The Black Mask (Vol. 2, No. 2 — November 1920)

I

The street was squalid, dirty. On either side a row of rickety frame houses, leaning like drunken sailors one upon the other, warned idle trespassers of the character of the neighborhood. The few people who traversed it now in the autumn twilight walked quickly and with many a furtive, sidewise glance, as though in some ancient land of gnomes and ogres, where, behind every wall, lurked an unknown horror.

That is, all but young Fleming Metcalf Knibbs. It is doubtful that Knibbs could achieve the furtive if his life depended on it. He was one of those straightforward chaps who insist that black is black, and, even though a sizable check be the inducement, refuse to call it gray. Of course, in reality, no check could possibly prove an inducement to young Knibbs, as his private fortune was known to flirt with seven figures; but the comparison is none the less illuminating on that account.

Nor was he without a sense of humor, or of balance: humor enough to enjoy all phases of life, balance enough to realize that not in money alone does one find happiness.

But his humor bordered on the romantic and adventurous, almost indiscreetly so. He was given to prowling in little-frequented quarters, arid every now and again he would get himself in trouble, which he enjoyed hugely.

Moving along the sordid thoroughfare, his ever-curious eyes taking in its details, young Knibbs came at length to a house more rickety, if possible, than the rest, whose door was at that moment slowly opening. In the shadow he glimpsed white-stockinged ankles and slippers below a dark skirt.

Knibbs was passing as the girl descended the steps. Her movements were so softly gliding as to be almost ethereal, and, visualizing her as emerging from a haze, he recalled a famous picture of a wood nymph shrouded in twilight mist. At first her face was indistinct, then suddenly he caught it, like a ray of light, and stood transfixed by its strange charm.

And now he saw her quite unromantically catch the heel of one slipper on the edge of a step and reach wildly for support. This impulsive movement sent the other slipper flying through the air. It described a graceful arc and landed on the sidewalk. The girl sat down heavily.

Fleming Knibbs congratulated himself on this heaven-sent opportunity to acquaint himself with her, as he stooped and retrieved the itinerant slipper. He turned, smiling pleasantly.

“Allow me,” he said, and fitted it to her unshod foot.

“Thank you.” Her voice was drowsy, as though it were early morning and she had just arisen.

He looked at her sharply. “You’re not hurt?”

“Not at all,” she replied in the same monotone, getting to her feet. She was an extremely pretty girl, Knibbs noted again, and wondered at finding her in this contrasting environment. He fell in step beside her, inquiring meanwhile if he might escort her to her destination.

“If you wish,” she conceded.

She was obviously tired, physically or mentally or both. Fleming’s interest was intrigued.

And now they found themselves in a more populated section. The street grew crooked. Situated in the tenderloin’s heart, it turned and twisted convulsively, a veritable aorta of floating human derelicts writhing toward the river and a cheap amusement park on its banks. But the girl avoided the park, turning in an opposite direction. The crowd began to thin out. At the last comer, across from innumerable shadowy wharves, and reveling in an unaccountable river stench, stood a wabbly fruit stand illuminated by a single flaring gas jet. Dirty, flimsy wooden baskets containing all manner of fruits and vegetables tipped their rims partly toward the curb and partly toward the dark heavens, while here and there a shadowy head of cabbage peeped out upon this dreary vista. On a soap box by the stand, and directly under the uncertain light, sat a mere boy, thin of limb and vicious of feature, hunched intently over a Yiddish newspaper.

They passed this last outpost of the underworld, Fleming’s curiosity growing apace. On the left stretched acres of slimy marshes, and beyond, only faintly discernible in the growing darkness, the river. It was too much for young Knibbs. He stopped in his tracks.

“What—?” he began, and then his mouth opened in surprise and astonishment, and he concluded “—the devil!”

For a blunt automatic had been thrust against his ribs, and the girl in the dark skirt and white slippers was talking to him in her soft, sleepy drawl: “Be still, or I shall have to shoot you.”

Then deliberately she set about “frisking” him. Her slender fingers plucked his scarfpin, his watch and at length found the inner pocket of his coat and his wallet.

She was talking again. “Now, then, stand as you are.” She began backing away. “I am watching you. If you move an inch—”

The rest was left to be inferred. The click of her high heels on the sidewalk grew less and less distinct until it became inaudible.

Whirling, Fleming Knibbs dashed toward the corner. No one was in sight. The young Jew, as before, was hunched over his paper.

“A girl—” panted Knibbs. “She came in this direction. Have you seen her?”

“I see no vun,” replied the boy, sourly; then, observing for the first time the well-groomed man before him, his trade instincts arose to the surface and he became suddenly ingratiating, “except” he emphasized, rubbing his skinny hands in anticipation, “my customers.”

Fleming’s wallet was gone, but he still had some change. One hand went readily to his pocket, emerging with a bright half-dollar.

“Here’s the price of a dozen apples, my boy,” he said. “Eat them yourself. Now which way did she go?”

The youth pocketed his reward, pointing meanwhile to one of the numerous small streets opening on the waterfront. Before he could speak Knibbs was off.

Doing a hundred yards in eleven flat, he came to a thoroughfare with car tracks. The girl was nowhere in sight. In the distance the vanishing lights of a trolley winked at him derisively.

“Gone!” he exclaimed in disgust. Then, brightening: “But wasn’t she a peach?”

