbled at last; “hasn’t he got dark hair?”

She beamed upon her husband. “Thomas is so observant,” she said with pride. “I had forgotten; but the young man I spoke of does have dark hair, so he couldn’t be the one.”

The old man then suggested that one who lived in the block below might be my man. They discussed this one at some length before they decided that he was too tall and too old. Mrs. Quarre suggested another. They discussed that one, and voted against him. Thomas offered a candidate; he was weighed and discarded. They chattered on.

Darkness settled. The old man turned on a light in a tall lamp that threw a soft yellow circle upon us, and left the rest of the room dim. The room was a large one, and heavy with the thick hangings and bulky horsehair furniture of a generation ago. I didn’t expect to get any information here; but I was comfortable, and the cigar was a good one. Time enough to go out into the drizzle when I had finished my smoke.

Something cold touched the nape of my neck.

“Stand up!”

I didn’t stand up: I couldn’t. I was paralyzed. I sat and blinked at the Quarres.

And looking at them, I knew that something cold couldn’t be against the back of my neck; a harsh voice couldn’t have ordered me to stand up. It wasn’t possible!

Mrs. Quarre still sat primly upright against the cushions her husband had adjusted to her back; her eyes still twinkled with friendliness behind her glasses. The old man still stroked his white beard, and let cigar smoke drift unhurriedly from his nostrils.

They would go on talking about the young men in the neighborhood who might be the man I wanted. Nothing had happened. I had dozed.

“Get up!” The cold thing against my neck jabbed deep into the flesh.

I stood up. “Frisk him,” the harsh voice came from behind.

The old man carefully laid his cigar down, came to me, and ran his hands over my body. Satisfied that I was unarmed, he emptied my pockets, dropping the contents upon the chair that I had just left.

“That’s all,” he told the man behind me, and returned to his chair.

“Turn around, you!” the harsh voice ordered.

I turned and faced a tall, gaunt, raw-boned man of about my own age, which is thirty-five. He had an ugly face — hollow-cheeked, bony, and spattered with big pale freckles. His eyes were of a watery blue, and his nose and chin stuck out abruptly. “Know me?” he asked.

“No.”

“You’re a liar!”

I didn’t argue the point; he was holding a gun in one big freckled hand.

“You’re going to know me pretty well before you’re through with me,” this big ugly man threatened. “You’re going to—”

“Hook!” a voice came from a portièred doorway — the doorway through which the ugly man had no doubt crept up behind me. “Hook, come here!” The voice was feminine — young, clear, and musical.

“What do you want?” the ugly man called over his shoulder.

“He’s here.”

“All right!” He turned to Thomas Quarre. “Keep this joker safe.”

From somewhere among his whiskers, his coat, and his stiff white vest, the old man brought out a big black revolver, which he handled with no signs of unfamiliarity.

The ugly man swept up the things that had been taken from my pockets, and carried them through the portières with him.

Mrs. Quarre smiled up at me. “Do sit down, Mr. Tracy,” she said.

I sat.

Through the portières a new voice came from the next room; a drawling baritone voice whose accent was unmistakably British; cultured British. “What’s up, Hook?” this voice was asking.

The harsh voice of the ugly man:

“Plenty’s up, I’m telling you! They’re on to us! I started out a while ago; and as soon as I got to the street, I seen a man I knowed on the other side. He was pointed out to me in Philly five-six years ago. I don’t know his name, but I remembered his mug — he’s a Continental Detective Agency man. I came back in right away, and me and Elvira watched him out of the window. He went to every house on the other side of the street, asking questions or something. Then he came over and started to give this side a whirl, and after a while he rings the bell. I tell the old woman and her husband to get him in, stall him along, and see what he says for himself. He’s got a song and dance about looking for a guy what seen an old woman bumped by a street car — but that’s the bunk! He’s gunning for us. I went in and stuck him up just now. I meant to wait till you come, but I was scared he’d get nervous and beat it.”

The British voice: “You shouldn’t have shown yourself to him. The others could have taken care of him.”

Hook: “What’s the diff? Chances is he knows us all anyway. But supposing he didn’t, what diff does it make?”

The drawling British voice: “It may make a deal of difference. It was stupid.”

Hook, blustering: “Stupid, huh? You’re always bellyaching about other people being stupid. To hell with you, I say! Who does all the work? Who’s the guy that swings all the jobs? Huh? Where—”

The young feminine voice: “Now, Hook, for God’s sake don’t make that speech again. I’ve listened to it until I know it by heart!”

A rustle of papers, and the British voice: “I say, Hook, you’re correct about his being a detective. Here is an identification card.”

The feminine voice from the next room: “Well, what’s to be done? What’s our play?”

Hook: “That’s easy to answer. We’re going to knock this sleuth off!”

The feminine voice: “And put our necks in the noose?”

Hook, scornfully: “As if they ain’t there if we don’t! You don’t think this guy ain’t after us for the L.A. job, do you?”

The British voice: “You’re an ass, Hook, and a quite hopeless one. Suppose this chap is interested in the Los Angeles affair, as is probable; what then? He is a Continental operative. Is it likely that his organization doesn’t know where he is? Don’t you think they know he was coming up here? And don’t they know as much about us — chances are — as he does? There’s no use killing him. That would only make matters worse. The thing to do is to tie him up and leave him here. His associates will hardly come looking for him until tomorrow.”

My gratitude went out to the British voice! Somebody was in my favor, at least to the extent of letting me live. I hadn’t been feeling very cheerful these last few minutes. Somehow, the fact that I couldn’t see these people who were deciding whether I was to live or die, made my plight seem all the more desperate. I felt better now, though far from gay; I had confidence in the drawling British voice; it was the voice of a man who habitually carries his point.

Hook, bellowing: “Let me tell you something, brother: that guy’s going to be knocked off! That’s flat! I’m taking no chances. You can jaw all you want to about it, but I’m looking out for my own neck and it’ll be a lot safer with that guy where he can’t talk. That’s flat.”

The feminine voice, disgustedly: “Aw, Hook, be reasonable!”

The British voice, still drawling, but dead cold: “There’s no use reasoning with you, Hook, you’ve the instincts and the intellect of a troglodyte. There is only one sort of language that you understand; and I’m going to talk that language to you, my son. If you are tempted to do anything silly between now and the time of our departure, just say this to yourself two or three times: ‘If he dies, I die.’ Say it as if it were out of the Bible — because it’s that true.”

There followed a long space of silence, with a tenseness that made my not particularly sensitive scalp tingle.

When, at last, a voice cut the silence, I jumped as if a gun had been fired; though the voice was low and smooth enough.

It was the British voice, confidently victorious, and I breathed again.

“We’ll get the old people away first,” the voice was saying. “You take charge of our guest, Hook. Tie him up while I get the bonds, and we’ll be gone in less than half an hour.”

The portières parted and Hook came into the room — a scowling Hook whose freckles had a greenish tinge against the sallowness of his face. He pointed a revolver at me, and spoke to the Quarres, short and harsh:

“He wants you.” They got up and went into the next room.

Hook, meanwhile, had stepped back to the doorway, still menacing me with his revolver; and pulled loose the plush ropes that were around the heavy curtains. Then he came around behind me, and tied me securely to the highbacked chair; my arms to the chair’s arms, my legs to the chair’s legs, my body to the chair’s back and seat; and he wound up by gagging me with the corner of a cushion that was too well-stuffed.

As he finished lashing me into place, and stepped back to scowl at me, I heard the street door close softly, and then light footsteps ran back and forth overhead.

Hook looked in the direction of those footsteps, and his little watery blue eyes grew cunning. “Elvira!” he called softly.

The portières bulged as if someone had touched them, and the musical feminine voice came through. “What?”

“Come here.”

“I’d better not. He wouldn’t—”

“Damn him!” Hook flared up. “Come here!”

She came into the room and into the circle of light from the tall lamp; a girl in her early twenties, slender and lithe, and dressed for the street, except that she carried her hat in one hand. A white face beneath a bobbed mass of flame-colored hair. Smoke-grey eyes that were set too far apart for trustworthiness — though not for beauty — laughed at me; and her red mouth laughed at me, exposing the edges of little sharp animal-teeth. She was as beautiful as the devil, and twice as dangerous.

She laughed at me — a fat man all trussed up with red plush rope, and with the corner of a green cushion in my mouth — and she turned to the ugly man. “What do you want?”

He spoke in an undertone, with a furtive glance at the ceiling, above which soft steps still padded back and forth.

“What say we shake him?”

Her smoke-grey eyes lost their merriment and became calculating.

“There’s a hundred thousand he’s holding — a third of it’s mine. You don’t think I’m going to take a Mickey Finn on that, do you?”

“Course not! Supposing we get the hundred-grand?”

“How?”

“Leave it to me, kid; leave it to me! If I swing it, will you go with me? You know I’ll be good to you.”

She smiled contemptuously, I thought — but he seemed to like it.

“You’re whooping right you’ll be good to me,” she said. “But listen, Hook: we couldn’t get away with it — not unless you get him. I know him! I’m not running away with anything that belongs to him unless he is fixed so that he can’t come after it.”

Hook moistened his lips and looked around the room at nothing. Apparently he didn’t like the thought of tangling with the owner of the British drawl. But his desire for the girl was too strong for his fear.

“I’ll do it!” he blurted. “I’ll get him! Do you mean it, kid? If I get him, you’ll go with me?”

She held out her hand. “It’s a bet,” she said and he believed her.

His ugly face grew warm and red and utterly happy, and he took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. In his place, I might have believed her myself — all of us have fallen for that sort of thing at one time or another — but sitting tied up on the side-lines, I knew that he’d have been better off playing with a gallon of nitro than with this baby. She was dangerous! There was a rough time ahead for Hook!

“This is the lay—” Hook began, and stopped, tongue-tied.

A step had sounded in the next room.

Immediately the British voice came through the portières, and there was exasperation to the drawl now:

“This is really too much! I can’t” — he said reahly and cawnt — “leave for a moment without having things done all wrong. Now just what got into you, Elvira, that you must go in and exhibit yourself to our detective?”

Fear flashed into her smoke-grey eyes, and out again, and she spoke airily. “Don’t be altogether yellow,” she said. “Your precious neck can get along all right without so much guarding.”

The portières parted, and I twisted my head around as far as I could get it for my first look at this man who was responsible for my still being alive. I saw a short fat man, hatted and coated for the street, and carrying a tan traveling bag in one hand.

Then his face came into the yellow circle of light, and I saw that it was a Chinese face. A short fat Chinese, immaculately clothed in garments that were as British as his accent.

“It isn’t a matter of color,” he told the girl — and I understood now the full sting of her jibe; “it’s simply a matter of ordinary wisdom.”

His face was a round yellow mask, and his voice was the same emotionless drawl that I had heard before; but I knew that he was as surely under the girl’s sway as the ugly man — or he wouldn’t have let her taunt bring him into the room. But I doubted that she’d find this Anglicized oriental as easily handled as Hook.

“There was no particular need,” the Chinese was still talking, “for this chap to have seen any of us.” He looked at me now for the first time, with little opaque eyes that were like two black seeds. “It’s quite possible that he didn’t know any of us, even by description. This showing ourselves to him is the most arrant sort of nonsense.”

“Aw, hell, Tai!” Hook blustered. “Quit your bellyaching, will you? What’s the diff? I’ll knock him off, and that takes care of that!”

The Chinese set down his tan bag and shook his head.

“There will be no killing,” he drawled, “or there will be quite a bit of killing. You don’t mistake my meaning, do you, Hook?”

Hook didn’t. His Adam’s apple ran up and down with the effort of his swallowing and behind the cushion that was choking me, I thanked the yellow man again.

Then this red-haired she-devil put her spoon in the dish.

“Hook’s always offering to do things that he has no intention of doing,” she told the Chinese.

Hook’s ugly face blazed red at this reminder of his promise to get the Chinese, and he swallowed again, and his eyes looked as if nothing would have suited him better than an opportunity to crawl under something. But the girl had him; her influence was stronger than his cowardice.

He suddenly stepped close to the Chinese, and from his advantage of a full head in height scowled down into the round yellow face.

“Tai,” the ugly man snarled; “you’re done. I’m sick and tired of all this dog you put on — acting like you was a king or something. I’m going to—”

He faltered, and his words faded away into silence. Tai looked up at him with eyes that were as hard and black and inhuman as two pieces of coal. Hook’s lips twitched and he flinched away a little.

I stopped sweating. The yellow man had won again. But I had forgotten the red-haired she-devil. She laughed now — a mocking laugh that must have been like a knife to the ugly man.

A bellow came from deep in his chest, and he hurled one big fist into the round blank face of the yellow man.

The force of the punch carried Tai all the way across the room, and threw him on his side in one corner.

But he had twisted his body around to face the ugly man even as he went hurtling across the room — a gun was in his hand before he went down — and he was speaking before his legs had settled upon the floor — and his voice was a cultured British drawl.

“Later,” he was saying; “we will settle this thing that is between us. Just now you will drop your pistol and stand very still while I get up.”

Hook’s revolver — only half out of his pocket when the oriental had covered him — thudded to the rug. He stood rigidly still while Tai got to his feet, and Hook’s breath came out noisily, and each freckle stood ghastily out against the dirty scared white of his face.

I looked at the girl. There was contempt in the eyes with which she looked at Hook, but no disappointment.

Then I made a discovery: something had changed in the room near her!

I shut my eyes and tried to picture that part of the room as it had been before the two men had clashed. Opening my eyes suddenly, I had the answer.

On the table beside the girl had been a book and some magazines. They were gone now. Not two feet from the girl was the tan bag that Tai had brought into the room. Suppose the bag had held the bonds from the Los Angeles job that they had mentioned. It probably had. What then? It probably now held the book and magazines that had been on the table. The girl had stirred up the trouble between the two men to distract their attention while she made a switch. Where would the loot be, then? I didn’t know, but I suspected that it was too bulky to be on the girl’s slender person.

Just beyond the table was a couch, with a wide red cover that went all the way down to the floor. I looked from the couch to the girl. She was watching me, and her eyes twinkled with a flash of mirth as they met mine coming from the couch. The couch it was!

By now the Chinese had pocketed Hook’s revolver, and was talking to him: “If I hadn’t a dislike for murder, and didn’t think that you will perhaps be of some value to Elvira and me in effecting our departure, I should certainly relieve us of the handicap of your stupidity now. But I’ll give you one more chance. I would suggest, however, that you think carefully before you give way to any more of your violent impulses.” He turned to the girl. “Have you been putting foolish ideas in our Hook’s head?”

She laughed. “Nobody could put any kind in it.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” he said, and then came over to test the lashings about my arms and body.

Finding them satisfactory, he picked up the tan bag, and held out the gun he had taken from the ugly man a few minutes before.

“Here’s your revolver, Hook, now try to be sensible. We may as well go now. The old man and his wife will do as they were told. They are on their way to a city that we needn’t mention by name in front of our friend here, to wait for us and their share of the bonds. Needless to say, they will wait a long while — they are out of it now. But between ourselves there must be no more treachery. If we’re to get clear, we must help each other.”

According to the best dramatic rules, these folks should have made sarcastic speeches to me before they left, but they didn’t. They passed me without even a farewell look, and went out of sight into the darkness of the hall.

Suddenly the Chinese was in the room again, running tiptoe — an open knife in one hand, a gun in the other. This was the man I had been thanking for saving my life! He bent over me.

The knife moved on my right side, and the rope that held that arm slackened its grip. I breathed again, and my heart went back to beating.

“Hook will be back,” Tai whispered, and was gone.

On the carpet, three feet in front of me, lay a revolver.

The street door closed, and I was alone in the house for a while.

You may believe that I spent that while struggling with the red plush ropes that bound me. Tai had cut one length, loosening my right arm somewhat and giving my body more play, but I was far from free. And his whispered “Hook will be back” was all the spur I needed to throw my strength against my bonds.

I understood now why the Chinese had insisted so strongly upon my life being spared. I was the weapon with which Hook was to be removed! The Chinese figured that Hook would make some excuse as soon as they reached the street, slip back into the house, knock me off, and rejoin his confederates. If he didn’t do it on his own initiative, I suppose the Chinese would suggest it.

So he had put a gun within reach and had loosened my ropes as much as he could, not to have me free before he himself got away.

This thinking was a side-issue. I didn’t let it slow up my efforts to get loose. The why wasn’t important to me just now — the important thing was to have that revolver in my hand when the ugly man came back.

Just as the front door opened, I got my right arm completely free, and plucked the strangling cushion from my mouth. The rest of my body was still held by the ropes — held loosely — but held.

I threw myself, chair and all, forward, breaking the fall with my free arm. The carpet was thick. I went down on my face, with the heavy chair atop me, all doubled up, but my right arm was free of the tangle, and my right hand grasped the gun. The dim light hit upon a man hurrying into the room — a glint of metal in his hand.

I fired.

He caught both hands to his belly, bent double, and slid out across the carpet.

That was over. But that was far from being all. I wrenched at the plush ropes that held me, while my mind tried to sketch what lay ahead.

The girl had switched the bonds, hiding them under the couch — there was no question of that. She had intended coming back for them before I had time to get free. But Hook had come back first, and she would have to change her plan. What more likely than that she would now tell the Chinese that Hook had made the switch? What then? There was only one answer: Tai would come back for the bonds — both of them would come. Tai knew that I was armed now, but they had said that the bonds represented a hundred thousand dollars. That would be enough to bring them back!

I kicked the last rope loose and scrambled to the couch. The bonds were beneath it: four thick bundles, done up with heavy rubber bands. I tucked them under one arm, and went over to the man who was dying near the door. His gun was under one of his legs. I pulled it out, stepped over him, and went into the dark hall. Then I stopped to consider.

The girl and the Chinese would split to tackle me. One would come in the front door and the other in the rear. That would be the safest way for them to handle me. My play, obviously, was to wait just inside one of those doors for them. It would be foolish for me to leave the house. That’s exactly what they would be expecting at first — and they would be lying in ambush.

Decidedly, my play was to lie low within sight of this front door and wait until one of them came through it — as one of them surely would, when they had tired of waiting for me to come out.

Toward the street door, the hall was lighted with the glow that filtered through the glass from the street lights. The stairway leading to the second-story threw a triangular shadow across part of the hall — a shadow that was black enough for any purpose. I crouched low in this three-cornered slice of night, and waited.

