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Average Jones

by Samuel Hopkins Adams · English · Gutenberg #6864 · 420,631 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Average Jones

Author: Samuel Hopkins Adams


        
Release date: November 1, 2004 [eBook #6864]
                Most recently updated: April 13, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6864

Credits: Sean Pobuda and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AVERAGE JONES ***




Average Jones

by Samuel Hopkins Adams


Contents

 CHAPTER I. THE B-FLAT TROMBONE
 CHAPTER II. RED DOT
 CHAPTER III. OPEN TRAIL
 CHAPTER IV. THE MERCY SIGN—ONE
 CHAPTER V. THE MERCY SIGN—TWO
 CHAPTER VI. BLUE FIRES
 CHAPTER VII. PIN-PRICKS
 CHAPTER VIII. BIG PRINT
 CHAPTER IX. THE MAN WHO SPOKE LATIN
 CHAPTER X. THE ONE BEST BET
 CHAPTER XI. THE MILLION-DOLLAR DOG




CHAPTER I. THE B-FLAT TROMBONE


Three men sat in the Cosmic Club discussing the question: “What’s the
matter with Jones?” Waldemar, the oldest of the conferees, was the
owner, and at times the operator, of an important and decent newspaper.
His heavy face wore the expression of good-humored power,
characteristic of the experienced and successful journalist. Beside him
sat Robert Bertram, the club idler, slender and languidly elegant. The
third member of the conference was Jones himself.

Average Jones had come by his nickname inevitably. His parents had
foredoomed him to it when they furnished him with the initials A. V. R.
E. as preface to his birthright of J for Jones. His character
apparently justified the chance concomitance. He was, so to speak, a
composite photograph of any thousand well-conditioned, clean-living
Americans between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. Happily, his
otherwise commonplace face was relieved by the one unfailing
characteristic of composite photographs, large, deep-set and thoughtful
eyes. Otherwise he would have passed in any crowd, and nobody would
have noticed him pass. Now, at twenty-seven, he looked back over the
five years since his graduation from college and wondered what he had
done with them; and at the four previous years of undergraduate life
and wondered how he had done so well with those and why he had not in
some manner justified the parting words of his favorite professor.

“You have one rare faculty, Jones. You can, when you choose, sharpen
the pencil of your mind to a very fine point. Specialize, my boy,
specialize.”

If the recipient of this admonition had specialized in anything, it was
in life. Having twenty-five thousand a year of his own he might have
continued in that path indefinitely, but for two influences. One was an
irruptive craving within him to take some part in the dynamic
activities of the surrounding world. The other was the “freak” will of
his late and little-lamented uncle, from whom he had his present
income, and his future expectations of some ten millions. Adrian Van
Reypen Egerton had, as Waldemar once put it, “—one into the mayor’s
chair with a good name and come out with a block of ice stock.” In a
will whose cynical humor was the topic of its day, Mr. Egerton jeered
posthumously at the public which he had despoiled, and promised
restitution, of a sort, through his heir.

“Therefore,” he had written, “I give and bequeath to the said Adrian
Van Reypen Egerton Jones, the residue of my property, the principal to
be taken over by him at such time as he shall have completed five years
of continuous residence in New York City. After such time the virus of
the metropolis will have worked through his entire being. He will
squander his unearned and undeserved fortune, thus completing the
vicious circle, and returning the millions acquired by my political
activities, in a poisoned shower upon the city, for which, having
bossed, bullied and looted it, I feel no sentiment other than
contempt.”

“And now,” remarked Waldemar in his heavy, rumbling voice, “you aspire
to disappoint that good old man.”

“It’s only human nature, you know,” said Average Jones. “When a man
puts a ten-million-dollar curse on you and suggests that you haven’t
the backbone of a shrimp, you—you—”

“—naturally yearn to prove him a liar,” supplied Bertram.

“Exactly. Anyway, I’ve no taste for dissipation, either moral or
financial. I want action; something to do. I’m bored in this infernal
city.”

“The wail of the unslaked romanticist,” commented Bertram.

“Romanticist nothing!” protested the other. “My ambitions are practical
enough if I could only get ’em stirred up.”

“Exactly. Boredom is simply romanticism with a morning-after thirst.
You’re panting for romance, for something bizarre. Egypt and St.
Petersburg and Buenos Ayres and Samoa have all become commonplace to
you. You’ve overdone them. That’s why you’re back here in New York
waiting with stretched nerves for the Adventure of Life to cat-creep up
from behind and toss the lariat of rainbow dreams over your shoulders.”

Waldemar laughed. “Not a bad diagnosis. Why don’t you take up a hobby,
Mr. Jones?”

“What kind of a hobby?”

“Any kind. The club is full of hobby-riders. Of all people that I know,
they have the keenest appetite for life. Look at old Denechaud; he was
a misanthrope until he took to gathering scarabs. Fenton, over there,
has the finest collection of circus posters in the world. Bellerding’s
house is a museum of obsolete musical instruments. De Gay collects
venomous insects from all over the world; no harmless ones need apply.
Terriberry has a mania for old railroad tickets. Some are really very
curious. I’ve often wished I had the time to be a crank. It’s a happy
life.”

“What line would you choose?” asked Bertram languidly.

“Nobody has gone in for queer advertisements yet, I believe,” replied
the older man. “If one could take the time to follow them up—-but it
would mean all one’s leisure.”

“Would it be so demanding a career?” said Average Jones, smiling.

“Decidedly. I once knew a man who gave away twenty dollars daily on
clues from the day’s news. He wasn’t bored for lack of occupation.”

“But the ordinary run of advertising is nothing more than an effort to
sell something by yelling in print,” objected Average Jones.

“Is it? Well perhaps you don’t look in the right place.”

Waldemar reached for the morning’s copy of the Universal and ran his
eye down the columns of “classified” matter. “Hark to this,” he said,
and read:

“Is there any work on God’s green earth for a man who has just _got_ to
have it?”


“Or this:

“WANTED—A venerable looking man with white beard and medical degree.
Good pay to right applicant.”


“What’s that?” asked Average Jones with awakened interest.

“Only a quack medical concern looking for a stall to impress their
come-ons,” explained Waldemar.

Average Jones leaned over to scan the paper in his turn.

“Here’s one,” said he, and read:

WANTED—Performer on B-flat trombone. Can use at once. Apply with
instrument, after 1 p. m. 300 East 100th Street.


“That seems ordinary enough,” said Waldemar.

“What’s it doing in a daily paper? There must be—er—technical
publications—er—journals, you know, for this sort of demand.”

“When Average’s words come slow, you’ve got him interested,” commented
Bertram. “Sure sign.”

“Nevertheless, he’s right,” said Waldemar. “It is rather misplaced.”

“How is this for one that says what it means?” said Bertram.

WANTED—At once, a brass howitzer and a man who isn’t afraid to handle
it. Mrs. Anne Cullen, Pier 49½ East River.


“The woman who is fighting the barge combine,” explained Waldemar. “Not
so good as it looks. She’s bluffing.”

“Anyway, I’d like a shy at this business,” declared Average Jones with
sudden conviction. “It looks to me like something to do.”

“Make it a business, then,” advised Waldemar. “If you care really to go
in for it, my newspaper would be glad to pay for information such as
you might collect. We haven’t time, for example, to trace down
fraudulent advertisers. If you could start an enterprise of that sort,
you’d certainly find it amusing, and, at times, perhaps, even
adventurous.”

“I wouldn’t know how to establish it,” objected Average Jones.

The newspaper owner drew a rough diagram on a sheet of paper and filled
it in with writing, crossing out and revising liberally. Divided, upon
his pattern, into lines, the final draft read:

HAVE YOU BEEN STUNG?


Thousands have.
Thousands will be.
They’re Laying for You.
_WHO?_
The Advertising Crooks.

A. JONES
Ad-Visor
Can Protect You Against Them.

Before Spending Your Money Call on Him. Advice on all Subjects
Connected with Newspaper, Magazine or Display Advertising. Free
Consultation to Persons Unable to Pay. Call or Write, Enclosing
Postage. _This Is On The Level_.
Jones, Ad-Visor


“Ad-Visor! Do you expect me to blight my budding career by a poisonous
pun like that?” demanded Average Jones with a wry face.

“It may be a poisonous pun, but it’s an arresting catch-word,” said
Waldemar, unmoved. “Single column, about fifty lines will do it in
nice, open style. Caps and lower case, and black-faced type for the
name and title. Insert twice a week in every New York and Brooklyn
paper.”

“Isn’t it—er—a little blatant?” suggested Bertram, with lifted
eyebrows.

“Blatant?” repeated its inventor. “It’s more than that. It’s howlingly
vulgar. It’s a riot of glaring yellow. How else would you expect to
catch the public?”

“Suppose, then, I do burst into flame to this effect?” queried the
prospective “Ad-Visor.” “_Et aprés?_ as we proudly say after spending a
week in Paris.”

“_Aprés?_ Oh, plenty of things. You hire an office, a clerk, two
stenographers and a clipping export, and prepare to take care of the
work that comes in. You’ll be flooded,” promised Waldemar.

“And between times I’m to go skipping about, chasing long white
whiskers and brass howitzers and B-flat trombones, I suppose.”

“Until you get your work systematized you’ll have no time for skipping.
Within six months, if you’re not sandbagged or jailed on fake libel
suits, you’ll have a unique bibliography of swindles. Then I’ll begin
to come and buy your knowledge to keep my own columns clean.”

The speaker looked up to meet the gaze of an iron-gray man with a
harsh, sallow face.

“Excuse my interrupting,” said the new-comer.

“Just one question, Waldemar. Who’s going to be the nominee?”

“Linder.”

“Linder? Surely not! Why, his name hasn’t been heard.”

“It will be.”

“His Federal job?”

“He resigns in two weeks.”

“His record will kill him.”

“What record? You and I know he’s a grafter. But can we prove anything?
His clerk has always handled all the money.”

“Wasn’t there an old scandal—a woman case?” asked the questioner
vaguely.

“That Washington man’s wife? Too old. Linder would deny it flatly, and
there would be no witnesses. The woman is dead—killed by his brutal
treatment of her, they say. But the whole thing was hushed up at the
time by Linder’s pull, and when the husband threatened to kill him
Linder quietly set a commissioner of insanity on the case and had the
man put away. He’s never appeared since. No, that wouldn’t be
politically effective.”

The gray man nodded, and walked away, musing.

“Egbert, the traction boss,” explained Waldemar. “We’re generally on
opposite sides, but this time we’re both against Linder. Egbert wants a
cheaper man for mayor. I want a straighter one. And I could get him
this year if Linder wasn’t so well fortified. However, to get back to
our project, Mr. Jones—”

Get back to it they did with such absorption that when the group broke
up, several hours later, Average Jones was committed, by plan and rote,
to the new and hopeful adventure of Life.

In the great human hunt which ever has been and ever shall be till “the
last bird flies into the last light”—some call it business, some call
it art, some call it love, and a very few know it for what it is, the
very mainspring of existence—the path of the pursuer and the prey often
run obscurely parallel. What time the Honorable William Linder matured
his designs on the mayoralty, Average Jones sat in a suite of offices
in Astor Court, a location which Waldemar had advised as being central,
expensive, and inspirational of confidence, and considered, with a
whirling brain, the minor woes of humanity. Other people’s troubles had
swarmed down upon him in answer to his advertised offer of help, as
sparrows flock to scattered bread crumbs. Mostly these were of the
lesser order of difficulties; but for what he gave in advice and help
the Ad-Visor took payment in experience and knowledge of human nature.
Still it was the hard, honest study, and the helpful toil which held
him to his task, rather than the romance and adventure which he had
hoped for and Waldemar had foretold—until, in a quiet, street in
Brooklyn, of which he had never so much as heard, there befell that
which, first of many events, justified the prophetic Waldemar and gave
Average Jones a part in the greater drama of the metropolis. The party
of the second part was the Honorable William Linder.

Mr., Linder sat at five P. M., of an early summer day, behind lock and
bolt. The third floor front room of his ornate mansion on Brooklyn’s
Park Slope was dedicated to peaceful thought. Sprawled in a huge and
softly upholstered chair at the window, he took his ease in his house.
The chair had been a recent gift from an anonymous admirer whose
political necessities, the Honorable Mr. Linder idly surmised, had not
yet driven him to reveal his identity. Its occupant stretched his
shoeless feet, as was his custom, upon the broad window-sill, flooded
by the seasonable warmth of sunshine, the while he considered the
ripening mayoralty situation. He found it highly satisfactory. In the
language of his inner man, it was a cinch.

Below, in Kennard Street, a solitary musician plodded. His
pretzel-shaped brass rested against his shoulder. He appeared to be the
“scout” of one of those prevalent and melancholious German bands,
which, under Brooklyn’s easy ordinances, are privileged to draw echoes
of the past writhing from their forgotten recesses. The man looked
slowly about him as if apprising potential returns. His gravid glance
encountered the prominent feet in the third story window of the Linder
mansion, and rested. He moved forward. Opposite the window he paused.
He raised the mouthpiece to his lips and embarked on a perilous sea of
notes from which the tutored ear might have inferred that once popular
ditty, _Egypt_.

Love of music was not one of the Honorable William Linder’s attributes.
An irascible temper was. Of all instruments the B-flat trombone
possesses the most nerve-jarring tone. The master of the mansion leaped
from his restful chair. Where his feet had ornamented the coping his
face now appeared. Far out he leaned, and roared at the musician below.
The brass throat blared back at him, while the soloist, his eyes closed
in the ecstasy of art, brought the “verse” part of his selection to an
excruciating conclusion, half a tone below pitch. Before the chorus
there was a brief pause for effect. In this pause, from Mr. Linder’s
open face a voice fell like a falling star. Although it did not cry
“Excelsior,” its output of vocables might have been mistaken, by a
casual ear, for that clarion call. What the Honorable Mr. Linder
actually shouted was:

“Getthehelloutofhere!”

The performer upturned a mild and vacant face. “What you say?” he
inquired in a softly Teutonic accent.

The Honorable William Linder made urgent gestures, like a brakeman.

“Go away! Move on!”

The musician smiled reassuringly.

“I got already paid for this,” he explained.

Up went the brass to his lips again. The tonal stairway which leads up
to the chorus of _Egypt_ rose in rasping wailfulness. It culminated in
an excessive, unendurable, brazen shriek—and the Honorable William
Linder experienced upon the undefended rear of his person the most
violent kick of a lifetime not always devoted to the arts of peace. It
projected him clear of the window-sill. His last sensible vision was
the face of the musician, the mouth absurdly hollow and pursed above
the suddenly removed mouthpiece. Then an awning intercepted the
politician’s flight. He passed through this, penetrated a second and
similar stretch of canvas shading the next window below, and lay placid
on his own front steps with three ribs caved in and a variegated
fracture of the collar-bone. By the time the descent was ended the
German musician had tucked his brass under his arm and was hurrying, in
panic, down the street, his ears still ringing with the concussion
which had blown the angry householder from his own front window. He was
intercepted by a running policeman.

“Where was the explosion?” demanded the officer.

“Explosion? I hear a noise in the larch house on the corner,” replied
the musician dully.

The policeman grabbed his arm. “Come along back. You fer a witness!
Come on; you an’ yer horn.”

“It iss not a horn,” explained the German patiently, “it iss a B-flat
trombone.”

Along with several million other readers, Average Jones followed the
Linder “bomb outrage” through the scandalized head-lines of the local
press. The perpetrator, declared the excited journals, had been
skilful. No clue was left. The explosion had taken care of that. The
police (with the characteristic stupidity of a corps of former
truck-drivers and bartenders, decorated with brass buttons and shields
and without further qualification dubbed “detectives”) vacillated from
theory to theory. Their putty-and-pasteboard fantasies did not long
survive the Honorable William Linder’s return to consciousness and
coherence. An “inside job,” they had said. The door was locked and
bolted, Mr. Linder declared, and there was no possible place for an
intruder to conceal himself. Clock-work, then.

“How would any human being guess what time to set it for,” demanded the
politician in disgust, “when I never know, myself, where I’m going to
be at any given hour of any given day?”

“Then that Dutch horn-player threw the bomb,” propounded the head of
the “Detective Bureau” ponderously.

“Of course; tossed it right up, three stories, and kept playing his
infernal trombone with the other hand all the time. You ought to be
carrying a hod!”

Nevertheless, the police hung tenaciously to the theory that the
musician was involved, chiefly because they had nothing else to hang
to. The explosion had been very localized, the room not generally
wrecked; but the chair which seemed to be the center of disturbance,
and from which the Honorable William Linder had risen just in time to
save his life, was blown to pieces, and a portion of the floor beneath
it was much shattered. The force of the explosion had been from above
the floor downward; not up through the flooring. As to murderously
inclined foes, Mr. Linder disclaimed knowledge of any. The notion that
the trombonist had given a signal he derided as an “Old Sleuth
pipe-dream.”

As time went on and “clues” came to nothing, the police had no greater
concern than quietly to forget, according to custom, a problem beyond
their limited powers. With the release of the German musician, who was
found to be simple-minded to the verge of half-wittedness, public
interest waned, and the case faded out of current print.

Average Jones, who was much occupied with a pair of blackmailers
operating through faked photographs, about that time, had almost
forgotten the Linder case, when, one day, a month after the explosion,
Waldemar dropped in at the Astor Court offices. He found a changed
Jones; much thinner and “finer” than when, eight weeks before, he had
embarked on his new career, at the newspaper owner’s instance. The
young man’s color was less pronounced, and his eyes, though alert and
eager, showed rings under them.

“You have found the work interesting, I take it,” remarked the visitor.

“Ra—ather,” drawled Average Jones appreciatively.

“That was a good initial effort, running down the opium pill mail-order
enterprise.”

“It was simple enough as soon as I saw the catchword in the ‘Wanted’
line.”

“Anything is easy to a man who sees,” returned the older man
sententiously. “The open eye of the open mind—that has more to do with
real detective work than all the deduction and induction and analysis
ever devised.”

“It is the detective part that interests me most in the game, but I
haven’t had much of it, yet. You haven’t run across any promising ads
lately, have you?”

Waldemar’s wide, florid brow wrinkled.

“I haven’t thought or dreamed of anything for a month but this infernal
bomb explosion.”

“Oh, the Linder case. You’re personally interested?”

“Politically. It makes Linder’s nomination certain. Persecution.
Attempted assassination. He becomes a near-martyr. I’m almost ready to
believe that he planted a fake bomb himself.”

“And fell out of a third-story window to carry out the idea? That’s
pushing realism rather far, isn’t it?”

Waldemar laughed. “There’s the weakness. Unless we suppose that he
under-reckoned the charge of explosive.”

“They let the musician go, didn’t they?”

“Yes. There was absolutely no proof against him, except that he was in
the street below. Besides, he seemed quite lacking mentally.”

“Mightn’t that have been a sham?”

“Alienists, of good standing examined him. They reported him just a
shade better than half-witted. He was like a one-ideaed child, his
whole being comprised in his ability, and ambition to play his B-flat
trombone.”

“Well, if I needed an accomplice,” said Average Jones thoughtfully, “I
wouldn’t want any better one than a half-witted man. Did he play well?”

“Atrociously. And if you know what a soul-shattering blare exudes from
a B-flat trombone—” Mr. Waldemar lifted expressive hands.

Within Average Jones’ overstocked mind something stirred at the
repetition of the words “B-flat trombone.” Somewhere they had attracted
his notice in print; and somehow they were connected with Waldemar.
Then from amidst the hundreds of advertisements with which, in the past
weeks, he had crowded his brain, one stood out clear. It voiced the
desire of an unknown gentleman on the near border of Harlem for the
services of a performer upon that semi-exotic instrument. One among
several, it had been cut from the columns of the _Universal_, on the
evening which had launched him upon his new enterprise. Average Jones
made two steps to a bookcase, took down a huge scrap-book from an
alphabetized row, and turned the leaves rapidly.

“Three Hundred East One Hundredth Street,” said he, slamming the book
shut again. “Three Hundred East One Hundredth. You won’t mind, will
you,” he said to Waldemar, “if I leave you unceremoniously?”

“Recalled a forgotten engagement?” asked the other, rising.