He caught the next car, intending to return home. When seated, he mentally inventoried his losses. There were several hundred dollars in the wallet. The pin was worth five hundred and the watch another hundred. All told, she had netted close to a thousand dollars. “Not bad, for a half-asleep girl,” he commented to himself.

The thought occurred to him that the whole matter should be reported at police headquarters, but in the instance he had strange scruples which he himself could not explain. He tried to console his conscience by emphasizing the fact that the loss meant nothing to him. Then he happily remembered his friend, Simeon Dreer, of the murder squad, who was occasionally willing, if caught in the mood, to aid his friends; in working out their little problems. He promptly left the car and took another one cross-town.

Half an hour later he found himself in Dreer’s apartment. The little, weazened man in huge green spectacles like twin railroad signals was talking on the telephone when Knibbs entered.

“Very well. I shall go there immediately,” Fleming heard him say, and his disappointment was keen, for he knew the old fellow was being called out on a departmental case.

Simeon Dreer replaced the receiver on its hook and came toward Knibbs, peering intently with his near-sighted eyes.

“Ah, it’s young Fleming Knibbs,” he said at length in the tone of a discoverer. “Hello, Knibbs. Hello. Sorry I can’t entertain you; I’m called out. Drop in tomorrow, eh? I’ve a couple of new records. A serenade from Les Millions d’Arlequin, and—”

Dreer was a musical enthusiast with a pronounced leaning toward the classical.-

“I’ve been robbed,” announced Fleming, “and I thought perhaps—”

“Robbed?”

“Held up.”

“No! When?”

“Not an hour ago.”

“This is interesting. I should like to hear the details. As I said, I’m called out on a case: supposed suicide which may be a murder; but if you care to go along, we’ll talk about it on the way over.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

They were on the street in a jiffy. Knibbs hailed a taxi and leaped in while wrinkled old Simeon Dreer confided his destination to the chauffeur. Shortly they were bowling along at a good speed, with Dreer sitting quietly listening to his guest’s story. When it had been concluded, the murder squad man chuckled. By the weak light of the street lamps Fleming saw his green glasses bobbing up and down.

“Very, very interesting, young Knibbs,” he commented, when his mirth had subsided. “I shall look into it at the first opportunity. And on what street, by the way, did you meet this fair highwaywoman?”

The moneyed young man slapped his knee sharply. “By Jove, I’m an unobservant idiot. I can’t tell you the name of that street. I was too busy soaking up its atmosphere.”

“You would know it if you saw it?”

“From a million-.There’s nothing like it in the Western world.”

“I believe I know the one you mean. In fact—”

At that moment the taxi stopped joltingly.

Dreer threw open the door and clambered out.

“In fact, young Knibbs,” he called over his shoulder, “if you will look around, I think you will find that you are on it now.”

II

Knibbs emerged hurriedly. The old fellow was right. They were on the very street in which his adventures had originated. And more. They were facing the self-same rickety frame dwelling from which the half-asleep girl had come not two hours before!

Simeon Dreer observed the fixity of his companion’s gaze, and inferred the truth. “So this is her home, eh?” he said softly. “Well—now we have complications; for here, also, this evening, a suicide was committed.”

Fleming gripped the other’s arm convulsively.

“Not—not — the girl?” he whispered.

“Calm yourself,” replied Dreer. “It was a man—an elderly man—”

Fleming sighed his relief, then laughed at the absurdity of his interest in her.

“I’m a romantic, susceptible, bred-in-the-bone fool,” he told himself as he followed Dreer up the steps.

In the narrow, low-ceilinged entry — illuminated by a single gas jet, flaring weirdly—they found a policeman on guard: a Swede, one Hjalmar Yensen, with whom even Knibbs was acquainted.

“Good evening, Yensen,” said the murder squad man. “What’s been going on here?”

“Ay don’ know. Somebody kill himself, Ay gass.”

“You were sent from headquarters merely to see that no one left the house, eh?”

“Yeh. Ay ask skal Ay pinch somebody, an’ dey say, ‘Hal, no; leave dat to Master Dreer.’ ”

“Very good,” nodded the weazened little fellow, his green spectacles bobbing eagerly, for he was always eager when approaching a case that promised difficulties. “Who’s upstairs?”

“Yust a cop a doctor.”

“And the residents—the people of the house?”

“Yeh. Ay forgot dem.”

Dreer waited for no more, but clattered up the uncarpeted stairs with Fleming Metcalf Knibbs at his heels.

A light in the front room drew them. They hurried past a bluecoat at the door and stood for a moment on the threshold, taking in the scene.

The body, covered by a sheet, lay near a small table in a corner of the room. In addition to the table were only two other articles of furniture: one a bedstead on which reposed the gaunt figure of a man of perhaps fifty, the other a chair; and seated on the chair, her eyes partially closed, was Fleming’s half-asleep girl!

Knibbs drew in his breath sharply. The girl did not look up. She was apparently unaware of their entrance.

The physician approached.

“I am Doctor Collier,” he said. “You are from headquarters, I take it?”

Simeon bobbed his green glasses again, peering up at the tall M. D. with his little, near-sighted eyes. “Dreer’s my name,” he remarked. “There’s a suicide here, I understand, doctor. What do you know of it?”

“Merely this: that the officer on the beat heard a cry and ran in here to find this man—” he indicated the white-sheathed form on the floor — “with a knife in his heart. I was summoned, pronounced the fellow dead, and now your men are detaining me, in spite of the fact that I have a practice waiting.”