I had two guns: the one the Chinese had given me, and the one I had taken from Hook. I had fired one shot; that would leave me eleven still to use — unless one of the weapons had been used since it was loaded. I broke the gun Tai had given me, and in the dark ran my fingers across the back of the cylinder. My fingers touched one shell — under the hammer Tai had taken no chances; he had given me one bullet — the bullet with which I had dropped Hook.

I put that gun down on the floor, and examined the one I had taken from Hook. It was empty. The Chinese had taken no chances at all! He had emptied Hook’s gun before returning it to him after their quarrel.

I was in a hole! Alone, unarmed, in a strange house that would presently hold two who were hunting me — and that one of them was a woman didn’t soothe me any — she was none the less deadly on that account.

For a moment I was tempted to make a dash for it; the thought of being out in the street again was pleasant; but I put the idea away. That would be foolishness, and plenty of it. Then I remembered the bonds under my arm. They would have to be my weapon; and if they were to serve me, they would have to be concealed.

I slipped out of my triangular shadow and went up the stairs. Thanks to the street lights, the upstairs rooms were not too dark for me to move around. Around and around I went through the rooms, hunting for a place to hide the bonds. But when suddenly a window rattled, as if from the draught created by the opening of an outside door somewhere, I still had the loot in my hands.

There was nothing to do now but to chuck them out of a window and trust to luck. I grabbed a pillow from a bed, stripped off the white case, and dumped the bonds into it. Then I leaned out of an already open window and looked down into the night, searching for a desirable dumping place: I didn’t want the bonds to land on anything that would make a racket.

And, looking out of the window, I found a better hiding place. The window opened into a narrow court, on the other side of which was a house of the same sort as the one I was in. That house was of the same height as this one, with a flat tin roof that sloped down the other way. The roof wasn’t far from me — not too far to chuck the pillow-case. I chucked it. It disappeared over the edge of the roof and crackled softly on the tin.

Then I turned on all the lights in the room, lighted a cigarette (we all like to pose a little now and then), and sat down on the bed to await my capture. I might have stalked my enemies through the dark house, and possibly have nabbed them; but most likely I would simply have succeeded in getting myself shot. And I don’t like to be shot.

The girl found me.

She came creeping up the hall, an automatic in each hand, hesitated for an instant outside the door, and then came in on the jump. And when she saw me sitting peacefully on the side of the bed, her eyes snapped scornfully at me, as if I had done something mean. I suppose she thought I should have given her an opportunity to shoot.

“I got him, Tai,” she called, and the Chinese joined us.

“What did Hook do with the bonds?” he asked point blank.

I grinned into his round yellow face and led my ace.

“Why don’t you ask the girl?”

His face showed nothing, but I imagined that his fat body stiffened a little within its fashionable British clothing. That encouraged me, and I went on with my little lie that was meant to stir things up.

“Haven’t you rapped to it,” I asked; “that they were fixing up to ditch you?”

“You dirty liar!” the girl screamed, and took a step toward me.

Tai halted her with an imperative gesture. He stared through her with his opaque black eyes, and as he stared the blood slid out of her face. She had this fat yellow man on her string, right enough, but he wasn’t exactly a harmless toy.

“So that’s how it is?” he said slowly, to no one in particular. Then to me: “Where did they put the bonds?”

The girl went close to him and her words came out tumbling over each other:

“Here’s the truth of it, Tai, so help me God! I switched the stuff myself. Hook wasn’t in it. I was going to run out on both of you. I stuck them under the couch downstairs, but they’re not there now. That’s the God’s truth!”

He was eager to believe her, and her words had the ring of truth to them. And I knew that — in love with her as he was — he’d more readily forgive her treachery with the bonds than he would forgive her for planning to run off with Hook; so I made haste to stir things up again.

“Part of that is right enough,” I said. “She did stick the bonds under the couch — but Hook was in on it. They fixed it up between them while you were upstairs. He was to pick a fight with you, and during the argument she was to make the switch, and that is exactly what they did.”

I had him! As she wheeled savagely toward me, he stuck the muzzle of an automatic in her side — a smart jab that checked the angry words she was hurling at me.

“I’ll take your guns, Elvira,” he said, and took them.

“Where are the bonds now?” he asked me.

I grinned. “I’m not with you, Tai. I’m against you.”

“I don’t like violence,” he said slowly, “and I believe you are a sensible person. Let us traffic, my friend.”

“You name it,” I suggested.

“Gladly! As a basis for our bargaining, we will stipulate that you have hidden the bonds where they cannot be found by anyone else; and that I have you completely in my power, as the shilling shockers used to have it.”

“Reasonable enough,” I said; “go on.”

“The situation, then, is what gamblers call a standoff. Neither of us has the advantage. As a detective, you want us; but we have you. As thieves, we want the bonds; but you have them. I offer you the girl in exchange for the bonds, and that seems to me an equitable offer. It will give me the bonds and a chance to get away. It will give you no small degree of success in your task as a detective. Hook is dead. You will have the girl. All that will remain is to find me and the bonds again — by no means a hopeless task. You will have turned a defeat into half a victory, with an excellent chance to make it a complete one.”

“How do I know that you’ll give me the girl?”

He shrugged. “Naturally, there can be no guarantee. But, knowing that she planned to desert me for the swine who lies dead below, you can’t imagine that my feelings for her are the most friendly. Too, if I take her with me, she will want a share in the loot.”

I turned the lay-out over in my mind.

“This is the way it looks to me,” I told him at last. “You aren’t a killer. I’ll come through alive no matter what happens. All right; why should I swap? You and the girl will be easier to find again than the bonds, and they are the most important part of the job anyway. I’ll hold on to them, and take my chances on finding you folks again. Yes, I’m playing it safe.”

“No, I’m not a killer,” he said, very softly; and he smiled the first smile I had seen on his face. It wasn’t a pleasant smile: and there was something in it that made you want to shudder. “But I am other things, perhaps, of which you haven’t thought. But this talking is to no purpose. Elvira!”

The girl came obediently forward.

“You will find sheets in one of the bureau drawers,” he told her. “Tear one or two of them into strips strong enough to tie up our friend securely.”

The girl went to the bureau. I wrinkled my head, trying to find a not too disagreeable answer to the question in my mind. The answer that came first wasn’t nice: torture.

Then a faint sound brought us all into tense motionlessness.

The room we were in had two doors: one leading into the hall, the other into another bedroom. It was through the hall door that the faint sound had come — the sound of creeping feet.

Swiftly, silently, Tai moved backward to a position from which he could watch the hall door without losing sight of the girl and me — and the gun poised like a live thing in his fat hand was all the warning we needed to make no noise.

The faint sound again, just outside the door.

The gun in Tai’s hand seemed to quiver with eagerness.

Through the other door — the door that gave to the next room — popped Mrs. Quarre, an enormous cocked revolver in her thin hand.

“Let go it, you nasty heathen,” she screeched.

Tai dropped his pistol before he turned to face her, and he held his hands up high — all of which was very wise.

Thomas Quarre came through the hall door then; he also held a cocked revolver — the mate of his wife’s — though, in front of his bulk, his didn’t look so enormously large.

I looked at the old woman again, and found little of the friendly fragile one who had poured tea and chatted about the neighbors. This was a witch if there ever was one — a witch of the blackest, most malignant sort. Her little faded eyes were sharp with ferocity, her withered lips were taut in a wolfish snarl, and her thin body fairly quivered with hate.

“I knew it,” she was shrilling. “I told Tom as soon as we got far enough away to think things over. I knew it was a frame-up! I knew this supposed detective was a pal of yours! I knew it was just a scheme to beat Thomas and me out of our shares! Well, I’ll show you, you yellow monkey! Where are them bonds? Where are they?”

The Chinese had recovered his poise, if he had ever lost it.

“Our stout friend can tell you perhaps,” he said. “I was about to extract the information from him when you so — ah — dramatically arrived.”

“Thomas, for goodness sakes don’t stand there dreaming,” she snapped at her husband, who to all appearances was still the same mild old man who had given me an excellent cigar. “Tie up this Chinaman! I don’t trust him an inch, and I won’t feel easy until he’s tied up.”

I got up from my seat on the side of the bed, and moved cautiously to a spot that I thought would be out of the line of fire if the thing I expected happened.

Tai had dropped the gun that had been in his hand, but he hadn’t been searched. The Chinese are a thorough people; if one of them carries a gun at all, he usually carries two or three or more. One gun had been taken from Tai, and if they tried to truss him up without frisking him, there was likely to be fireworks. So I moved to one side.

Fat Thomas Quarre went phlegmatically up to the Chinese to carry out his wife’s orders — and bungled the job perfectly.

He put his bulk between Tai and the old woman’s gun.

Tai’s hands moved. An automatic was in each.

Once more Tai ran true to racial form. When a Chinese shoots, he keeps on until his gun is empty.

When I yanked Tai over backward by his fat throat, and slammed him to the floor, his guns were still barking metal; and they clicked empty as I got a knee on one of his arms. I didn’t take any chances. I worked on his throat until his eyes and tongue told me that he was out of things for a while. Then I looked around.

Thomas Quarre was against the bed, plainly dead, with three round holes in his starched white vest.

Across the room, Mrs. Quarre lay on her back. Her clothes had somehow settled in place around her fragile body, and death had given her once more the gentle friendly look she had worn when I first saw her.

The red-haired girl Elvira was gone.

Presently Tai stirred, and after taking another gun from his clothes, I helped him sit up. He stroked his bruised throat with one fat hand, and looked coolly around the room.

“Where’s Elvira?” he asked.

“Got away — for the time being.”

He shrugged. “Well, you can call it a decidedly successful operation. The Quarres and Hook dead; the bonds and I in your hands.”

“Not so bad,” I admitted, “but will you do me a favor?”

“If I may.”

“Tell me what the hell this is all about!”

“All about?” he asked.

“Exactly! From what you people have let me overhear, I gather that you pulled some sort of job in Los Angeles that netted you a hundred-thousand-dollars’ worth of bonds; but I can’t remember any recent job of that size down there.”

“Why, that’s preposterous!” he said with what, for him, was almost wild-eyed amazement. “Preposterous! Of course you know all about it!”

“I do not! I was trying to find a young fellow named Fisher who left his Tacoma home in anger a week or two ago. His father wants him found on the quiet, so that he can come down and try to talk him into going home again. I was told that I might find Fisher in this block of Turk Street, and that’s what brought me here.”

He didn’t believe me. He never believed me. He went to the gallows thinking me a liar.

When I got out into the street again (and Turk Street was a lovely place when I came free into it after my evening in that house!) I bought a newspaper that told me most of what I wanted to know.

A boy of twenty — a messenger in the employ of a Los Angeles stock and bond house — had disappeared two days before, while on his way to a bank with a wad of bonds. That same night this boy and a slender girl with bobbed red hair had registered at a hotel in Fresno as J. M. Riordan and wife. The next morning the boy had been found in his room — murdered. The girl was gone. The bonds were gone.

That much the paper told me. During the next few days, digging up a little here and a little there, I succeeded in piecing together most of the story.

The Chinese — whose full name was Tai Choon Tau — had been the brains of the mob. Their game had been a variation of the always-reliable badger game. Tai would pick out some youth who was messenger or runner for a banker or broker — one who carried either cash or negotiable securities in large quantities.

The girl Elvira would then make this lad, get him all fussed up over her — which shouldn’t have been very hard for her — and then lead him gently around to running away with her and whatever he could grab in the way of his employer’s bonds or currency.

Wherever they spent the first night of their flight, there Hook would appear — foaming at the mouth and loaded for bear. The girl would plead and tear her hair and so forth, trying to keep Hook — in his rôle of irate husband — from butchering the youth. Finally she would succeed, and in the end the youth would find himself without either girl or the fruits of his thievery.

Sometimes he had surrendered to the police. Two we found had committed suicide. The Los Angeles lad had been built of tougher stuff than the others. He had put up a fight, and Hook had had to kill him. You can measure the girl’s skill in her end of the game by the fact that not one of the half dozen youths who had been trimmed had said the least thing to implicate her; and some of them had gone to great trouble to keep her out of it.

The house in Turk Street had been the mob’s retreat, and, that it might be always a safe one, they had not worked their game in San Francisco. Hook and the girl were supposed by the neighbors to be the Quarres’ son and daughter — and Tai was the Chinese cook. The Quarres’ benign and respectable appearances had also come in handy when the mob had securities to be disposed of.

The Chinese went to the gallows. We threw out the widest and finest-meshed of dragnets for the red-haired girl; and we turned up girls with bobbed red hair by the scores. But the girl Elvira was not among them.

I promised myself that some day...

Woman in the Dark DASHIELL HAMMETT

Original publication: Liberty, April 8, April 15, and April 22, 1933; first collected in Woman in the Dark (New York, Lawrence E. Spivak, 1951)

Carroll John Daly (1889–1958) wrote the first hard-boiled private eye story, inventing the form nearly a century ago with a story titled “The False Burton Combs” featuring private investigator Terry Mack. It appeared in the December 1922 issue of Black Mask and served as the prototype for all the tough, wise-cracking private dicks who followed.

Samuel Dashiell Hammett’s (1894–1961) first Continental Op story, “Arson Plus,” followed almost immediately in the October 1, 1923, issue of Black Mask, and the American detective story was changed forever. While Daly was essentially a hack, Hammett brought literary texture and depth to the genre, influencing every hard-boiled writer who ever attempted to work in that quintessentially American literary form.

Born in Maryland, Hammett dropped out of school and, after various jobs, took a position with the Pinkerton Detective Agency in Baltimore and worked in several bureaus, notably San Francisco, and called extensively on his experiences to provide plots and authenticity to his fiction.

His first stories (published under the pseudonym Peter Collinson) appeared in The Smart Set and a year later he began to write prolifically for the top pulp magazines, mainly Black Mask; he was one of the three most popular and best paid of the pulp writers for the next decade (along with Daly and Erle Stanley Gardner).

He wrote his only five novels in a seven-year stretch, the first four being serialized in Black Mask: Red Harvest (1927–1928), The Dain Curse (1928–1929), The Maltese Falcon (1929–1930), and The Glass Key (1930); The Thin Man was first published in Redbook in 1933 and in book form in 1934.

Frail for all of his adult life, his poor health and decades-long alcoholism contributed to a dramatically reduced literary output after his final novel, though he is known to have contributed extensively to the work of his longtime, on-and-off lover, Lillian Hellman.

Title: Woman in the Dark, 1934

Studio: RKO Radio Pictures

Director: Phil Rosen

Screenwriter: Sada Cowan

Producer: Burt Kelly

• Fay Wray (Louise Loring)

• Ralph Bellamy (John Bradley)

• Melvyn Douglas (Tony Robson)

As lucky as Hammett was with the superb film adaptations of The Maltese Falcon (1931) and The Glass Key (1935), as well as the outstanding film version of The Thin Man (1934) — although the rather dark novel was made as a comedy — that’s how unlucky he got with Woman in the Dark, which managed to turn an outstanding story into an utterly pedestrian B movie in spite of the good cast.

Apart from attempting to add a character mainly in a (failed and misguided) attempt to provide humor, the story line is a very faithful adaptation of the novella, which is a mystery story without a detective.

Louise Loring, the unhappy mistress of the fabulously wealthy Tony Robson, escapes from his abuse in the night and seeks refuge in the cabin of John Bradley, who has just served a prison term for manslaughter. When Robson and his hired man try to take Loring back, Bradley stops them, apparently badly injuring the hired man. Bradley and Loring flee but Robson tracks them down and has them arrested but, when it is learned that the hired man was beaten by Robson, the truth sets them free.

Hammett received credit above the title.

The film was also released as Woman in the Shadows.

The 1952 motion picture titled Woman in the Dark has no connection to Hammett or his original story.

WOMAN IN THE DARK Dashiell Hammett

Inside Job RAOUL WHITFIELD

Original publication: Black Mask, February 1932; first published in book form in The Hard-Boiled Omnibus, edited by Joseph T. Shaw (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1946)

When Joseph Shaw, the legendary editor of Black Mask, compiled his 1946 anthology of what he regarded as the greatest stories published in its pages, he included (of course) a story by Dashiell Hammett, another by Raymond Chandler, but he used two by Raoul Fauconnier Whitfield (1896–1945), one published under his real name and another under his Ramon Decolta pseudonym.

The pulp community was not a huge one. The editors knew each other, and they knew the writers. The writers, too, knew each other, and their common meeting place was often a bar. While the two greatest writers for the pulps, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, are believed to have met only once, Hammett became very close to one of the other giants of the era, Raoul Whitfield. There seems to be a good deal of evidence that Hammett became even closer to Whitfield’s wife, Prudence, but that’s another story.

Whitfield was born in New York City. During World War I, he served with the US Army Air Corps in France as a pilot. When he returned to the United States, he went to learn the steel business (he was related to Andrew Carnegie), then worked as a newspaper reporter and began to write fiction for pulp magazines. He used his flying background to write aviation stories for the pulps in the early 1920s, then sold his first mystery to Black Mask for the March 1926 issue. He went on, in a serious burst of prolificity, to write nearly ninety stories, under his own name and as Decolta, for Black Mask between that first effort and his last one, only eight years later, for the February 1934 issue.

The prolific Whitfield had quickly become one of Black Mask’s best and most popular writers, but his career was cut short when he became ill in 1935; he never fully recovered and died ten years later.

He also wrote five mystery novels, three under his own name: Green Ice (1930), Death in a Bowl (1931), and The Virgin Kills (1932), and two under the pseudonym Temple Field, Five (1931) and Killers’ Carnival (1932). As Whitfield, he wrote four juveniles, all with aviation backgrounds: Wings of Gold (1930), Silver Wings (1930), Danger Zone (1931), and Danger Circus (1933).

In the story “Inside Job,” Hugh Fresney, editor of a Los Angeles newspaper, takes on the mob and seems a good choice for assassination. The wealthy owner of the paper, Clinton Vaupaugh, is nervous when he thinks he might be the target. Tim Slade, a former reporter who now works as a private detective, is brought in by Fresney to work the case.