“Yes. No. I mean I’m going to Harlem to hear some music.
Thirty-fourth’s the nearest station, isn’t it? Thanks. So long.”

Waldemar rubbed his head thoughtfully as the door slammed behind the
speeding Ad-Visor.

“Now, what kind of a tune is he on the track of, I wonder?” he mused.
“I wish it hadn’t struck him until I’d had time to go over the Linder
business with him.”

But while Waldemar rubbed his head in cogitatation and the Honorable
William Linder, in his Brooklyn headquarters, breathed charily, out of
respect to his creaking rib, Average Jones was following fate
northward.

Three Hundred East One Hundredth Street is a house decrepit with a
disease of the aged. Its windowed eyes are rheumy. It sags backward on
gnarled joints. All its poor old bones creak when the winds shake it.
To Average Jones’ inquiring gaze on this summer day it opposed the
secrecy of a senile indifference. He hesitated to pull at its
bell-knob, lest by that act he should exert a disruptive force which
might bring all the frail structure rattling down in ruin. When, at
length, he forced himself to the summons, the merest ghost of a tinkle
complained petulantly from within against his violence.

An old lady came to the door. She was sleek and placid, round and
comfortable. She did not seem to belong in that house at all. Average
Jones felt as if he had cracked open one of the grisly locust shells
which cling lifelessly to tree trunks, and had found within a plump and
prosperous beetle.

“Was an advertisement for a trombone player inserted from this house,
ma’am?” he inquired.

“Long ago,” said she.

“Am I too late, then?”

“Much. It was answered nearly two months since. I have never,” said the
old lady with conviction, “seen such a frazzled lot of folks as B-flat
trombone players.”

“The person who inserted the advertisement—?”

“Has left. A month since.”

“Could you tell where he went?”

“Left no address.”

“His name was Telford, wasn’t it?” said Average Jones strategically.

“Might be,” said the old lady, who had evidently formed no favorable
impression of her ex-lodger. “But he _called_ himself Ransom.”

“He had a furnished room?”

“The whole third floor, furnished.”

“Is it let now?”

“Part of it. The rear.”

“I’ll take the front room.”

“Without even looking at it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a queer young man. As to price?”

“Whatever you choose.”

“You’re a _very_ queer young man. Are you a B-flat trombone player?”

“I collect ’em,” said Average Jones.

“References?” said the old lady abruptly and with suspicion.

“All varieties,” replied her prospective lodger cheerfully. “I will
bring ’em to-morrow with my grip.”

For five successive evenings thereafter Average Jones sat in the senile
house, awaiting personal response to the following advertisement which
he had inserted in the _Universal:_

WANTED—B-flat trombonist. Must have had experience as street player.
Apply between 8 and 10 p. m. R—, 300 East 100th Street.


Between the ebb and flow of applicant musicians he read exhaustively
upon the unallied subjects of trombones and high explosives, or talked
with his landlady, who proved to be a sociable person, not disinclined
to discuss the departed guest. “Ransom,” his supplanter learned, had
come light and gone light. Two dress suit cases had sufficed to bring
in all his belongings. He went out but little, and then, she opined
with a disgustful sniff, for purposes strictly alcoholic. Parcels came
for him occasionally. These were usually labeled “Glass. Handle with
care.” Oh! there was one other thing. A huge, easy arm-chair from
Carruthers and Company, mighty luxurious for an eight-dollar lodger.

“Did he take that with him?” asked Average Jones.

“No. After he had been here a while he had a man come in and box it up.
He must have sent it away, but I never saw it go.”

“Was this before or after the trombone players came?”

“Long after. It was after he had picked out his man and had him up here
practicing.”

“Did—er—you ever—er—see this musician?” drawled Average Jones in the
slow tones of his peculiar excitement.

“Bless you, yes! Talked with him.”

“What was he like?”

“He was a stupid old German. I always thought he was a sort of a
natural.”

“Yes?” Average Jones peered out of the window. “Is this the man, coming
up the street?”

“It surely is,” said the old lady. “Now, _Mister_ Jones, if he
commences his blaring and blatting and—“.

“There’ll be no more music, ma’am,” promised the young man, laughing,
as she went out to answer the door-bell.

The musician, ushered in, looked about him, an expression of bewildered
and childish surprise on his rabbit-like face.

“I am Schlichting,” he murmured; “I come to play the B-flat trombone.”

“Glad to see you, Mr. Schlichting,” said Average Jones, leading the way
up-stairs. “Sit down.”

The visitor put his trombone down and shook his head with conviction.

“It iss the same room, yes,” he observed. “But it iss not the same
gent, no.”

“You expected to find Mr. Ransom here?”

“I don’t know Mr. Ransom. I know only to play the B-flat trombone.”

“Mr. Ransom, the gentleman who employed you to play in the street in
Brooklyn.”

Mr. Schlichting made large and expansive gestures. “It iss a pleasure
to play for such a gent,” he said warmly. “Two dollars a day.”

“You have played often in Kennard Street?”

“I don’t know Kennard Street. I know only to play the B-flat trombone.”

“Kennard Street. In Brooklyn. Where the fat gentleman told you to stop,
and fell out of the window.”

A look of fear overspread the worn and innocent face.

“I don’t go there no more. The po-lice, they take there.”

“But you had gone there before?”

“Not to play; no.”

“Not to play? Are you sure?”

The German considered painfully. “There vass no feet in the window,” he
explained, brightening.

Upon that surprising phrase Average Jones pondered. “You were not to
play unless there were feet the window,” he said at length. “Was that
it?”

The musician assented.

“It does look like a signal to show that Linder was in,” mused the
interrogator. “Do you know Linder?”

“I don’t know nothing only to play the B-flat trombone,” repeated the
other patiently.

“Now, Schlichting,” said Average Jones, “here is a dollar. Every
evening you must come here. Whether I am here or not, there will be a
dollar for you. Do you understand?”

By way of answer the German reached down and listed his instrument to
his lips.

“No, not that,” forbade Average Jones. “Put it down.”

“Not to play my B-flat trombone?” asked the other, innocently hurt.
“The other gent he make play here always.”

“Did he?” drawled Average Jones. “And he—er—listened?”

“He listened from out there.” The musician pointed to the other room.

“How long?”

“Different times,” was the placid reply.

“But he was always in the other room.”

“Always. And I play _Egypt_. Like this.”

“No!” said Average Jones, as the other stretched out a hopeful hand.

“He liked it—_Egypt_,” said the German wistfully. “He said: ‘Bravo!
_Encore! Bis!_’ Sometimes nine, sometimes ten times over I play it, the
chorus.”

“And then he sent you home?”

“Then sometimes something goes ‘sping-g-g-g-g!’ like that in the back
room. Then he comes out and I may go home.”

“Um—m,” muttered Average Jones discontentedly. “When did you begin to
play in the street?”

“After a long time. He take me away to Brooklyn and tell me, ‘When you
see the feet iss in the window you play hard!’”

There was a long pause. Then Average Jones asked casually:

“Did you ever notice a big easy chair here?”

“I do not notice nothing. I play my B-flat trombone.”

And there his limitations were established. But the old lady had
something to add.

“It’s all true that he said,” she confirmed. “I could hear his racket
in the front room and Mr. Ransom working in the back and then, after
the old man was gone, Mr. Ransom sweeping up something by himself.”

“Sweeping? What—er—was he—er—sweeping?”

“Glass, I think. The girl used to find little slivers of it first in
one part of the room, then in another. I raised the rent for that and
for the racket.”

“The next thing,” said Average Jones, “is to find out where that big
easy chair went from here. Can you help me there?”

The old lady shook her head. “All I can do is to tell you the near-by
truck men.”

Canvass of the local trucking industry brought to light the conveyor of
that elegant article of furniture. It had gone, Average Jones learned,
not to the mansion of the Honorable William Linder, as he had fondly
hoped, but to an obscure address not far from the Navy Yard in
Brooklyn. To this address, having looked up and gathered in the B-flat
trombonist, Average Jones led the way. The pair lurked in the
neighborhood of the ramshackle house watching the entrance, until
toward evening, as the door opened to let out a tremulous wreck of a
man, palsied with debauch, Schlichting observed:

“That iss him. He hass been drinking again once.”

Average Jones hurried the musician around the corner into concealment.
“You have been here before to meet Mr. Ransom?”

“No.”

“Where did he meet you to pay you your wages?”

“On some corner,” said the other vaguely.

“Then he took you to the big house and left you there,” urged Jones.

“No; he left me on the street corner. ‘When the feet iss in the
window,’ he says, ‘you play.’”

“It comes to this,” drawled Average Jones intently, looking the
employee between his vacuous eyes. “Ransom shipped the chair to
Plymouth Street and from there to Linder’s house. He figured out that
Linder would put it in his study and do his sitting at the window in
it. And you were to know when he was there by seeing his feet in the
window, and give the signal when you saw him. It must have been a
signal to somebody pretty far off, or he wouldn’t have chosen so loud
an instrument as a B-flat trombone.”

“I can play the B-flat trombone louder as any man in the business,”
asserted Schlichting with proud conviction.

“But what gets me,” pursued Average Jones, “is the purpose of the
signal. Whom was it for?”

“I don’t know nothing,” said the other complacently. “I only know to
play the B-flat trombone louder as any man in the world.”

Average Jones paid him a lump sum, dismissed him and returned to the
Cosmic Club, there to ponder the problem. What next? To accuse Ransom,
the mysterious hirer of a B-flat trombone virtuosity, without
sufficient proof upon which to base even a claim of cross-examination,
would be to block his own game then and there, for Ransom could, and
very likely would, go away, leaving no trace. Who was Ransom, anyway?
And what relation, if any, did he bear to Linder?

Absorbed in these considerations, he failed to notice that the club was
filling up beyond its wont. A hand fell on his shoulder.

“Hello, Average. Haven’t seen you at a Saturday special night since you
started your hobby.”

It was Bertram. “What’s on?” Average Jones asked him, shaking hands.

“Freak concert. Bellerding has trotted out part of his collection of
mediaeval musical instruments, and some professionals are going to play
them. Waldemar is at our table. Come and join us.”

Conversation at the round-table was general and lively that evening,
and not until the port came on—the prideful club port, served only on
special occasions and in wonderful, delicate glasses—did Average Jones
get an opportunity to speak to Waldemar aside.

“I’ve been looking into that Linder matter a little.”

“Indeed. I’ve about given up hope.”

“You spoke of an old scandal in Linder’s career. What was the husband’s
name?”

“Arbuthnot, I believe.”

“Do you know what sort of looking man he was?”

“No. I could find out from Washington.”

“What was his business?”

“Government employment, I think.”

“In the—er—scientific line, perhaps?” drawled Jones.

“Why, yes, I believe it was.”

“Um-m. Suppose, now, Linder should drop out of the combination. Who
would be the most likely nominee?”

“Marsden—the man I’ve been grooming for the place. A first-class,
honorable, fearless man.”

“Well, it’s only a chance; but if I can get one dark point cleared up—”

He paused as a curious, tingling note came from the platform where the
musicians were tuning tip.

“One of Bellerding’s sweet dulcets,” observed Bertram.

The Performer nearest them was running a slow bass scale on a sort of
two-stringed horse-fiddle of a strange shape. Average Jones’ still
untouched glass, almost full of the precious port, trembled and sang a
little tentative response. Up-up-up mounted the thrilling notes, in
crescendo force.

“What a racking sort of tone, for all its sweetness!” said Average
Jones. His delicate and fragile port glass evidently shared the
opinion, for, without further warning, it split and shivered.

“They used to show that experiment in the laboratory,” said Bertram.
“You must have had just the accurate amount of liquid in the glass,
Average. Move back, you lunatic, it’s dripping all over you.”

But Average Jones sat unheeding.  The liquor dribbled down into his
lap. He kept his fascinated gaze fixed on the shattered glass. Bertram
dabbed him with a napkin.

“Tha—a—anks, Bertram,” drawled the beneficiary of this attention.
“Doesn’t matter. Excuse me. Good night.”

Leaving his surprised companions, he took hat and cane and caught a
Third Avenue car. By the time he had reached Brooklyn Bridge he had his
campaign mapped out. It all depended upon the opening question. Average
Jones decided to hit out and hit quick.

At the house near the Navy Yard he learned that his man was out. So he
sat upon the front steps while one of the highest-priced wines in New
York dried into his knees. Shortly before eleven a shuffling figure
paused at the steps, feeling for a key.

“Mr. Arbuthnot, otherwise Ransom?” said Average Jones blandly.

The man’s chin jerked back. His jaw dropped.

“Would you like to hire another B-flat trombonist?” pursued the young
man.

“Who are you?” gasped the other. “What do you want?”

“I want to know,” drawled Average Jones, “how—er-you planted the glass
bulb—er—the sulphuric acid bulb, you know—in the chair that you
sent—er—to the Honorable William Linder, so that—er—it wouldn’t be
shattered by anything but the middle C note of a B-flat trombone?”

The man sat down weakly and bowed his face in his hands. Presently he
looked up.

“I don’t care,” he said. “Come inside.”

At the end of an hour’s talk Arbuthnot, alias Ransom, agreed to
everything that Average Jones proposed.

“Mind you,” he said, “I don’t promise I won’t kill him later. But
meantime it’ll be some satisfaction to put him down and out
politically. You can find me here any time you want me. You say you’ll
see Linder to-morrow?”

“To-morrow,” said Average Jones. “‘Look in the next day’s papers for
the result.”

Setting his telephone receiver down the Honorable William Linder lost
himself in conjecture. He had just given an appointment to his tried
and true, but quite impersonal enemy, Mr. Horace Waldemar.

“What can Waldemar want of me?” ran his thoughts. “And who is this
friend, Jones, that he’s bringing? Jones? Jones! Jones?!” He tried it
in three different accents, without extracting any particular meaning
therefrom. “Nothing much in the political game,” he decided.

It was with a mingling of gruffness and dignity that he greeted Mr.
Waldemar an hour later. The introduction to Average Jones he
acknowledged with a curt nod.

“Want a job for this young man, Waldemar?” he grunted.

“Not at present, thank you,” returned the newspaper owner. “Mr. Jones
has a few arguments to present to you.”

“Arguments,” repeated the Honorable William Lender contemptuously.
“What kind of arguments?”

“Political arguments. Mayoralty, to be specific. To be more specific
still, arguments showing why you should drop out of the race.”

“A pin-feather reformer, eh?”

The politician turned to meet Average Jones’ steady gaze and mildly
inquiring smile.

“Do you—er—know anything of submarine mines, Mr. Linder?” drawled the
visitor.

“Huh?” returned the Honorable William Linder, startled.

“Submarine mines,” explained the other., “Mines in the sea, if you wish
words of one syllable.”

The lids of the Honorable Linder contracted.

“You’re in the wrong joint,” he said, “this ain’t the Naval College.”

“Thank you. A submarine mine is a very ingenious affair. I’ve recently
been reading somewhat extensively on the subject. The main charge is
some high explosive, usually of the dynamite type. Above it is a small
jar of sulphuric acid. Teeth, working on levers, surround this jar. The
levers project outside the mine. When a ship strikes the mine, one or
more of the levers are pressed in. The teeth crush the jar. The
sulphuric acid drops upon the main charge and explodes it. Do you
follow me.”

“I’ll follow you as far as the front door,” said the politician
balefully. He rose.

“If the charge were in a chair, in the cushion of an easy chair, we’ll
say, on the third floor of a house in Brooklyn—”

The Honorable William Linder sat down again. He sat heavily.

“—the problem would be somewhat different. Of course, it would be easy
to arrange that the first person to sit down in the chair would, by his
own weight, blow himself up. But the first person might not be the
right person, you know. Do you still follow me?”

The Honorable William Linder made a remark like a fish.

“Now, we have, if you will forgive my professorial method,” continued
Average Jones, “a chair sent to a gentleman of prominence from an
anonymous source. In this chair is a charge of high explosive and above
it a glass bulb containing sulphuric acid. The bulb, we will assume, is
so safe-guarded as to resist any ordinary shock of moving. But when
this gentleman, sitting at ease in his chair, is noticed by a
trombonist, placed for that purpose In the street, below—”

“The Dutch horn-player!” cried the politician. “Then it was him; and
I’ll—”

“Only an innocent tool,” interrupted Average Jones, in his turn. “He
had no comprehension of what he was doing. He didn’t understand that
the vibration from his trombone on one particular note by the slide up
the scale—as in the chorus of _Egypt_—would shiver that glass and set
off the charge. All that he knew was to play the B-flat trombone and
take his pay.”

“His pay?” The question leaped to the politician’s lips. “Who paid
him?”

“A man—named—er—Arbuthnot,” drawled Average Jones.

Linder’s eyes did not drop, but a film seemed to be drawn over them.

“You once knew—er—a Mrs. Arbuthnot?”

The thick shoulders quivered a little.

“Her husband—her widower—is in Brooklyn. Shall I push the argument any
further to convince you that you’d better drop out of the mayoralty
race?”

Linder recovered himself a little. “What kind of a game are you ringing
in on me?” he demanded.

“Don’t you think,” suggested Average Jones sweetly, “that considered as
news, this—”

Linder caught the word out of his mouth. “News!” he roared. “A fake
story ten years old, news? That ain’t news! It’s spite work. Even your
dirty paper, Waldemar, wouldn’t rake that kind of muck up after ten
years. It’d be a boomerang. You’ll have to put up a stronger line of
blackmail and bluff than that.”

“Blackmail is perhaps the correct word technically,” admitted the
newspaper owner, “but bluff—there you go wrong. You’ve forgotten one
thing; that Arbuthnot’s arrest and confession would make the whole
story news. We stand ready to arrest Arbuthnot, and he stands ready to
confess.”

There was a long, tense minute of silence. Then—

“What do you want?” The straight-to-the-point question was an admission
of defeat.

“Your announcement of withdrawal. I’d rather print that than the
Arbuthnot story.”

There was a long silence. Finally the Honorable Linder dropped his hand
on the table. “You win,” he declared curtly. “But you’ll give me the
benefit, in the announcement, of bad health caused by the shock of the
explosion, to explain my quitting, Waldemar?”

“It will certainly make it more plausible,” assented the newspaper
owner with a smile.

Linder turned on Average Jones.

“Did you dope this out, young fellow?” he demanded.

“Yes.”

“Well, you’ve put me in the Down-and-Out-Club, all right. And I’m just
curious enough to want to know how you did it.”

“By abstaining,” returned Average Jones cryptically, “from the best
wine that ever came out of the Cosmic Club cellar.”




CHAPTER II. RED DOT


From his inner sanctum, Average Jones stared obliquely out upon the
whirl of Fifth Avenue, warming itself under a late March sun.

In the outer offices a line of anxious applicants was being disposed of
by his trained assistants. To the advertising expert’s offices had come
that day but three cases difficult enough to be referred to the
Ad-Visor himself. Two were rather intricate financial lures which
Average Jones was able to dispose of by a mere “Don’t.” The third was a
Spiritualist announcement behind which lurked a shrewd plot to entrap a
senile millionaire into a marriage with the medium. These having been
settled, the expert was free to muse upon a paragraph which had
appeared in all the important New York morning papers of the day
before.

REWARD-$1,000 reward for information as to slayer of Brindle Bulldog
“Rags” killed in office of Malcolm Dorr, Stengel Building, Union
Square, March 29.


“That’s too much money for a dog,” decided Average Jones. “Particularly
one that hasn’t any bench record. I’ll just have a glance into the
thing.”

Slipping on his coat he walked briskly down the avenue, and crossing
over to Union Square, entered the gloomy old building which is the sole
survival of the days when the Stengel estate foresaw the upward trend
of business toward Fourteenth Street. Stepping from the elevator at the
seventh floor, he paused underneath this sign:

MALCOLM DORR
ANALYTICAL AND CONSULTING CHEMIST
_Hours 10 to 4_


Entering, Average Jones found a fat young man, with mild blue eyes,
sitting at a desk.

“Mr. Dorr?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied the fat young man nervously, “but if you are a reporter,
I must—”

“I am not,” interrupted the other. “I am an expert on advertising, and
I want that one thousand dollars reward.”

The chemist pushed his chair back and rubbed his forehead.