“One more question. About the man on the bed: what’s his affliction?”

“Paralysis.”

“Can’t move about?”

“Impossible. Only his neck and arms are free.”

“May I have your card?”

“Certainly.” The physician extracted one from his vest pocket, extending it under the old fellow’s nose.

“Thank you. Haggerty, show the doctor out.” Dreer swung on his heel, went to the bed and sat on its edge. “Tell me,” he requested of the paralytic, “what happened here.”

The invalid passed a hand over his deeply set, black eyes, as though to clear his vision. Then he removed it and waved it weakly toward the corner.

“This man, John Ulrich,” he began, “is my cousin. Like my daughter and myself, he has seen much misfortune. He came in tonight broken-spirited and stood at the foot of my bed and told me he was going to end it all. I tried to reason with him, but he wouldn’t listen. On the table lay a knife—one John had brought with him from the East Indies when he stoked on a British steamer. He walked over and picked it up. Frightened, I cried out at the top of my lungs, but that merely frenzied him, and he drove the blade to its hilt in his breast. You know the rest.”

“And your daughter?”

“She was here at the time. Weren’t you, Lola?”

The girl nodded. It was no more than a tired little inclination of her pretty head. Knibbs could not help pitying her.

The questions continued. “What is your name?”

“Bastian De Brunner.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“Less than a month.”

“And previously?”

“Australia.”

“M-mm,” mumbled Dreer. Then he arose quickly, went to the corner and threw the sheet aside.

The body of John Ulrich was fully six feet tall and solidly constructed. His face, though somewhat distorted, revealed plain, rather commonplace features under a shaggy beard. His shirt was darkly stained where the knife had penetrated. The weapon itself, however, had been removed, and lay on the table.

It was, from all the evidence, a plain case of suicide, motive poverty. Yet doubt might be readily cast on the motive. For had not this girl, Lola, returned earlier in the evening with upward of a thousand dollars in loot taken forcibly from Fleming Metcalf Knibbs? Was it likely, with this wealth in her possession, that she would allow a member of the family to kill himself because of dire need? No, it wasn’t likely. Still—

Simeon Dreer went to Knibbs and whispered: “Talk to her while I engage her father. Ask her if she remembers you. Hint about the robbery and watch her face.”

Fleming approached the girl, took her hand and drew her to one of the small windows overlooking the street. By the light of a corner arc lamp they could see, directly below, the half-rotted wooden steps on which she had slipped.

Knibbs pressed her hand gently. She looked at him. “Do you remember me?” he murmured.

“What?” Her tone was as listless as before.

“Do you remember having met me before?”

She gave a little negative shake of her sepia-crowned head. And then, trailing after, a long-drawn “No-o-o.”

Knibbs waxed a bit impatient. This feminine Jesse James was either consummately clever or genuinely half-asleep. Her features hadn’t yielded the slightest sign of recognition. He decided to be more explicit.

“You know,” he said, “I was robbed this evening by—of all persons—a pretty young lady — robbed of a watch and scarf pin and three hundred dollars in currency.”

“Were you?” she sighed.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you really?”

“Yes.”

“Then, perhaps—” he lowered his voice still more — “perhaps you can tell me where they are.”

She smiled very much as a child smiles in its sleep.

“How absurd,” she said. “I am not a clairvoyant.”

Fleming figuratively threw up his hands at the hopelessness of learning anything from her. She was maddening. Without further questioning he strode to the door. The detective, observing this, met him in the hall.

“Well, young Knibbs?” he queried, hopefully.

“She’s the image of original innocence—or original sin—God knows which. Doesn’t know a blasted thing about my hold-up; never met me; and all that. Oh, what’s the use?”

“A phrase not in my vocabulary,” replied Dreer. “Do you want me to arrest her?”

“Heavens, no! Send a girl—particularly as pretty a girl as she—to jail? I’d rather lose a few thousand more than do that.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Get my trinkets back.”

Dreer became speculative.

“She may have carried this thing out on her own initiative, without the knowledge or consent of her parent, in which instance it’s hardly likely she would bring the loot home with her,” he muttered. “She’s been to a ‘fence,’ no doubt. However, I’ll have Yensen search the house and report to me tomorrow. There’s nothing we can do now, except perhaps make undertaking arrangements. This other affair is plainly suicide.”

They filed down the stairway, pausing at its foot for another chat with Hjalmar Yensen.

“My boy,” said Simeon Dreer to the big, raw-boned Swede, “I know you are a careful, conscientious officer. I know you are thorough. And I have a little job here that requires thoroughness more than anything else. It’s only a side-light on the suicide, but it may succeed in recovering some stolen personal property, and there’s always a reward attached to that sort of thing, you know. Now, Yensen, I want you to search this shack from cellar to garret for a diamond scarf pin shaped in a question mark, a Gruen watch, and an alligator wallet containing three hundred dollars in bills and a motor-car license made out to Fleming Metcalf Knibbs. Do your best to uncover these or anything else of interest, Incidentally, you might call in the matron from the Twenty-second District Station and have the girl searched, preferably without the knowledge of her father. When you are quite through, you and Haggerty may leave. Tell De Brunner we hold his household blameless; that the evidence of suicide is satisfactory to the department, and he will not be intruded upon again, though, of course, the final judgment is in the coroner’s hands. Meanwhile, we shall summon an undertaker. Good-bye.”

And they went out.