Title: High Tide, 1947

Studio: Monogram Pictures

Director: John Reinhardt

Screenwriter: Robert Presnell Sr.

Producer: Jack Wrather

• Lee Tracy (Hugh Fresney)

• Don Castle (Tim “T. M.” Slade)

• Julie Bishop (Julie Vaughn)

• Anabel Shaw (Dana Jones)

• Regis Toomey (Inspector O’Haffey)

• Douglas Walton (Clinton Vaughn)

The outstanding element added to the screenplay is the opening scene when the newspaper editor Fresney and the private investigator are seen driving too fast when the car flips and they are injured and trapped in the car on a beach in Malibu, Fresney with a broken back and Slade immobile. The tide is rapidly coming in and threatening to drown them as their conversation reveals that one of them is a villain, though it is unclear which one. Fresney tells Slade, “You know, kid, if you had only not answered that telegram I sent you...” The story is then told in flashback, closely following Whitfield’s short story.

It would be useful to have read the story before watching the film. It is a reasonably complicated plot and its resolution comes so rapidly at the denouement that it is nearly impossible to follow the events and how everyone is connected to all that activity.

Lee Tracy had a successful career on Broadway, television, and motion pictures, being nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Art Hockstader, former president of the United States, a character loosely based on Harry Truman, in both the 1960 stage and 1964 film versions of The Best Man, written by Gore Vidal.

Don Castle, who famously resembled Clark Gable, minus the charisma, became a producer on the television series, Lassie. After an automobile accident, he died of a prescription drug overdose; he was forty-eight years old.

Julie Bishop was born Jacqueline Brown but used the family name Wells (as Jacqueline) professionally through 1941. She also used the name Diane Duval onstage, as well as in one film. Highly successful, she appeared in more than fifty B movies in the 1940s, as well as in major films with John Wayne and others.

High Tide, even though it was a low budget B film, was regarded highly enough for the UCLA Film and Television Archive, funded by the Film Noir Foundation, to restore the film in 2013.

INSIDE JOB Raoul Whitfield

Fresney stood beside the coat-rack, pulling off his gray gloves. His eyes were on the half-moon shaped desk and his chair at the center of the inner curve, on the platform a foot above the floor. He took off his gloves slowly, stuffed them in a pocket of his tightly buttoned trench coat. His gold-headed cane he removed from an arm, hung it over the second hook of the rack. Phillips, the real estate editor, passed him and grinned with his long face.

“Nasty weather,” he said.

Fresney’s face was turned towards the large, black-lettered sign that hung on a wall of the editorial room.

“Is it?” he said in a cold voice.

The sign on the wall spelled Accuracy and was very old and dirty. Fresney’s thin, long lips curved slightly in a smile. He removed his coat, took off a gray soft hat and hung it over the hook that held his stick. At one end of the room the automatic telegraph machines were making a clatter. Two or three typewriters were working. At a glance Fresney saw that seven or eight of the dozen reporters on the staff had arrived; it was five minutes of two.

He took a pack of cigarettes from a pocket of the trench coat, walked swiftly around to his chair. It was a swivel-chair; rather battered looking. Cleve Collins, his assistant, looked up from some copy. He sat across from the city editor, on the outer curve of the half moon. There were two chairs on each side of his — copy readers’ places. Collins said:

“Vapor said he wanted you as soon as you came in, Hugh.”

The managing editor’s name was Clinton Vaupaugh; he was called “Vapor” around the city rooms. Fresney nodded and sat down. He put a cigarette in his mouth, lighted a match by scratching a thumbnail across the phosphorous, and held the flame against paper and tobacco. His small, dark eyes looked at words on a yellow sheet of news paper as he shook the match out. The words were: “You’re a good slave driver and a lousy city editor. I resign. Hennessy.”

Fresney lifted the paper the words were typed on as though it was something dirty. He used the tips of a thumb and forefinger and let the yellow stuff fall to the platform beside him. On another scrap of news paper he read: “Dyke has sweet alibi and smashed head. Reedy sore — says sheet didn’t use his picture. Better give him break. In for the bulldog. Jake.”

Fresney flipped the scrap across to Cleve Collins, who was watching him closely.

“Run Dan Reedy’s face on Page two — mark it ‘must,’ ” he instructed. “Give him a good boost.”

Collins blinked. “Reedy — what for?” he asked. “What did he do?”

The city editor’s eyes smiled a little. “He grabbed Jap Dyke, along with two or three other plainclothes boys,” he replied grimly. “But we’ll forget the others for the moment.”

The assistant city editor grunted. He made notes on paper. Fresney said:

“He’s feeling hurt and making it tough for Jake. We’ll use some oil.”

Collins swore very softly. Then he said:

“Vapor wants to see you when you get here, Hugh.”

The city editor nodded. “Hennessy’s quit; he didn’t like it because I told him to go after the Ware woman hard and tell her the police would be out if she didn’t talk. I think Hennessy drew a week ahead, yesterday. If he did — send Burney after the money. If Hennessy won’t pay up we’ll have him pinched.”

The assistant city editor widened his blue eyes. He was thirty-two, ten years younger than Fresney. He had a pale, thin face and his body was long and thin.

“And what’ll the police do, after they pinch Hennessy?” he asked dryly.

Fresney’s eyes were hard. “They’ll do what I tell ’em to do,” he replied.

Collins whistled very softly. Fresney looked at him sharply, then looked down at another slip of news paper on which was scrawled: “Cresser gets hanged tonight. C.C.” The city editor looked at Collins and said slowly: “He put up a good fight, Cleve. Send Daly over to cover it — there’s a pass around here somewhere.”

Collins nodded. “Yeah. Cresser put up a good fight,” he agreed. “Damn’ little money — a wife — and with the sheet yelping for his neck—”

Fresney spoke coldly and softly: “Shut up, Cleve.”

Collins narrowed his eyes. “The wife was in to see you about fifteen minutes ago, Hugh,” he said quietly.

Fresney said: “You shut up, Cleve.”

Collins paid no attention to him. “I told her you were out of the city,” he said.

Fresney’s lips got very tight, and his eyes very small. Before he could speak Collins said:

“But she didn’t believe me.”

The city editor reached deep down in a hip pocket, twisting in his chair. He got the Colt loose, opened a drawer of the desk and slipped it inside. Cleve Collins looked down at the copy before him.

“That drawer sticks,” he reminded quietly. “You ought to have it fixed, Hugh.”

Hugh Fresney swung his chair and stood up. He smiled down at his assistant.

“It wouldn’t do you any good if I did get the works,” he said grimly. “Running this sheet takes guts.”

He looked beyond his assistant towards the groups of reporters. The Dispatch was a morning paper and was making a fight to beat the circulation of the Press. Fresney was driving his men hard, and he knew that he wasn’t exactly popular. The fact didn’t bother him.

He said to Cleve Collins: “Take on another man in Hennessy’s place — and no college stuff. And there’s a fellow getting in in a few hours to see me. His name is Slade. If I’m not here when he comes in — have him wait.”

Collins nodded and said without smiling:

“Vapor wants to see you as soon as you get here, Hugh.”

The city editor grinned. “Why didn’t you say so before?” he said. “There’s no damn’ system around this place.”

He walked along a side of the large room towards an office door marked: Managing Editor. Inside the door was a small anteroom. A very good-looking girl, with red hair and blue eyes, sat back of a small desk. She frowned when she saw Fresney. The city editor smiled at her; but she didn’t smile back. Fresney said:

“How about dinner tonight — late, at my place?”

The girl’s expression changed just a little.

“C. V. is inside,” she said coldly.

Fresney chuckled. “Lovely lady,” he said mockingly. “Just another of the mob that would like to see me lying on my back in an alley, with my eyes open.”

He went through another door, closed it behind him and stood looking down at the gray-haired figure of Clinton Vaupaugh. The managing editor was heavy, smooth-faced, handsome. He was a big man with full lips and soft gray eyes.

“It’s got to stop, Hugh,” he said very slowly. Suddenly he banged a fist on the desk behind which he sat; frowned with his whole face. “I tell you — it’s got to stop!”

The city editor smiled with his long lips, but his eyes were cold.

“Who’s whining now?” he tasked with faint amusement in his voice.

Vaupaugh said grimly: “The Press had an editorial yesterday — you saw it? It doesn’t name this sheet, but it does everything but name it. It says we’re distorting the news. It claims we influenced the jury in the Cresser verdict; we hit at women — we’re ruthless, lying—”

Fresney took a cigarette from the pack and lighted it.

“The circulation department reports a daily city gain of twelve thousand in ten days,” he replied easily. “Where do you think we got that sale? It isn’t new readers. It’s right out of the Press’s pocket — we stole those readers away from them. They know it. Of course we’re scum — the whole lot of us.”

Vaupaugh took a handkerchief from a pocket, and there was an odor of perfume. He wiped his lips.

“It’s got to stop,” he repeated. “You’ve got to tone down, Hugh.”

Fresney smiled sardonically. “I haven’t started yet,” he breathed.

Vaupaugh stood up and shook a finger across the desk. He was breathing heavily and his face was pale.

“You got Cresser hanged — and you’re going after Jap Dyke the same way. You know who the man back of Edith Ware is? Bernard Kyle — one of our biggest advertisers. He called me up this morning. Lay off the Ware case — and lay off quick.”

Fresney yawned. “We can tone down a bit,” he said. “Kyle, eh? About to walk out on her, I suppose. Afraid of his wife — she just got back from Europe. And the Ware brat makes a bum attempt at suicide.”

Vaupaugh spoke in a shaken tone. “It isn’t a matter of toning down — we’re dropping the Ware suicide attempt. Dropping it, you understand?”

Fresney closed his small eyes, then opened them just a little.

“What’s wrong, Clint?” he asked very quietly.

Vaupaugh seated himself and said in a half whisper:

“My life’s been threatened — I had a phone call two hours ago. It sounded like business.”

The city editor made a snapping sound with fingers of his left hand.

“So that’s it,” he breathed. “First time your life has been threatened, Clint?”

There was irony in his words. Vaupaugh looked at him coldly.

“It’s the first time there’s ever been any real reason for the threats,” he replied. “Drop the Ware woman suicide stuff. Tone down a lot on Jap Dyke—”

Fresney straightened and stared at the managing editor.

“No,” he said in a hard voice. “Dyke’s our circulation builder — just now. A tough racketeer-gambler who went a bit too far. Mixed up with some city officials. We can’t drop Jap—”

Vaupaugh was suddenly very calm. “Drop Jap Dyke,” he said tonelessly. “I’ve changed my mind. It isn’t just a tone down — drop him! Or else—”

Hugh Fresney waited a few seconds and then repeated questioningly:

“Or else?”

Vaupaugh wiped his full lips again. “Or else quit the sheet,” he said steadily.

Fresney looked at the managing editor a long time with his small eyes. Then he said:

“Like hell, Clint.”

He turned abruptly and went into the anteroom. The red-haired girl bent her head over some papers and Fresney said grimly:

“How about that late dinner?”

She didn’t answer him. He went into the big editorial room and towards his desk. As he neared it he saw Tim Slade standing close to Collins. He reached his desk, scribbled: “82 Goorley Street at six — ask for Creese — he’ll take you to back room where I feed.” He looked at Slade’s lean face and said nastily:

“That’s where he lives — you’re a dirty louse to hound him. This is the last tip I’ll give you. Take it and get the hell out of here!”

He folded the paper on which he had scribbled, tossed it across the desk. Tim Slade’s eyes flickered, and when Collins handed him the slip of paper he said grimly:

“He owes me the fifty — and if he’s got anything worth that much — he’ll pay up.”

He went along a row between desks, and Cleve Collins said:

“Did Vapor want anything special?”

Fresney nodded. “The sheet’s getting virtuous again,” he stated with grim amusement. “We’re dropping the Ware stuff — and we’re dropping Jap Dyke.”

Cleve Collins blinked at him, then whistled. Fresney said:

“We’ll play up the church convention and feature any women’s club meetings. And remember the kiddies, Cleve — remember the kiddies. Nothing like the kiddies to build circulation.”

Collins smiled grimly. Fresney called up two reporters and gave them assignments. Collins seemed to be thinking hard. After a little while he looked across at Fresney and said softly:

“It’s a little late to start playing up the kiddies, isn’t it, Hugh?”

Hugh Fresney looked at him narrowly. “It’s not too late for you, Clint,” he said very quietly. “But it’s awful damn’ late for Vapor and me!”

Tim Slade had a lean, sun-browned face, brown eyes and hair, good features. He was almost six feet tall and there was a power in his shoulders and arms that wasn’t noticeable at a glance. His movements were very quick, though they had the appearance of being slow through grace. He kept brown eyes on Fresney. Fresney said:

“Clinton Vaupaugh is yellow. He’s greedy, too. Two months ago he inherited the paper — his father died. I talked him into putting guts into it, and going after circulation. He didn’t care about the guts part, not having any himself. But a gain in circulation — that got him. He told me to go to it. I went to it. Pittsburgh hasn’t had a fighting sheet in years. For a month and a half I’ve been tearing things loose. Pounding away at old crimes and going after the new ones. A quarter of the staff has quit or been fired. We’ve got three suits against us. Hell’s about ready to pop.”

Tim Slade smiled and nodded. “Sure,” he agreed. “And what’s that got to do with me coming on from Cleveland?”

Fresney tapped his cane against the wooden floor of the back room at 82 Goorley Street.

“I didn’t know it when I sent for you — but Vaupaugh’s life has been threatened. I had a phone call at the flat, two days ago. From a booth in a local department store. A woman’s voice. She said I’d get it this week; there was nothing I could do about it — and she was just telling me so I could fix up a few things.”

Slade frowned. “Any chance of it just being a bluff?” he asked.

Fresney shook his head. “Not a nickel’s worth,” he replied. “I made a couple of mistakes.”

Slade said: “Well?”

Fresney frowned at his half-empty beer glass. Then he looked at Slade with his little eyes almost closed. He nodded his head as though in self-agreement.

“I fired a reporter named Hallam, a week ago. Vaupaugh’s secretary is a red-headed girl named Dana Jones. She and Hallam were hot for each other. Hallam didn’t like my talking to him about it, the way I did. He swung at me, and I knocked him cold. Then I fired him. He can’t get another job and he left town yesterday. He hates my insides, and so does the girl.”

Slade finished the beer. “That makes two, Hugh,” he said. “Hallam might come back.”

The city editor nodded. “And a reporter named Hennessy makes three,” he added. “I didn’t fire him — he quit. But I was going to fire him. A woman named Edith Ware tried suicide, three days ago. Reason — her lover was going to be good and stick around his wife. Reason — the wife was coming back home. I had an inside from her maid — paid fifty bucks for it. Sent Hennessy to break the woman down and make her talk. Wanted to know who the man was. Good stuff — the way I was running things. Hennessy sold out, maybe. Or maybe he just got hating me. Anyway, he wrote that I was a slave driver and a louse. He’s been drinking.”

Slade said: “A possible three.”

Fresney looked at his fingernails. “The Ware woman is the fourth. I’ve smeared her all over the sheet since she made her bum attempt at suicide. I think she uses cocaine.”

Slade nodded. “Four.”

The city editor drew a deep breath. “I’ve been ripping things wide open, Tim. There are a lot of others that might do things — and the two that count biggest. Ruth Cresser and Jap Dyke. The Cresser girl is the wife of a guy that hangs tonight. We forced the police to go the limit with him. I had four men working on his past. We played for the jury — for everything. He hangs tonight. His wife was in today.”

Slade said: “Five.”

Fresney closed his eyes. “Cresser killed two cops, maybe. Jap Dyke told him to do it, maybe. He’s bad and he’s important. The other sheets keep clear of him. We did, until we went out for circulation. Jap stabbed a kid a week ago — in one of his gambling houses. A stoolie tipped me — I’ve been playing all ends. We ran stuff that made the city detectives grab Jap. He hasn’t talked much yet, but he has an alibi. He knows that I’m city editor and that Vaupaugh is managing editor.”

Slade said very tonelessly “Six.”

Fresney looked at the man across from him and smiled. It was a hard smile.

“Six — and some others we won’t bother about,” he breathed. “I’ve crammed a lot of living into forty-two years, Tim — I guess you know that. I can smell death when it’s close, and I smell it now. One paper can’t clean up this town — not the way I went at it. That was one of the mistakes. The other is one I’ve made all my life — I like to smash people that get in my way.”

Slade said: “Sure.”

Fresney nodded, his little eyes very small.

“Man or woman — that hasn’t made any difference. That’s the other mistake — you can’t smash women out of the way, Tim. They’re the mothers of men.”

He leaned back and chuckled. Then he shrugged and battered the gold head of the cane on the table.

“I like to smash people that get in my way,” he repeated. “Women have got in my way — in the paper’s way. And when I’m finished, Tim — someone will have got in my way again.”

Slade’s brown eyes held a faintly puzzled expression. He didn’t ask the question, but the city editor answered it.

“I loaned you half the money to get started in that Cleveland agency, Tim. You’ve done well — you had it in you.”

Slade shrugged. “In another three months — I can pay you back, Hugh,” he said.

Fresney smiled narrowly. “In another three months I’ll be forgotten,” he breathed. “Forget the loan, Tim. I wired for you for just one reason. I’m going to be through — pretty quick. That doesn’t frighten me, not much. I carry a gun and a heavy stick, Tim, and if I get a break — a chance to fight — you can go on back to Cleveland. But if they get me in the back, or machine-gun me out, or mob me out — I’d like you to get at least one of ’em, Tim. See?”

Slade’s brown eyes were frowning. But he didn’t speak.

Fresney said: “You’ll be all alone, Tim. The police’ll be pleasant, but they’ll be tickled. They never knew which way I’d print stuff. And I know too much. Vaupaugh’s yellow and he hates me now, because he’s been scared. Maybe he’ll get the dose, too. Maybe not. He’ll offer a reward, but the paper won’t help you much, Tim. The staff hates me. Collins might help a little, but he’ll probably get my job, and he’ll be busy being careful he doesn’t lose it. See?”

Slade nodded. Fresney smiled and shrugged.

“You’ll be alone, Tim,” he repeated. “I’ve hurt too many humans around here.”

Slade said: “All right — I don’t mind being alone.”

Fresney looked at the private detective with a peculiar expression in his small eyes.