“You mean you have—have found out something?”

“Not yet. But I intend to.”

Dorr stared at him in silence.

“You are very fond of dogs, Mr. Dorr?”

“Eh? Oh, yes. Yes, certainly,” said the other mechanically.

Average Jones shot a sudden glance of surprise at him, then looked
dreamily at his own finger-nails.

“I can sympathize with you. I have exhibited for some years. Your dog
was perhaps a green ribboner?”

“Er—oh—yes; I believe so.”

“Ah! Several of mine have been. One in particular, took medal after
medal; a beautiful glossy brown bulldog, with long silky ears, and the
slender splayed-out legs that are so highly prized but so seldom seen
nowadays. His tail, too, had the truly Willoughby curve, from his dam,
who was a famous courser.”

Mr. Dorr looked puzzled. “I didn’t know they used that kind of dog for
coursing,” he said vaguely.

Average Jones smiled with almost affectionate admiration at the crease
along the knee of his carefully pressed trousers. His tone, when next
he spoke, was that of a youth bored with life. Any of his intimates
would have recognized in it, however, the characteristic evidence that
his mind was ranging swift and far to a conclusion.

“Mr. Dorr,” he drawled, “who—er—owned your—er—dog?”

“Why, I—I did,” said the startled chemist.

“Who gave him to you?”

“A friend.”

“Quite so. Was it that—er—friend who—er—offered the reward?”

“What makes you think that?”

“This, to be frank. A man who doesn’t know a bulldog from a bed-spring
isn’t likely to be offering a thousand dollars to avenge the death of
one. And the minute you answered my question as to whether you cared
for dogs, I knew you didn’t. When you fell for a green ribbon, and a
splay-legged, curly-tailed medal-winner in the brindle bull class
(there’s no such class, by the way), I knew you were bluffing. Mr.
Dorr, who—er—has been—er—threatening your life?”

The chemist swung around in his chair.

“What do you know?” he demanded.

“Nothing. I’m guessing. It’s a fair guess that a reasonably valuable
brindle bull isn’t presented to a man who cares nothing for dogs
without some reason. The most likely reason is protection. Is it in
your case?”

“Yes, it is,” replied the other, after some hesitation.

“And now the protection is gone. Don’t you think you’d better let me in
on this?”

“Let me speak to my—my legal adviser first.”

He called up a down-town number on the telephone and asked to be
connected with Judge Elverson. “I may have to ask you to leave the
office for a moment,” he said to his caller.

“Very well. But if that is United States District Attorney Roger
Elverson, tell him that it is A. V. R. Jones who wants to know, and
remind him of the missing letter opium advertisement.”

Almost immediately Average Jones was called back from the hallway,
whither he had gone.

“Elverson says to tell you the whole thing,” said the chemist, “in
confidence, of course.”

“Understood. Now, who is it that wants to get rid of you?”

“The Paragon Pressed Meat Company.”

Average Jones became vitally concerned in removing an infinitesimal
speck from his left cuff. “Ah,” he commented, “the Canned Meat Trust.
What have you been doing to them?”

“Sold them a preparation of my invention for deodorizing certain
by-products used for manufacturing purposes. Several months ago I found
they were using it on canned meats that had gone bad, and then selling
the stuff.”

“Would the meat so treated be poisonous?”

“Well—dangerous to any one eating it habitually. I wrote, warning them
that they must stop.”

“Did they reply?”

“A man came to see me and told me I was mistaken. He hinted that if I
thought my invention was worth more than I’d received, his principals,
would be glad to take the matter up with me. Shortly after I heard that
the Federal authorities were going after the Trust, so I called on Mr.
Elverson.”

“Mistake Number One. Elverson is straight, but his office is fuller of
leaks than a sieve.”

“That’s probably why I found my private laboratory reeking of cyanide
fumes a fortnight later,” remarked Dorr dryly. “I got to the outer air
alive, but not much more. A week later there was an explosion in the
laboratory. I didn’t happen to be there at the time. The odd feature of
the explosion was that I hadn’t any explosive drugs in the place.”

“Where is this laboratory?”

“Over in Flatbush, where I live—or did live. Within a month after that,
a friendly neighbor took a pot-shot at a man who was sneaking up behind
me as I was going home late one night. The man shot, too, but missed
me. I reported it to the police, and they told me to be sure and not
let the newspapers know. Then they forgot it.”

Average Jones laughed. “Of course they did. Some day New York will find
out that ‘the finest police force in the world’ is the biggest sham
outside the dime museum. Except in the case of crimes by the regular,
advertised criminals, they’re as helpless as babies. Didn’t you take
any other precautions?”

“Oh, yes. I reported the attempt to Judge Elverson. He sent a secret
service man over to live with me. Then I got a commission out in
Denver. When I came back, about a month ago, Judge Elverson gave me the
two dogs.”

“Two?”

“Yes. Rags and Tatters.”

“Where’s Tatters?”

“Dead. By the same road as Rags.”

“Killed at your place in Flatbush?”

“No. Right here in this room.”

Average Jones became suddenly very much worried about the second button
of his coat. Having satisfied himself of its stability, he drawled,
“Er—both of—er—them?”

“Yes. Ten days apart.”

“Where were you?”

“On the spot. That is, I was here when Tatters got his death. I had
gone to the wash-room at the farther end of the hall when Rags was
poisoned.”

“Why do you say poisoned?”

“What else could it have been? There was no wound on either of the
dogs.”

“Was there evidence of poison?”

“Pathological only. In Tatters case it was very marked. He was dozing
in a corner near the radiator when I heard him yelp and saw him
snapping at his belly. He ran across the room, lay down and began
licking himself. Within fifteen minutes he began to whine. Then he
stiffened out in a sort of a spasm. It was like strychnine poisoning.
Before could get a veterinary here he was dead.”

“Did you make any examination?”

“I analyzed the contents of his stomach, but did not obtain positive
results.”

“What about the other dog?”

“Rags? That was the day before yesterday. We had just come over from
Flatbush and Razs was nosing around in the corner—”

“Was it the same corner where Tatters was attacked?”

“Yes, near the radiator. He seemed to be interested in something there
when I left the room. I was gone not more than two minutes.”

“Lock the door after you?”

“It has a special spring lock which I had put on it.”

Average Jones crossed over and looked at the contrivance. Then his
glance fell to a huge, old-fashioned keyhole below the new fastening.
“You didn’t use that larger lock?”

“No. I haven’t for months. The key is lost, I think.”

Retracing his steps the investigator sighted the hole from the
radiator, and shook his head.

“It’s not in range,” he said. “Go on.”

“As I reached the door on my return, I heard Rags yelp. You may believe
I got to him quickly. He was pawing wildly at his nose. I called up the
nearest veterinary. Within ten minutes the convulsions came on. The
veterinary was here when Rags died, which was within fifteen minutes of
the first spasm. He didn’t believe it was strychnine. Said the attacks
were different. Whatever it was, I couldn’t find any trace of it in the
stomach. The veterinary took the body away and made a complete
autopsy.”

“Did he discover anything?”

“Yes. The blood was coagulated and on the upper lip he found a circle
of small pustules. He agreed that both dogs probably swallowed
something that was left in my office, though I don’t see how it could
have got there.”

“That won’t do,” returned Average Jones positively. “A dog doesn’t cry
out when he swallows poison, unless it’s some corrosive.”

“It was no corrosive. I examined the mouth.”

“What about the radiator?” asked Average Jones, getting down on his
knees beside that antiquated contrivance. “It seems to have been the
center of disturbance.”

“If you’re thinking of fumes,” replied the chemist. “I tested for that.
It isn’t possible.”

“No; I suppose not. And yet, there’s the curious feature that the fatal
influence seems to have emanated from the corner which is the most
remote from both windows and door. Are your windows left open at
night?”

“The windows, sometimes. The transom is kept double-bolted.”

“Do they face any other windows near by?”

“You can see for yourself that they don’t.”

“There’s no fire-escape and it’s too far up for anything to come in
from the street.” Average examined the walls with attention and
returned to the big keyhole, through which he peeped.

“Do you ever chew gum?” he asked suddenly.

The Chemist stared at him. “It isn’t a habit of mine to,” he said.

“But you wouldn’t have any objection to my sending for some, in
satisfaction of a sudden irresistible craving?”

“Any particular brand? I’ll phone the corner drug store.”

“Any sort will suit, thank you.”

When the gum arrived, Average Jones, after politely offering some to
his host, chewed up a single stick thoroughly. This he rolled out to an
extremely tenuous consistency and spread it deftly across the unused
keyhole, which it completely though thinly, veiled.

“Now, what’s that for?” inquired the chemist, eying the improvised
closure with some contempt.

“Don’t know, exactly, yet,” replied the deviser, cheerfully. “But when
queer and fatal things happen in a room and there’s only one opening,
it’s just as well to keep your eye on that, no matter how small it is.
Better still, perhaps, if you’d shift your office.”

The fat young chemist pushed his hair back, looked out of the window,
and then turned to Average Jones. The rather flabby lines of his face
had abruptly hardened over the firm contour below.

“No. I’m hanged if I will,” he said simply.

An amiable grin overspread Average Jones’ face.

“You’ve got more nerve than prudence,” he observed. “But I don’t say
you aren’t right. Since you’re going to stick to the ship, keep your
eye on that gum. If it lets go its hold, wire me.”

“All right,” agreed young Mr. Dorr. “Whatever your little game is, I’ll
play it. Give me your address in case you leave town.”

“As I may do. I am going to hire a press-clipping bureau on special
order to dig through the files of the local and neighboring city
newspapers for recent items concerning dog-poisoning cases. If our
unknown has devised a new method of canicide, it’s quite possible he
may have worked it somewhere else, too. Good-by, and if you can’t be
wise, be careful.”

Dog-poisoning seemed to Average Jones to have become a popular pastime
in and around New York, judging from the succession of news items which
poured in upon him from the clipping bureau. Several days were
exhausted by false clues. Then one morning there arrived, among other
data, an article from the Bridgeport _Morning Delineator_ which caused
the Ad-Visor to sit up with a jerk. It detailed the poisoning of
several dogs under peculiar circumstances. Three hours later he was in
the bustling Connecticut city. There he took carriage for the house of
Mr. Curtis Fleming, whose valuable Great Dane dog had been the last
victim.

Mr. Curtis Fleming revealed himself as an elderly, gentleman all grown
to a point: pointed white nose, eyes that were pin-points of irascible
gleam, and a most pointed manner of speech.

“Who are you?” he demanded rancidly, as his visitor was ushered in.

Average Jones recognized the type. He knew of but one way to deal with
it.

“Jones!” he retorted with such astounding emphasis that the
monosyllable fairly exploded in the other’s face.

“Well, well, well,” said the elder man, his aspect suddenly mollified.
“Don’t bite me. What kind of a Jones are you, and what do you want of
me?”

“Ordinary variety of Jones. I want to now about your dog.”

“Reporter?”

“No.”

“Glad of it. They’re no good. Had my reporters on this case. Found
nothing.”

“Your reporters?”

“I own the Bridgeport _Delineator_.”

“What about the dog?”

“Good boy!” approved the old martinet. “Sticks to his point. Dog was
out walking with me day before yesterday. Crossing a vacant lot on next
square. Chased a rat. Rat ran into a heap of old timber. Dog nosed
around. Gave a yelp and came back to me. Had spasm. Died in fifteen
minutes. And hang me, sir,” cried the old man, bringing his fist down
on Average Jones’ knee, “if I see how the poison got him, for he was
muzzled to the snout, sir!”

“Muzzled? Then—er—why do, you—er—suggest poison?” drawled the young
man.

“Fourth dog to go the same way in the last week.”

“All in this locality?”

“Yes, all on Golden Hill.”

“Any suspicions?”

“Suspicions? Certainly, young man, certainly. Look at this.”

Average Jones took the smutted newspaper proof which his host extended,
and read:

“WARNING—Residents of the Golden Hill neighborhood are earnestly
cautioned against unguarded handling of timber about woodpiles or
outbuildings until further notice. Danger!”


“When was this published?”

“Wasn’t published. _Delineator_ refused it. Thought it was a case of
insanity.”

“Who offered it?”

“Professor Moseley. Tenant of mine. Frame house on the next corner with
old-fashioned conservatory.”

“How long ago?”

“About a week.”

“All the dogs you speak of died since then?”

“Yes.”

“Did he give any explanation of the advertisement?”

“No. Acted half-crazy when he brought it to the office, the business
manager said. Wouldn’t sign his name to the thing. Wouldn’t say
anything about it. Begged the manager to let him have the weather
reports in advance, every day. The manager put the advertisement in
type, decided not to it, and returned the money.”

“Weather reports, eh?” Average Jones mused a moment. “How long was the
ad to run?”

“Until the first hard frost.”

“Has there—er—been a—er—frost since?” drawled Average Jones.

“No.”

“Who is this Moseley?”

“Don’t know much about him. Scientific experimenter of some kind, I
believe. Very exclusive,” added Mr. Curtis Fleming, with a grin. “Never
sociated with any of us neighbors. Rent on the nail, though. Insane,
too, I think. Writes letters to himself with nothing in them.”

“How’s that?” inquired Average Jones.

The other took an envelope from his pocket and handed it over. “It got
enclosed by mistake with the copy for the advertisement. The
handwriting on the envelope is his own. Look inside.”

A glance had shown Average Jones that the letter, had been mailed in
New York on March twenty-fifth. He took out the enclosure. It was a
small slip of paper. The date was stamped on with a rubber stamp. There
was no writing of any kind. Near the center of the sheet were three
dots. They seemed to have been made with red ink.

“You’re sure the address is in Professor Moseley’s writing?”

“I’d swear to it.”

“It doesn’t follow that he mailed it to himself. In fact, I should
judge that it was sent by someone who was particularly anxious not to
have any specimen of his handwriting lying about for identification.

“Perhaps. What’s your interest in all this, anyway my mysterious young
friend?”

“Two dogs in New York poisoned in something the same way as yours.”

“Well, I’ve got _my_ man. He confessed.”

“Confessed?” echoed Average Jones.

“Practically. I’ve kept the point of the story to the last. Professor
Moseley committed suicide this morning.”

If Mr. Curtis Fleming had designed to make an impression on his
visitor, his ambition was fulfilled. Average Jones got to his feet
slowly, walked over to the window, returned, picked up the strange
proof with its message of suggested peril, studied it, returned to the
window, and stared out into the day.

“Cut his throat about nine o’clock this morning,” pursued the other.
“Dead when they found him.”

“Do you mind not talking to me for a minute?” said Average Jones
curtly.

“Told to hold my tongue in my own house by uninvited stripling,”
cackled the other. “You’ re a singular young man. Have it your own
way.”

After a five minutes’ silence the visitor turned from the window and
spoke. “There has been a deadly danger loose about here for which
Professor Moseley felt himself responsible. He has killed himself.
Why?”

“Because I was on his trail,” declared Mr. Curtis Fleming. “Afraid to
face me.”

“Nonsense. I believe some human being has been killed by this thing,
whatever it may be, and that the horror of it drove Moseley to
suicide.”

“Prove it.”

“Give me a morning paper.”

His host handed him the current issue of the _Delineator_.

Average Jones studied the local page.

“Where’s Galvin’s Alley?” he asked presently.

“Two short blocks from here.”

“In the Golden Hill section?”

“Yes.”

“Read that.”

Mr. Curtis Fleming took the paper. His eyes were directed to a
paragraph telling of the death of an Italian child living in Galvin’s
Alley. Cause, convulsions.

“By Jove!” said he, somewhat awed. “You can reason, young man.”

“I’ve got to, reason a lot further, if I’m to get anywhere in this
affair,” said Average Jones with conviction. “Do you care, to come to
Galvin’s Alley with me?”

Together they went down the hill to a poor little house, marked by
white crêpe. The occupants were Italians who spoke some English. They
said that four-year-old Pietro had been playing around a woodpile the
afternoon before, when he was taken sick and came home, staggering. The
doctor could do nothing. The little one passed from spasm into spasm,
and died in an hour.

“Was there a mark like a ring anywhere on the hand or face?” asked
Average Jones.

The dead child’s father looked surprised. That, he said, was what the
strange gentleman who had come that very morning asked, a queer, bent
little gentlemen, very bald and with big eye-glasses, who was kind, and
wept with them and gave them money to bury the “bambino.”

“Moseley, by the Lord Harry!” exclaimed Mr. Curtis Fleming. “But what
was the death-agent?”

Average Jones shook his head. “Too early to do more than guess. Will
you take me to Professor Moseley’s place?”

The old house stood four-square, with a patched-up conservatory on one
wing. In the front room they found the recluse’s body decently
disposed, with an undertaker’s assistant in charge. From the greenhouse
came a subdued hissing.

“What’s that?” asked Jones.

“Fumigating the conservatory. There was a note found near the body
insisting on its being done. ‘For safety,’ it said, so I ordered it
looked to.”

“You’re in charge, then?”

“It’s my house. And there are no relatives so far as I know. Come and
look at his papers. You won’t find much.”

In the old-fashioned desk was a heap of undecipherable matter,
interspersed with dates, apparently bearing upon scientific
experiments; a package of letters from the Denny Research Laboratories
of St. Louis, mentioning enclosure of checks; and three self-addressed
envelopes bearing New York postmarks, of dates respectively, March 12,
March 14 and March 20. Each contained a date-stamped sheet of paper,
similar to that which Mr. Curtis Fleming had shown to Average Jones.
The one of earliest date bore two red dots; the second, three red dots,
and the third, two. All the envelopes were endorsed in Professor
Moseley’s handwriting; the first with the one word “Filled.” The second
writing was “Held for warmer weather.” The last was inscribed “One in
poor condition.”

Of these Average Jones made careful note, as well as of the laboratory
address. By this time the hissing of the fumigating apparatus had
ceased. The two men went to the conservatory and gazed in upon a ruin
of limp leaves and flaccid petals, killed by the powerful gases.
Suddenly, with an exclamation of astonishment, the investigator stooped
and lifted from the floor a marvel of ermine body and pale green wings.
The moth, spreading nearly a foot, was quite dead.

“Here’s the mate, sir,” said the fumigating expert, handing him another
specimen, a trifle smaller. “The place was crowded with all kinds of
pretty ones. All gone where the good bugs go now.”

Average Jones took the pair of moths to the desk, measured them and
laid them carefully away in a drawer.

“The rest must wait,” he said. “I have to send a telegram.”

With the interested Mr. Curtis Fleming in attendance, he went to the
telegraph office, where he wrote out a dispatch.

“Mr. A. V. R. Jones?” said the operator. “There’s a message here for
you.”

Average Jones took the leaflet and read:

“_Found gum on floor this morning when I arrived_.
MALCOLM DORR.”


Then he recalled his own blank, tore it up, and substituted the
following, which he ordered “rushed”:

MALCOLM DORR, STENGEL BUILDING, NEW YORY CITY:
    “_Leave office immediately. Do not return until it has been
    fumigated thoroughly. Imperative_.
    A. V. R. JONES.”


“And now,” said Average Jones to Mr. Fleming, “I’m going back to New
York. If any collectors come chasing to you for luna moths, don’t deal
with them. Refer them to me, please. Here is my card.”

“Your orders shall be obeyed,” said the older man, his beady eyes
twinkling. “But why, in the name of all that’s unheard of, should
collectors come bothering me about luna moths?”

“Because of an announcement to this effect which will appear in the
next number of the _National Science Weekly_, and in coming issues of
the New York _Evening Register_.”

He handed out a rough draft of this advertisement:

“For Sale—Two largest known specimens of _Tropaea luna_, unmounted;
respectively 10 and 11½ inches spread. Also various other specimens
from collection of late Gerald Moseley, of Conn. Write for particulars.
Jones, Room 222 Astor Court Temple, New York.”


“What about further danger here?” inquired Mr. Fleming, as Average
Jones bade him good-by. “Would we better run that warning of poor
Moseley’s, after all?”

For reply Jones pointed out the window. A late season whirl of snow
enveloped the streets.

“I see,” said the old man. “The frost. Well Mr. Mysterious Jones, I
don’t know what you’re up to, but you’ve given me an interesting day.
Let me know what comes of it.”