III

Knibbs was awakened about nine o’clock the following morning by the ringing of the telephone bell. He arose, grumbling between yawns, and wended his barefooted way to the instrument.

“Hello!” he said briefly.

“That you, young Knibbs?” asked Dreer’s voice at the other end.

Fleming’s sleepiness vanished. Perhaps the old fellow had some interesting information about his half-asleep girl, of whom he had dreamed the whole night through.

“Yes, Mr. Dreer,” he replied. “What is it? A new development in our case?”

“No; it’s about the suicide, but I knew you’d be interested—thought you’d like to follow it up, you know, because—well, because the little girl is tied up in it, and—”

“Yes, yes—of course. What have you found?”

“A meagre clue. It may and may not be of importance.” Dreer was always modest. “If you care to come over, we’ll examine its possibilities together.”

“But I thought the incident of the suicide was closed. I thought the department was satisfied.”

“The department is never satisfied so long as a shadow of suspicion remains undispelled. To be brutally frank, young Knibbs, there is a possibility that Lola De Brunner murdered the man Ulrich!”

“No!”

“Yes—a possibility. I do not say it with assurance, and I hope, if only because of your interest in her, that it proves untrue. But it is there and cannot be avoided. As I said, if you care to come over—”

“Wait for me. I’ll be over in a jiffy,” cried Fleming.

He slammed the receiver on its hook, and a moment later was getting into his clothes with reckless haste. The girl Lola had taken a peculiar hold on him. Though the unusual circumstances of their meeting, not to mention the depressing incidents which followed, were certainly not—on their face, at least — of a nature to awaken the finer instincts, these instincts were awakened, nevertheless, in Fleming Knibbs, and, coming to analyze it that beautiful September morning, he concluded that it was so because there was something real about this girl that rose above the most damning facts, refuting them.

In brief, anything bad she had done wasn’t true. He-clung to this assertion because it was the only ground on which he could satisfactorily explain his attraction to her. He knew he wouldn’t be drawn to a girl essentially bad; ergo folks had merely gotten the wrong angle on her acts and misunderstood them.

True, he had a difficult mental battle maintaining this stand. Inevitable logic came forward again and again, arguing: “If a man approached you on the street, thrust a gun in your face, and relieved you of your valuables, he would be a thief, wouldn’t he—a common highwayman? If a girl — no matter how pretty — does the same thing, is she not a thief also?” That was a stumper. Knibbs had to find a way to answer No so that he would believe it. And he did. But how he did is beyond the comprehension of any save those who, too, are under the spell of some lovely young woman.

Fleming Knibbs sacrificed breakfast that morning in his eagerness to see Dreer. Just forty-five minutes elapsed between the ringing of his phone and the instant he walked, unannounced, into the detective’s strangely cluttered library.

Simeon Dreer was seated with his ear close to the phonograph, listening dreamily to the strains of Les Millions d’Arlequin. As his visitor entered, he raised his hand, without turning, in a request for silence.

Knibbs sat down and waited impatiently for the music to cease.

When it did, finally, Dreer, muttering “beautiful, beautiful,” put the record away with great care and deliberation before joining his guest.

Then, fumbling in his pocket, he brought forth an envelope.

“This,” he said, “was found by my good friend Yensen, and earned him a five-dollar bill.”

“And this was all he found?” queried Knibbs. “No sign of the watch or scarf pin?”

“None. The girl asked him, you see, to help move her father to a back room, which he did. Afterward he discovered this missive under the pillow. Tactfully maintaining silence, he brought it to me. Of your trinkets, however, young Knibbs, there was not a sign.”

Fleming looked at the envelope. It was addressed in a rangy scrawl to Bastian De Brunner and bore an Australian postmark dated six weeks earlier. Within was a sheet of linen letter paper. He drew it out and read:

Knibbs glanced at Simeon Dreer, frowning. “So you think, because, she entertained a dislike for the man Ulrich, that she killed him, and that her father is protecting her with his suicide story?”

“A natural assumption, isn’t it?”

Fleming, being reluctant to admit it, remained silent.

“Young Knibbs,” continued Simeon, “at what hour did this girl hold you up?”

“About nine, I should judge.”

“And how long do you think it would take her to return home from that spot, provided she went directly by trolley?”

“No more than fifteen minutes.”

“Then she could have been home at nine-fifteen?”

“Easily.”

“You’ve considered, I suppose, that the stabbing occurred at nine-twenty?”

Fleming avoided the detective’s gaze. He felt that by defending the girl he was putting himself in an awkward position, yet in his heart he knew he would go on defending her to the end. And the end? What would it be? Finally, seeking an argument on which to pin his dwindling hope, he asked: “How can you be so sure of your time?”

“Easily. There’s a small grocery store on the corner, and in its window hangs a. clock which Officer Haggerty is in the habit of consulting as he swings around his beat. It was exactly nine-twenty by that clock when, as he passed the Window, he heard De Brunner’s cry. Lola, it would appear, had been home five minutes.”

Knibbs winced; then suddenly struck by an idea he leaped to his feet. “But if she returned directly home after leaving me, the stolen property must have been in her possession,” he cried. “And as it wasn’t in her possession, she couldn’t have returned directly home, and must have arrived after the deed was done. That clears her of all suspicion.”

He sat down in an exultant glow.

Dreer lay back in his chair and laughed heartily. His green glasses flashed in the morning sunlight pouring through the open window.