“You don’t think I’m going to get it, eh? Think I’ve gone yellow, like Vaupaugh?”

Slade said quietly: “You seem pretty sure, Hugh. Ever think of being a news paper man in some other city?”

Fresney smiled grimly. “I never was good at running,” he replied. “Well — that’s all, Tim. That loan pays your fee — unless I get a chance to fight. If you look things over after, and see that I’ve hit back some — then trot on back to Cleveland and forget all this stuff.”

The city editor stood up. He patted a pocket of the trench coat, which he hadn’t removed. He looked down at Slade, smiling a little.

“I’m no damn’ angel, Tim,” he said. “I guess you know that. But I don’t like the idea of the human that gets me having things too easy.”

He held out his hand and Slade stood up. “I’ll go back to the paper behind you,” he said. “I’ll stick around for a while. You just might be wrong about things, Hugh.”

The city editor grinned and shook his head. He tossed a dollar bill on the table.

“The paper’s gone virtuous,” he stated with faint mockery. “It may save Vaupaugh’s perfumed neck, but it won’t save mine.”

Tim Slade didn’t argue the point. He’d known Fresney for five years, and the city editor had always shoved humans out of his way. If he said he was through — Slade knew he was through.

Fresney said: “Don’t come to the funeral, Tim.” His smile became a grin. “It’ll be a bum show. And you may have work to do.”

Slade nodded. “You had a good time while the racket lasted, Hugh,” he said quietly. “I’ll do what I can. But with so many hating you—”

Fresney grunted. “There may be carelessness along the line.”

He dug his left hand into a pocket of the trench coat and handed Slade a grotesquely twisted piece of lead.

“This morning, in the fog,” he said quietly, “I took an early walk — it hit a brick wall just ahead of me. Not much sound. Better keep it — might help. Over on the North Side, and the gun was silenced. Just the one shot. I got down low and stayed down for seconds, then I grabbed a cab and went home.”

Tim Slade said: “Good size — .45 maybe.”

Fresney nodded. “Maybe — doesn’t matter much. So long, Tim.”

Slade said: “Luck — and keep your chin up, Hugh.”

The city editor went from the room and down the stairs. Slade slipped the bullet in a pocket of his loose gray coat. He stood looking through the doorway, though Fresney was no longer in sight. After a few seconds he shoved his right hand in a deep pocket and touched the steel of his Colt automatic.

Then he went down the stairs and outside, watched the city editor turn a corner and head southward, towards the Ninth Street bridge. He followed along, a half square or so behind. Fresney walked rapidly, with his head up. When a truck made sharp exhaust racket, not far from the bridge, the city editor stopped and looked towards it. Then he went on.

Tim Slade bought a paper and glanced at it from time to time. It was dark when Fresney reached the other side of the bridge. The sky was gray and it was growing foggy. Slade increased his pace and got closer to the city editor. After seven or eight squares Fresney crossed Liberty Street and walked in the direction of the four-story brick building occupied by the Dispatch. The editorial rooms were on the upper floor; the presses were at street level. Slade followed to the entrance but didn’t go inside. The presses were motionless; there was a small crowd standing in the murky fog and reading a bulletin to the effect that Walter Cresser’s wife was making a last-hour appeal to the State governor, who was in Pittsburgh. The bulletin stated that Cresser was to be hanged between eleven and midnight.

Tim Slade lighted a cigarette and went into a drug store. He had a soft drink which killed the taste of the beer he had taken with Fresney. He didn’t like the taste of beer. When he’d finished the drink he got inside a booth and called Fresney. He said:

“T. S. speaking. Do you know a small man, very thin, who walks with a limp? Left leg stiff. Carries a straight, black stick.”

Fresney said: “No — why?”

Tim Slade dropped a cigarette on the floor of the booth and stepped on it.

“He tagged along across the street from you, most of the way to the building. Just now he picked up a paper a blonde gal dropped, and they went different directions.”

Fresney said in an irritated voice: “Well — what of that?”

Slade said: “Maybe nothing — but she dropped the paper when she was right beside him, and I figured he might have slipped something with something written on it — inside the paper before he handed it back.”

There was a little silence, then Fresney said:

“The mechanics of the way they work doesn’t interest me, Tim.”

Slade said: “All right — but I thought you might want to know a tip might be out that you were inside the building.”

Fresney said with sarcasm: “Thanks — you think they’ll walk in and get me at my desk?”

Slade said: “I thought you might know the man.”

The city editor swore. Slade waited a few seconds, then said:

“What time are you coming out?”

Fresney swore again: “Around eleven-thirty, unless something big breaks. Take a nap, Tim — and we’ll have a drink around midnight. Ring me at eleven-fifteen.”

Slade said: “Right,” and hung up. He smiled down at the receiver grimly. His brown eyes were almost closed. When he left the booth he went to the cigar counter and bought cigarettes. He recognized one of the Dispatch reporters he had seen in the editorial room. The reporter was at the counter, talking to an older man.

“I’ve got a hunch the sheet is going to be a lot softer,” he was saying. “Tough on Fresney — he’ll hate getting soft with it.”

The reporter’s companion swore. “It’ll just be another thing for him to hate,” he said grimly. “Hating comes easy for him.”

Tim Slade went out to the street and walked past the Dispatch building again. There was a later bulletin posted — it had been pasted up on the great glass window that showed off the presses, while he was phoning. It announced that the governor had refused to reconsider the Cresser stay. Nothing more could be done.

Tim Slade moved along Liberty Street, through the fog. He nodded his head and his brown eyes were grim.

“And hating comes easy for other people, too,” he breathed very softly.

At the moment that Walter Cresser was pronounced dead by doctors at Western Penitentiary, Tim Slade was listening to a jazz band playing on the stage of the Alvin Theatre. They were doing a new number called “Your Baby’s My Baby Now.” They did it in slow tempo and when they had finished there was a lot of applause. The jazz band was the last number on the bill, and the bill was a long one. Tim Slade looked at his wrist-watch, left his aisle seat and went outside. It was damply cold; the fog had thickened.

He walked to Liberty Street and moved towards the newspaper building. When he was three or four squares away an ambulance sped by, going in the same direction. It didn’t make much noise and Slade paid little attention to it.

When he neared the entrance to the Dispatch there was a crowd that wasn’t looking at bulletins. The ambulance was at the curb, and there was a black, open car with police insignia showing.

Slade closed his brown eyes slightly, shoved his way through the crowd. A uniformed officer caught him by the arm and Slade said:

“I’m on the staff — what’s wrong?”

The officer released his grip. “You’ll be writing about it,” he stated grimly and told the crowd to stop shoving.

Slade said: “Sure,” and went inside.

At the top of the first flight of wooden stairs he saw another crowd. The white of an interne’s coat showed. He went up the stairs. Cleve Collins, looking very pale, was saying:

“I heard one shot — and I heard Vaupaugh call out: ‘For God’s sake, Hugh — get him—’ Then there was another shot. I was two flights up, and I ran right down. Vaupaugh was lying where he is now — and Fresney was halfway down, moving a little, on the steps.”

Collins stopped. A plain-clothesman with a good pair of shoulders and a strong jaw said:

“What’d you do?”

Collins shrugged. “I went down there—” he pointed half the way down the stairs that led to the street level of the building — “and asked Fresney if he was shot.”

The plain-clothesman said with sarcasm: “Wasn’t that fine!”

The assistant city editor looked at him sharply. Then he said:

“Don’t be that way, Reynolds. I’m not a suspect and I’m not stupid.”

His voice was hard. Reynolds blinked at him and shrugged.

“No offense meant,” he said.

Tim Slade moved a few feet and looked down at the body of Vaupaugh. He hadn’t known the managing editor of the paper. The interne said in a fairly loud voice:

“All over, here — I’ll go in and look at the other one.”

Slade followed him into a room used by the circulation department. Hugh Fresney was stretched out on a leather divan. There was blood on his face; his head was bandaged. Five or six men were grouped around the divan. Fresney said slowly and with evident pain:

“Vaupaugh started down the stairs — something was wrong with the elevator. There was something I wanted to tell him, and I started after him. I called to him, but he didn’t hear me. Collins — my assistant — came out to tell me we’d just got a flash that Cresser had been hanged. I said I’d be back — and went down after Vaupaugh. I caught up to him on the landing of the first floor.”

The city editor paused. He spoke thickly — his mouth was cut. Slade noticed two of the paper’s reporters in the group about him. There was a police lieutenant in uniform and a man that looked like another plain-clothes detective. Fresney went on:

“The landings aren’t very well lighted — we don’t use them much. These circulation department doors were closed — the offices were dark. Vaupaugh was facing me — he had his back to this door. I was talking — there was a shot. Vaupaugh grabbed at his back and called out. I think he said: ‘I’m shot — for God’s sake get him, Hugh.’ Not sure — the shot made a lot of racket. Vaupaugh staggered away from me — and there was another shot from the doorway here.”

Fresney raised his left arm and pointed towards the door of the circulation office. He spoke in a low tone.

“Vaupaugh fell and I stumbled over his body. I was trying to get my gun from the pocket I carry it in — it stuck. I went to my knees and something hit me on the top of the head. I grappled with the one who had struck me and was hit again. Then my body was swung around — I was falling. I hit the stairs and must have lost consciousness. The next thing I knew was when Collins was beside me, asking if I was shot.”

The police lieutenant said: “What did you tell Collins?”

Fresney swore. “I said I didn’t think so — but that the managing editor was. I told him the one with the gun must have got to the street. He ran on down the stairs and got the traffic cop near the theatre, a square away. The others came down and brought me up here — someone telephoned headquarters—”

Fresney closed his eyes, and the interne, beside him, said:

“Better let us run you to the hospital. You may be banged up inside. Outside it’s just a smashed head and face, and cuts and bruises on the body from the fall.”

Fresney shook his head. “I’ll come over for an examination later, in a cab. I’m all right. Vaupaugh—”

The interne shrugged. “Dead — maybe within ten seconds of the time he was hit. Looks as though the bullet got the heart, from behind.”

Fresney’s face twisted. “Damn!” he said weakly.

The police lieutenant asked: “You never got a look at the face of the fellow that cracked you, Fresney?”

The city editor shook his head. “He handled me as though he was big, strong,” he replied. “But I was almost out after the first crack — he might not have been big.”

One of the other men said: “You don’t think there were two or three of them?”

Fresney opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling. He was wearing no coat; his vest was opened and his white shirt sleeves were rolled up.

“Might have been,” he said slowly. “I have the feeling there was only one.”

The police lieutenant said: “Vaupaugh’s life had been threatened, you say?”

Fresney nodded. “He told me that this afternoon.”

The one who looked like a plain-clothesman to Tim Slade spoke hoarsely:

“Yours — has it been threatened, Fresney?”

The city editor smiled a little. “Hell, yes,” he replied. “You fellows know that.”

He used his arms and sat up a little. His eyes went to one of the reporters. Collins came into the room and Fresney said to him:

“Get this in the next edition, Cleve — but save the high-lights for the final. Vaupaugh’s — last words — that sort of thing.”

He shook his head, as though thinking of Vaupaugh. His eyes rested on Slade’s face, but he didn’t appear to see him. The police lieutenant spoke grimly.

“Maybe they were trying for you — or this one fellow was trying for you, Fresney,” he said.

Fresney said thickly: “Maybe.”

The police lieutenant looked at those in the room. He frowned at Slade.

“Who are you?” he asked.

Tim Slade let his brown eyes meet the city editor’s. Fresney eased his head back to the raised portion of the divan, and twisted his face with pain. Then he smiled a little.

“He’s all right, Lieutenant,” he said. “Tim Slade — has a detective agency in Cleveland.”

The police lieutenant continued to frown. He looked at Fresney.

“What’s he doing here?” he asked.

Fresney said: “I wired for him — things looked bad for me. He’s an old friend of mine.”

The lieutenant grunted. “Bodyguard, eh?” he breathed.

Slade shook his head. “No,” he said quietly. “I’m no good at that sort of thing.”

The police lieutenant stared at him. Fresney swore and sat up again. His face was pretty badly battered. The lieutenant spoke grimly.

“Know who might have wanted to kill Vaupaugh, Fresney?”

The city editor narrowed his eyes. “No,” he said. “But he was managing editor and owner of the sheet — and a lot of people always want to kill editors.”

The police lieutenant smiled. “Know who might have wanted to kill you?” he asked.

Fresney swore huskily. He touched his bandaged head with careful fingers.

“I know a few people who might want to kill me,” he stated. “But that doesn’t say they tried.”

Collins said: “You might have been mistaken for Vaupaugh — or he might have been mistaken for you. They wanted you, Hugh — and they got him.”

The police lieutenant grunted. “Or maybe they figured one of you was about as bad as the other — and tried for you both.”

Fresney shrugged. He looked at Collins. “Better get up above, and get the story going,” he said. “Reporters from the other papers will be along soon. Treat ’em nice — but don’t tell them anything important, and avoid the truth as much as possible. Get a good obituary started for Vaupaugh.”

His words were tight, peculiar. Collins said:

“The obit’s all ready — I had Creager write it up a week ago.”

Fresney smiled grimly and the police lieutenant made clicking sounds.

“You fellows work fast,” he breathed.

Fresney looked at Collins as he turned to go from the room.

“Say that the paper will probably offer a large reward for the arrest of the killer or killers,” he said slowly. “Don’t use my picture. Play Vaupaugh’s death up as a big loss to Pittsburgh and the newspaper world.”

The police lieutenant swore. Collins nodded and started from the room. Fresney called in a voice that was thick and not very strong:

“Don’t forget the police, Cleve — they’re working hard. The dragnet’s out. The police boys all loved Vaupaugh, and they were terribly broken up over his death. When word got around that I was alive — they shouted with joy—”

He leaned back and closed his eyes. Collins went from the room. Tim Slade looked at the police lieutenant, who was regarding the city editor with a grim expression in his eyes.

“Our job’s to get the killer,” he said simply. “This paper’s been pounding the police for weeks. We’ve been grafters, quitters, cowards, and a lot of other things. You printed the stuff, Fresney — and the dead man okeyed it. But that doesn’t count. We’ll do our job.”

Fresney said with doubt: “Yeah? Well, anything I can do to help—”

He let his words trail off. The police lieutenant said:

“I want the names of the persons you were worried about. And any you think Vaupaugh might have been worried about.”

Fresney said: “Sure — got a pencil?”

The lieutenant said: “I can remember them.”

The city editor frowned. “Cresser was hanged a little while ago. The Dispatch thought he was guilty. We went after him. We dug up some of his past stuff. He has a wife — she’s tried to see me a couple of times. I don’t think she wanted to throw her arms around my neck. She knew Vaupaugh was the managing editor — she tried to see him, too.”

The police lieutenant said grimly: “You think a woman knocked you out and threw you down the stairs?”

Fresney smiled grimly. “You asked who might want to finish me — or Vaupaugh.”

The officer said: “All right. Go on—”

Fresney said: “You boys got Jap Dyke — but the paper had to tell you he was back in town. And the paper had to yelp that there might be graft holding off a pinch. Jap’s mob don’t love me — they didn’t love Vaupaugh.”

The police lieutenant didn’t speak. Fresney said:

“The Ware woman — the one that tried suicide. We gave her a play. There was a man in the background, and he was getting pretty scared. And nasty. The one she thought she wanted to suicide for. He was worried about his wife.”

The officer narrowed his eyes on Fresney’s and started to ask a question. But the city editor shook his head.

“In private, maybe — but you don’t get his name here.” He smiled very grimly. “He’s a big advertiser.”

The lieutenant swore. Fresney said: “I hurt pretty bad — get me a cab, Tim. I’ll go over and let the doc see if anything’s wrong inside.”

The police lieutenant frowned. Fresney said: “Then I’ve got to come back here — and get the sheet moving.”

Tim Slade went outside and moved past the covered body of Clinton Vaupaugh. A uniformed cop was on a ladder that was in place near woodwork high on the wall of the landing. He had a flashlight in one hand and he called down:

“Yeah — one hunk of lead dug in here.”

Tim Slade kept his brown eyes narrowed a little and went down the stairs. He hailed a cab, directly in front of the entrance. Two uniformed officers were keeping the crowd moving. Theatres were out and there was a lot of traffic. There was a bulletin up stating that Walter Cresser had been hanged.

A reporter and a plain-clothesman helped Fresney to the cab. The plain-clothesman said:

“Mind if I go along, Fresney? The lieutenant thought you might remember something between now and the time you get back, and you could tell me.”

Fresney said wearily: “Climb in.”

Tim Slade stood near the door of the cab, and his eyes met the city editor’s. Fresney looked pretty sick.

“See what you can dig up, Tim,” Fresney said in a tired voice. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

Slade smiled. “You aren’t holding anything back?” he questioned.

The city editor frowned. The plain-clothesman beside him yawned and looked bored. Fresney shook his head very slowly.

“I didn’t get a peek at the killer, Tim,” he said. “I think he made a mistake — thought Vaupaugh was me. But you might work around the building a bit — that fellow seemed to know where to lay for us. The elevator wasn’t working.”

Slade said: “Yeah — I’ll poke around the paper.”

The plain-clothesman looked straight ahead and his eyes were expressionless. His voice was that way, too.

“Sure,” he said. “It might have been an inside job.”

Inspector O’Hafey had a big head, a tall body. He was gray haired and his eyes were the same color. He looked at the papers Slade handed him, handed them back.

“Your outfit got Dunner,” he said in a husky voice. “Well, how do you figure?”

They were in the rear of the editorial room, and there was a lot of clatter up front. Most of the Dispatch staff were working on the story — there was a lot to be done. O’Hafey was doing his questioning on the spot.

Slade said: “I got a wire from Fresney. I’ve known him for five years or so. He’s a hard man, and he doesn’t scare easily. When I got here he seemed to want to keep me under cover. His life had been threatened; he was shot at this morning. Here’s the lead.”

He handed it to the inspector, who looked at it, then handed it to a sergeant sitting beside him. Tim Slade’s browned face was expressionless.

“Fresney seemed to be pretty certain he was slated to go out,” he went on. “He named some people who hated him enough to finish him, maybe. He told me Vaupaugh’s life had been threatened, and that the managing editor was yellow. He said the policy of the paper was to be changed, because Vaupaugh was scared. The sheet was going ‘soft.’ But he thought it was too late to save his neck, though it might save Vaupaugh.”