On the train back to New York, Average Jones Wrote two letters. One was
to the Denny Research Laboratories in St. Louis, the other to the
Department of Agriculture at Washington. On the following morning he
went to Dorr’s office. That young chemist was in a recalcitrant frame
of mind.

“I’ve done about ten dollars’ worth of fumigating and a hundred
dollars’ worth of damage,” he said, “and now, I’d like to have a
Missouri sign. In other words, I want to be shown. What did some skunk
want to kill my dogs for?”

“He didn’t.”

“But they’re dead, aren’t they?”

“Accident.”

“What kind of an accident?”

“The kind in which the innocent bystander gets the worst of it. You’re
the one it was meant for.”

“Me?”

“Certainly. You’d probably have got it if the dog hadn’t.”

The speaker examined the keyhole, then walked over to the radiator and
looked over, under and through it minutely. “Nothing there,” he
observed; and, after extending his examination to the windows,
book-shelf and desk, added:

“I guess we might have spared the fumigation. However, the safest side
is the best.”

“What is it? Some new game in projective germs?” demanded the chemist.

“Oh, disinfectants will kill other things besides germs,” returned
Average Jones. “Luna moths, for instance. Wait a few days and I’ll have
some mail to show you on that subject. In the meantime, have a plumber
solder up that keyhole so tight that nothing short of dynamite can get
through it.”

Collectors of _lepidoptera_ rose in shoals to the printed offer of luna
moths measuring ten and eleven inches across the wings. Letters came in
by, every mail, responding variously with fervor, suspicion, yearning
eagerness, and bitter skepticism to Average Jones’ advertisement. All
of these he put aside, except such as bore a New York postmark. And
each day he compared the new names signed to the New York letters with
the directory of occupants of the Stengel Building. Less than a week
after the luna moth advertisement appeared, Average Jones walked into
Malcolm Dorr’s office with a twinkle in his eye.

“Do you know a man named Marcus L. Ross?” he asked the chemist.

“Never heard of him.”

“Marcus L. Ross is interested, not only in luna moths, but in the rest
of the Moseley collection. He writes from the Delamater Apartments,
where he lives, to tell me so. Also he has an office in this building.
Likewise he works frequently at night. Finally, he is one of the
confidential lobbyists of the Paragon Pressed Meat Company. Do you
see?”

“I begin,” replied young Mr. Dorr.

“It would be very easy for Mr. Ross, whose office is on the floor
above, to stop at this door on his way, down-stairs after quitting work
late at night when the elevator had stopped running and—let us say—peep
through the keyhole.”

Malcolm Dorr got up and stretched himself slowly. The sharp, clean
lines of his face suddenly stood out again under the creasy flesh.

“I don’t know what _you’re_ going to do to Mr. Ross,” he said, “but I
want to see him first.”

“I’m not going to do anything to him,” returned Average Jones,
“because, in the first place, I suspect that he is far, far away,
having noted, doubtless, the plugged keyhole and suffered a crisis of
the nerves. It’s strange how nervous your scientific murderer is.
Anyway, Ross is only an agent. I’m going to aim higher.”

“As how?”

“Well, I expect to do three things. First, I expect to scare a peaceful
but murderous trust multimillionaire almost out of his senses; second,
I expect to dispatch a costly yacht to unknown seas; and third, I
expect to raise the street selling price of the evening ‘yellow’
journals, temporarily, about one thousand per cent. What’s the answer?
The answer is ‘Buy to-night’s papers.’”

New York, that afternoon, saw something new in advertising. That it
really was advertising was shown by the “_Adv_.” sign, large and plain,
in both the papers which carried it. The favored journals were the only
two which indulged in “fudge” editions; that is, editions with glaring
red-typed inserts of “special” news. On the front page of each,
stretching narrowly across three columns, was a device showing a tiny
mapped outline in black marked Bridgeport, Conn., and a large skeleton
draft of Manhattan Island showing the principal streets. From the
Connecticut city downward ran a line of dots in red. The dots entered
New York from the north, passed down Fourth Avenue to the south side of
Union Square, turned west and terminated. Beneath this map was the
legend, also in red:

WATCH THE LINE ADVANCE IN LATER EDITIONS


It was the first time in the records of journalism that the “fudge”
device had been used in advertising.

Great was the rejoicing of the “newsies” when public curiosity made a
“run” upon these papers. Greater it grew when the “afternoon edition”
appeared, and with their keen business instinct, the urchins saw that
they could run the price upward, which they promptly did, in some cases
even to a nickel. This edition carried the same “fudge” advertisement,
but now the red dots crossed over to Fifth Avenue and turned northward
as far as Twenty-third Street. The inscription was:

UPWARD AND ONWARD SEE NEXT EXTRA


For the “Night Extra” people paid five, ten, even fifteen cents. Rumor
ran wild. Other papers, even, look the matter up as news, and commented
upon the meaning of the extraordinary advertisement. This time, the
red-dotted line went as far up Fifth Ave title as Fiftieth Street. And
the legend was ominous:

WHEN I TURN, I STRIKE


That was all that evening. The dotted line did not turn.

Keen as newspaper conjecture is, it failed to connect the “red-line
maps,” with the fame of which the city was raging, with an item of
shipping news printed in the evening papers of the following day:

CLEARED—For South American Ports, steam yacht _Electra_, New York.
Owner John M. Colwell.


And not until the following morning did the papers announce that
President Colwell, of the Canned Meat Trust, having been ordered by his
physician on a long sea voyage to refurbish his depleted nerves, after
closing his house on West Fifty-first Street, had sailed in his own
yacht. The same issue carried a few lines about the “freak ads.” which
had so sensationally blazed and so suddenly waned from the “yellows.”
The opinion was offered that they represented the exploitation of some
new brand of whisky which would announce itself later. But that
announcement never came, and President Colwell sailed to far seas, and
Mr. Curtis Fleming came to New York, keen for explanations, for he,
too, had seen the “fudge” and marveled. Hence, Average Jones had him,
together with young Mr. Dorr, at a private room luncheon at the Cosmic
Club, where he offered an explanation and elucidation.

“The whole affair,” he said, “was a problem in the connecting up of
loose ends. At the New York terminus we had two deaths in the office of
a man with powerful and subtle enemies, that office being practically
sealed against intrusion except for a very large keyhole. Some deadly
thing is introduced through that keyhole; so much is practically proven
by the breaking out of the chewing gum with which I coated it. Probably
the scheme was carried out in the evening when the building was nearly
deserted. The killing influence reaches a corner far out of the direct
line of the keyhole. Being near the radiator, that corner represents
the attraction of warmth. Therefore, the invading force was some
sentient creature.”

Dorr shuddered. “Some kind of venomous snake,” he surmised.

“Not a bad guess. But a snake, however small, would have been instantly
noticed by the dogs. Now, let’s look at the Bridgeport end. Here,
again, we have a deadly influence loosed; this time by accident. A
scientific experimentalist is the innocent cause of the disaster. Here,
too, the peril is somewhat dependent upon warmth, since we know, from
Professor Moseley’s agonized eagerness for a frost, that cold weather
would have put an end to it. The cold weather fails to come. Dogs are
killed. Finally a child falls victim, and on that child is found a
circular mark, similar to the mark on Mr. Dorr’s dog’s lip. You see the
striking points of analogy?”

“Do you mean us to believe poor old Moseley a cold-blooded murderer?”
demanded Mr. Curtis Fleming.

“Far from it. At worst an unhappy victim of his own carelessness in
loosing a peril upon his neighborhood. You’re forgetting a connecting
link; the secretive red-dot communications from New York City addressed
by Moseley to himself on behalf of some customer who ordered simply by
a code of ink dots. He was the man I had to find. The giant luna moths
helped to do it.”

“I don’t see where they come in at all,” declared Dorr bluntly. “A moth
a foot wide couldn’t crawl through a keyhole.”

“No; nor do any damage if it did. The luna is as harmless as it is
lovely. In this case the moths weren’t active agents. They were
important only as clues—and bait. Their enormous size showed Professor
Moseley’s line of work; the selective breeding of certain forms of life
to two or three times the normal proportions. Very well; I had to
ascertain some creature which, if magnified several times, would be
deadly, and which would still be capable of entering a large keyhole.
Having determined that—”

“You found what it was?” cried Dorr.

“One moment. Having determined that, I had still to get in touch with
Professor Moseley’s mysterious New York correspondent. I figured that
he must be interested in Professor Moseley’s particular branch of
research or he never could have devised his murderous scheme. So I
constructed the luna moth advertisement to draw him, and when I got a
reply from Mr. Ross, who is a fellow-tenant of Mr. Dorr’s, the chain
was complete. Now, you see where the luna moths were useful. If I had
advertised, instead of them, the _lathrodectus_, he might have
suspected and refrained from answering.”

“What’s the _lathrodectus?_” demanded both the hearers at once.

For answer Average Jones took a letter from his pocket and read:

BUREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY,
U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE,
WASHINGTON, D. C., April 7


MR. A. V. R. JONES,


Astor Court Temple, New York City.

DEAR Sir,

Replying to your letter of inquiry, the only insect answering your
specifications is a small spider _Lathrodectus mactans_, sometimes
popularly called the Red Dot, from a bright red mark upon the back.
Rare cases are known where death has been caused by the bite of this
insect. Fortunately its fangs are so weak that they can penetrate only
very tender skin, otherwise death from its bite would be more common,
as the venom, drop for drop, is perhaps the most virulent known to
science.

This Bureau knows nothing of any experiments in breeding the
_Lathrodectus_ for size. Your surmise that specimens of two or three
times the normal size would be dangerous to life is undoubtedly
correct, and selected breeding to that end should be conducted only
under adequate scientific safeguards. A _Lathrodectus mactans_ with
fangs large enough to penetrate the skin of the hand, and a double or
triple supply of venom, would be, perhaps, more deadly than a cobra.

The symptoms of poisoning by this species are spasms, similar to those
of trismus, and agonizing general pains. There are no local symptoms,
except, in some cases, a circle of small pustules about the bitten
spot.

Commercially, the _Lathrodectus_ has value, in that the poison is used
in certain affections of the heart. For details, I would refer you to
the Denny Laboratories of St. Louis, Mo., which are purchasers of the
venom.

The species is very susceptible to cold, and would hardly survive a
severe frost. It frequents woodpiles and outhouses.

Yours truly,
L. O. HOWARD,
Chief of Bureau.


“Then Ross was sneaking down here at night and putting the spiders
which he had got from Professor Moseley through my keyhole, in the hope
that sooner or later one of them would get me,” said Dorr.

“A very reasonable expectation, too. _Vide_, the dogs,” returned
Average Jones.

“And now,” said Mr. Curtis Fleming, “will some one kindly explain to me
what this Ross fiend had against our friend, Mr. Dorr?”

“Nothing,” replied Average Jones.

“Nothing? Was he coursing with spiders merely for sport?”

“Oh, no. You see Mr. Dorr was interfering with the machinery of one of
our ruling institutions, the Canned Meat Trust. He possessed
information which would have indicted all the officials. Therefore it
was desirable—even essential—that he should be removed from the pathway
of progress.”

“Nonsense! Socialistic nonsense!” snapped Mr. Curtis Fleming. “Trusts
may be unprincipled, but they don’t commit individual crimes.”

“Don’t they?” returned Average Jones, smiling amiably at his own
boot-tip. “Did you ever hear of Mr. Adel Meyer’s little corset steel
which he invented to stick in the customs scales and rob the government
for the profit of his Syrup Trust? Or of the individual oil refineries
which mysteriously disappeared in fire and smoke at a time when they
became annoying to the Combination Oil Trust? Or of the Traction
Trust’s two plots to murder Prosecutor Henry in San Francisco? I’m just
mentioning a few cases from memory. Why, when a criminal trust faces
only loss it will commit forgery, theft or arson. When it faces jail,
it will commit murder just as determinedly. Self-defense, you know. As
for the case of Mr. Dorr—” and he proceeded to detail the various
attempts on the young chemist’s life.

“But why so roundabout a method?” asked Dorr skeptically.

“Well, they tried the ordinary methods of murder on you through agents.
That didn’t work. It was up to the Trust to put one of its own
confidential men on it. Ross is an amateur entomologist. He devised a
means that looked to be pretty safe and, in the long run, sure.”

“And would have been but for your skill, young Jones,” declared Mr.
Curtis Fleming, with emphasis.

“Don’t forget the fortunate coincidences,” replied Average Jones
modestly. “They’re about half of it. In fact, detective work, for all
that is said on the other side, is mostly the ability to recognize and
connect coincidences. The coincidence of the escape of the Red Dots
from Professor Moseley’s breeding cages; the coincidence of the death
of the dogs on Golden Hill, followed by the death of the child; the
coincidence of poor Moseley’s having left the red dot letters on the
desk instead of destroying them; the coincidence of Dorr’s dogs being
bitten, when it might easily have been himself had he gone to turn on
the radiator and disturbed the savage little spider—”

“And the chief coincidence of your having become interested in the
advertisement which Judge Elverson had me insert, really more to scare
off further attempts than anything else,” put in Dorr. “What became of
the spiders that were slipped through my keyhole, anyway?”

“Two of them, as you know, were probably killed by the dogs. The others
may well have died of cold. At night when the heat was off and the
windows open. The cleaning woman wouldn’t have been likely to notice
them when she swept the bodies out. And, sooner or later, if Ross had
continued to insert Red Dots through the keyhole one of them would have
bitten you, Dorr, and the Canned Meat Trust would have gone on its way
rejoicing.”

“Well, you’ve certainly saved my life,” declared Dorr, “and it’s a case
of sheer force of reasoning.”

Average Jones shook his head. “You might give some of the credit to
Providence,” he said. “Just one little event would have meant the
saving of the Italian child, and of Professor Moseley, and the death of
yourself, instead of the other way around.”

“And that event?” asked Mr. Curtis Fleming.

“Five degrees of frost in Bridgeport,” replied Average Jones.




CHAPTER III. OPEN TRAIL


“Not good enough,” said Average Jones, laying aside a sheet of paper
upon which was pasted a newspaper clipping. “We can’t afford luxuries,
Simpson.”

The confidential clerk rubbed his high, pale forehead indeterminately.
“But five thousand dollars, Mr. Jones,” he protested.

“Would pay a year’s office rent, you’re thinking. True. Nevertheless I
can’t see the missing Mr. Hoff as a sound professional proposition.”

“So you think it would be impossible to find him?”

“Now, why should I think any such absurd thing? I think, if you choose,
that he wouldn’t be worth the amount, when found, to lose.”

“The ad says different, Sir.” Simpson raised the paper and read:

“FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS—The aforesaid sum will be paid without question
to anyone furnishing information which leads to the discovery of
Roderick Hoff, twenty-four years old, who left his home in Toledo, O.,
on April 12. Communicate with Dr. Conrad Hoff, Toledo.


“Surely Doctor Hoff is good for the amount.”

“Oh, he’s good for millions, thanks to his much advertised quack
‘Catarrh-Killer.’ The point is, from what I can discover, Mr. Roderick
Hoff isn’t worth retrieving at any price above one dime.”

“Was the information about him that you wished, in the telegram?” asked
the confidential clerk.

“Yes; all I wanted. Thanks for looking after it. Have the Toledo
reporter, who sent it, forward his bill. And if the old inventor who’s
been haunted by disembodied voices comes again, bring him to me.”

“Yes, sir,” said Simpson, going out.

Left to himself, Average Jones again ran over the dispatches, conveying
the information as to the lost Toledo youth. They had given a fairly
complete sketch of young Hoff’s life and character. At twenty-four, it
appeared, Roderick Hoff had achieved a career. Emerging, by the
propulsive method, from college, in the first term of his freshman
year, he had taken a post-graduate course in the cigarette ward of a
polite retreat for nervous wrecks. He had subsequently endured two
breach-of-promise suits, had broken the state automobile record for
number of speed violation arrests, had been buncoed, badgered, paneled,
blackmailed and short-carded out of sums varying between one hundred
and ten thousand dollars; and now, in the year of grace, 19—, was the
horror of the pulpit and the delight of the press of the city which he
called his home. For the rest, he was a large, mild, good-humored,
pulpy individual, with a fixed delusion that the human organism can
absorb a quart of alcoholic miscellany per day and be none the worse
for it. The major premise of his proposition was perfectly correct. He
proved it daily. The minor premise was an error. Bets were even in the
Toledo clubs as to whether delirium tremens or paresis would win the
event around young Mr. Hoff’s kite-shaped race-track of a brain.

With his tastes the income of twenty-five thousand dollars per annum
which his father allowed him from the profits of “Dr. Hoff’s
Catarrh-Killer,” proved sadly insufficient to his needs. He mentioned
this fact to his father, so Average Jones’ information ran, early in
April, and suggested an increase, only to be refused with some
acerbity.

“Oh, very well,” said he, “I’ll go and make it myself.”

The amazement inspired in Doctor Hoff’s mind by this pronouncement was
augmented in the next few days by the fact that Roderick was very busy
about town in his motor-car, and was changed to vivid alarm immediately
thereafter by the young man’s disappearance. To all intents and
appearances, Roderick Hoff had dropped off the earth on or about April
twelfth. By April fifteenth New York, Pittsburg, Chicago, Washington
and other clearing-houses for the distribution of the unspent increment
were apprised of the elder Hoff’s five thousand-dollar anxiety through
the medium of the daily press. This advertisement it was, upon the
practical merits of which Average Jones and his confidential clerk had
differed.

“If there were any chance of sport in it,” mused Average Jones, “I’d go
in. But to follow the trail of a spurious young sport from bar-room to
brothel and from brothel to gambling hell—” He shook his head. “Not
good enough,” he repeated.

Simpson’s face appeared at the door. His blond forehead was wrinkled
with excitement.

“Doctor Hoff is here, Mr. Jones. I told him you couldn’t see him, but
he wouldn’t take no. Says he was recommended to you by a former
client.”

Following the word, there burst into Average Jones’ private sanctum a
gross old man, silk-hatted and bediamonded, whose side-whiskers
bristled whitely with perturbed self-importance. In his hand was a
patchy bundle.

“They tried to stop me!” he sputtered. “Me! I’m worth ten million
dollars, an’ a ten-dollar-a-week office toad tries to hold me up when I
come here myself person’ly, from Toledo to see you.”

Analysis of advertising in all its forms had inspired Average Jones
with a profound contempt and dislike for the cruelest of all forms of
swindling medical quackery. And this swollen, smug-faced intruder
looked a particularly offensive specimen of his kind. Therefore the
Ad-Visor said curtly:

“I can’t take your case. Good day—”

“Not take it! Did you read the reward?”

“Yes. It is interesting as showing the patent medicine faker’s touching
confidence in the power of advertising. Otherwise it doesn’t, interest
me. Get some one else to find your young hopeful.”

“It ain’t no case of findin’ now. The boy’s dead.” His strident voice
quavered and broke, but rose again to a snarl. “And, by God, I’ll spend
a million to get the dogs that murdered him.”

At the word “murdered” Average Jones’ clean cut, agreeable, but rather
stolidly neutral face underwent a subtle transformation. Another
personality looked out from the deep-set, somnolent, gray eyes; a
personality resolute, forceful and quietly alert. It was apparently
belied by the hesitant drawl, which, as all who had ever seen the
Ad-Visor at his chosen pursuits well knew, signified awakened or
intensified interest in the matter in hand.

“Where—er—is—the—er—body”

“I don’t know. It ain’t been found.”

“Then how do you know he’s dead?”

The other tore open the bundle he carried, and spread before Average
Jones a white stained shirt with ominous brown splotches.

“It’s his shirt. There’s the initials. Mailed to my house and got there
just after I left. My secretary brought it on, with the note that come
pinned to it. Here it is.”

He produced a bit of coarse wrapping-paper upon which was this message
in rough capital letters:

TWO DAGOES SHOT HIM DASSENT SAY NO MORE FROM A FRIEND IN CINCINNATI.


Average Jones examined the wrapper. It was postmarked Cincinnati. He
next smoothed out the creased silk and studied minutely the blotches,
which were heaviest about the left breast and shoulder.