“The profession lost a genius when you took to clipping coupons for a life work,” he chuckled. “My boy, consider these facts: all ‘fences’ do not live miles away from their co-workers. They may even live conveniently near. In which event the girl could have dropped in without losing more than a minute or two. Besides, it would be foolish for either of us to try to prove her absence at the time of the tragedy, for in addition to her father, averring her presence, Haggerty found her in the room when he entered. My chief reason for questioning you concerning the hour of the hold-up was to establish a limited area in which her ‘fence’ might be located. For I believe she employed a ‘fence.’ He may, really, be more guilty than she. And if we find him it may lead to a clearing of the whole mystery. I am beginning to sense a link between the robbery and the stabbing; and I’m glad, after all, that you didn’t allow me to arrest her last night. Now she can be watched. You know, young Knibbs, the musty old saying: murder will out.”

Fleming was decidedly pale.

“I think you do her an injustice,” he muttered.

“That’s just what I’m trying not to do. If she isn’t guilty of wrongdoing she deserves to be cleared in our sight. And if she is—”

He left the rest to be inferred, and on the whole it carried a sinister meaning with the shadow of the dreaded “chair” looming in the background.

IV

Knibbs left his friend Dreer’s apartment in a depressed frame of mind. He felt that if his half-asleep girl proved as black as circumstances had painted her he could no longer entertain faith in humankind. Also, in this indigo mood, he nursed a slight resentfulness toward Dreer for casting additional suspicion upon her, and reflecting deprecatingly upon his deductive ability.

He would show the old fellow. This affair wasn’t over yet. The truth was still hidden from them. Thus steeped in his musings, and not fully realizing what he was doing, he signaled a passing taxi.

Within, he sat chewing the cud of his thoughts as the constricted city landscape flashed by. Twenty minutes passed. At length he felt the machine stop, and heard the chauffeur’s voice, “Here you are, sir.”

He looked up. The taxi was standing before the little grocery store which Dreer had described. Then Fleming Knibbs remembered that, with some vague idea of accumulating additional facts, he had ordered to be driven into Lola’s neighborhood.

He paid the man and stood idly watching him drive away. He didn’t quite know what to do, where to begin. Uncertain as he was; he started to walk around the block, hoping a course would suggest itself. He passed the shabby De Brunner residence slowly. There was crepe on the door, and the worn green shades in the front room were drawn to a level with the slightly opened windows. At the next corner he swung to the right. Shortly he came to an alley lined with drunken fences and battered slop cans. On the impulse he entered it. He knew he would find the De Brunner backyard somewhere along-here. As to what he would do when he reached it he hadn’t the faintest idea.

There were two stout Women in faded gingham house dresses and aprons standing at a gate directly behind De Brunner’s. As Knibbs neared them he caught snatches of their conversation. They were talking of the tragedy.

Fleming took his nerve in hand.

“Pardon, ladies,” he interrupted. “I understand there was a suicide in the neighborhood—”

“You’re right there was,” responded the more garrulous of the pair, apparently glad for the opportunity to air what she knew. “In that house there — right in front of you. They just moved in the other day, an’ now one of ’em’s gone a-ready. Stabbed hisself. I heard the paralytic yell when he did it. An’ then two men came runnin’ out the back gate. ‘Somethin’s wrong,’ I told meself; an’ sure enough I was right. They was goin’ for the doctor, I guess, an’—”

“Well, well—too bad,” commented the young man, restraining his excitement with difficulty as the last fact made itself known. “Did they return quickly?”

“I dunno. But they’re back now. I saw ’em in the yard this mornin’.”

“Too bad,” repeated Knibbs, simulating the idle sympathy of the curiosity seeker. “However, such things are happening continually, aren’t they?”

And nodding and tipping his hat he moved on, picking his way between cans until he again reached the end of the alley. But he looked cautiously back within a few minutes, and, finding the women £one, retraced his steps.

At the De Brunner gate he found, luckily, no bolts to hinder his progress, and entered quickly. All he wanted was a surreptitious look at the two men who had projected themselves into the drama, so that, should the occasion arise, he might identify them. He walked softly to the kitchen window and peered within. The room was empty.

Then, suddenly, he felt his ankles seized, and he fell, and was jerked through a narrow window into the dark, evil-smelling cellar. And before his senses had regained their equilibrium, his arms were trussed behind him with a strip of clothes-line.

He heard a coarse laugh. “Well, fella, that time yuh got fresh once too often, didn’t yuh?”

At this moment the cellar door opened and a voice muttered:

“What’s wrong down there, Belden? Why the racket?”

“Caught a snooper, Jim,” retorted Fleming’s assailant, triumphantly.

“No!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Bring him up.”

Knibbs’s arm was seized in a rough grasp and he was thrust through the darkness. With the other man behind him, prodding, he marched up the stairs into the kitchen.

Now he could see the two men clearly. His captor was a short, stocky fellow with a bull neck, pugnacious jaw, and close-cropped red hair. A typical prize fighter. The other—a tall, lean chap—affected a little mustache above a pair of hard lips, and a stock around his neck.

The lean one faced him. “What’s the big idea?” he demanded. “Come on, now—talk. What business have you here?”

This was another poser for Knibbs. He knew he had exceeded his rights by prowling around the place. Of course, he was doing it for the girl’s sake, but he couldn’t tell them that. What could he tell them?

“It seems I struck the wrong place—” he began.