O’Hafey said: “You’ve got a paying agency in Cleveland, yet you came on here when he wired. Why?”

Slade smiled a little. “I was a reporter here for a while, five years ago. Worked under Fresney. He set me up in business. I still owe him some money.”

O’Hafey said: “Uh-huh. What were you to do?”

Slade spoke softly: “Go after whoever murdered Fresney, after they got him.”

O’Hafey blinked at Slade’s brown eyes. “After they got him?” he repeated.

Slade nodded. “He didn’t figure having a bodyguard would help much. But I tailed him back to the paper around six.”

O’Hafey said: “Anything happen?”

Slade hesitated, then shrugged. “A small, thin man with a stiff left leg followed along from the North Side. He carried a black stick. When Fresney came in the building this fellow stopped and waited around near the bulletin window. I got the idea he was stalling. After a while a blonde girl came along and dropped a paper. The one with the stiff leg picked it up and handed it back to her. I got the idea that he might have passed something along with it. Couldn’t see what he did — his back was to me. They went in different directions.”

The inspector widened his gray eyes. “A tip for someone — that Fresney was inside, eh?” he muttered.

Slade shrugged. “It was just a chance. I called Fresney and asked him if he knew anyone that looked like this small, thin limper. He said no — and wanted to know why. I told him and he said he wasn’t interested in the mechanics of the kill.”

“Tough guy,” O’Hafey said. “Well, I guess we know Fresney’s tough. Wanted you to get whoever got him, eh? Working from the grave. He would like that idea.”

Slade said: “I didn’t have to tell you these things, Inspector. I’m working for Fresney, and he isn’t exactly strong for the local police. I told you so that you wouldn’t get in my way.”

The inspector frowned. Then he smiled grimly.

“Go ahead, Slade,” he agreed. “Fresney thinks we won’t care much about grabbing the one who was after him, or who killed Vaupaugh. Well, that’s true enough. But we do a lot of jobs we don’t like.”

The sergeant said quietly: “Where were you — when this murder occurred?”

Slade grinned. “Listening to a jazz band at the Alvin Theatre,” he replied.

O’Hafey looked at his big hands. “Any good?” he asked.

Tim Slade nodded. “Swell,” he replied, and stood up. “If you don’t mind I’ll go out for some coffee and a doughnut.”

The inspector nodded. “Sure,” he said.

Slade went through the editorial room and reached Cleve Collins’s side. The assistant was reading typewritten words on news paper. Fresney had not returned yet. It was eleven-forty-five. Collins looked up and Slade said:

“Pretty tough on Vaupaugh.”

Collins nodded. “I think the fellow that got him was after Hugh,” he said soberly.

Slade said: “You do? Well, he must have known he made a mistake. He heard Vaupaugh call out.”

Collins said: “Yes — and he shot again. That was the one he missed.”

Slade nodded. “Well, there are more than two bullets in a gun,” he said. “What next?”

Collins shrugged. “Fresney was going for him. He stumbled. The second bullet was meant for him, maybe. It went into the wall. The spot where they dug it out is in a line — it works out right. The killer may have thought he’d hit Fresney, or he didn’t want to try again. So he used his gun on Hugh’s head — swung him around and threw him down the stairs. Then he went down past him and into the street. He got a break — he didn’t meet anyone coming up. The theatres were out, and he got away in the crowd.”

Slade’s brown eyes looked down at a proof of a “head” that read: Dispatch Owner Slain. He nodded his head.

“That’s the way it looks,” he said.

He moved away from the curved desk, glancing at Fresney’s vacant chair. The telegraph machines were clattering and a lot of typewriters were working. Slade moved towards the private office of Vaupaugh, opened the door quietly and went inside. He closed the door behind him.

Dana Jones looked at him with eyes that were a misty blue. She was small and very pretty. Tim Slade said:

“Pardon. You’re Miss Jones, Vaupaugh’s secretary?”

Her mouth set in a straight line. Her lips were nice, not too red. She didn’t reply.

Slade smiled. “I’m Slade,” he said. “I’m not with the police or on any paper. I’m from Cleveland. Fresney sent for me. He was worried.”

Her blue eyes narrowed. “What about?” she asked so steadily that he felt surprise.

“He thought maybe he was going to be killed. I’m an agency man — an old friend of his.”

She was silent again. Slade said quietly: “Some hours ago he gave me a list of those he thought might like to see him dead.”

He stopped. The girl said: “Well—”

Slade looked around at framed cartoons on the walls of the anteroom.

“Your name was one of them,” he said.

The girl’s eyes got very wide. She pressed a tiny, damp handkerchief against her lips. Slade smiled.

“That may not mean much. I’m just poking around. The police don’t know that Fresney was worried about you — not yet.”

Her eyes grew hard; she took the handkerchief away from her lips.

“Fresney wasn’t killed,” she said steadily. “What difference does it make who he’s worried about?”

Slade chuckled. “It’s a nice point,” he said. “But the police think Vaupaugh was killed by mistake. They think Fresney was slated to get the dose.”

The girl sat very motionless behind the small desk that held her typewriter.

“You think I shot Clinton by mistake, then threw Hugh Fresney down the stairs, then came back in here?” she said. There was scorn in her words.

Slade shook his head and looked at the cartoons again.

“Naturally not,” he replied. “Fresney fired a reporter named Hallam. Hallam hit him because he said something about you. Joking, I suppose. Fresney has a peculiar sense of humor. I understand you rather like Hallam.”

The girl stood up. “Bob’s out of town,” she said firmly. “He went to Chicago yesterday at noon. I saw him off.”

Slade nodded. “Trains run both ways,” he observed.

She shook her head. “He got a job on the News — a night job. He got it by telephone. He didn’t come back. You can call the paper now — he’s probably there. You can talk with him.”

Slade grinned. “No, thanks,” he said. “I’ll take your word for it. But Hallam didn’t like Fresney much, did he?”

She smiled, her lips and eyes hard. “Of course not,” she said. “And I don’t like him much. And I can give you a list, too—”

Slade lifted a hand in protest. “I believe you,” he interrupted. “Let’s forget the idea that the killer made a mistake. Let’s say he wanted to get Vaupaugh, and he got him. Fresney was coming for him, so he knocked him out and got away. That’s simple enough. Can you give me a list of some people who might have wanted to get the managing editor and owner of a sheet that was stepping down pretty hard in order to build circulation?”

Dana Jones said: “Why should I? You’re not with the police.”

Tim Slade shrugged. “You just said you could give me a list,” he reminded.

She nodded. “But I didn’t say that I would.”

Slade grinned. “You’re hard to get along with,” he told her cheerfully. “Think Cresser’s wife might have worked the idea that Vaupaugh would be better dead?”

The girl sat down behind the typewriter again. She looked at him narrowly.

“Fresney’s a pretty big man for a woman to throw downstairs,” she said.

Tim Slade spoke patiently: “That fact has been mentioned several times,” he said. “But sometimes a woman gets a man to do a job for her.”

Dana Jones didn’t speak. He liked her eyes and her hands. They were both strong and decisive. She had a nice voice, even when it was hard.

Slade said: “How about the Ware woman, and the advertiser she made a bum attempt at suicide for? Either one of them might have been pretty sore.”

She nodded slowly. “Of course. And C. V. bawled out a ticket broker this morning for giving him bum seats to a show last night. The ticket broker might have been sore, too.”

Tears filled her eyes again, but she blinked them away. Slade said:

“You thought a lot of Vaupaugh?”

She looked at him for several seconds, and he thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then she said:

“No, he was pretty weak. I feel sorry for him. He was very frightened.”

Slade nodded. “He wanted the paper to make money, so he let Fresney run it his way. His way was pretty hard. They came after Vaupaugh, and he ordered the circulation building stuff stopped. But it was too late. Is that it?”

The girl said: “I suppose — that was it.”

Slade looked at the cartoons again. “How about this Hennessy?” he asked. “He was fed up with Fresney; he thought he was a slave-driver.”

The girl looked at Slade and said very slowly: “What’s the use of asking me these questions? You seem to know a lot of people who hated Fresney. Some of them might have hated Vaupaugh, too. Vaupaugh gave the orders around here—”

Slade widened his eyes. “Did he?” he asked.

She smiled a little. It was a hard smile. “And Hugh Fresney made suggestions,” she finished.

Slade said: “You’re all right. I like you.”

The girl’s blue eyes looked surprised. Then she said:

“That’s fine — can I tell mother?”

Slade grinned and turned away. But he stopped near the door.

“Where were you when—”

He stopped as she threw up a hand. “I was sitting right in here putting powder on my nose,” she said. “And I haven’t a damn’ bit of proof of it.”

Slade chuckled. He said: “Somehow I believe you.”

He went outside and closed the door. Hugh Fresney was easing himself into his chair at the inner curve of the long copy desk. When the police inspector went close to him he waved him away. Slade went towards the desk and heard Fresney say:

“Nothing wrong inside of me — give me fifteen minutes, Inspector — and then I’ll answer questions all night. I’ve got to get the last edition lined up.”

The inspector nodded and turned away. He saw Slade and beckoned to him and they went to the rear of the city room together. O’Hafey said:

“That hunk of lead we dug out of the wood in the hall here — it’s a .38 bullet. The sergeant thinks the one Fresney gave you is a .38, too.”

Slade nodded. “Might mean the same gent took another crack at Fresney — or the figure he thought was Fresney,” he breathed. “And it might not.”

The inspector nodded. “We’re bringing in everyone Fresney thinks might hate him, or Vaupaugh. We haven’t been able to find anyone who saw the killer run from the building.”

Slade said: “You haven’t found anyone who was out front, heard the shots — and didn’t see anyone run from the building?”

O’Hafey grinned. “Funny, I thought of that, too. Yeah — there was a news-kid outside. Near the bulletins — along with a lot of others. He was near the entrance and he heard the racket. He wasn’t sure it was shooting, but he sort of watched the entrance. There was a lot of traffic noise. The first person to come out, the news-kid says, was Collins. The news-kid is around fifteen years old, and seems pretty bright.”

Slade said: “Well — how about the roof?”

The inspector shrugged. “I’ve been up there. It isn’t easy. A couple of closed doors, a narrow passage, and an iron ladder for ten feet. Nothing locked, but everything closed. Only one way off — to the building on the left. A fifteen-foot drop. One of my men is trying to get down that way now. It probably can be done.”

The inspector frowned and added: “But I don’t think it was.”

Slade said: “And you believe the news-kid?”

O’Hafey nodded his big head. “Inside job,” he said very slowly. “The fellow knew Fresney was in here. He knew where to wait. It wasn’t very light — he heard Fresney’s voice and made a mistake because he wanted to get the city editor in the back. He wanted to get him in the back because he didn’t want to be seen. He didn’t want to be seen because Fresney knew him — and there would be a chance of him yelling his name. When he heard Vaupaugh call out, he knew he’d made a mistake. Fresney went for him and stumbled. The killer’s second shot went wild. He used his gun and shoved Fresney down the stairs.

“He didn’t shoot again, because he’d made enough racket already. But he didn’t follow Fresney down, and pass him while he was stunned. Or if he did, he didn’t go outside. There are a couple of doors he could have used on the main floor — into the space where the presses are. He could have got out three other ways. Or he could have come back upstairs.”

The inspector drew a deep breath. “That’s in return for the bullet you handed me,” he said. “It’s the way things look to me. My men are trying to find others who heard the shots — and others who saw people moving around right after they heard them. Fresney never even got the safety catch off his Colt. A full load inside. He has a permit for the gun, and when he got it, several weeks ago, he stated that he wasn’t exactly loved in this town.”

Slade nodded. “You’re going pretty strong for the theory that Vaupaugh got the dose by mistake, and that it was an inside job,” he said softly.

O’Hafey shrugged. “I’ll follow any lead,” he said. “That looks like the one to be followed right now. I want to find out who there is, in some way familiar with this newspaper plant, who thought Fresney was a louse.”

Slade nodded again. “If I dig up anything — I’ll get it to you, Inspector,” he said. “I’m just poking around — I wasn’t supposed to go to work until Fresney was killed.”

The inspector looked grim. “Do you lose much by the guy getting the wrong man?” he asked.

Slade smiled with his brown eyes almost closed. He lighted a cigarette and inhaled.

“I haven’t had time to figure it out yet,” he said. “But I don’t think I lose a thing.”

His voice held a peculiar note. He moved away, went past reporters’ desks and reached Fresney’s side. The city editor was reading copy and had a blue pencil in his right hand. His head and forehead were bandaged — and there was adhesive tape around the right corner of his mouth. He was frowning.

Slade stood beside him and said softly:

“You weren’t holding anything back, Hugh?”

The city editor didn’t look up. He scratched out some words and said thickly:

“Just one thing, Tim.”

Slade waited, and still the city editor didn’t look up. Slade said: “What, Hugh?”

Fresney spoke softly. “I told you I didn’t know a short, thin man with a limp. I do know one. His name is Garrow. He was a stoolie for the North Side police for a while. Then he dropped out of sight. I had a tip that he wouldn’t turn up anything on the Jap Dyke mob.”

Slade whistled softly. “That might mean he was in with them.” He was silent for a few seconds, then he said very slowly: “I think he gave the tipoff that you were inside, Hugh. I think maybe I’d better look him up.”

Fresney said grimly: “He’ll be hard to find.”

Slade nodded. “You’re holding out the fact that you know this fellow — you’re not tipping the police?”

Fresney shrugged. “They can know it now,” he said. “I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t see that it would help things any.”

Slade said: “All right — not holding out anything else?”

Fresney swore and looked up. “Hell, no,” he said. “It’s the Dyke mob’s job — only they made a mistake. They got Vaupaugh instead of me. Damn’ tough on him. As for me — they’ll get me yet.”

Slade smiled with his brown eyes. “You’ll be around for a while yet,” he said. “The inspector has questions. I’m going out, but I’ll be back before you leave.”

The city editor nodded. “I’ll probably have to go down to the commissioner’s office,” he said. “If I’m not here or there — I’ll be at 82 Goorley until dawn. I think best over the strong stuff.”

Slade said: “Sleep would be better for you — you must hurt a lot.”

Fresney nodded. “I damn’ near got my neck broken,” he breathed, and went to work on the copy again.

Tim Slade walked away from the city desk and went to the elevator. He asked the operator why it hadn’t been running at the time of the killing. The operator said it had been out of order for an hour before the murder — motor trouble. It was fixed fifteen minutes after.

Slade got off at the street floor, went outside and stood near the curb for a few minutes. Then he went inside, went upstairs. A plain-clothesman was standing at one end of the landing, looking things over. He nodded to Tim. Tim went on up. When he opened the door of the anteroom to the office that had been Vaupaugh’s, O’Hafey blinked at him from the chair he was seated on.

Slade said: “Pardon, Inspector — I thought Miss Jones was alone. Wanted to ask her a question.”

O’Hafey waved a hand. “Go ahead,” he instructed.

Slade looked at Dana Jones. “With Vaupaugh dead,” he said steadily, “who inherits the paper?”

The inspector grunted. The girl said: “The family.”

Slade nodded, smiling. “Large family?” he asked.

The girl said: “Daughter and son. The son lives abroad, in Paris. He doesn’t like newspapers.”

O’Hafey said: “Man after my own heart.”

Slade smiled a little. “How about the daughter?” he asked.

Dana Jones shrugged. “She and her father didn’t get along. She lives at the Schenley Hotel — saw him once a month, maybe.”

O’Hafey sat up straight. “And they didn’t get along, eh?” he breathed. “Maybe he wouldn’t give her as much money as she wanted.”

Slade looked at the inspector, grinning. The girl frowned.

“Another woman who might have killed him,” she said disgustedly. “As a matter of fact, he gave her all the money she needed. She never complained. She told me once he was a pretty good father, but she didn’t like the perfume he used.”

Slade said: “Did you like it?”

The secretary’s eyes were very small. “If I were a man — I think I’d have liked it on a woman,” she replied.

O’Hafey chuckled. Slade looked around at the cartoons on the wall, then looked at Dana Jones again.

“I got very crazy about you in a hurry, Dana,” he said simply. “I’ve gone a good many years without doing that over any girl. Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night, before I shove off for Cleveland?”

The girl stared at him. O’Hafey blinked. Slade said:

“I’ll make you forget Hallam. You weren’t engaged, and he drank too much. Besides, all newspaper men are bums.”

O’Hafey said: “What the—”

Slade smiled a little and kept his eyes on the girl.

“We’ll have Vaupaugh’s murderer by dawn,” he said slowly. “And that’ll be that. How about the dinner?”

The girl said: “You’re — mad—”

Slade shook his head. “If we have the killer by dawn — will you have dinner with me?”

O’Hafey grunted. The girl said: “Yes.”

Slade nodded. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll have a time.”

He grinned at O’Hafey and went from the office. Fresney was calling to Collins in a loud voice:

“Where in hell’s that follow-up on Lawson’s feature?”

Tim Slade went down two flights of stairs, took his time going down the next. On the landing where the murder had occurred he stood for a few seconds. The plain-clothesman had gone. Slade went to the door of the circulation department room into which Hugh Fresney had been carried. He stood with his back to it and let his eyes move along the landing. After a few minutes he went down the steps and to the street. It was twelve-fifteen by his wrist-watch. The fog was pretty bad; there was a chill in the air. Tim Slade hailed a cab and got inside.

“Schenley Hotel,” he said. “Don’t hurry — I want to think.”

The cab driver stared at him, then grinned. “Sure,” he said over his shoulder. “I get that way a lot of times, but it don’t do me any good.”

Collins was slumped in his chair when Slade walked into the editorial rooms at three o’clock. He had a green shade over his eyes and he looked tired. Most of the staff had quit for the night, but the telegraph instruments were still pounding out words. Slade sat on the edge of the inner curve of the copy desk, and said:

“Hugh went home?”

Collins nodded. “He went over to the commissioner’s office, and got back here at two. He stayed around for a while, but his body was aching pretty badly. He finally got away. Then that police lieutenant came in and gave me a third degree.”

Slade said: “You?”