To the surprise of Doctor Hoff, the young man’s glance roved the big
desk before him, settling with satisfaction upon a sponge-cup for
moistening stamps. Applying this to one of the spots on the shirt, he
rubbed the wetted portion vigorously on a sheet of paper which lay near
at hand. His lips pursed. He whistled very softly and meditatively. He
scratched his chin with a slow movement.

“Is that all?” he shot out suddenly at the older man.

“All! Ain’t it enough? He’s been murdered; murdered, I tell you, an’
you set there an’ whistle!”

Average Jones directed a dreamy smile toward a far comer of the room.

“I don’t see anything so far,” he observed, “to indicate that your son
is not alive and well at this moment.”

Doctor Hoff struck his fist down heavily on the desk. “What’s this
you’re givin’ me? Can’t you read? Look at that note there, an’ the
blood on the shirt.”

“Would you mind moderating your voice? My outside office is full of
more or less excitable clients,” said the Ad-Visor mildly. “Moreover,
it’s not blood anyway.”

“What is it, then?”

“That’s beside the question. Dried blood rubs off a faint buff color.”
He picked up the sheet of paper from his desk. A deep brownish streak
showed where he had applied the moistened cloth. “It’s the rawest kind
of a blind. Why, the idiot who sent the shirt didn’t even have the
sense to fake bullet holes. Enough to make one lose all interest in the
case,” he added disgustedly.

Doctor Hoff began tugging at his side-whiskers. “Don’t do nothing like
that,” he pleaded. “Come with me to Cincinnati. If he ain’t dead
they’ve kidnapped him for a ransom.”

“Then Cincinnati is the last place on the map to look, because there’s
where they want you to think he is. But it doesn’t look like a case of
ransom to me. Let’s see. Was he particularly drunk the day before he
disappeared?”

“No. He was sober.”

“Unusually sober, maybe?” suggested the other.

“Yes, he was. Been sober for a week. An’ he was studyin’, too.”

“Ah! Studying what?”

“Spanish.”

“Spanish, eh? Ever exhibit any interest in foreign tongues before?”

“Not enough to get him through one term in college,” returned the other
grimly.

“How did you know about his studying?”

“Seen the perfessor in the house.”

“Some one you knew?”

“No. I asked him. Roddy was sore because I found out what he was up
to.”

Upon that point Average Jones meditated a moment.

“Did you see this Spanish professor again?” he inquired presently.

“Now that you speak of it, I didn’t see him but the once.”

“Can you leave for Toledo on to-night’s train?”

“You’re goin’ to take the case, then?” the quack clawed nervously at
his professional white whiskers. “What’s your terms?” he demanded.

“That I’m to have full control and that you’re to take orders and not
give them.”

Doctor Hoff swallowed that with a gulp. “You’re on,” he said finally.

On the train Doctor Hoff regaled his companion with a strictly paternal
view of his son’s character and pursuits as he knew them. This served,
at least, to enlarge his auditor’s ideas as to the average American
father’s vast and profound ignorance of the life, habits, manners and
customs of that common but variable species, the Offspring. Beyond this
it had little value. Average Jones gave its author a few specific
instructions as to minor lines of home investigation, and retired to
map out a tentative campaign.

His first call, on arriving at Toledo, was at the business office of
the _Daily Saw_, in which he inserted the following paragraph on a
repeat-until-stopped order:

WANTED—Instructor in Spanish. One with recent Experience preferred.
Apply between 9 and 10 A.M. Doctor Hoff, 360 Fairfield Avenue.


Thence he climbed the stairs to the den of the city editor, to whom he
stated his errand openly, being too wise in his day and generation to
attempt concealment or evasion with a newspaper man from whom he wanted
information. The city editor obligingly furnished further details
regarding “Rickey” Hoff, as he called the young man, which, while
differing in important respects from Doctor Hoff’s, bore the ear-marks
of superior accuracy.

“The worst of it is,” said the newspaper man, “that there are elements
of decency about the young cub, if he’d keep sober. He won’t go into
the old boy’s business, because he hates it. Says it’s all rot and
lies. He’s dead right, of course. But there’s nothing else for him to
do, so he just fights booze. Better make a few inquiries at Silent
Charley’s.”

“What’s that?”

“Quiet little bar kept by a talkative Swede. ‘Rickey’ Hoff hung out
there a lot. Charley even had a room fixed up for him to lay off in
when he was too pickled to go home.”

“Would—er—young Hoff—er—perhaps keep a few—er—extra clothes there?”
asked Average Jones, seemingly struggling with a yawn.

The city editor stared. “Oh, I dare say. He used to end his sprees
pretty much mussed up.”

“That would perhaps explain where the shirt came from,” murmured the
Ad-Visor. “Much obliged for the suggestion. I’ll just step around.”

“Silent Charley” he found ready, even eager to talk. Yes; “Rickey” Hoff
had been in his place right along. Drunk? No; not even drinking much
lately. Two other gentlemen had met him there quite often. They sat in
the back room and talked. No, neither of them was Spanish. One was big
and clean-shaven and wore a silk hat. They called him “Colonel.” A
swell dresser. The other man drank gin, and a lot of it. His name was
Fred. He was very tanned. One day there had been a hot discussion over
a sheet of paper that lay on the table in front of the three men in the
back room. “Rickey” had called a messenger boy and sent him out for a
geography. “I told you there wasn’t any such thing there,” the
saloon-keeper heard him say triumphantly, when the geography arrived.
Then Fred replied: “To h-ll with you and your schoolbook! I tell you
I’ve waded across it.” The colonel smoothed things over and it ended in
a magnum of champagne being ordered.

“For which the colonel paid?” asked Average Jones.

“Why, yes, he did,” assented the saloon man. “He said, ‘Well, it’s a
go, then. Here’s luck to us!’ He was a good spender, the colonel.”

“And you haven’t seen any of them since, I suppose?”

“Nary a one.”

On his return to the Hoff mansion the investigator found the head
thereof in a state of great excitement.

“Say, I’ve found out something,” he cried. “Roddy’s gone to Yurrup.”

“Where did you find that out?” asked Average Jones with a smile.

“I been going through his papers like you told me. He’s been outfitting
for a trip. Bought lots of truck the last few days and I found the
duplicate sale-checks that come in the packages. There’s stubs for a
steamer rug and for a dope for seasickness and for a compass,” he
concluded triumphantly.

“Compass, eh?” observed Average Jones thoughtfully. “Ship’s compass is
good enough for most of us going to Europe. Anything else?”

“Lot of clothes.”

“What kind of clothes?”

“Cheap stuff mostly. Khaki riding-pants, neglyjee shirts and
such-like.”

“Not much suggestion of Europe there. What more?”

Doctor Hoff consulted a list. “Colored glasses.”

“That looks like desert travel.”

“Aneroid barometer.”

“Mountain climbing.”

“Permanganate of potash outfit.”

“Snake country,” commented the other.

“Patent water-still.”

Average Jones leaned forward. “How big?”

“Don’t know. Cost twenty dollars.”

“Little one, then. That means about three people. Taken with the
compass, it means a small-boat trip on salt water.”

“Small boat nothin’!” retorted the other. “His doctor met me this
morning an’ told me Roddy had sent for him and ast him a lot of
questions about eatin’ aboard ship and which way to have his berth made
up, and all that.”

“A small-boat trip following a sea trip, then. What else have you
found?”

“Nothin’ much. Mosquito nettin’, pills, surgeon’s plaster and odds and
ends of drugs.”

“Let me see the drug list.”

He ran his eye down the paper. Then he looked at Doctor Hoff with a
half smile.

“You didn’t notice anything peculiar about this list?”

“Don’t know as I did.”

“Not the—er—nitric acid, for instance?”

“Nope. What of it?”

“Mr. Hoff, your son has been caught by one of the oldest tricks in the
whole bunco list—the lost Spanish mine swindle. That acid, together
with the rest of the outfit, means a gold-hunt as plain as if it were
spelled out. And the Spanish professor was sent for, not to give
lessons, but to translate the fake letter. Where does your son bank?”

“Fifth National.”

“Telephone there and find out how much he drew.”

Doctor Hoff sat down at the ’phone. “Five hundred dollars,” he said
presently.

“Is that all?” asked the other, disappointed.

“Yes. Wait. He had six checks certified aggregating ten thousand
dollars.”

“Then it isn’t South America or the West Indies. He’d want, a letter of
credit there. Must be some part of the United States, or just across
the border. Well, we’ve done a good day’s work, and I’ve got a hard
evening’s thinking before me. We might be able to head off the
colonel’s personally conducted expedition yet, if we could locate it.”

The evening’s thinking formulated itself into a telegram to Average
Jones’ club, the Cosmic. It was one among the many distinctions of the
modest little club in Gramercy Park, that its membership pretty well
comprised the range of available information on any topic. Under the
“favored applications clause,” a person whose knowledge of any
particular subject was unique and authoritative, whether the topic were
Esperanto or fistiana, went to the head of the waiting—list
automatically and had his initiation fee remitted. Hence, Average Jones
was confident of a helpful reply to his message of inquiry, which
summed up his conclusions and surmises thus far:

“COSMIC CLUB, NEW YORK CITY:
    Refer following to geographical expert: Where is large, shallow,
    unmapped body of salt water in United States, or near border,
    surrounded by hot, snake-infested desert and mountainous country,
    reputed to contain gold? Spanish associations indicated. Wire
    details and name of best guide, if obtainable.


A. JONES.”


The reply was disappointing:

“Cyrus C. Allen absent from town. Will forward your wire.


“COSMIC CLUB.”


Well poised as Average Jones normally was, he chafed over the ensuing
delay of four days, each of which gave the colonel’s expedition just so
much start upon its unknown course. The only relief was a call from the
Spanish instructor who answered Jones’ advertisement. He was the same
who had served young Hoff. As the Ad-Visor surmised, his former
employment had been merely the translation of a letter. The letter was
in base Spanish, he said. He didn’t remember much of it, but there was
something about a lost gold mine. Yes; there was reference to a map.
No; no geographical names were mentioned, but in several places the
capital letters B. C. seemed to indicate a locality. He hadn’t noted
the date or the signature. That was all he could tell.

Doctor Hoff, who had been ramping with impatience over the man’s lack
of definite memory, now rushed to the atlas and began to study the
maps.

“You needn’t trouble,” said Average Jones coolly. “You won’t find it
there.”

“I’ll find that B. C. if I have to go over every map in the geography.”

“Then you’ll have to get a Spanish edition. For a guess, B. C. is Baja
California, the Mexican peninsula of California.”

Jones sent a supplementary wire to this effect to Cyrus C. Allen, of
the Cosmic Club, and within a few hours received a reply from that
eminent cartographer, who had been located in a remote part of
Connecticut:

“Probably Laguna Salada, not on map. Seventy miles long; four to eight
wide. Between Cocopah and Sierra Gigantica ranges. Country very wild
and arid. Can be reached by water from Yuma, or pack train from
Calexico. White, who has hunted there, says Captain Funcke, Calexico,
best guide.


“ALLEN.”


Average Jones tossed this over to the father.

“As I figure it,” he said, “your son’s two friends had this all mapped
out beforehand for him. One went west direct. He was the imbecile who
stopped in Cincinnati and mailed you the bloody shirt to throw you off
the scent. Meantime the colonel took Roderick around by a sea route,
probably New York and New Orleans.”

“That’d explain the steamer rug and the seasickness,” admitted Doctor
Hoff; “but I don’t know what he’d want to go that long way for.”

“Simple enough, when you reckon with this colonel person as having
brains in his head. He would foresee a hue and cry as soon as the young
man disappeared. So he cooks up this trip to keep his prey out of touch
with the newspapers for the few days when the news of the disappearance
would be fresh enough to be spread abroad in the Associated Press
dispatches. From New Orleans they’d go on west by train.”

“What I don’t see is how they caught Roddy on such an old game. He’s
easy, but I didn’t s’pose he was that easy.”

“To do him justice, he isn’t—quite. They put it up on him rather
cleverly. In the period of waiting to hear from the geographical expert
I’ve put in some fairly hard work, going over your son’s effects. And,
in the room over Silent Charley’s bar, I found a newspaper with this in
it.”

He handed to Doctor Hoff a thin clipping, marked “_Daily Saw_, March
29”:

LOST—Spanish letter and map. Of no value except to owner. Return to No.
16, this office, and receive heartfelt thanks.


“Well,” said Doctor Hoff, after reading it over twice, “that don’t tell
me nothing.”

“No? Yet it’s pretty plain. The two crooks ‘planted’ the letter and map
on your son. Probably slipped them into a pocket of his coat while he
was drunk. Then they inserted their little ad, waited until he had time
to find the letter, and casually called the advertisement to his
attention. The rest would be easy. But I’ll have something to say to my
clerk, who failed to clip that ad.”

“You’re workin’ for _me_, now,” half blustered, half whined the old
quack. “Whatche goin’ to do next?”

“Pack for the night train.”

“Where to?”

“Yuma or Calexico. Don’t know which till I get a reply to two
telegrams. I’ll need five hundred dollars expense money.”

“Say, you don’t want much, do ye?” snarled the quack, his avaricious
soul in revolt at the prospect of immediate outlay. “When I hire a man
I expect him to pay his own expenses and send me the bill.”

“Quite so,” agreed the other blandly. “But, you see, you aren’t hiring
me. I’m doing this on spec. And I don’t propose to invest anything in a
dubious proposition, myself. It isn’t too late to call it off, you
know.”

“No, I do’ wanta do that,” said the other with contorted face. “I’ll
get the five hundred here for’ you in an hour.”

“And about the five thousand dollars reward? I think I’d better have a
word of writing on that.”

“You mean you don’t trust me?” snapped the other. “I’m good for five
million dollars to-morrow in this town.”

“I know you are—in writing,” agreed the other equably. “That’s why I
want your valued signature. You see, to be quite frank, I haven’t the
fullest confidence in gentlemen in your line of business.”

“I’ll have my lawyer draw up a form of contract and mail it after you
to-morrow,” promised the quack with a crafty look.

“No, you wo—” began Average Jones; but he broke off with a smile. “Very
well,” he amended. “If things work out as I figure them, that will do.
And,” he added, dropping into his significant drawl and looking the
quack flatly in the eye, “don’t you—er—bank on my—er—not understanding
your offer—and—er—you.”

Uncomfortably pondering this reply, Doctor Hoff set about the matter of
the expense money. Mean time a telegram came which settled the matter
of immediate destination. It apprised Average Jones that, a fortnight
previous, this paragraph had appeared in the paid columns of the Yuma
Yucca:

WANTED-Small, flat-bottomed sailboat. Centerboard type preferred.
Hasty, care this office.


Average Jones bought a ticket for Yuma.

Disembarking at the Yuma station three days later, Average Jones
blinked in the harsh sunlight at a small, compactly built, keen-eyed
man, roughly dressed for the trail.

“I’m Captain Funcke,” said the stranger. His speech was gentle, slow,
even hesitant; but there was something competent and reliable in his
bearing which satisfied the shrewd young reader of men’s characters
from the outset. “Your wire got me two days since and I came right up.”

“Any trace?”

“Left here two days ago.”

“Three of them?”

“Yes. Flat-bottomed, narrow-beamed boat, sloop-rigged pretty light.”

“Know anything of the men?”

“Only the big one. Calls himself Colonel Richford. Had a fake copper
outfit in the mountains east of Alamo.”

“Where do you think they’re headed for?”

“Probably the wildest country they can find, if they want to get rid of
young Hoff,” said the other, who had been apprised of the main points
of the situation. “That would likely be the Pinto range, to the
southwest of the Laguna. Richford knows that country a little. He was
in there two years ago.”

“They would probably want to get rid of him without obvious murder;”
said Average Jones. “You see, his money is in certified checks which
they’d have to get cashed. If some one should find his body with a
bullet-hole in it, they’d have some explaining to do.”

“Nobody’d be likely to find it. Only about two parties a year get’ down
there. Still, somebody might trail him. And I guess old Richford is too
foxy to do any killing when he turns the trick just as well without
it.”

“Suppose it’s the Pintos, then. How do we get there?”

“Hard-ash breeze,” returned the other succinctly. “Our rowboat is
outfitted and waiting.”

“Good work!” said Jones heartily. “How far is it?”

“Sixty miles to the turn of the Laguna. There’s a four-mile current to
help. They’ve a scant two days’ start, and we’ll catch up some, for
their boat is heavier and their sail is no good with the wind in this
direction. If we don’t catch up some,” he added grimly, “I wouldn’t
want to insure our young friend’s life. So it’s all aboard, if you’re
ready.”

For the first time since embarking upon the strange seas of advertising
in his quest of the Adventure of Life, Average Jones now met the
experience of grilling physical toil. All that day and all the night
the two men swung at the oars; swung until every muscle in the young
Easterner’s back had turned to live nerve-fiber, and the flesh had
begun to strip from the palms of his hands. Even so, the hardy captain
had done most of the work. Aided by the current, they turned the
shoulder of the Cocopah range as the dawn shone lurid in the east, and
the captain swung the boat’s head to the southern shore of the lake.
Meantime, between spells at the oars, Average Jones had outlined the
case in full to Funcke. He could have found no better coadjutor:

By nature and equipment every really expert hunter and tracker is a
detective. The subtleties of the trail sharpen both physical and mental
sensibility. Captain Funcke was, by instinct, a student of that
continuous logic which constitutes the science of the chase, whether
the prize of pursuit be a mountain sheep’s horns or the scholar’s need
of praise for the interpreting of some half-obliterated inscription on
a pre-Hittite tomb. After long and silent consideration the captain
gave his views.

“It isn’t bunco. It’s a hold-up. If Richford had wanted to stick young
Hoff, he’d never have brought him here. There isn’t ‘color’ enough
within eighty miles to gild a cigar band. It looks to me like the
scheme is this: They get him off in the mountains, out of sight of the
lake, so he’ll have no landmark to go by. Then they scare him into
signing co-partnership papers, and make him turn over those certified
checks to them. With the papers to show for it, they go out by Calexico
and cash the checks in Los Angeles. They could put up the bluff that
their partner was guarding the mine while they bought machinery and
outfitted. That’d be good enough to cash certified checks by.”

“Yes; that’s about the way I figure it out. You spoke of Richford’s
being able to get rid of young Hoff effectually, without actual
murder.”

“All he’d have to do would be to quit the boy while he was asleep. A
tenderfoot would die of thirst over there in a short time.”

“Is there no water?”

“There’s a _tenaja_ they’re depending on. But I doubt if they find any
water there now. It’s been an extra dry season.”

“A _tenaja?_” queried the Ad-Visor.

“Rock-basin holding rainwater,” explained the hunter. “There’s been no
rainfall since August. If they find the _tenaja_ empty they’ll, have
barely enough in the canteens they pack to get them to the next water,
the Tenaja Poquita, around behind the mountains and across the desert
into the next range.”

“What’s the next water to that?”

“The Stream of Palms. That’s a day and a half on foot.”

For the space of a hundred oar-strokes Average Jones ruminated.

“Suppose—er—they didn’t—er—find any water in the Tenaja Poquita,
either?” he drawled.

“Then they _would_ be up against it.”

“And there’s no other water in the Pintos?”

“Yes, there is,” said the captain. “There’s a _tenaja_ that’s so high
up and so hidden that it’s only known to one other man besides me, and
he’s an Indian. It’s less than an hour from the _tenaja_ that Richford
will take his party to. And we’re sure of finding water there. It never
dries up this early.”

“Get me to young Hoff, then, Captain. You’re in command from the moment
we land.”

It was broad day when the keel pushed softly into the muddy bottom of a
long, shallow arm of the lake. Captain Funcke rose, stretched the kinks
out of his back, and jumped ashore.

“You say I’m in command?” he inquired.

“Absolute.”

“Then you roll up under that _mesquite_ and fall asleep. I’m going to
cast about for their trail.”

To the worn-out oarsman, it seemed only a few moments later that an
insistent grip on his shoulder aroused him. But the overhead sun, whose
direct rays were fairly boiling the sweat out of him, harshly corrected
this impression.

“I’ve found their boat,” said Captain Funcke. “The trail heads for the
Pintos. They’re traveling heavy. I don’t believe they’re twenty-four
hours ahead of us.”