“Ha! Ha! Ha! I guess it does seem that way now, doesn’t it? Pretty weak; pretty weak. You’ll have to do better than that.”

“What will you do if I don’t try — turn me over to the police?”

“Not a chance. That would be an easy way out for you, wouldn’t it?” He winked, slyly. “No, fella, unless you can explain, I imagine old De Brunner will keep you here awhile. He likes company, and he has a way with him that may win a confession from you. Suppose you come with me and see him now.”

With the lean man leading and “red head” bringing up in the rear, they trailed upstairs to a back bedroom. Bastian De Brunner, the paralytic, lay with several pillows propped under his head reading a newspaper. He looked up as they entered.

“We caught this fella,” said the tail one, as though he had had a hand in it, “prowling in the yard.”

With his deeply set, dark eyes De Brunner studied Fleming Knibbs. “You were here last night, weren’t you?” he asked.

Knibbs refused to answer, though he knew the sick man was not deceived.

“What do you want?” De Brunner continued.

Still Knibbs maintained his silence.

“Bring him here.” The command came in a hard, inflexible tone from among the pillows. The lean spokesman and his companion leaped to obey. They half carried Knibbs to a chair beside the bed. Fleming found himself looking squarely into De Brunner’s eyes.

“Go,” said the paralytic to the two men lingering in the background. They went.

Knibbs felt the other’s eyes boring into him, and he glared back defiantly. No words were spoken. It was a battle of minds. De Brunner’s pupils seemed to glow like coals and his whole attitude was of striving for domination.

It came to Fleming at that dramatic moment, as he fought back, that Bastian De Brunner possessed _hypnotic power, and a thrill of fear coursed through him. He suppressed it quickly, concentrating every force into his staring eyes. He must hold his own. He must not allow himself to fall under the spell.

Absolute silence prevailed in the room.

Slowly Knibbs became conscious of a numbness in the legs. It grew upon him an inch at a time, crawling like a snake past the knee and upward. He became desperate, frantic. He tried to shout for help, but no sound issued from his lips. He tried to tear himself from the chair and dash from the room, but his muscles were immovable, refusing to obey the mental impulse. Vaguely Knibbs marveled at this. It always had been his impression that hypnotic control of an unwilling subject was impossible. Obviously De Brunner possessed an extraordinary power.

Then a sudden calmness swept over him as he realized that fear would only undermine his resistance, thus adding to the other’s strength. Though this was his first experience with hypnosis — and he was accordingly handicapped by a natural awe of mysterious, unknown forces—he now coolly rallied all his faculties to defense, and once again clearly met De Brunner’s gaze.

And then the door opened and Lola entered bearing a tray.

It was this interruption plus Fleming’s rally that spelled defeat for the paralytic’s initial stupendous attempt at controlling his captive’s mind. Without a word he removed his gaze and sank deeper among the pillows. “Send Jim up,” he said in a normal voice.

Lola set the tray on a bureau and, going to the door, called softly below.

Shortly the tall, thin-lipped fellow sauntered in.

“Make this man secure in the next room,” ordered de Brunner. “I want to see him later. Needn’t gag him unless he gets noisy.”

The chap called Jim yanked Knibbs to his feet; and then they were in a small, bare room furnished only with a cot. Silently Jim pushed his helpless charge on the cot, stretched him out at full length and made him fast to the frame with stout ropes ably knotted.

“Guess that’ll hold you awhile,” he grinned as he departed.

V.

Knibbs lay there the balance of the morning and far into the afternoon. Occasional footsteps passed the door, going to or coming from the back room. Then there was a prolonged silence and Knibbs thought he detected snoring.

Fleming’s position had now become not only irksome but decidedly uncomfortable. He was stiff from lying so long in one position and his legs and arms ached where the ropes had chafed them; for he had done considerable twisting and straining in spasmodic endeavors to free himself. Quiet having descended upon the mysterious household, he determined to make one last great attempt toward this end. Gathering all his reserve force in the effort, he drew his arms together and his knees up. The ropes held. He increased the tension gradually... and felt a thrill of exultation. His right arm was loose; his freedom remained but a matter of minutes.

Fleming Knibbs was casting off the last of his shackles when his anxious, roving eye observed the door opening silently. Transfixed with horror, he waited.

A figure slipped in and approached the cot. It was Lola. Knibbs breathed easier. He arose and held her arms. “Why are you here?” he whispered. “What do you want?” For a moment, in his highly excited state, he doubted her. The next moment he was ashamed of himself.

“I’ve come to help you,” she replied softly. “De Brunner is asleep. Jim and Belden have gone to hire an auto. They intend removing you to a place where there will be less likelihood of the police finding you. By your attitude and appearance, De Brunner believes you a Wealthy man-about-town who finds sport in traveling around with detectives. And he has designs on you—just what I do not know. He may hold you for ransom. Or it may be that he intends gaining mental control of you—as he has me. He’s—he’s the devil incarnate!” she concluded vehemently. “You must escape him.”

“But—isn’t he—your father?”

“Thank God, no! I was once, at least, of a good Belgian family—the family of Langlois. But I lost everyone and everything I held dear early in the war. Distracted, I fled to Australia, where I obtained employment as secretary to the manager of the Smith & Townsend circus. It was before the full seriousness of the war had been realized and many men, particularly the older ones, had no thought of entering service. De Brunner was one of these. He was a versatile performer—a daredevil who provided half a dozen acts, But one day he took a chance too many, and dropped from a trapeze, injuring his spine. It was then he fell back upon and developed a latent hypnotic power, and I became his slave, doing his bidding, no matter what. Oh, I hate it! I hate it! If I, too, could only escape! But I cannot. He controls my body and my soul, and I am fearful of him.”