Collins swore, nodding. “He thought my story might have been the bunk. Someone told him I’d made a hot speech to Vaupaugh when he refused to give me a raise he’d promised six months ago. The lieutenant had found out that Hugh had made a speech for me, too. Hugh thought I should have the raise. The lieutenant had an idea I might have done for Vaupaugh and lied about how it happened, and he figured Hugh might have tried to stop the fight and got shoved down the stairs. He thought Hugh might be protecting me.”

Slade grinned. “You denied it?”

Collins swore wearily. “I told him he was a crazy fool, and he said he thought he’d take me down to the station and hold me on suspicion. I said that would be fine — that Hugh would use scare-heads on it. That calmed him down a bit. He told me not to leave town and I said it was going to be tough having to cancel my trip to Japan. We didn’t get along so well, but he left about ten minutes ago.”

Slade looked at the Accuracy sign on the wall and whistled all that he could remember of “Your Baby’s My Baby Now.” Collins took off his eye-shade and swore again.

“We won’t have to smell that damn’ perfume around here any more, that’s one thing,” he muttered. “Poor devil!”

He stood up and stretched. He called one of the two reporters on hand and said that if anything big broke on the Vaupaugh murder he wanted to be called.

“And I hope nothing breaks,” he breathed.

He looked at Slade and said: “Staying up all night?”

Tim Slade shook his head. “I’ve only got about one thing more to do,” he said quietly.

Collins looked at Slade narrowly. “O’Hafey came over and asked some questions about you,” he said. “He seemed pretty puzzled. Wanted to know whether you were very crazy or very shrewd. Said you’d told Miss Jones you’d have Vaupaugh’s murderer by dawn, and she agreed to have dinner with you if you did. He said he figured maybe you were trying to kid him, and if that was so he didn’t like the time you’d picked.”

Slade smiled a little. Collins said: “What did Hugh mean when he tossed over that slip of paper and said you were a louse for hounding someone?”

Slade continued to smile. “He wanted you and anyone else who might be interested to think I wasn’t particularly concerned with him,” he said. “He didn’t want you to get the idea that I was a detective he’d brought on from Cleveland, because he thought he was going to get killed.”

Collins stared at him, sucked in a deep breath. There was silence in the city room, except for the clatter of the wire machines. Then the assistant city editor spoke.

“So that was it,” he muttered. “Well — what’s the idea of spreading it around now? Fresney’s still alive.”

Slade nodded. “Unless they got him on the way home,” he said steadily. “How about Miss Jones, Collins? Did Vaupaugh like her a lot?”

The assistant city editor half closed his eyes. He spoke in a hard voice.

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

Tim Slade nodded and stood up. He looked at the big sign on the wall again, then at his wrist-watch.

“I’ll be moving along,” he said cheerfully. “If you stick around another hour — you’ll have something for the paper — something new.”

Collins said: “Yes?” His tone was suddenly antagonistic. “Sorry, but I need sleep. If it’s big enough they’ll buzz me, and I’ll get Fresney up.”

Slade nodded again. “Are you giving the paper a black border?” he asked.

The assistant said tonelessly without looking up: “Just the editorial page.”

Slade looked towards the telegraph machines. “Get in touch with Vaupaugh’s family yet?” he asked. “The daughter?”

Collins shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “That isn’t up to me.”

Slade smiled. “So long,” he said and went from the big room. He rode the elevator down and reached the street. He made a phone call, a fairly long one. He walked along Liberty Street, turned north on Ninth. Ninth was almost deserted. Over near the bridge it was deserted.

He was halfway across the bridge when a cab passed him, going at pretty good speed. It slowed down a hundred feet or so ahead, stopped. There was the squealing of brakes, and a second cab pulled up almost the same distance behind him. No one descended from either cab.

Slade said grimly: “Sure—”

He got a cigarette between his lips, struck a match. The cab ahead started backing slowly, and when it started the other one moved forward. The driver of the one coming forward was very low in his seat.

Tim Slade pulled on the cigarette and reached for his gun. He had it in his right-hand fingers when the first bullet struck the iron railing behind him. The bullet came from a gun in the cab that was moving forward. Almost instantly there was a staccato clatter from the machine that was backing. A spray of bullets battered metallically against iron — pain stabbed through Slade’s left hand as the spray went away from him.

He fired twice at the cab that was moving forward, sucked in a sharp breath and vaulted the bridge rail. As he went down he ripped buttons from his coat in getting it open and let the gun slip from his fingers. He hit the water with his body hunched, in a sitting position. The shock was pretty bad.

When he came up he was under the bridge. He struggled free of his coat, toed off his low shoes. He was a strong swimmer, but it was a fight to keep under the bridge, against the current. The river was high and the water was very cold. Fifty feet along he got rid of his suit coat, and that made things easier.

Another fifty feet and he was out of the worst of the current. He was weakening pretty fast, and the hand that had been hit was numbing his left arm and bothering his stroke. The cold was getting to him, too.

He used a back stroke for several seconds, then turned over and put his remaining strength in an effort to get close to the mud at the far end of the bridge. He was almost through when he felt the water become very quiet. Another twenty feet and his knees were scraping mud. He dragged himself out of the water, lay motionless for a half minute or so. Then he got to his knees, pulled himself to his feet.

He shook the water from his ears, moved along between some wooden shacks built on the mud near the steel structure of the bridge. He was shivering and his breath was still coming in deep gulps.

Twenty minutes later he was in a cab and the cab was moving across the river, towards his hotel. The cab driver had a ten-dollar bill in his pocket, and Tim Slade had a soaked handkerchief wrapped around the palm of his left hand. He lay back in the seat with his eyes closed.

In his hotel room he had three deep drinks from a thin silver flask, got into dry clothes. He used antiseptic and bandages on his left hand, got a Luger that he’d picked up during the war from one of his bags. His eyes showed pain, but his lips were smiling a little. He had no coat or hat when he went down and picked up a cab. When he’d given the address he sat back and let his body sway with it. His eyes were closed and he was breathing slowly, evenly.

Once he parted his lips and said: “Sure—”

The fog didn’t seem to be so thick, but it had got colder. The cab driver drove very swiftly, and it didn’t take long to reach the address he had given.

The man who opened the wooden door of the two-story house had a thin scar across his forehead. Slade frowned at him, keeping his bandaged hand out of sight. He said:

“Creese upstairs? He wanted me.”

The one with the scarred forehead nodded. Slade went past him and he closed the door and bolted it. Slade said:

“Is he alone?”

The scarred one shook his head. “Jap’s with him,” he said hoarsely. “The coppers got tired of him and turned him loose.”

He went away, gesturing towards the stairs. From a rear room Slade heard voices and the clink of glasses. Upstairs everything seemed pretty quiet.

Tim Slade said very softly as he climbed the wooden stairs: “Jap — sure—”

The door of the room was half opened. Slade shoved it open the rest of the way, with his left shoe. He walked inside. Jap Dyke was leaning across a table, elbows spread. He was a small, heavily shouldered man with eyes that slanted, and were slightly almond shaped. His skin was yellowish, and his dark hair edged high from his forehead. He was Italian, but he looked like a Japanese.

Hugh Fresney sat in a corner, on a chair without arms. The chair was tilted back, and Fresney’s brown shoes rested on a cross rung between the two front legs. Both arms hung at his sides. There were two glasses, half filled with beer, on the table across which Dyke sprawled.

Tim Slade stood near the opened door, his back to the stairs. Both hands were in the side pockets of his suit coat. He smiled at Fresney.

The city editor’s lips twitched a little. Jap Dyke said:

“What’s this?”

He had a thin tone and when he spoke his lips didn’t move very much.

Slade said: “Hello, Hugh — feel better?”

The city editor’s eyes were very small. He shook his head.

“My face isn’t so bad, but my body hurts like the devil.”

Slade nodded. “It’ll hurt worse in a couple of months,” he said very quietly.

Fresney let his shoes slip off the rung of the tilted chair. They dangled just clear of the floor.

“How’s that, Tim?” he asked.

Slade smiled very narrowly. “You missed out, Hugh,” he said quietly. “You’re going to go the way Walter Cresser went — tonight.”

The city editor’s body jerked a little. Jap Dyke lifted his chin from his spread arms and his eyes got more almond shaped.

Fresney swallowed slowly and said: “Tell us about it, Tim.”

Slade said: “You murdered Vaupaugh.”

Jap Dyke drew a deep breath, then sighed heavily. Fresney closed his eyes, then opened them again.

“It was Little Red Riding Hood who did that, Tim,” he said very quietly.

Slade smiled with his lips. His brown eyes were on Fresney’s small ones.

“You’ve been tough for a long time, Hugh,” Slade said. “Good and tough. But lately you’ve been getting bad and tough. Tonight you murdered Vaupaugh. You did it because you hated him — you’ve hated him for a long time. You’ve planned his murder for a long time. He was yellow, Hugh — but that yellowness was going to stop you from doing things with the sheet.”

Jap Dyke swore very softly, but he didn’t move his body. Fresney said grimly:

“Yes, yes — go on.”

Slade said: “You built up this stuff about your life being threatened. And Vaupaugh’s. You said the sheet had been hard — too hard. Maybe that was true, but it was hard where it didn’t count. You said Jap Dyke was after you because you’d forced the police to pull him in. He wasn’t after you, Hugh — he was with you. The sheet yelped until he was pulled in, but they didn’t have anything on him. And you knew that. It just made it look good. And even with Vaupaugh dead, they wouldn’t have anything on him, Hugh.”

Slade paused. Jap Dyke’s fingers made faint tapping sounds against the table wood. Someone laughed thinly, downstairs.

Slade said: “You got me on from Cleveland, because you were ready to finish Vaupaugh, and you needed more evidence that a mistake had been made, and that someone had got the managing editor instead of you. You wanted to be sure everyone knew you were afraid. You built up a lot of little hates — some of them were real enough. Then, when Vaupaugh was leaving tonight, you went after him. You shot him in the back — and because his life had been threatened, and he still trusted you, you got a break. He didn’t think you’d shot him, so he yelled to you to get whoever had shot him. Collins heard that.”

Fresney was breathing heavily, but his eyes were still very small. Slade said:

“You knew you had him. After he yelled, you put another bullet up in the wall — in a spot that put it in line with the door you were going to use in your story. Your gun was in a pocket, loaded. I don’t know what you did with the one you used, and I don’t give a damn. Maybe Vaupaugh realized what had happened, and grabbed you. Maybe he didn’t. He might have shoved you down the stairs before he went out, or you might have just let yourself go down. You’re hard, Hugh — and you can take it. Besides you’d killed a man, and you had to make it look right. Collins found you unconscious or almost unconscious, halfway down the stairs. That’s how you murdered Vaupaugh.”

Jap Dyke said: “You shouldn’t have done it, Hugh.”

His voice was very low and hard. Fresney was still breathing heavily and evenly.

Slade said: “Vaupaugh was putting a check on you. He was going to run the sheet again, and you didn’t want that. You were playing politics, Hugh — you were going to play politics. You and Jap Dyke. You needed the sheet — the two of you could have done things with it. But you went too fast, and too far. And when Vaupaugh weakened you knew you’d lost. Unless he was dead. If he was dead — there was his daughter—”

Fresney let the chair tilt forward. His face twisted. Slade said:

“Take it easy — both of you! I’ve got lead ready to rip cloth — and then some more cloth!”

After a few seconds he spoke softly. “I went to the Schenley tonight and talked to Vaupaugh’s daughter. She hates you, Hugh — she hates your insides. Why? Because I told her what I figured. And she figured the same way. The chances are she would have married you, Hugh. She sort of liked you, and her father, who didn’t like you, would have been dead. She wouldn’t have known she was marrying his murderer. And you’d have had the paper, Hugh — the whole damn’ sheet to use the way you wanted.”

Fresney said in a hoarse voice: “You’re lying, Tim — you’re lying like hell. If you’d gone to her tonight and told her what you thought — she’d have laughed at you. You haven’t any evidence — you just think—”

Slade interrupted. “She didn’t laugh at me — she believed me. She had to believe me.”

Fresney said thickly: “You’re lying—”

Slade shook his head. “I called you on the phone and asked you if you knew a small man with a limp. I told you that I’d thought he had tipped that you were inside the paper. You said you weren’t interested. And then you changed the story. You did know such a man. You said his name was Garrow, and that he was working with Jap Dyke’s mob, you’d heard. He wouldn’t turn up anything against them, anyway.”

Fresney said: “Well?”

Slade’s smile faded. “There wasn’t any man with a limp. He didn’t pick up any paper and hand it to a blonde. I was just feeding you, Hugh — just seeing whether you’d use it. And you did use it, when you figured it would help.”

Fresney ran his tongue-tip over a lower lip. He looked at Jap Dyke and said:

“Is he safe, Jap?”

The slant-eyed one nodded. Fresney looked at Tim Slade and spoke in a very soft voice.

“You certainly earned the money you owed me, Tim. I hate to see you get still.”

Slade tightened the grip on his Luger. “Sure,” he said with sarcasm. “But you got worried, Hugh. I was away from the paper too much. I think you had me tailed — and spotted the Schenley visit. So guns were turned loose on me, on the bridge. They didn’t take.”

Fresney smiled thinly. “That’s so, Tim,” he said. “They didn’t take.”

Slade spoke quietly. “I think the police would have got around to you pretty soon, Hugh. But they were willing to believe you were hated enough for someone to have made a mistake — and have smeared Vaupaugh instead. I wasn’t so willing to believe that.”

Fresney said steadily: “All right, Tim. You’ve made your speech. About the gun — I took on a new reporter three days ago. Jap here recommended him. He was at the bottom of the stairs, with his coat spread like a blanket. I tossed him the gun, then did the dive. It hurt like the devil. The reporter went through the pressroom and out the truck entrance. He had the gun with him. The rest was the way you’ve told us.”

Jap Dyke looked at Fresney, and Fresney nodded. Dyke called loudly and thinly:

“Terry!”

Slade shook his head. “No good,” he said. “The police have been over here since I started across the first time. They let me work it my way. Terry and the rest are downstairs — they’ve been talking and laughing once in a while. But the police guns are making them act that way. Your bunch weren’t so strong for you taking up with Fresney, anyway, Jap. They’re being good and saving their necks.”

Jap Dyke let his body roll to one side and jerked at a pocket. Slade swung his body a little and squeezed on the Luger. Dyke moaned, went to his knees and fell forward. Hugh Fresney shoved over the table and leaped for Slade.

There were pounding footfalls on the wooden stairs as Slade jerked his body to one side. Fresney’s arms were swinging; a fist struck Slade and knocked him off balance, to one side. Fresney swung and pounded at him again. Slade said hoarsely:

“Stop — it — I’ve got — a gun—”

Fresney wasn’t armed, and he hated to shoot. The city editor had fingers on his right wrist now. They swayed backward, their bodies close. Fresney twisted the gun so the muzzle slanted towards his face — then jerked Slade’s wrist. His finger slipped with the sharpness of the jerk — the gun crashed.

Fresney’s body sagged, and he slipped slowly to the floor. O’Hafey came into the room, followed by two plain-clothesmen. They had drawn guns in their hands. Fresney was half propped against a wall. Slade said:

“He did it — and dropped the gun to one of Jap’s men he’d taken on as a reporter.”

One of the plain-clothesmen crossed the room and bent over Dyke. He straightened and said:

“He’s dead.”

O’Hafey stared down at the city editor, and Slade said:

“He twisted my gun — and jerked my wrist. It was his way of—”

Fresney’s eyes were staring, his lips were colorless. He tried to smile.

“The kid’s — good — O’Hafey,” he said very slowly and weakly. “And I — broke him in — taught him to use his eyes—”

His eyes closed, then opened again. He said with an effort, in a hoarse whisper:

“Inside — job — but it didn’t — work—”

His head fell forward, and his eyes stayed open. O’Hafey bent down and after a few seconds said:

“Well — that’s all for him.”

Tim Slade shook his head slowly. “He was a good, tough city editor,” he said slowly. “But he got greedy.”

O’Hafey nodded. “That’s the way with a lot of good tough guys,” he philosophized. “And after they get too greedy — they get dead.”

Tim Slade had dinner with Dana Jones. He needed someone to cut up the meat for him. He had a pretty bad left hand. It was a quiet dinner, but they got along nicely together. She’d never been to Cleveland, and they finally got around to wondering if she’d like it there. They were both fairly sure that she would.

The Adventure of the Six Napoleons ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

Original Publication: Collier’s Weekly Magazine, April 30, 1904 (it was later published in England in the May 1904 issue of The Strand Magazine); first collected in The Return of Sherlock Holmes (New York, McClure, Phillips, 1905, and the following month in London by George Newnes)

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) had determined that the extraordinary success of his Sherlock Holmes stories was ruining his opportunities to produce his far more significant work, the historical novels, such as The White Company (1891), The Refugees (1893), and Rodney Stone (1896), so he wrote of Holmes’s death in a struggle with his nemesis, the evil Professor Moriarty, at the edge of the Reichenbach Falls in “The Final Problem” (December 1893).

The public uproar (one distraught woman wrote to Doyle as “You Beast”) was so intense that he wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles (serialized in 1901–1902) as a case that occurred before his death. Doyle finally was persuaded to write more stories when Collier’s offered the then-staggering sum of $25,000 for six stories, $30,000 for eight, or $45,000 for thirteen. Although he was concerned about the quality of the stories, Doyle completed all thirteen, collecting them in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, which includes some of the most creative and memorable of his output.

In “The Adventure of the Six Napoleons,” Lestrade brings a seemingly trivial but nonetheless perplexing problem to Holmes, who is intrigued by its bizarre nature. An apparent lunatic is traveling all over London, burgling homes and shops, to steal plaster busts of Napoleon — then smashing them.

The British public still feared and hated Napoleon, even eight decades after his death, and Lestrade believes that a Napoleon-hater is responsible for the havoc. It is a nice red herring but nothing more and Holmes deduces the true reason for the vandalism.

Title: The Pearl of Death, 1944

Studio: Universal Pictures

Director: Roy William Neill

Screenwriter: Bertram Millhauser

Producer: Roy William Neill

• Basil Rathbone (Sherlock Holmes)

• Nigel Bruce (Doctor John H. Watson)

• Dennis Hoey (Lestrade)

• Evelyn Ankers (Naomi Drake)

While The Pearl of Death has much to recommend it, its adherence to the short story is not among those virtues. A pearl with a sinister reputation is at the center of a serial killer plot featuring the rather grotesque Rondo Hatton as the Creeper, who murders his victims by breaking their backs.