Average Jones stumbled to his feet. “I’m ready,” he said.

“It’s a case of travel light.” The hunter handed over a small bag of
food and a large canteen full of water. He himself packed a much larger
load, including two canteens and a powerful field-glass. Taking a
shotgun from the boat, he shouldered it, and set out at a long, easy
stride.

To Average Jones the memory of that day has never been wholly clear.
Sodden with weariness, dazzled and muddled by the savage sun-glare, he
followed, with eyes fixed, the rhythmically, monotonously moving feet
of his leader, through an interminable desert of soft, clogging sand; a
desert which dropped away into parched _arroyos_, and rose to scorched
_mesas_ whereon fierce cacti thrust at him with thorns and spikes; a
desert dead and mummified in the dreadful heat; a lifeless Inferno
wherein moved neither beast, bird nor insect. He remembers, dimly,
lying as he fell, when the indefatigable captain called a halt, and
being wakened in the chill breeze of evening, to see a wall of
mountains blocking the advance. Food brought him to his normal self
again, and in the crisp air of night he set his face to the task of
climbing. Severe as this was upon his unaccustomed muscles, the firm
rocks were still a welcome relief after the racking looseness of sand
that interminably sank away from foothold. At midnight the wearied
pursuers dropped down from a high plateau to a narrow _arroyo_. Here
again was sand. Fortunately, this time, for in it footprints stood out
clear, illuminated by the white moonlight. They led direct to a side
_barranca_. There the pursuers found the camp. It was deserted.

Like a hound on the trail, Captain Funcke cast about him.

“Here’s where they came in. No—yes—this is it. Confound the
cross-tracks!.. Here one of them cuts across the ridge to the _tenaja_
for water.

“Wait!... What’s this? Coyote trail? Yes, but... Trail brushed over, by
thunder! They didn’t do it carefully enough... Straight for the rocky
_mesa_.... That’s it! They made their sneak while Hoff was asleep,
probably covering trail behind them, and struck out for the inside
desert route to the Tenaja Poquita.” He took a quick look about the
camp and picked up an empty canteen. “Of course, they wouldn’t leave
him any water.”

“Then he’s gone to hunt it,” suggested Average Jones. “Which way?”

“You can’t tell which way a tenderfoot will go,” said the hunter
philosophically. “If he had any savvy at all he’d follow the old beaten
track around by the _arroyo_ to the water-hole. We’ll try it.”

On the way, Average Jones noticed his companion stop frequently to
examine the sand for something which he evidently didn’t find.

“These are fresh footsteps we’re following, aren’t they?” he asked.

“Yes. It isn’t that. He went this way all right. But the _tenaja’s_
gone dry.”

“How can you tell that?”

“No fresh sign of animals going this way. Must have been dry for weeks.
Our mining friends have taken what little water there was and left
young Hoff to die of thirst,” said the other grimly. “Well, that
explains the empty canteen all right.”

He turned and renewed his quick progress, leaping from boulder to
boulder, between narrowing walls of gray-white rock. Just as Average
Jones was spent and almost ready to collapse the leader checked.

“Hark!” he whispered.

Above the beating of the blood in his ears, Jones heard an irregular,
insistent scuffing sound. He crouched in silence while the captain
crept up to a ledge and cautiously peered over, then went forward in
response to the other’s urgent beckoning. They looked down into a
rock-basin of wild and curious beauty. To this day Average Jones
remembers the luminous grace and splendor of a Matilija poppy, which,
rooted between two boulders, swayed gently in the white moonlight above
a figure of dread. The figure, naked from the waist up, huddled upon
the hard-baked mud, digging madly at the earth. A sharp exclamation
broke from Average Jones. The digger half-rose, turned, collapsed to
his knees, and pointed with bleeding fingers to his open mouth, in
which the tongue showed black and swollen.

They went down to him.

An hour later, “Rickey” Hoff was sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion
in camp. Average Jones felt amply qualified to join him. But it was not
in the Ad-Visor’s character to quit an enterprise before it was wholly
completed. So long as the two bandits were on their way to cash the
young spendthrift’s checks—Jones had heard from the victim a brief
account of the extortion—success was not fully won.

“We’ve got to get that money back,” he said to Captain Funcke with
conviction.

The hunter made no reply in words. He merely leaned his shotgun against
his thigh, reached around beneath his coat and produced a forty-five
caliber revolver. This he held out toward Jones.

“Good thing to have,” conceded the other. “But—well, no; not in this
case. They got the booty with a show of legality, since Hoff signed the
copartnership agreement and turned over the checks. It was under duress
and threats, it’s true, but who’s to prove that, they being two to one,
and this being Mexico? No; they’re within the law, and I’ve a notion
that we can get the swag back by straight sale and barter. Provided,
always, we can catch them in time.”

“They’ll want to make pretty good time to the Tenaja Poquita,” pointed
out the captain. “They’re shy on water.”

“On wind, too. They’ve traveled hard, and they can’t be in the pink of
condition. According to Hoff, they deserted him while he was taking a
nap, about four o’clock in the afternoon. It’s a fair bet they’d camp
for the night, as you say it’s an eight hour hike to the _tenaja_.”

“Eight, the way they’d go.”

“Then—er—there’s a—er—shorter way?” drawled Average Jones, removing
some sand from a wrinkle in his scarified and soiled trousers as
carefully as if that were the one immediate and important consideration
in life.

“Yes. Across the Padre Cliffs. It cuts off about four hours, and it
takes us almost to the secret _tenaja_ I spoke of. We can fill up
there. But it’s not what you’d call safe, even in daylight.”

“But to a hunter, wouldn’t it be well worth the risk for a record pair
of horns—even if they were only tin horns?” queried Average Jones
suggestively.

Captain Funcke relaxed into a grin. He nodded.

“What’ll we do with _him?_” he asked, jerking his head toward the
sleeper.

“Leave him water, food and a note. Now, about this Tenaja Poquita we’re
headed for. How much water do you think there is in it?”

“If there’s a hundred gallons it’s doing well, this dry season.”

Average Jones got painfully to his feet. Looking carefully over the
scattered camp outfit, he selected from it a collapsible pail. Captain
Funcke glanced at it with curiosity, but characteristically forebore to
ask any questions. He himself shouldered the largest canteen.

“This’ll be enough for both until we reach the supply,” he said. “Don’t
need so much water at night.”

But the tenderfoot hung upon his own shoulder, not only the smallest of
their three canteens, but also the empty one which they had found in
the camp. Their own third tin, almost full, they left beside Hoff, with
a note.

“I’ve a notion,” said Jones, “that I’ll need all these receptacles for
water in my own peculiar business.”

“All right,” assented the other patiently. He took one of them and the
pail from Jones and skillfully disposed them on his own back. “Ready?
Hike, then.”

Two hours of the roughest kind of climbing brought them to a landslide.
These sudden shiftings of the slopes are a frequent feature of travel
in the Lower California mountains, often obliterating trails and
costing the wayfarer painful and perilous search for a new path. On the
Padre Cliffs, however, had occurred that rare phenomenon, a benevolent
avalanche, piling up a safe and feasible embankment around the angle of
an impracticable precipice, and thus saving an hour of the most
ticklish going of the journey. Thanks to this dispensation, the two men
reached the Tenaja Poquita before dawn. Scouting ahead, the captain
reported no fresh trail except coyotes and mule deer, and not more than
seventy-five gallons of water in the basin. Of this they both drank
deeply. Then after they had filled all the canteens, Average Jones
unfolded his scheme to the captain.

“If any one caught us at it,” commented that experienced hunter, “we’d
be shot without warning. However, the water would be evaporated in a
few days anyhow, and I’ll post notices at the next watercamps. I’m with
you.”

Taking turn and turn about with the pail, they bailed out the
rock-basin, scattering the water upon the greedy sand. What little
moisture remained in the sticky mud at the bottom they blotted up with
more sand. They then rolled in boulders. Average Jones looked down into
the hollow with satisfaction, and moved his full canteens into a
grotto.

“This company,” he said, “is now open for business.”

At eight o’clock there was a clatter of boots upon the rocks and two
men came staggering up the defile. Colonel Richford and his partner did
not look to be in good repair. The colonel’s face was drawn and
sun-blotched. His companion, the “Fred” of Silent Charley’s bar, was
bloated and shaken with liquor. Both panted with the hard, dry,
open-lipped breath of the first stage of thirst-exhaustion. The
colonel, who was in the lead, checked and started upon discovering
astride of a rock a pleasant visaged young man of a familiar American
type, whose appearance was in nowise remarkable except as to locality.
With a grunt that might have been greeting, but was more probably
surprise, the newcomer passed the seated man. Captain Funcke he did not
see at all. That astute hunter had dropped behind a boulder.

At the brink of the _tenaja_ the colonel stopped dead. Then with an
outburst of flaming language, he leaped in, burrowing among the rocks.

“Dry!” he yelled, lifting a furious and appalled face to his companion.

Fred stood staring from Average Jones to his three canteens. There was
a murderous look on his sinister face.

“Got water?” he growled.

“Yes,” replied the young man.

“Here, Colonel,” said Fred. “Here’s drink for us.”

“For sale,” added Average Jones calmly.

“People don’t _buy_ water in this country.”

“You’re not people,” returned Average Jones cheerfully. “You’re a
corporation; a soulless corporation. The North Pinto Gold Mining
Company.”

“What’s that!” cried the colonel thickly.

His hand flew back to his belt. Then it dropped, limp at his side, for
he was gazing into the two barrels of a shotgun, which, materializing
over a rock, were pointing accurately and disconcertingly at the pit of
his stomach. From behind the gun Captain Funcke’s quiet voice remarked:

“I wouldn’t, Colonel. As for you,” he added, turning to the other
wayfarer, who carried a rifle, “you want to remember that a shotgun has
two barrels, usually both loaded.”

Stepping forward, Average Jones “lifted” the financier’s weapon. Then
he deprived Fred of his rifle amid a surprisingly brilliant outburst of
verbal pyrotechnics.

“Now we can talk business comfortably,” he observed.

“I can’t talk at all pretty quick if I don’t git a moistener,” said
Fred piteously.

Pouring out a scant cupful of water into his hat, Average Jones handed
it over. “Drink slowly,” he advised. “You’ve got about a hundred
dollars’ worth there at present quotations.”

Colonel Richford’s head went up with a jerk.

“Hundred dollars’ worth!” he croaked, his eyes fiery with suspicion.
“Are you going to hold up two men dying of thirst?”

“There’s been only one man in danger of that death around here. His
name is Hoff.”

The redoubtable colonel gasped, and leaned back against a rock.

“You’ll be relieved to learn that he’s safe. Now, to answer your
question: No, I don’t propose to hold up two men for anything. I
propose to deal with the president and treasurer of the North Pinto
Gold Mining Company. As a practical mining man you will appreciate the
absolute necessity of water in your operations. The nearest available
supply is some ten hours distant. Before you could reach it I fear
that—er—your company would—er—have gone out of existence. Therefore I
am fortunate in being able to offer you a small supply which I will put
on the market at the low rate of ten thousand dollars. I may add
that—er—certified checks will—er—be accepted.”

For two hours the colonel, with the occasional objurgatory assistance
of his partner, talked, begged argued, threatened, and even wept. By
the end of that time his tongue was making sounds like a muffled
castanet, and his resolution was scorched out of him.

“You’ve got us,” he croaked. “Here’s your checks. Give me the water.”

“In proper and legal form, please,” said Average Jones.

He produced a contract and a fountain-pen. The contract was duly signed
and witnessed. It provided for the transfer of the water, in
consideration of one revolver and ten thousand dollars in checks. These
checks were endorsed over to A. V. R. E. Jones, whereupon he turned
over the pail of water and the largest canteen to the parched miners.
Then, sorting out the checks, he pocketed two aggregating five thousand
dollars, tore up three, and holding the other in his hand, turned to
Captain Funcke.

“Will five hundred dollars pay you for keeping young Hoff down here a
couple of months and making the beginning of a man of him?” he asked.

“Yes, and more,” replied the captain.

“It’s a go,” said Average Jones. “I’d like to make the job complete.”

Then, courteously bidding the North Pinto Gold Mining Company farewell,
the two water-dealers clambered up the rocks and disappeared beyond the
abrupt sky-line.

Once again Doctor Conrad Hoff sat in the private office of Average
Jones, Ad-Visor. The young man was thinner, browner and harder of fiber
than the Jones of two weeks previous. Doctor Hoff looked him over with
shrewd eyes.

“Say, your trip ain’t done you no harm, has it?” he exclaimed with a
boisterous and false good nature. “You look like’ a fightin’-cock. Hope
the boy comes out as good. You say he’s all right?”

“You’ve got his letter, in which he says so himself. That’s enough
proof, isn’t it?”

“Oh, I’ve got the letter all right. An’ it’s enough as far as it goes.
But it ain’t proof; not the kind of proof a man pays out reward money
on,” he added, cunningly. “You say you left Roddy down there with that
Funcke feller, hey?”

“Yes. It’ll make a man of him, if anything will. I threw that in as an
extra.”

“Yes; but what about them two crooks that goldbricked him? What’s
become of them?”

“On their way to Alaska or Bolivia or Corea, or anywhere else, for all
I know—or care,” said Average Jones indifferently.

“Is _that_ so?” The quack’s voice had taken on a sneering intonation.
“You come back here with your job not half done, with the guilty
fellers loose an’ runnin’, an’ you expect me to pay over, the five
thousand dollars to you. Huh!”

“No, I—er—don’t expect—er—anything of the sort,” said Average Jones
slowly.

Doctor Hoff’s little, restless eyes puckered at the corners. He was
puzzled. What did the young fellow mean?

“Don’t, eh?” he said, groping in his mind for a solution.

“No. You forgot to send me that promised form of agreement, didn’t you?
Thought you’d fooled me, perhaps. Well, I wouldn’t be so foolish as to
expect anything in the way of fair and honorable dealing when I
contract to do up a mining swindler for the benefit of the only meaner
creature on God’s earth—a patent medicine poisoner. So I took
precautions.”

“Say, be careful of what you say, young man,” blustered the quack.

“I am—quite particular. And, before you leave, wouldn’t you like to
hear about the five thousand dollars I got for my little job?”

Doctor Hoff blinked rapidly.

“What didje say?” he finally inquired.

“Five—er—thousand—er—dollars.”

“You got it?”

“In the bank.”

“Where dje get it?”

“From you, through your son’s check, duly certified.”

Doctor Hoff blinked more rapidly and moistened his lips with an
effortful tongue.

“H-h-how dje work it?” he asked in a die-away voice.

“By a forced sale of water rights to the North Pinto Gold Mining
Company, dissolved, in which Mr. Roderick Hoff was vice-president and
silent partner,” replied Average Jones with an amiable smile, as he
opened the door significantly.




CHAPTER IV. THE MERCY SIGN—ONE


“Want a job, Average?”

Bertram, his elegance undimmed by the first really trying weather of
the early summer, drifted to the coolest spot in the Ad-Visor’s sanctum
and spread his languid length along a wicker settee.

“Give a man breathing space, can’t you?” returned Average Jones. “This
is hotter than Baja California.”

“Why, I assumed that your quest of the quack’s scion would have trained
you down fit for anything.”

“Haven’t even caught up with the clippings that Simpson floods me with,
since I came back,” confessed the other. “What have you got up your
faultlessly creased sleeve? It’s got to be something different to rouse
me from a well-earned lethargy.”

“Because a man buncoes a loving father out of five thousand dollars,”
Average Jones snorted gently, “is no reason why he should unanimously
elect himself a life member of the Sons of Idleness,” murmured Bertram.

He cast an eye around the uniquely decorated walls, upon which hung,
here, the shrieking prospectus of a mythical gold-mine; there a small
but venomous political placard, and on all sides examples of the
uncouth or unusual in paid print; exploitations of grotesque
quackeries; appeals, business-like, absurd, or even passionate, in the
form of “Wants;” threats thinly disguised as “Personals;” dim
suggestions of crime, of fraud, of hope, of tragedy, of mania, all
decorated with the stars of “paid matter” or designated by the _Adv_.
sign, and each representing some case brought to A. Jones, Ad-Visor—to
quote his hybrid and expressive doorplate—by some one of his numerous
and incongruous clients.

“Something different?” repeated the visitor, reverting to Average
Jones’ last observation. “Well, yes; I think so. Where is Bellair
Street?”

“Ask a directory. How should I know?” retorted the other lazily.
“Sounds like old Greenwich Village.”

Bertram reached over with a cane of some pale, translucent green wood,
selected to match his pale green tie and the marvelous green opal which
held it in place, and prodded his friend severely in the ribs.
“Double-up Lucy; the sun is in the sky!” he proclaimed with unwonted
energy. “Listen. I cut this out of yesterday’s _Evening Register_. With
my own fair hands I did it, to rouse you from your shameless sloth.
With your kind attention, ladies and gentlemen—” He read:

“WANTED—A young man, unattached, competent to act as assistant in
outdoor scientific work. Manual skill as desirable as experience.
Emolument for one month’s work generous. Man without family insisted
upon. Apply after 8:30 P. M. in proper person. Smith, 74 Bellair
Street.”


Slowly whirling in his chair, Average Jones held out a hand, received
the clipping, read it through with attention, laid it on the desk, and
yawned.

“Is that all?” said the indignant Bertram. “Do you notice that
‘unattached’ in the opening sentence? And the specification that the
applicant must be without family? Doesn’t that inspire any notion above
a yawn in your palsied processes of mind?”

“It does; several notions. I yawned,” explained Average Jones with
dignity, “because I perceive with pain that I shall have to go to work.
What do you make of the thing, yourself?”

“Well, this man Smith—”

“What man Smith?”

“Smith, of 74 Bellair Street, who signs the ad.”

Average Jones laughed, “There isn’t any Smith,” he said.

“What do you know about it?” demanded Bertram, sitting up.

“Only what the advertisement tells me. It was written by a foreigner;
that’s too obvious for argument. ‘Emolument generous.’ ‘Apply in proper
person.’ Did a Smith ever write that? No. A Borgrevsky might have, or a
Greiffenhauser, or even a Mavronovoupoulos. But never Smith.”

“Well, it’s nothing to me what his name is. Only I thought you might be
the aspiring young scientist he was yearning for.”

“Wouldn’t wonder if I were, thank you. Let’s see. Bellair Street?
Where’s the directory? Thanks. Yes, it is Greenwich Village. Well, I
think I’ll just stroll down that way and have a look after dinner.”

Thus it was that Mr. Adrian Van Reypen Egerton Jones found himself on a
hot May evening pursuing the Adventure of Life into the vestibule of a
rather dingy old house which had once been the abode of solemn
prosperity if not actual aristocracy in the olden days of New York
City. Almost immediately the telegraphic click of the lock apprised him
that he might enter, and as he stepped into the hallway the door of the
right-hand ground-floor apartment opened to him.

“You will please come in,” said a voice.

The tone was gentle and measured. Also it was, by its accent, alien to
any rightful Smith. The visitor stepped into a passageway which was dim
until he entered it and the door swung behind him. Then it became pitch
black.

“You will pardon this,” said the voice. “A severe affection of the eyes
compels me.”

“You are Mr. Smith?” asked Average Jones.

“Yes. Your hand if you please.”

The visitor, groping, brushed with his fingers the back of a hand which
felt strangely hot and pulpy. Immediately the hand turned and closed,
and he was led forward to an inner room and seated in a chair. The
gentle, hot clasp relaxed and left his wrist free. A door facing him,
if his ears could be trusted, opened and shut.

“You will find matches at your elbow,” said the voice, coming dulled,
from a further apartment. “Doubtless you would be more comfortable with
a light.”

“Thank you,” returned Average Jones, enormously entertained by the
dime-novel setting which his host had provided for him.

He lighted the gas and looked about a sparsely furnished room without a
single distinguishing feature, unless a high and odd-shaped
traveling-bag which stood on a chair near by could be so regarded. The
voice interrupted his survey.

“You have come in answer to my advertisement?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are, then, of scientific pursuit?”

“Of scientific ambition, at least. I hope to meet your requirements.”

“Your name, if you please.”

“Jones; A. Jones, of New York City.”