Deeply interested and excited by this personal narrative from the girl whose sweet face he had learned to adore, Knibbs forgot his surroundings, forgot his desire to escape and the need of haste, and probed for more. “When, you are under the spell, are you fully aware of what you are doing, Lola?” He used her name reverently.

“Yes; but faintly, as in a dream. Oh, I know I robbed you. I recall the details—hazily. But I could not tell you last night—with De Brunner there, and the officers.”

“Being unable to do so himself, he intends using you to carry out his criminal designs, making you his unwilling automaton, and hiding from the law behind your skirts. Isn’t that it?”

She shrank back as though struck; then, strangling a sob, braced herself. “Of course. It is plain. Yet no matter how much I fear the consequences of my acts, I fear him more. Oh—I— I wish I were — dead!”

“Please don’t say that. Things will come out right. They must. Tell me, Lola, have you—committed many—ah — crimes at his bidding?”

She sighed with relief. “No; yours was the first. It seems the idea did not occur to him until he decided to come to America. I think perhaps Jim put it in his head. Jim and ‘Red’ Belden were canvasmen—rough as they come. And when De Brunner’s savings were exhausted—”

“I see. But who was the other man — this John Ulrich, who—who died last night?”

“He, too, was a student of hypnosis — a complacent hypocrite I have always detested. De Brunner became acquainted with him in Melbourne. Another circus man, Cassius Wynn, introduced them. It may be, too, that the idea of crime through hypnotic control originated in him, or in Wynn. I cannot say. But De Brunner was master of them all, despite his infirmity. And somehow he found in me his most pliant subject.”

“Tell me one more thing, Lola. Did John Ulrich commit suicide, or was he murdered?”

“I do not know,” she said, looking at him with frank eyes, and he knew she spoke the truth, but he was no less uneasy, for he believed he knew now what had transpired the night before. “I had just returned and in a sort of stupor was mounting the steps when someone screamed. I went in and lay the loot on the bed. Jim and Belden were standing staring down at Ulrich. De Brunner said something in a sharp tone; then Jim took the loot and both of them went out quickly. I saw no more of them until this morning.”

Knibbs welcomed the projection of other suspects on the scene. It relieved him to think that, if Ulrich was knifed, either of the ex-circus men might have had a hand in it. But he had recurrent thrills of fear. For it may have been that Lola’s remembrance of that waking dream was incorrect—and that, after all, she had committed— No, no! Heaven forbid!

He took a short step toward her. “I think I hear someone at the front door,” he hissed. “Let’s get out of here. No; I’ll not go alone. You must come, too, Lola. I’ll care for you. I’ll—”

“No. It is impossible... You were right. There is someone below. Hurry!”

“You—”

“Oh, if I only might! But I cannot. I feel those invisible ties and they’re — too strong—for me. Go now, please.”

The closing of the vestibule door reached them distinctly. There was need of haste. Knibbs cast one last pleading look at the girl, saw the uselessness of petitioning her further, and, determining to return later with the police department at his back, stooped and kissed her full upon the lips. Then he threw open the door and stepped into the hall.

He had delayed a bit too long. He stepped squarely in the path of the two canvasmen.

VI.

And then Knibbs had his hands full. He met Jim—the lean fellow affecting the Chaplin mustache—with a crashing blow in the face that sent him reeling back against his companion. And he followed this up, launching himself like a tiger at the other’s throat. He made the silk stock his target, hoping, incidentally, that the force of his attack would carry them both to the floor. But unfortunately Belden had braced himself against the balustrade, which caused the whole tide of battle to turn. Jim met his leap squarely, and shortly both were on him.

There was a crash, a great tangle of flashing arms and legs on the floor, the sound of blows, and at intervals above it all the awakened paralytic’s voice calling to Lola. .

Knibbs was putting up the fight of his life. And the fact that, glorified his efforts was that he was not fighting for himself alone. It wasn’t only that he defended himself against kidnapping or resisted being-trussed again on that cot. It was something bigger and finer. Substantially, he was fighting for the woman he loved.

But it was a losing fight. Belden, being a bred-in-the-bone pug, and lean Jim having been thoroughly educated in toughness—an education incomplete without a working knowledge of the fistic art—Knibbs’ chances were on the short end. Already his nose was bleeding and his chin gashed.

Then they piled upon him as in a football game, crushing out his breath; and he felt his surroundings slipping away, when the unexpected happened.

To Fleming Metcalf Knibbs, prone on the hall floor with the two ex-circus men belaboring him, the events which transpired now appeared more than ever dream-like. The rickety front door was thrust inward and an avalanche of rushing footsteps came to his ears. The pressure on his throat and chest was suddenly relieved, and as he moved his head weakly he saw Simeon Dreer, of the murder squad, looking down at him through his ridiculously large green spectacles, while all around swarmed blue-coated and brass-buttoned forms.

“Hoo-ray!” cheered Knibbs weakly, staring back at Dreer with a silly smile. He felt that he ought to get up and welcome his rescuers, but for the life of him he couldn’t move a muscle.

At an order from Dreer, an officer got him under the arms; and then he found himself standing on shaking, uncertain legs, one hand on the balustrade post, the other moving across his forehead. Slowly his faculties revived.