Many of the Rathbone/Sherlock Holmes films, made during the World War II era, were fashioned as propaganda vehicles, but The Pearl of Death is closer than most of the others to Doyle’s traditional tales of the observation and deduction that Holmes employs to solve mysteries.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE SIX NAPOLEONS Arthur Conan Doyle

It was no very unusual thing for Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, to look in upon us of an evening, and his visits were welcome to Sherlock Holmes, for they enabled him to keep in touch with all that was going on at the police headquarters. In return for the news which Lestrade would bring, Holmes was always ready to listen with attention to the details of any case upon which the detective was engaged, and was able occasionally, without any active interference, to give some hint or suggestion drawn from his own vast knowledge and experience.

On this particular evening Lestrade had spoken of the weather and the newspapers. Then he had fallen silent, puffing thoughtfully at his cigar. Holmes looked keenly at him.

“Anything remarkable on hand?” he asked.

“Oh, no, Mr. Holmes, nothing very particular.”

“Then tell me all about it.”

Lestrade laughed.

“Well, Mr. Holmes, there is no use denying that there is something on my mind. And yet it is such an absurd business that I hesitated to bother you about it. On the other hand, although it is trivial, it is undoubtedly queer, and I know that you have a taste for all that is out of the common. But in my opinion it comes more in Dr. Watson’s line than ours.”

“Disease?” said I.

“Madness, anyhow. And a queer madness too! You wouldn’t think there was anyone living at this time of day who had such a hatred of Napoleon the First that he would break any image of him that he could see.”

Holmes sank back in his chair.

“That’s no business of mine,” said he.

“Exactly. That’s what I said. But then, when the man commits burglary in order to break images which are not his own, that brings it away from the doctor and on to the policeman.”

Holmes sat up again.

“Burglary! This is more interesting. Let me hear the details.”

Lestrade took out his official notebook and refreshed his memory from its pages.

“The first case reported was four days ago,” said he. “It was at the shop of Morse Hudson, who has a place for the sale of pictures and statues in the Kennington Road. The assistant had left the front shop for an instant, when he heard a crash, and, hurrying in, found a plaster bust of Napoleon, which stood with several other works of art upon the counter, lying shivered into fragments. He rushed out into the road, but, although several passers-by declared that they had noticed a man run out of the shop, he could neither see anyone nor could he find any means of identifying the rascal. It seemed to be one of those senseless acts of hooliganism which occur from time to time, and it was reported to the constable on the beat as such. The plaster cast was not worth more than a few shillings, and the whole affair appeared to be too childish for any particular investigation.

“The second case, however, was more serious and also more singular. It occurred only last night.

“In Kennington Road, and within a few hundred yards of Morse Hudson’s shop, there lives a well-known medical practitioner, named Dr. Barnicot, who has one of the largest practices upon the south side of the Thames. His residence and principal consulting-room is at Kennington Road, but he has a branch surgery and dispensary at Lower Brixton Road, two miles away. This Dr. Barnicot is an enthusiastic admirer of Napoleon, and his house is full of books, pictures, and relics of the French Emperor. Some little time ago he purchased from Morse Hudson two duplicate plaster casts of the famous head of Napoleon by the French sculptor Devine. One of these he placed in his hall in the house at Kennington Road, and the other on the mantelpiece of the surgery at Lower Brixton. Well, when Dr. Barnicot came down this morning he was astonished to find that his house had been burgled during the night, but that nothing had been taken save the plaster head from the hall. It had been carried out, and had been dashed savagely against the garden wall, under which its splintered fragments were discovered.”

Holmes rubbed his hands.

“This is certainly very novel,” said he.

“I thought it would please you. But I have not got to the end yet. Dr. Barnicot was due at his surgery at twelve o’clock, and you can imagine his amazement when, on arriving there, he found that the window had been opened in the night, and that the broken pieces of his second bust were strewn all over the room. It had been smashed to atoms where it stood. In neither case were there any signs which could give us a clue as to the criminal or lunatic who had done the mischief. Now, Mr. Holmes, you have got the facts.”

“They are singular, not to say grotesque,” said Holmes. “May I ask whether the two busts smashed in Dr. Barnicot’s rooms were the exact duplicates of the one which was destroyed in Morse Hudson’s shop?”

“They were taken from the same mould.”

“Such a fact must tell against the theory that the man who breaks them is influenced by any general hatred of Napoleon. Considering how many hundreds of statues of the great Emperor must exist in London, it is too much to suppose such a coincidence as that a promiscuous iconoclast should chance to begin upon three specimens of the same bust.”

“Well, I thought as you do,” said Lestrade. “On the other hand, this Morse Hudson is the purveyor of busts in that part of London, and these three were the only ones which had been in his shop for years. So although, as you say, there are many hundreds of statues in London, it is very probable that these three were the only ones in that district. Therefore a local fanatic would begin with them. What do you think, Dr. Watson?”

“There are no limits to the possibilities of monomania,” I answered. “There is the condition which the modern French psychologists have called the ‘idée fixe,’ which may be trifling in character, and accompanied by complete sanity in every other way. A man who had read deeply about Napoleon, or who had possibly received some hereditary family injury through the great war, might conceivably form such an ‘idée fixe,’ and under its influence be capable of any fantastic outrage.”

“That won’t do, my dear Watson,” said Holmes, shaking his head; “for no amount of ‘idée fixe’ would enable your interesting monomaniac to find out where these busts were situated.”

“Well, how do you explain it?”

“I don’t attempt to do so. I would only observe that there is a certain method in the gentleman’s eccentric proceedings. For example, in Dr. Barnicot’s hall where a sound might arouse the family, the bust was taken outside before being broken, whereas in the surgery, where there was less danger of an alarm, it was smashed where it stood. The affair seems absurdly trifling, and yet I dare call nothing trivial when I reflect that some of my most classic cases have had the least promising commencement. You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day. I can’t afford, therefore, to smile at your three broken busts, Lestrade, and I shall be very much obliged to you if you will let me hear of any fresh developments of so singular a chain of events.”

The development for which my friend had asked came in a quicker and an infinitely more tragic form than he could have imagined. I was still dressing in my bedroom next morning, when there was a tap at the door, and Holmes entered, a telegram in his hand. He read it aloud:

“What is it, then?” I asked.

“Don’t know — may be anything. But I suspect it is the sequel of the story of the statues. In that case our friend the image-breaker has begun operations in another quarter of London. There’s coffee on the table, Watson, and I have a cab at the door.”

In half an hour we had reached Pitt Street, a quiet little backwater just beside one of the briskest currents of London life. No. 131 was one of a row, all flat-chested, respectable, and most unromantic dwellings. As we drove up we found the railings in front of the house lined by a curious crowd. Holmes whistled.

“By George! it’s attempted murder at the least. Nothing less will hold the London message boy. There’s a deed of violence indicated in that fellow’s round shoulders and outstretched neck. What’s this, Watson? The top step swilled down and the other ones dry. Footsteps enough, anyhow! Well, well, there’s Lestrade at the front window, and we shall soon know all about it.”

The official received us with a very grave face and showed us into a sitting-room, where an exceedingly unkempt and agitated elderly man, clad in a flannel dressing-gown, was pacing up and down. He was introduced to us as the owner of the house — Mr. Horace Harker, of the Central Press Syndicate.

“It’s the Napoleon bust business again,” said Lestrade. “You seemed interested last night, Mr. Holmes, so I thought perhaps you would be glad to be present now that the affair has taken a very much graver turn.”

“What has it turned to, then?”

“To murder. Mr. Harker, will you tell these gentlemen exactly what has occurred?”

The man in the dressing-gown turned upon us with a most melancholy face.

“It’s an extraordinary thing,” said he, “that all my life I have been collecting other people’s news, and now that a real piece of news has come my own way I am so confused and bothered that I can’t put two words together. If I had come in here as a journalist I should have interviewed myself and had two columns in every evening paper. As it is, I am giving away valuable copy by telling my story over and over to a string of different people, and I can make no use of it myself. However, I’ve heard your name, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and if you’ll only explain this queer business I shall be paid for my trouble in telling you the story.”

Holmes sat down and listened.

“It all seems to centre round that bust of Napoleon which I bought for this very room about four months ago. I picked it up cheap from Harding Brothers, two doors from the High Street Station. A great deal of my journalistic work is done at night, and I often write until the early morning. So it was today. I was sitting in my den, which is at the back of the top of the house, about three o’clock, when I was convinced that I heard some sounds downstairs. I listened, but they were not repeated, and I concluded that they came from outside. Then suddenly, about five minutes later, there came a most horrible yell — the most dreadful sound, Mr. Holmes, that ever I heard. It will ring in my ears as long as I live. I sat frozen with horror for a minute or two. Then I seized the poker and went downstairs. When I entered this room I found the window wide open, and I at once observed that the bust was gone from the mantelpiece. Why any burglar should take such a thing passes my understanding, for it was only a plaster cast, and of no real value whatever.

“You can see for yourself that anyone going out through that open window could reach the front doorstep by taking a long stride. This was clearly what the burglar had done, so I went round and opened the door. Stepping out into the dark I nearly fell over a dead man who was lying there. I ran back for a light, and there was the poor fellow, a great gash in his throat and the whole place swimming in blood. He lay on his back, his knees drawn up, and his mouth horribly open. I shall see him in my dreams. I had just time to blow on my police whistle, and then I must have fainted, for I knew nothing more until I found the policeman standing over me in the hall.”

“Well, who was the murdered man?” asked Holmes.

“There’s nothing to show who he was,” said Lestrade. “You shall see the body at the mortuary, but we have made nothing of it up to now. He is a tall man, sunburnt, very powerful, not more than thirty. He is poorly dressed, and yet does not appear to be a labourer. A horn-handled clasp-knife was lying in a pool of blood beside him. Whether it was the weapon which did the deed, or whether it belonged to the dead man, I do not know. There was no name on his clothing, and nothing in his pockets save an apple, some string, a shilling map of London, and a photograph. Here it is.”

It was evidently taken by a snap-shot from a small camera. It represented an alert, sharp-featured simian man with thick eyebrows, and a very peculiar projection of the lower part of the face like the muzzle of a baboon.

“And what became of the bust?” asked Holmes, after a careful study of this picture.

“We had news of it just before you came. It has been found in the front garden of an empty house in Campden House Road. It was broken into fragments. I am going round now to see it. Will you come?”

“Certainly. I must just take one look round.” He examined the carpet and the window. “The fellow had either very long legs or was a most active man,” said he. “With an area beneath it was no mean feat to reach that window-ledge and open that window. Getting back was comparatively simple. Are you coming with us to see the remains of your bust, Mr. Harker?”

The disconsolate journalist had seated himself at a writing-table.

“I must try and make something of it,” said he, “though I have no doubt that the first editions of the evening papers are out already with full details. It’s like my luck! You remember when the stand fell at Doncaster? Well, I was the only journalist in the stand, and my journal the only one that had no account of it, for I was too shaken to write it. And now I’ll be too late with a murder done on my own doorstep.”

As we left the room we heard his pen travelling shrilly over the foolscap.

The spot where the fragments of the bust had been found was only a few hundred yards away. For the first time our eyes rested upon this presentment of the great Emperor, which seemed to raise such frantic and destructive hatred in the mind of the unknown. It lay scattered in splintered shards upon the grass. Holmes picked up several of them and examined them carefully. I was convinced from his intent face and his purposeful manner that at last he was upon a clue.

“Well?” asked Lestrade.

Holmes shrugged his shoulders.

“We have a long way to go yet,” said he. “And yet — and yet — well, we have some suggestive facts to act upon. The possession of this trifling bust was worth more in the eyes of this strange criminal than a human life. That is one point. Then there is the singular fact that he did not break it in the house, or immediately outside the house, if to break it was his sole object.”

“He was rattled and bustled by meeting this other fellow. He hardly knew what he was doing.”

“Well, that’s likely enough. But I wish to call your attention very particularly to the position of this house in the garden of which the bust was destroyed.”

Lestrade looked about him.

“It was an empty house, and so he knew that he would not be disturbed in the garden.”

“Yes, but there is another empty house farther up the street which he must have passed before he came to this one. Why did he not break it there, since it is evident that every yard that he carried it increased the risk of someone meeting him?”

“I give it up,” said Lestrade.

Holmes pointed to the street lamp above our heads.

“He could see what he was doing here, and he could not there. That was the reason.”

“By Jove! that’s true,” said the detective. “Now that I come to think of it, Dr. Barnicot’s bust was broken not far from his red lamp. Well, Mr. Holmes, what are we to do with that fact?”

“To remember it — to docket it. We may come on something later which will bear upon it. What steps do you propose to take now, Lestrade?”

“The most practical way of getting at it, in my opinion, is to identify the dead man. There should be no difficulty about that. When we have found who he is and who his associates are, we should have a good start in learning what he was doing in Pitt Street last night, and who it was who met him and killed him on the doorstep of Mr. Horace Harker. Don’t you think so?”

“No doubt; and yet it is not quite the way in which I should approach the case.”

“What would you do then?”

“Oh, you must not let me influence you in any way. I suggest that you go on your line and I on mine. We can compare notes afterwards, and each will supplement the other.”

“Very good,” said Lestrade.

“If you are going back to Pitt Street you might see Mr. Horace Harker. Tell him from me that I have quite made up my mind, and that it is certain that a dangerous homicidal lunatic with Napoleonic delusions was in his house last night. It will be useful for his article.”

Lestrade stared.

“You don’t seriously believe that?”

Holmes smiled.

“Don’t I? Well, perhaps I don’t. But I am sure that it will interest Mr. Horace Harker and the subscribers of the Central Press Syndicate. Now, Watson, I think that we shall find that we have a long and rather complex day’s work before us. I should be glad, Lestrade, if you could make it convenient to meet us at Baker Street at six o’clock this evening. Until then I should like to keep this photograph found in the dead man’s pocket. It is possible that I may have to ask your company and assistance upon a small expedition which will have to be undertaken tonight, if my chain of reasoning should prove to be correct. Until then, goodbye, and good luck.”

Sherlock Holmes and I walked together to the High Street, where he stopped at the shop of Harding Brothers, whence the bust had been purchased. A young assistant informed us that Mr. Harding would be absent until afternoon, and that he was himself a newcomer, who could give us no information. Holmes’s face showed his disappointment and annoyance.

“Well, well, we can’t expect to have it all our own way, Watson,” he said at last. “We must come back in the afternoon, if Mr. Harding will not be here until then. I am, as you have no doubt surmised, endeavouring to trace these busts to their source, in order to find if there is not something peculiar which may account for their remarkable fate. Let us make for Mr. Morse Hudson, of the Kennington Road, and see if he can throw any light upon the problem.”

A drive of an hour brought us to the picture-dealer’s establishment. He was a small, stout man with a red face and a peppery manner.

“Yes, sir. On my very counter, sir,” said he. “What we pay rates and taxes for I don’t know, when any ruffian can come in and break one’s goods. Yes, sir, it was I who sold Dr. Barnicot his two statues. Disgraceful, sir! A Nihilist plot, that’s what I make it. No one but an Anarchist would go about breaking statues. Red republicans, that’s what I call ’em. Who did I get the statues from? I don’t see what that has to do with it. Well, if you really want to know, I got them from Gelder and Co., in Church Street, Stepney. They are a well-known house in the trade, and have been this twenty years. How many had I? Three — two and one are three — two of Dr. Barnicot’s and one smashed in broad daylight on my own counter. Do I know that photograph? No, I don’t. Yes, I do though. Why, it’s Beppo! He was a kind of Italian piecework man, who made himself useful in the shop. He could carve a bit, and gild a frame, and do odd jobs. The fellow left me last week, and I’ve heard nothing of him since. No, I don’t know where he came from nor where he went to. I had nothing against him while he was here. He was gone two days before the bust was smashed.”

“Well, that’s all we could reasonably expect to get from Morse Hudson,” said Holmes, as we emerged from the shop. “We have this Beppo as a common factor, both in Kennington and in Kensington, so that is worth a ten-mile drive. Now, Watson, let us make for Gelder and Co., of Stepney, the source and origin of busts. I shall be surprised if we don’t get some help down there.”

In rapid succession we passed through the fringe of fashionable London, hotel London, theatrical London, literary London, commercial London, and, finally, maritime London, till we came to a riverside city of a hundred thousand souls, where the tenement houses swelter and reek with the outcasts of Europe. Here, in a broad thoroughfare, once the abode of wealthy city merchants, we found the sculpture works for which we searched. Outside was a considerable yard full of monumental masonry. Inside was a large room in which fifty workers were carving or moulding. The manager, a big blond German, received us civilly, and gave a clear answer to all Holmes’s questions. A reference to his books showed that hundreds of casts had been taken from a marble copy of Devine’s head of Napoleon, but that the three which had been sent to Morse Hudson a year or so before had been half of a batch of six, the other three being sent to Harding Brothers, of Kensington. There was no reason why those six should be different to any of the other casts. He could suggest no possible cause why anyone should wish to destroy them — in fact, he laughed at the idea. Their wholesale price was six shillings, but the retailer would get twelve or more. The cast was taken in two moulds from each side of the face, and then these two profiles of plaster of Paris were joined together to make the complete bust. The work was usually done by Italians in the room we were in. When finished the busts were put on a table in the passage to dry, and afterwards stored. That was all he could tell us.

But the production of the photograph had a remarkable effect upon the manager. His face flushed with anger, and his brows knotted over his blue Teutonic eyes.

“Ah, the rascal!” he cried. “Yes, indeed, I know him very well. This has always been a respectable establishment, and the only time that we have ever had the police in it was over this very fellow. It was more than a year ago now. He knifed another Italian in the street, and then he came to the works with the police on his heels, and he was taken here. Beppo was his name — his second name I never knew. Serve me right for engaging a man with such a face. But he was a good workman — one of the best.”

“What did he get?”

“The man lived, and he got off with a year. I have no doubt he is out now; but he has not dared to show his nose here. We have a cousin of his here, and I dare say he could tell you where he is.”