“You live with your family?”

“I have no family or near relatives.”

“That is well. I will not conceal from, you that there are risks. But
the pay is high. Can you endure exposure? Laboring in all weathers?
Subsisting on rough fare and sleeping as you may?”

“I have camped in the northern forests.”

“Yes,” mused the voice. “You look hardy.”

Average Jones arose. “You—er—are spying upon me, then,” he drawled
quietly. “I might have—er—suspected a peep-hole.”

He advanced slowly toward the door whence the voice came. A chair
blocked his way. Without lowering his gaze he shoved at the obstacle
with his foot.

“Have a care!” warned the voice.

The chair toppled and overturned. From it fell, with a light shock, the
strange valise, which, striking the floor, flew open, disclosing a
small cardboard cabinet. Across the front of the cabinet was a strip of
white paper labeled in handwriting, each letter being individual, with
what looked to the young man like the word “MERCY.” He stooped to
replace the bag.

“Do not touch it,” ordered the voice peremptorily.

Average Jones straightened up to face the door again.

“I will apologize for my clumsiness,” he said slowly, “when you explain
why you have tried to trick me.”

There was a pause. Then:

“Presently,” said the voice. “Meantime, after what you have
accidentally seen, you will perhaps appreciate that the employment is
not without its peril!”

Average Jones stared from the door to the floored cabinet and back
again in stupefaction.

“Perhaps I’m stupid,” he said, “but a misshapen valise containing a
cabinet with a girl’s name on it doesn’t seem calculated to scare an
able-bodied man to death. It isn’t full of dynamite, is it?”

“What is your branch of scientific work?” counter-questioned the other.

“Botany,” replied the young man, at random.

“No other? Physics? Entomology? Astronomy? Chemistry? Biology?”

The applicant shook his head in repeated negation. “None that I’ve
specialized on.”

“Ah! I fear you will not suit my purpose.”

“All right. But you haven’t explained, yet, why you’ve been studying me
through a peep-hole, when I am not allowed to see you.”

After a pause of consideration the voice spoke again.

“You are right. Since I can not employ you, I owe you every courtesy
for having put you to this trouble. You will observe that I am not very
presentable.”

The side door swung open. In the dimness of the half-disclosed
apartment Average Jones saw a man huddled in a chair. He wore a black
skull cap. So far as identification went he was safe. His whole face
was grotesquely blotched and swollen. So, also, were the hands which
rested on his knees.

“You will pardon me,” said Average Jones, “but I am by nature cautious.
You have touched me. Is it contagious?”

A contortion of the features, probably indicating a smile, made the
changeling face more hideous than before.

“Be at peace,” he said. “It is not. You can find your way out? I bid
you good evening, sir.”

“Now I wonder,” mused Average Jones, as he jolted on the rear platform
of an Eighth Avenue car, “by what lead I could have landed that job. I
rather think I’ve missed something.”

All that night, and recurrently on many nights thereafter, the poisoned
and contorted face and the scrawled “MERCY” on the cabinet lurked
troublously in his mind. Nor did Bertram cease to scoff him for his
maladroitness until both of them temporarily forgot the strange “Smith”
and his advertisement in the entrancement of a chase which led them for
a time far back through the centuries to a climax that might well have
cost Average Jones his life. They had returned from Baltimore and the
society of the Man who spoke Latin a few days when Bertram, at the
club, called up Average Jones’ office.

“I’m sending Professor Paul Gehren to you,” was his message. “He’ll
call to-day or to-morrow.”

Average Jones knew Professor Gehren by sight, knew of him further by
repute as an impulsive, violent, warm-hearted and learned pundit who,
for a typically meager recompense, furnished sundry classes of young
gentlemen with amusement, alarm and instruction, in about equal parts,
through the medium of lectures at the Metropolitan University. During
vacations the professor pursued, with some degree of passion,
experiments which added luster and selected portions of the alphabet to
his name. Twice a week he walked down-town to the Cosmic Club, where he
was wont to dine and express destructive and anarchistic views upon the
nature, conduct, motives and personality of the organization’s
governing committees.

On the day following Bertram’s telephone, Professor Gehren entered
Astor Court Temple, took the elevator to the ninth floor, and,
following directions, found himself scanning a ground-glass window
flaunting the capitalized and gilded legend,

A. JONES, AD-VISOR


“Ad-Visor,” commented the professor, rancorously. “A vicious verbal
monstrosity!” He read on:

ADVICE UPON ADVERTISING IN ALL FORMS
_Consultation Free. Step In_


“Consultation free!” repeated the educator with virulence. “A trap! A
manifest pitfall! I don’t know why Mr. Bertram should have sent me
hither. The enterprise is patently quack,” he asseverated in a rising
voice.

Upon the word a young man opened the door and, emerging, received the
accusation full in the face. The young man smiled.

“Quack, I said,” repeated the exasperated mentor, “and I repeat it.
Quack!”

“If you’re suffering from the delusion that you’re a duck,” observed
the young man mildly, “you’ll find a taxidermist on the top floor.”

The caller turned purple. “If you are Mr. Jones, of the Cosmic Club—”

“I am.”

“—there are certain things which Mr. Bertram must explain.”

“Yes; Bertram said that you were coming, but I’d almost given you up.
Come in.”

“Into a—a den where free advice is offered? Of all the patent and
infernal rascalities, sir, the offer of free advice—”

“There, there,” soothed the younger man. “I know all about the free
swindles. This isn’t one of them. It’s just a fad of mine.”

He led the perturbed scholar inside and got him settled in a chair.
“Now, go ahead. Show me the advertisement and tell me how much you
lost.”

“I’ve lost my assistant. There is no advertisement about it. What I
came for is advice. But upon seeing your tricky door-plate—”

“Oh, that’s merely to encourage the timorous. Who is this assistant?”

“Harvey Craig, a youth, hardly more than a boy, for whom I feel a
certain responsibility, as his deceased parents left him in my care.”

“Yes,” said Jones as the professor paused.

“He has disappeared.”

“When?”

“Permanently, since ten days ago.”

“Permanently?”

“Up to that time he had absented himself without reporting to me for
only three or four days at a time.”

“He lived with you?”

“No. He had been aiding me in certain investigations at my laboratory.”

“In what line?”

“Metallurgy.”

“When did he stop?”

“About four weeks ago.”

“Did he give any reason?”

“He requested indefinite leave. Work had been offered him, he hinted,
at a very high rate of remuneration.”

“You don’t know by whom?”

“No, I know nothing whatever about it.”

“Have you any definite suspicions as to his absence?”

“I gravely fear that the boy has made away with himself.”

“Why so?”

“After his first absence I called to see him at his room. He had
obviously undergone a violent paroxysm of grief or shame.”

“He told you this?”

“No. But his eyes, and, indeed, his whole face, were abnormally
swollen, as with weeping.”

“Ah, yes.” Average Jones’ voice had suddenly taken on a bored
indifference. “Were—er—his hands, also?”

“His hands? Why should they?”

“Of course, why, indeed? You noted them?”

“I did not, sir.”

“Did he seem depressed or morose?”

“I can not say that he did.”

“Professor Gehren, what, newspaper do you take?”

The scholar stared. “The _Citizen_ in the morning, The _Register_ in
the evening.”

“Are either of them delivered to your laboratory?”

“Yes; the _Register_.”

“Do you keep it on file?”

“No.”

“Ah! That’s a pity. Then you wouldn’t know if one were missing?”

The professor reflected. “Yes, there was a copy containing a letter
upon Von Studeborg’s recent experiments—”

“Can you recall the date?”

“After the middle of June, I think.”

Average Jones sent for a file and handed it to Professor Gehren.

“Is this it?” he asked, indicating the copy of June 18.

“That is the letter!” said that gentleman.

Average Jones turned the paper and found, upon an inside page, the
strange advertisement from 74 Bellair Street.

“One more question, Professor,” said he. “When did you last see Mr.
Craig?”

“Nine or ten days ago. I think it was July 2.”

“How did he impress you?”

“As being somewhat preoccupied. Otherwise normal.”

“Was his face swollen then?”

“No.”

“Where did you see him?”

“The first time at my laboratory, about eleven o’clock.”

“You saw him again that day, then?”

“Yes. We met by accident at a little before two P.M. on Twenty-third
Street. I was surprised, because he had told me he had to catch a noon
train and return to his work.”

“Then he hadn’t done so?”

“Yes. He explained that he had, but that he had been sent back to buy
some supplies.”

“You believe he was telling the truth?”

“In an extensive experience with young men I have never known a more
truthful one than he.”

“Between the first day of his coming back to New York and the last, had
you seen him?”

“I had talked with him over the telephone. He called up two or three
times to say that he was well and working hard and that he hoped to be
back in a few weeks.”

“Where did he call up from?”

“As he did not volunteer the information, I am unable to say.”

“Unfortunate again. Well, I think you may drop the notion of suicide.
If anything of importance occurs, please notify me at once. Otherwise,
I’ll send you word when I have made progress.”

Having dismissed the anxious pundit, Average Jones, so immersed in
thought as to be oblivious to outer things, made his way to the Cosmic
Club in a series of caroms from indignant pedestrian to indignant
pedestrian. There, as he had foreseen, he found Robert Bertram.

“Can I detach you from your usual bridge game this evening?” he
demanded of that languid gentleman.

“Very possibly. What’s the inducement?”

“Chapter Second of the Bellair Street advertisement. I’ve told you the
first chapter. You’ve been the god-outside-the-machine so far. Now,
come on in.”

Together they went to the Greenwich Village house. The name “Smith” had
disappeared from the vestibule.

“As I expected,” said Jones. “Our hope be in the landlord!”

The landlord turned out to be a German landlady, who knew little
concerning her late ground-floor tenant and evinced no interest in the
subject. The “perfessor,” as she termed “Smith,” had taken the flat by
the month, was prompt in payment, quiet in habit, given to long and
frequent absences; had been there hardly at all in the last few weeks.
Where had he moved to? Hummel only knew! He had left no address. Where
did his furniture go? Nowhere; he’d left it behind. Was any one in the
house acquainted with him? Mrs. Marron in the other ground-floor flat
had tried to be. Not much luck, she thought.

Mrs. Marron was voluble, ignorant, and a willing source of information.

“The perfessor? Sure! I knew’m. ’Twas me give’m the name. He was a
Mejum. Naw! Not for money. Too swell for that. But a real-thing Mejum.
A big one; one of the kind it comes to, nacheral. Spirit-rappin’s!
Somethin’ fierce! My kitchen window is on the air-shaft. So’s his.
Many’s the time in the still evenin’s I’ve heard the rap-rap-rappin’ on
his window an’ on the wall, but mostly on the window. Blip! out of the
dark. It’d make you just hop! And him sittin’ quiet and peaceful in the
front room all the time. Yep; my little girl seen him there while I was
hearin’ the raps.”

“Did you ask him about them?” inquired Jones.

“Sure! He wouldn’t have it at first. Then he kinder smiled and half
owned up. And once I seen him with his materializin’ wand, sittin’ in
the room almost dark.”

“His what?”

“Materializin’ wand. Spirit-rod, you know. As tall as himself and all
shiny and slick. It was slim and sort o’ knobby like this wood—what’s
the name of it, now?—they make fish poles out of. Only the real
big-bugs in spiritualism use ’em. They’re dangerous. You wouldn’t caich
me touchin’ it or goin’ in there even now. I says to Mrs. Kraus, I
says—”

And so the stream of high-pitched, eager talk flowed until the two men
escaped from it into the vacant apartment. This was much as Average
Jones had seen on his former visit. Only the strange valise was
missing. Going to the kitchen, which he opened through intermediate
doors on a straight line with the front room, Average Jones inspected
the window. The glass was thickly marked with faint, bluish blurs,
being, indeed, almost opaque from them in the middle of the upper pane.
There was nothing indicative below the window, unless it were a
considerable amount of crumbled putty, which he fingered with puzzled
curiosity.

In the front room a mass of papers had been half burned. Some of them
were local journals, mostly the _Evening Register_. A few were
publications in the Arabic text.

“Oriental newspapers,” remarked Bertram.

Average Jones picked them up and began to fold them. From between two
sheets fluttered a very small bit of paper, narrow and half curled, as
if from the drying of mucilage. He lifted and read it.

“Here we are again, Bert,” he remarked in his most casual tone. “The
quality of _this_ Mercy is strained, all right.”

The two men bent over the slip, studying it. The word was, as Average
Jones had said, in a strained, effortful handwriting, and each letter
stood distinct. These were the characters:

MERCY


“Is it mathematical, do you think, possibly?” asked Average Jones.

“All alone by itself like that? Rather not! More like a label, if you
ask me.”

“The little sister of the label on the cabinet, then.”

“_Cherchez la femme_,” observed Bertram. “It sounds like perfect
foolishness to me; a swollen faced outlander who rules familiar spirits
with a wand, and, between investigations in the realms of science,
writes a girl’s name all over the place like a lovesick school-boy! Is
Mercy his spirit-control, do you suppose?”

“Oh, let’s get out of here,” said Average Jones. “I’m getting dizzy
with it all. The next step,” he observed, as they walked slowly up the
street, “is by train. Want to take a short trip to-morrow, Bert? Or,
perhaps, several short trips?”

“Whither away, fair youth?”

“To the place where the fake ‘Smith’ and the lost Craig have been doing
their little stunts.”

“I thought you said Professor Gehren couldn’t tell you where Craig had
gone.”

“No more he could. So I’ve got to find out for myself. Here’s the way I
figure it out: The two men have been engaged in some out-of-door work
that is extra hazardous. So much we know. Harvey Craig has, I’m afraid,
succumbed to it. Otherwise he’d have sent some word to Professor
Gehren. He may be dead or he may only be disabled by the dangerous
character of the work, whatever it was. In any case our mysterious
foreign friend has probably skipped out hastily. Now, I propose to find
the railroad station they passed through, coming and going, and
interview the ticket agent.”

“You’ve got a fine large contract on your hands to find it.”

“Not so large, either. All we have to do is to look for a place that is
very isolated and yet quite near New York.”

“How do you know it is quite near New York?”

“Because Harvey Craig went there and back between noon and two o’clock,
Professor Gehren says. Now, we’ve got to find such a place which is
near a stretch of deserted, swampy ground, very badly infested with
mosquitoes. I’d thought of the Hackensack Meadows, just across the
river in Jersey.”

“That is all very well,” said Bertram; “but why mosquitoes?”

“Why, the poisoned and swollen face and hands both of them suffered
from,” explained Average Jones. “What else could it be?”

“I’d thought of poison-ivy or some kind of plant they’d been grubbing
at.”

“So had I. But I happened to think that anything of that sort, if it
had poisoned them once, would keep on poisoning them, while mosquitoes
they could protect themselves against, if they didn’t become immune, as
they most likely would. As there must have been a lot of ‘skeeters’ to
do the kind of job that ‘Smith’s’ face showed, I naturally figured on a
swamp.”

“Average,” said Bertram solemnly, “there are times when I conceive a
sort of respect for your commonplace and plodding intellect. Now, let
me have my little inning. I used to commute—on the Jersey and Delaware
Short Line. There’s a station on that line, Pearlington by name, that’s
a combination of Mosquitoville, Lonesomehurst and Nutting Doon. It’s in
the mathematical center of the ghastliest marsh anywhere between Here
and Somewhere else. I think that’s our little summer resort, and I’m
yours for the nine A. M. train to-morrow.”

Dismounting from that rather casual accommodation on the following day,
the two friends found Pearlington to consist of a windowed packing-box
inhabited by a hermit in a brass-buttoned blue. This lonely official
readily identified the subjects of Average Jones’ inquiry.

“I guess I know your friends, all right. The dago was tall and thin and
had white hair; almost snow-white. No, he wasn’t old, neither. He
talked very soft and slow. Used to stay off in the reeds three and four
days at a time. No, ain’t seen him for near a week; him nor his boat
nor the young fellow that was with him. Sort of bugologists, or
something, wasn’t they.”

“Have you any idea where we could find their camp?”

The railroad man laughed.

“Fine chance you got of finding anything in that swamp. There’s ten
square miles of it, every square just like every other square, and a
hundred little islands, and a thousand creeks and rivers winding
through.”

“You’re right,” agreed Average Jones. “It would take a month to search
it. You spoke of a boat.”

“It’s my notion they must have had a houseboat. They could a-rowed it
up on the tide from the Kills—a little one. I never saw no tent with
’em. And they had to have something over their heads. The boat I seen
’em have was a rowboat. I s’pose they used it to go back and forth in.”

“Thanks,” said Average Jones. “That’s a good idea about the houseboat.”

On the following day this advertisement appeared in the newspapers of
several shore towns along the New Jersey and Staten Island coast.

A DRIFT—A small houseboat lost several days ago from the Hackensack
Meadows. Fifty dollars reward paid for information leading to recovery.
Jones, Ad-Visor, Astor Court Temple, New York.


Two days later came a reply, locating the lost craft at Bayonne.
Average Jones went thither and identified it. Within its single room
was uttermost confusion, testifying to the simplest kind of
housekeeping sharply terminated. Attempt had been made to burn the boat
before it was given to wind and current, but certain evidences of
charred wood, and the fact of a succession of furious thunder-showers
in the week past, suggested the reason for failure. In a heap of
rubbish, where the fire had apparently started, Average Jones found,
first, a Washington newspaper, which he pocketed; next, with a swelling
heart, the wreck of the pasteboard cabinet, but no sign of the strange
valise which had held it. The “Mercy” sign was gone from the cabinet,
its place being supplied by a placard, larger, in a different
handwriting, and startlingly more specific:

“DANGER! IF FOUND DESTROY AT ONCE.
_Do Not Touch With Bare Hands_.”


There was nothing else. Gingerly, Average Jones detached the sign. The
cabinet proved to be empty. He pushed a rock into it, lifted it on the
end of a stick and dropped it overboard. One after another eight little
fishes glinted up through the water, turned their white bellies to the
sunlight and bobbed, motionless. The investigator hastily threw away
the label and cast his gloves after it. But on his return to the city
he was able to give a reproduction of the writing to Professor Gehren
which convinced that anxious scholar that Harvey Craig had been alive
and able to write not long before the time when the houseboat was set
adrift.




CHAPTER V. THE MERCY SIGN—TWO


Some days after the recovery of the houseboat, Average Jones sat at
breakfast, according to his custom, in the café of the Hotel Palatia.
Several matters were troubling his normally serene mind. First of these
was the loss of the trail which should have led to Harvey Craig.
Second, as a minor issue, the Oriental papers found in the deserted
Bellair Street apartment had been proved, by translation, to consist
mainly of revolutionary sound and fury, signifying, to the person most
concerned, nothing. As for the issue of the Washington daily, culled
from the houseboat, there was, amidst the usual mélange of social,
diplomatic, political and city news, no marked passage to show any
reason for its having been in the possession of “Smith.” Average Jones
had studied and restudied the columns, both reading matter and
advertising, until he knew them almost by heart. During the period of
waiting for his order to be brought he was brooding over the problem,
when he felt a hand-pressure on his shoulder and turned to confront Mr.
Thomas Colvin McIntyre, solemn of countenance and groomed with a
supernal modesty of elegance, as befitted a rising young diplomat,
already Fifth Assistant Secretary of State of the United States of
America.

“Hello, Tommy,” said the breakfaster. “What’ll you have to drink? An
_entente cordiale?_”

“Don’t joke,” said the other. “I’m in a pale pink funk. I’m afraid to
look into the morning papers.”

“Hello! What have you been up to that’s scandalous?”

“It isn’t me,” replied the diplomat ungrammatically. “It’s Telfik Bey.”

“Telfik Bey? Wait a minute. Let me think.” The name had struck a
response from some thought wire within Average Jones’ perturbed brain.
Presently it came to him as visualized print in small head-lines,
reproduced to the mind’s eye from the Washington newspaper which he had
so exhaustively studied.

THIS TURK A QUICK JUMPER
Telfik Bey, Guest of Turkish Embassy, Barely
Escapes a Speeding Motor-Car


No arrest, it appeared, had been made. The “story,” indeed, was brief,
and of no intrinsic importance other than as a social note. But to
Average Jones it began to glow luminously.