Out of the little room came Officer Yensen, holding Lola tightly by the arm.

Knibbs saw red.

“Release that lady,” he bellowed, or tried to bellow, for he was still too weak to achieve the real thing. Yensen looked uncertainly first at Knibbs then at Simeon Dreer.

Simeon smiled tolerantly. “Do as the gentleman requests, Yensen,” he said.

It was done; whereat those remaining in the hall proceeded to the rear room where the discomfited ruffians and their leader were under guard.

“A charming gathering,” commented Dreer. “At what hour is tea served?”

“Sir, your sarcasm is anything but appropriate,” said the paralytic from among his pillows, pretending righteous indignation, though his face was livid with wrath. “By what right do you force your way into my home—at this very moment a house of death?”

Dreer maintained his nonchalance. “If it were not a house of death I should not be here,” he replied, “though it appears fortunate for Mr. Knibbs that I happened along when I did. However, his rescue was incidental and secondary. I have come after the murderer of John Ulrich!”

“The murderer of Ulrich! What do you mean?”

“My English is clear, I believe. I’m sure you understand me, De Brunner. If not, I shall be more harshly explicit. There’s an ambulance waiting outside to take you away. There’s a police patrol, too; and I might add, if I may be so indelicate, that were you not bedridden, you’d ride in the latter.”

“You charge me—”

“Sure. With the murder of John Ulrich.”

“Ridiculous.” De Brunner’s eyes narrowed to pin points.

“Not altogether,” continued Simeon, calmly. “You won’t deny, I take it, that you were once a circus performer — a versatile person, as clever on the trapeze as at knife throwing!—”

He paused impressively.

The paralytic’s face blanched.

“I see you’re on,” he snarled. “How you did it I don’t know and don’t care. You’re a clever devil yourself. But neither you nor the commonwealth shall have the satisfaction of administering—my—punishment—”

It was over in a trice. They saw his hand move quickly, convulsively, under the sheet. A spasm of pain crossed his face. His head jerked up. The muscles of his neck and shoulders tensed. For a moment great physical strain was apparent there. Then he relaxed and his head rolled to one side.

Dreer leaped forward and threw back the covers. Evidence of Bastian De Brunner’s act was sickeningly apparent. A dagger—the very one Ulrich was reputed to have brought from India—was plunged to the hilt in his side. Quickly removing it, he drew the sheet up over the still form.

“The state is satisfied,” he said.

“But how—?” began Fleming Metcalf Knibbs for the hundredth time.

They were in Dreer’s cluttered apartment. Lola Langlois was seated in one of the spacious chairs, with Fleming draped over its arm, gazing longingly down upon her. He had looked up just long enough to put his question to Dreer.

The little man tinkered with his green spectacles a moment before replying.

“I hardly know whether to tell you or not,” he said. “The truth is I shall probably sacrifice my professional reputation in your eyes by doing so. For the whole thing was so absurdly simple. You see, young Knibbs, after you left this morning I made a second careful examination of De Brunner’s letter from Cassius Wynn and found the envelope not torn open but carefully cut. That implied one thing, didn’t it—that De Brunner opened his mail with a knife? Of course, to do that, he has had at times a knife in bed with him. Suggestive, eh? But not complete. Doctor Collier’s statement now returned to me: that although paralyzed De Brunner’s arms were free. Further illumination came when I learned upon inquiry that Smith & Townsend was not the name of a mercantile house but of a traveling circus. Some showmen in town supplied me with final details. They remembered Bastian De Brunner and his knife-throwing act. What more would the densest sleuth require? Immediately a picture of John Ulrich disputing De Brunner’s power suggested itself. Perhaps Ulrich threatened to expose him to the police. At any rate a lost temper and a hurtling knife terminated the incident in tragedy. It was Ulrich’s death cry, not a call for help from De Brunner, that brought the police. And there you have it. You, young Knibbs, supplied equally as important information as I, however, in learning of this strange fellow’s criminal intentions.”

Dreer arose abruptly and. went to the phonograph and shortly the strains of Les Millions D’Arlequin filled the room. Sitting raptly by the instrument he drank in every note.

After a moment he appeared to have been struck by a thought. Unexpectedly, he cut the record off in its prime, and, stealing a side glance at the youth and maid, now busily engaged in whispered conversation, he left the room.

Exactly twenty minutes later his apartment bell rang. Of which, also, Fleming Knibbs and Lola were blissfully unaware.

Then Dreer’s green spectacles poked their way through the door. Fleming had his half-asleep girl in his arms — no longer half asleep, however, for her lips were pressed to his in passionate surrender. The little man said later he never saw, and never expected to see again, so beautiful, so colorful a picture.

He coughed.

“Come in,” said Knibbs, without looking up.

“It’s Hjalmar Yensen below,” explained Simeon. “He says ‘Red’ Belden and the man called Jim confessed to making off with your personal property and named the ‘fence’ they had employed. He has recovered everything, young Knibbs, and wants to see you.”

“Can’t,” replied Fleming, briefly, giving the chair a hitch so that its back was now to the door. “I’m busy. Tell him to leave the Ingersoll and scarf pin in your care. As for the wallet—let him keep it.”

“And its contents?”

“Of course.”

“Whew!”

“And Dreer—”

“Yes?”

“Invite him to the wedding. We can have him watch the gifts, you know.”