“No, no,” cried Holmes, “not a word to the cousin — not a word, I beg you. The matter is very important, and the farther I go with it the more important it seems to grow. When you referred in your ledger to the sale of those casts I observed that the date was June third of last year. Could you give me the date when Beppo was arrested?”

“I could tell you roughly by the pay-list,” the manager answered. “Yes,” he continued, after some turning over of pages, “he was paid last on May twentieth.”

“Thank you,” said Holmes. “I don’t think that I need intrude upon your time and patience any more.” With a last word of caution that he should say nothing as to our researches we turned our faces westward once more.

The afternoon was far advanced before we were able to snatch a hasty luncheon at a restaurant. A news-bill at the entrance announced “Kensington Outrage. Murder by a Madman,” and the contents of the paper showed that Mr. Horace Harker had got his account into print after all. Two columns were occupied with a highly sensational and flowery rendering of the whole incident. Holmes propped it against the cruet stand and read it while he ate. Once or twice he chuckled.

“This is all right, Watson,” said he. “Listen to this: ‘It is satisfactory to know that there can be no difference of opinion upon this case, since Mr. Lestrade, one of the most experienced members of the official force, and Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the well-known consulting expert, have each come to the conclusion that the grotesque series of incidents, which have ended in so tragic a fashion, arise from lunacy rather than from deliberate crime. No explanation save mental aberration can cover the facts.’ The Press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it. And now, if you have quite finished, we will hark back to Kensington, and see what the manager of Harding Brothers has to say to the matter.”

The founder of that great emporium proved to be a brisk, crisp little person, very dapper and quick, with a clear head and a ready tongue.

“Yes, sir, I have already read the account in the evening papers. Mr. Horace Harker is a customer of ours. We supplied him with the bust some months ago. We ordered three busts of that sort from Gelder and Co., of Stepney. They are all sold now. To whom? Oh, I dare say by consulting our sales book we could very easily tell you. Yes, we have the entries here. One to Mr. Harker, you see, and one to Mr. Josiah Brown, of Laburnum Lodge, Laburnum Vale, Chiswick, and one to Mr. Sandeford, of Lower Grove Road, Reading. No, I have never seen this face which you show me in the photograph. You would hardly forget it — would you, sir? — for I’ve seldom seen an uglier. Have we any Italians on the staff? Yes, sir, we have several among our workpeople and cleaners. I dare say they might get a peep at that sales book if they wanted to. There is no particular reason for keeping a watch upon that book. Well, well, it’s a very strange business, and I hope that you’ll let me know if anything comes of your inquiries.”

Holmes had taken several notes during Mr. Harding’s evidence, and I could see that he was thoroughly satisfied by the turn which affairs were taking. He made no remark, however, save that, unless we hurried, we should be late for our appointment with Lestrade. Sure enough, when we reached Baker Street the detective was already there, and we found him pacing up and down in a fever of impatience. His look of importance showed that his day’s work had not been in vain.

“Well?” he asked. “What luck, Mr. Holmes?”

“We have had a very busy day, and not entirely a wasted one,” my friend explained. “We have seen both the retailers and also the wholesale manufacturers. I can trace each of the busts now from the beginning.”

“The busts!” cried Lestrade. “Well, well, you have your own methods, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and it is not for me to say a word against them, but I think I have done a better day’s work than you. I have identified the dead man.”

“You don’t say so!”

“And found a cause for the crime.”

“Splendid!”

“We have an inspector who makes a speciality of Saffron Hill and the Italian quarter. Well, this dead man had some Catholic emblem round his neck, and that, along with his colour, made me think he was from the South. Inspector Hill knew him the moment he caught sight of him. His name is Pietro Venucci, from Naples, and he is one of the greatest cut-throats in London. He is connected with the Mafia, which, as you know, is a secret political society, enforcing its decrees by murder. Now you see how the affair begins to clear up. The other fellow is probably an Italian also, and a member of the Mafia. He has broken the rules in some fashion. Pietro is set upon his track. Probably the photograph we found in his pocket is the man himself, so that he may not knife the wrong person. He dogs the fellow, he sees him enter a house, he waits outside for him, and in the scuffle receives his own death-wound. How is that, Mr. Sherlock Holmes?”

Holmes clapped his hands approvingly.

“Excellent, Lestrade, excellent!” he cried. “But I didn’t quite follow your explanation of the destruction of the busts.”

“The busts! You never can get those busts out of your head. After all, that is nothing; petty larceny, six months at the most. It is the murder that we are really investigating, and I tell you that I am gathering all the threads into my hands.”

“And the next stage?”

“Is a very simple one. I shall go down with Hill to the Italian quarter, find the man whose photograph we have got, and arrest him on the charge of murder. Will you come with us?”

“I think not. I fancy we can attain our end in a simpler way. I can’t say for certain, because it all depends — well, it all depends upon a factor which is completely outside our control. But I have great hopes — in fact, the betting is exactly two to one — that if you will come with us tonight I shall be able to help you to lay him by the heels.”

“In the Italian quarter?”

“No; I fancy Chiswick is an address which is more likely to find him. If you will come with me to Chiswick tonight, Lestrade, I’ll promise to go to the Italian quarter with you tomorrow, and no harm will be done by the delay. And now I think that a few hours’ sleep would do us all good, for I do not propose to leave before eleven o’clock, and it is unlikely that we shall be back before morning. You’ll dine with us, Lestrade, and then you are welcome to the sofa until it is time for us to start. In the meantime, Watson, I should be glad if you would ring for an express messenger, for I have a letter to send, and it is important that it should go at once.”

Holmes spent the evening in rummaging among the files of the old daily papers with which one of our lumber-rooms was packed. When at last he descended it was with triumph in his eyes, but he said nothing to either of us as to the result of his researches. For my own part, I had followed step by step the methods by which he had traced the various windings of this complex case, and, though I could not yet perceive the goal which we would reach, I understood clearly that Holmes expected this grotesque criminal to make an attempt upon the two remaining busts, one of which, I remembered, was at Chiswick. No doubt the object of our journey was to catch him in the very act, and I could not but admire the cunning with which my friend had inserted a wrong clue in the evening paper so as to give the fellow the idea that he could continue his scheme with impunity. I was not surprised when Holmes suggested that I should take my revolver with me. He had himself picked up the loaded hunting-crop which was his favourite weapon.

A four-wheeler was at the door at eleven, and in it we drove to a spot at the other side of Hammersmith Bridge. Here the cabman was directed to wait. A short walk brought us to a secluded road fringed with pleasant houses, each standing in its own grounds. In the light of a street lamp we read “Laburnum Villa” upon the gate-post of one of them. The occupants had evidently retired to rest, for all was dark save for a fanlight over the hall door, which shed a single blurred circle on to the garden path. The wooden fence which separated the grounds from the road threw a dense black shadow upon the inner side, and here it was that we crouched.

“I fear that you’ll have a long time to wait,” Holmes whispered. “We may thank our stars that it is not raining. I don’t think we can even venture to smoke to pass the time. However, it’s a two to one chance that we get something to pay us for our trouble.”

It proved, however, that our vigil was not to be so long as Holmes had led us to fear, and it ended in a very sudden and singular fashion. In an instant, without the least sound to warn us of his coming, the garden gate swung open, and a lithe, dark figure, as swift and active as an ape, rushed up the garden path. We saw it whisk past the light thrown from over the door and disappear against the black shadow of the house. There was a long pause, during which we held our breath, and then a very gentle creaking sound came to our ears. The window was being opened. The noise ceased, and again there was a long silence. The fellow was making his way into the house. We saw the sudden flash of a dark lantern inside the room. What he sought was evidently not there, for again we saw the flash through another blind, and then through another.

“Let us get to the open window. We will nab him as he climbs out,” Lestrade whispered.

But before we could move the man had emerged again. As he came out into the glimmering patch of light we saw that he carried something white under his arm. He looked stealthily all round him. The silence of the deserted street reassured him. Turning his back upon us, he laid down his burden, and the next instant there was the sound of a sharp tap, followed by a clatter and rattle. The man was so intent upon what he was doing that he never heard our steps as we stole across the grass plot. With the bound of a tiger Holmes was on his back, and an instant later Lestrade and I had him by either wrist, and the handcuffs had been fastened. As we turned him over I saw a hideous, sallow face, with writhing, furious features glaring up at us, and I knew that it was indeed the man of the photograph whom we had secured.

But it was not our prisoner to whom Holmes was giving his attention. Squatted on the doorstep, he was engaged in most carefully examining that which the man had brought from the house. It was a bust of Napoleon like the one which we had seen that morning, and it had been broken into similar fragments. Carefully Holmes held each separate shard to the light, but in no way did it differ from any other shattered piece of plaster. He had just completed his examination, when the hall lights flew up, the door opened, and the owner of the house, a jovial, rotund figure in shirt and trousers, presented himself.

“Mr. Josiah Brown, I suppose?” said Holmes.

“Yes, sir; and you no doubt are Mr. Sherlock Holmes? I had the note which you sent by the express messenger, and I did exactly what you told me. We locked every door in the inside and awaited developments. Well, I’m very glad to see that you have got the rascal. I hope, gentlemen, that you will come in and have some refreshment.”

However, Lestrade was anxious to get his man into safe quarters, so within a few minutes our cab had been summoned and we were all four upon our way to London. Not a word would our captive say; but he glared at us from the shadow of his matted hair, and once, when my hand seemed within his reach, he snapped at it like a hungry wolf. We stayed long enough at the police station to learn that a search of his clothing revealed nothing save a few shillings and a long sheath knife, the handle of which bore copious traces of recent blood.

“That’s all right,” said Lestrade, as we parted. “Hill knows all these gentry, and he will give a name to him. You’ll find that my theory of the Mafia will work out all right. But I’m sure I am exceedingly obliged to you, Mr. Holmes, for the workmanlike way in which you laid hands upon him. I don’t quite understand it all yet.”

“I fear it is rather too late an hour for explanations,” said Holmes. “Besides, there are one or two details which are not finished off, and it is one of those cases which are worth working out to the very end. If you will come round once more to my rooms at six o’clock tomorrow I think I shall be able to show you that even now you have not grasped the entire meaning of this business, which presents some features which make it absolutely original in the history of crime. If ever I permit you to chronicle any more of my little problems, Watson, I foresee that you will enliven your pages by an account of the singular adventure of the Napoleonic busts.”

When we met again next evening, Lestrade was furnished with much information concerning our prisoner. His name, it appeared, was Beppo, second name unknown. He was a well-known ne’er-do-well among the Italian colony. He had once been a skilful sculptor and had earned an honest living, but he had taken to evil courses, and had twice already been in gaol — once for a petty theft and once, as we had already heard, for stabbing a fellow-countryman. He could talk English perfectly well. His reasons for destroying the busts were still unknown, and he refused to answer any questions upon the subject; but the police had discovered that these same busts might very well have been made by his own hands, since he was engaged in this class of work at the establishment of Gelder and Co. To all this information, much of which we already knew, Holmes listened with polite attention; but I, who knew him so well, could clearly see that his thoughts were elsewhere, and I detected a mixture of mingled uneasiness and expectation beneath that mask which he was wont to assume. At last he started in his chair and his eyes brightened. There had been a ring at the bell. A minute later we heard steps upon the stairs, and an elderly, red-faced man with grizzled side-whiskers was ushered in. In his right hand he carried an old-fashioned carpet-bag, which he placed upon the table.

“Is Mr. Sherlock Holmes here?”

My friend bowed and smiled. “Mr. Sandeford, of Reading, I suppose?” said he.

“Yes, sir. I fear that I am a little late; but the trains were awkward. You wrote to me about a bust that is in my possession.”

“Exactly.”

“I have your letter here. You said, ‘I desire to possess a copy of Devine’s Napoleon, and am prepared to pay you ten pounds for the one which is in your possession.’ Is that right?”

“Certainly.”

“I was very much surprised at your letter, for I could not imagine how you knew that I owned such a thing.”

“Of course you must have been surprised, but the explanation is very simple. Mr. Harding, of Harding Brothers, said that they had sold you their last copy, and he gave me your address.”

“Oh, that was it, was it? Did he tell you what I paid for it?”

“No, he did not.”

“Well, I am an honest man, though not a very rich one. I only gave fifteen shillings for the bust, and I think you ought to know that before I take ten pounds from you.”

“I am sure the scruple does you honour, Mr. Sandeford. But I have named that price, so I intend to stick to it.”

“Well, it is very handsome of you, Mr. Holmes. I brought the bust up with me, as you asked me to do. Here it is!”

He opened his bag, and at last we saw placed upon our table a complete specimen of that bust which we had already seen more than once in fragments.

Holmes took a paper from his pocket and laid a ten-pound note upon the table.

“You will kindly sign that paper, Mr. Sandeford, in the presence of these witnesses. It is simply to say that you transfer every possible right that you ever had in the bust to me. I am a methodical man, you see, and you never know what turn events might take afterwards. Thank you, Mr. Sandeford; here is your money, and I wish you a very good evening.”

When our visitor had disappeared Sherlock Holmes’s movements were such as to rivet our attention. He began by taking a clean white cloth from a drawer and laying it over the table. Then he placed his newly acquired bust in the centre of the cloth. Finally he picked up his hunting-crop and struck Napoleon a sharp blow on the top of the head. The figure broke into fragments, and Holmes bent eagerly over the shattered remains. Next instant, with a loud shout of triumph, he held up one splinter, in which a round, dark object was fixed like a plum in a pudding.

“Gentlemen,” he cried, “let me introduce you to the famous black pearl of the Borgias!”

Lestrade and I sat silent for a moment, and then, with a spontaneous impulse, we both broke out clapping as at the well-wrought crisis of a play. A flush of colour sprang to Holmes’s pale cheeks, and he bowed to us like the master dramatist who receives the homage of his audience. It was at such moments that for an instant he ceased to be a reasoning machine and betrayed his human love for admiration and applause. The same singularly proud and reserved nature which turned away with disdain from popular notoriety was capable of being moved to its depths by spontaneous wonder and praise from a friend.

“Yes, gentlemen,” said he, “it is the most famous pearl now existing in the world, and it has been my good fortune by a connected chain of inductive reasoning, to trace it from the Prince of Calonna’s bedroom at the Dacre Hotel, where it was lost, to the interior of this, the last of the six busts of Napoleon which were manufactured by Gelder and Co., of Stepney. You will remember, Lestrade, the sensation caused by the disappearance of this valuable jewel, and the vain efforts of the London police to recover it. I was myself consulted upon the case; but I was unable to throw any light upon it. Suspicion fell upon the maid of the Princess, who was an Italian, and it was proved that she had a brother in London, but we failed to trace any connection between them. The maid’s name was Lucretia Venucci, and there is no doubt in my mind that this Pietro who was murdered two nights ago was the brother. I have been looking up the dates in the old files of the paper, and I find that the disappearance of the pearl was exactly two days before the arrest of Beppo for some crime of violence — an event which took place in the factory of Gelder and Co., at the very moment when these busts were being made. Now you clearly see the sequence of events, though you see them, of course, in the inverse order to the way in which they presented themselves to me. Beppo had the pearl in his possession. He may have stolen it from Pietro, he may have been Pietro’s confederate, he may have been the go-between of Pietro and his sister. It is of no consequence to us which is the correct solution.

“The main fact is that he had the pearl, and at that moment, when it was on his person, he was pursued by the police. He made for the factory in which he worked, and he knew that he had only a few minutes in which to conceal this enormously valuable prize, which would otherwise be found on him when he was searched. Six plaster casts of Napoleon were drying in the passage. One of them was still soft. In an instant Beppo, a skilful workman, made a small hole in the wet plaster, dropped in the pearl, and with a few touches covered over the aperture once more. It was an admirable hiding-place. No one could possibly find it. But Beppo was condemned to a year’s imprisonment, and in the meanwhile his six busts were scattered over London. He could not tell which contained his treasure. Only by breaking them could he see. Even shaking would tell him nothing for as the plaster was wet it was probable that the pearl would adhere to it — as, in fact, it has done. Beppo did not despair, and he conducted his search with considerable ingenuity and perseverance. Through a cousin who works with Gelder he found out the retail firms who had bought the busts. He managed to find employment with Morse Hudson, and in that way tracked down three of them. The pearl was not there. Then with the help of some Italian employee, he succeeded in finding out where the other three busts had gone. The first was Hawker’s. There he was dogged by his confederate, who held Beppo responsible for the loss of the pearl, and he stabbed him in the scuffle which followed.”

“If he was his confederate, why should he carry his photograph?” I asked.

“As a means of tracing him if he wished to inquire about him from any third person. That was the obvious reason. Well, after the murder I calculated that Beppo would probably hurry rather than delay his movements. He would fear that the police would read his secret, and so he hastened on before they should get ahead of him. Of course, I could not say that he had not found the pearl in Harker’s bust. I had not even concluded for certain that it was the pearl; but it was evident to me that he was looking for something, since he carried the bust past the other houses in order to break it in the garden which had a lamp overlooking it. Since Harker’s bust was one in three, the chances were exactly as I told you — two to one against the pearl being inside it. There remained two busts, and it was obvious that he would go for the London one first. I warned the inmates of the house, so as to avoid a second tragedy, and we went down, with the happiest results. By that time, of course, I knew for certain that it was the Borgia pearl that we were after. The name of the murdered man linked the one event with the other. There only remained a single bust — the Reading one — and the pearl must be there. I bought it in your presence from the owner — and there it lies.”

We sat in silence for a moment.

“Well,” said Lestrade, “I’ve seen you handle a good many cases, Mr. Holmes, but I don’t know that I ever knew a more workmanlike one than that. We’re not jealous of you at Scotland Yard. No, sir, we are very proud of you, and if you come down tomorrow there’s not a man, from the oldest inspector to the youngest constable, who wouldn’t be glad to shake you by the hand.”

“Thank you!” said Holmes. “Thank you!” and as he turned away it seemed to me that he was more nearly moved by the softer human emotions than I had ever seen him. A moment later he was the cold and practical thinker once more. “Put the pearl in the safe, Watson,” said he, “and get out the papers of the Conk-Singleton forgery case. Goodbye, Lestrade. If any little problem comes your way I shall be happy, if I can, to give you a hint or two as to its solution.”