“Who is Telfik Bey?” he inquired.

“He isn’t. Up to yesterday he was a guest of this hotel.”

“Indeed! Skipped without paying his bill?”

“Yes—ah. Skipped—that is, left suddenly without paying his bill, if you
choose to put it that way.”

The tone was significant. Average Jones’ good natured face became
grave.

“Oh, I beg your pardon, Tommy. Was he a friend of yours?”

“No. He was, in a sense, a ward of the Department, over here on
invitation. This is what has almost driven me crazy.”

Fumbling nervously in the pocket of his creaseless white waistcoat he
brought forth a death notice.

“From the _Dial_,” he said, handing it to Average Jones.

The clipping looked conventional enough.

DIED—July 21, suddenly at the Hotel Palatia: Telfik Bey of Stamboul,
Turkey. Funeral services from the Turkish Embassy, Washington, on Tues.
Ana Alhari.


“If the newspapers ever discover—” The young diplomat stopped short
before the enormity of the hypothesis.

“It looks straight enough to me as a death notice, except for the tail.
What does ‘Ana Alhari’ mean? Sort of a _requiescat?_”

“Yes; like a mice!” said young Mr. McIntyre bitterly. “It means
‘Hurrah!’ That’s the sort of _requiescat_ it is!”

“Ah! Then they got him the second time.”

“What do you mean by ‘second time?’”

“The Washington incident, of course, was the first; the attempted
murder—that is, the narrow escape of Telfik Bey.”

Young Mr. McIntyre looked baffled. “I’m blessed if I know what you’re
up to, Jones,” he said. “But if you do know anything of this case I
need your help. In Washington, where they failed, we fooled the
newspapers. Here, where they’ve succeeded—“

“Who are ‘they?’” interrupted Jones.

“That’s what I’m here to get at. The murderers of Telfik Bey, of
course. My instructions are to find out secretly, if at all. For if it
does get into the newspapers there’ll be the very deuce to pay. It
isn’t desirable that even Telfik Bey’s presence here should have been
known for reasons which—ah—(here Average Jones remarked the resumption
of his friend’s official bearing)—which, not being for the public, I
need not detail to you.”

“You need not, in point of fact, tell me anything about it at all,”
observed Average Jones equably.

Pomposity fell away from Mr. Thomas Colvin McIntyre, leaving him
palpably shivering.

“But I need your help. Need it very much. You know something about
handling the newspapers, don’t you?”

“I know how to get things in; not how to keep them out.”

The other groaned. “It may already be too late. What newspapers have
you there?”

“All of ’em. Want me to look?”

Mr. McIntyre braced himself.

“Turk dies at Palatia,” read Average Jones. “Mm—heart disease...
wealthy Stamboul merchant... studying American methods... Turkish
minister notified.”

“Is that all?”

“Practically.”

“And the other reports?”

Average Jones ran them swiftly over. “About the same. Hold on! Here’s a
little something extra in the _Universal_.”

“Found on the floor... bell-boy who discovered the tragedy collapses...
condition serious... Supposedly shock—”

“What’s that?” interrupted young Mr. McIntyre, half rising. “Shot?”

“You’re nervous, Tommy. I didn’t say ‘shot.’ Said ‘shock’.”

“Oh, of course. Shock—the bell-boy, it means.”

“See here; first thing you know you’ll be getting me interested. Hadn’t
you better open up or shut up?”

Mr. McIntyre took a long breath and a resolution simultaneously.

“At any rate I can trust you,” he said. “Telfik Bey is not a merchant.
He is a secret, confidential agent of the Turkish government. He came
over to New York from Washington in spite of warnings that he would be
killed.”

“You’re certain he was killed?”

“I only wish I could believe anything else.”

“Shot?”

“The coroner and a physician whom I sent can find no trace of a wound.”

“What do they say?”

“Apoplexy.”

“The refuge of the mystified medico. It doesn’t satisfy you?”

“It won’t satisfy the State Department.”

“And possibly not the newspapers, eventually.”

“Come up with me and look the place over, Average. Let me send for the
manager.”

That functionary came, a vision of perturbation in a pale-gray coat.
Upon assurance that Average Jones was “safe” he led the way to the
rooms so hastily vacated by the spirit of the Turkish guest.

“We’ve succeeded in keeping two recent suicides and a blackmail scheme
in this hotel out of the newspapers,” observed the manager morosely.
“But this would be the worst of all. If I could have known, when the
Turkish Embassy reserved the apartment—”

“The Turkish Embassy never reserved any apartment for Telfik Bey,” put
in the Fifth Assistant Secretary of State.

“Surely you are mistaken, sir,” replied the hotel man. “I saw their
emissary myself. He specified for rooms on the south side, either the
third or fourth floor. Wouldn’t have anything else.”

“You gave him a definite reservation?” asked Jones.

“Yes; 335 and 336.”

“Has the man been here since?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“A Turk, you think?”

“I suppose so. Foreign, anyway.”

“Anything about him strike you particularly?”

“Well, he was tall and thin and looked sickly. He talked very soft,
too, like a sick man.”

The characterization of the Pearlington station agent recurred to the
interrogator’s mind. “Had he—er—white hair?” he half yawned.

“No,” replied the manager, and, in the same breath, the budding
diplomat demanded:

“What are you up to, Average? Why should he?”

Average Jones turned to him. “To what other hotels would the Turkish
Embassy be likely to send its men?”

“Sometimes their _charge d’affaires_ goes to the Nederstrom.”

“Go up there and find out whether a room has been reserved for Telfik
Bey, and if so—”

“They wouldn’t reserve at two hotels, would they?”

“By whom,” concluded Average Jones, shaking his head at the
interruption. “Find out who occupied or reserved the apartments on
either side.”

Mr. Thomas Colvin McIntyre lifted a wrinkling eyebrow. “Really, Jones,”
he observed, “you seem to be employing me rather in the capacity of a
messenger boy.”

“If you think a messenger boy could do it as well, ring for one,”
drawled Average Jones, in his mildest voice. “Meantime, I’ll be in the
Turk’s room here.”

Numbers 335 and 336, which the manager opened, after the prompt if
somewhat sulky departure of Mr. McIntyre, proved to consist of a small
sitting room, a bedroom and a bath, each with a large window giving on
the cross-street, well back from Fifth Avenue.

“Here’s where he was found.” The manager indicated a spot near the wall
of the sitting-room and opposite the window. “He had just pushed the
button when he fell.”

“How do you know that?”

“Bronson, the bell-boy on that call, answered. He knocked several times
and got no answer. Then he opened the door and saw Mr. Telfik down, all
in a heap.”

“Where is Bronson?”

“At the hospital, unconscious.”

“What from?”

“Shock, the doctors say.”

“What—er—about the—er—shot?”

The manager looked startled. “Well, Bronson says that just as he opened
the door he saw a bullet cross the room and strike the wall above the
body.”

“You can’t see a bullet in flight.”

“He saw this one,” insisted the manager. “As soon as it struck it
exploded. Three other people heard it.”

“What did Bronson do?”

“Lost his head and ran out. He hadn’t got halfway to the elevator when
he fell, in a sort of fainting fit. He came to long enough to tell his
story. Then he got terribly nauseated and went off again.”

“He’s sure the man had fallen before the explosion?”

“Absolutely.”

“And he got no answer to his knocking?”

“No. That’s why he went in. He thought something might be wrong.”

“Had anybody else been in the room or past it within a few minutes?”

“Absolutely no one. The floor girl’s desk is just outside. She must
have seen anyone going in.”

“Has she anything to add?”

“She heard the shot. And a minute or two before, she had heard and felt
a jar from the room.”

“Corroborative of the man having fallen before the shot,” commented
Jones.

“When I got here, five minutes later, he was quite dead,” continued the
manager.

Evidence of the explosion was slight to the investigating eye of
Average Jones. The wall showed an abrasion, but, as the investigator
expected, no bullet hole. Against the leg of a desk he found a small
metal shell, which he laid on the table.

“There’s your bullet,” he observed with a smile.

“It’s a cartridge, anyway,” cried the hotel man. “He must have been
shot, after all.”

“From inside the room? Hardly! And certainly not with that. It’s a very
small fulminate of mercury shell, and never held lead. No. The man was
down, if not dead, before that went off.”

Average Jones was now at the window. Taking a piece of paper from his
pocket he brushed the contents of the window-sill upon it. A dozen dead
flies rolled upon the paper. He examined them thoughtfully, cast them
aside and turned back to the manager.

“Who occupy the adjoining rooms?”

“Two maiden ladies _did_, on the east. They’ve left,” said the manager
bitterly. “Been coming here for ten years, and now they’ve quit. If the
facts ever get in the newspapers—”

“What’s on the west, adjoining?”

“Nothing. The corridor runs down there.”

“Then it isn’t probable that any one got into the room from either
side.”

“Impossible,” said the manager.

Here Mr. Thomas Colvin McIntyre arrived with a flushed face.

“You are right, Average,” he said. “The same man had reserved rooms at
the Nederstrom for Telfik Bey.”

“What’s the location?”

“Tenth floor; north side. He had insisted on both details. Nos. 1015,
1017.”

“What neighbors?”

“Bond salesman on one side, Reverend and Mrs. Salisbury, of Wilmington,
on the other.”

“Um-m-m. What across the street?”

“How should I know? You didn’t tell me to ask.”

“It’s the Glenargan office building, just opened, Mr. Jones,”
volunteered the manager.

Average Jones turned again to the window, closed it and fastened his
handkerchief in the catch. “Leave that there,” he directed the manager.
“Don’t let any one into this room. I’m off.”

Stopping to telephone, Average Jones ascertained that there were no
vacant offices on the tenth floor, south side of the Glenargan
apartment building, facing the Nederstrom Hotel. The last one had been
let two weeks before to—this he ascertained by judicious questioning—a
dark, foreign gentleman who was an expert on rugs. Well satisfied, the
investigator crossed over to the skyscraper across from the Palatia.
There he demanded of the superintendent a single office on the third
floor, facing north. He was taken to a clean and vacant room. One
glance out of the window showed him his handkerchief, not opposite, but
well to the west.

“Too near Fifth Avenue,” he said. “I don’t like the roar of the
traffic.”

“There’s one other room on this floor, farther along,” said the
superintendent, “but it isn’t in order. Mr. Perkins’ time isn’t up till
day after tomorrow, and his things are there yet. He told the janitor,
though, that he was leaving town and wouldn’t bother to take away the
things. They aren’t worth much. Here’s the place.”

They entered the office. In it were only a desk, two chairs and a scrap
basket. The basket was crammed with newspapers. One of them was the
_Hotel Register_. Average Jones found Telfik Bey’s name, as he had
expected, in its roster.

“I’ll give fifty dollars for the furniture as it stands.”

“Glad to get it,” was the prompt response. “Will you want anything
else, now?”

“Yes. Send the janitor here.”

That worthy, upon receipt of a considerable benefaction, expressed
himself ready to serve the new tenant to the best of his ability.

“Do you know when Mr. Perkins left the building?”

“Yes, sir. This morning, early.”

“This morning! Sure it wasn’t yesterday?”

“Am I sure? Didn’t I help him to the street-car and hand him his little
package? That sick he was he couldn’t hardly walk alone.”

Average Jones pondered a moment. “Do you think he could have passed the
night here?”

“I know he did,” was the prompt response. “The scrubwoman heard him
when she came this morning.”

“Heard him?”

“Yes’ sir. Sobbing, like.”

The nerves of Average Jones gave a sharp “kickback,” like a mis-cranked
motor-car. His trend of thought had suddenly been reversed. The devious
and scientific slayer of Telfik Bey in tears? It seemed completely out
of the picture.

“You may go,” said he, and seating himself at the desk, proceeded to an
examination of his newly acquired property. The newspapers in the scrap
basket, mainly copies of the _Evening Register_, seemed to contain,
upon cursory examination, nothing germane to the issue. But, scattered
among them, the searcher found a number of fibrous chips. They were
short and thick; such chips as might be made by cutting a bamboo pole
into cross lengths, convenient for carrying.

“The ‘spirit-wand’,” observed Average Jones with gusto. “That was the
‘little package,’ of course.”

Next, he turned his attention to the desk. It was bare, except for a
few scraps of paper and some writing implements. But in a crevice there
shone a glimmer of glass. With a careful finger-nail Average Jones
pushed out a small phial. It had evidently been sealed with lead.
Nothing was in it.

Its discoverer leaned back and contemplated it with stiffened eyelids.
For, upon its tiny, improvised label was scrawled the “Mercy sign;”
mysterious before, now all but incredible.

For silent minutes Average Jones sat bemused. Then, turning in a
messenger call, he drew to him a sheet of paper upon which he slowly
and consideringly wrote a few words.

“You get a dollar extra if this reaches the advertising desk of the
_Register_ office within half an hour,” he advised the uniformed urchin
who answered the call. The modern mercury seized the paper and fled
forthwith.

Punctuality was a virtue which Average Jones had cultivated to the
point of a fad. Hence it was with some discountenance that his clerk
was obliged to apologize for his lateness, first, at 4 P. M. Of July
23, to a very dapper and spruce young gentleman in pale mauve spats,
who wouldn’t give his name; then at 4:05 P. m. of the same day to
Professor Gehren, of the Metropolitan University; and finally at 4:30
P. m. to Mr. Robert Bertram. When, only a moment before five, the
Ad-Visor entered, the manner of his apology was more absent than
fervent.

Bertram held out a newspaper to him.

“Cast your eye on that,” said he. “The _Register_ fairly reeks with
freaks lately.”

Average Jones read aloud.

SMITH-PERKINS, formerly 74 Bellair—Send map present location H. C.
Turkish Triumph about smoked out. MERCY—Box 34, Office.


“Oh, I don’t know about its being so freakish,” said Average Jones.

“Nonsense! Look at it! Turkish Triumph—that’s a cigarette, isn’t it? H.
C.—what’s that? And signed Mercy. Why, it’s the work of a lunatic!”

“It’s my work,” observed Average Jones blandly.

The three visitors stared a him in silence.

“Rather a forlorn hope, but sometimes a bluff will go,” he continued.

“If H. C. indicates Harvey Craig, as I infer,” said Professor Gehren
impatiently, “are you so infantile as to suppose that his murderer will
give information about him?”

Average Jones smiled, drew a letter from his pocket, glanced at it and
called for a number in Hackensack.

“Take the ’phone, Professor Gehren,” he said, when the reply came.
“It’s the Cairnside Hospital. Ask for information about Harvey Craig.”

With absorbed intentness the other three listened to the one-sided
conversation.

“Hello!... May I speak to Mr. Harvey Craig’s doctor?... This is
Professor Gehren of the Metropolitan University... Thank you, Doctor.
How is he?... Very grave?... Ah, has been very grave .... Wholly out of
danger?... What was the nature of his illness?

“When may I see him?... Very well. I will visit the hospital to-morrow
morning. Thank you.... I should have expected that you would notify me
of his, presence.” intervened, then “Good-by.”

“It is most inexplicable,” declared Professor Gehren, turning to the
others. “The doctor states that Harvey was brought there at night, by a
foreigner who left a large sum of money to pay for his care, and
certain suggestions for his treatment. One detail, carefully set down
in writing, was that if reddish or purple dots appeared under Harvey’s
nails, he was to be told that Mr. Smith released him and advised his
sending for his friends at once.”

“Reddish or purple dots, eh?” repeated Average Jones. “I should
like—er—to have talked with—er—that doctor before you cut off.”

“And I, sir,” said the professor, with the grim repression of the
thinker stirred to wrath, “should like to interview this stranger.”

“Perfectly feasible, I think,” returned Average Jones.

A long silence.

“You don’t mean that you’ve located him already!” cried young Mr.
McIntyre.

“He was so obliging as to save me the trouble.”

Average Jones held up the letter from which he had taken the Cairnside
Hospital’s telephone number. “The advertisement worked to a charm. Mr.
Smith gives his address in this, and intimates that I may call upon
him.”

Young Mr. McIntyre rose.

“You’re going to see him, then?”

“At once.”

“Did I understand you to imply that I am at liberty to accompany you?”
inquired Professor Gehren.

“If you care to take the risk.”

“Think there’ll be excitement?” asked Bertram languidly. “I’d like to
go along.”

Average Jones nodded. “One or a dozen; I fancy it will be all the same
to Smith.”

“You think we’ll find him dead.” Young Mr. McIntyre leaped to this
conclusion. “Count me in on it.”

“N-no; not dead.”

“Perhaps his friend ‘Mercy’ has gone back on him, then,” suggested Mr.
McIntyre, unabashed.

“Yes; I rather think that’s it,” said Average Jones, in a curious
accent. “‘Mercy’ has gone back on him, I believe, though I can’t quite
accurately place her as yet. Here’s the taxi,” he broke off. “All
aboard that’s going aboard. But it’s likely to be dangerous.”

Across town and far up the East Side whizzed the car, over the bridge
that leads away from Manhattan Island to the north, and through quiet
streets as little known to the average New Yorker as are Hong Kong and
Caracas. In front of a frame house it stopped. On a side porch, over
which bright roses swarmed like children clambering into a hospitable
lap, sat a man with a gray face. He was tall and slender, and his hair,
a dingy black, was already showing worn streaks where the color had
faded. At Average Jones he gazed with unconcealed surprise.

“Ah; it is _you!_” he exclaimed. “_You_,” he smiled, “are the ‘Mercy’
of the advertisement?”

“Yes.”

“And these gentlemen?”

“Are my friends.”

“You will come in?”

Average Jones examined a nodding rose with an indulgent, almost a
paternal, expression.

“If you—er—think it—er—safe,” he murmured.

“Assuredly.”

As if exacting a pledge the young man held out his hand. The older one
unhesitatingly grasped it. Average Jones turned the long fingers, which
enclosed his, back upward, and glanced at them.

“Ah,” he said, and nodded soberly, “so, it is that.”

“Yes; it is that,” assented the other. “I perceive that you have
communicated with Mr. Craig. How is he?”

“Out of danger.”

“That is well. A fine and manly youth. I should have sorely regretted
it if—”

Professor Gehren broke in upon him. “For the peril in which you have
involved him, sir, you have to answer to me, his guardian.”

The foreigner raised a hand. “He was without family or ties. I told him
the danger. He accepted it. Once he was careless—and one is not
careless twice in that work. But he was fortunate, too. I, also, was
fortunate in that the task was then so far advanced that I could
complete it alone. I got him to the hospital at night; no matter how.
For his danger and illness I have indemnified him in the sum of ten
thousand dollars. Is it enough?”

Professor Gehren bowed.

“And you, Mr. Jones; are you a detective?”

“No; merely a follower of strange trails—by taste.”

“Ah. You have set yourself to a dark one. You wish to know how Telfik
Bey”—his eyes narrowed and glinted—“came to his reward. Will you enter,
gentlemen?”

“I know this much,” replied Average Jones as, followed by his friends,
he passed through the door which their host held open. “With young
Craig as an assistant, you prepared, in the loneliest part of the
Hackensack Meadows, some kind of poison which, I believe, can be made
with safety only in the open air.”

The foreigner smiled and shook his head.

“Not with safety, even then,” he said. “But go on.”

“You found that your man was coming to New York. Knowing that he would
probably put up at the Palatia or the Nederstrom, you reserved rooms
for him at both, and took an office across from each. As it was hot
weather, you calculated upon his windows being open. You watched for
him. When he came you struck him down in his own room with the poison.”

“But how?” It was the diplomat who interrupted.

“I think with a long blow-gun.”

“By George!” said Bertram softly. “So the spirit-wand of bamboo was a
blow-gun! What led you to that, Average?”

“The spirit rappings, which the talky woman in the Bellair Street
apartment used to hear. That and the remnants of putty I found near the
window. You see the doors opening through the whole length of the
apartment gave a long range, where Mr.—er—Smith could practice. He had
a sort of target on the window, and every time he blew a putty ball
Mrs. Doubletongue heard the spirit. Am I right, sir?”

The host bowed.

“The fumes, whatever they were, killed swiftly?”

“They did. Instantly; mercifully. Too mercifully.”

“How could you know it was fumes?” demanded Mr. Thomas Colvin McIntyre.

“By the dead flies, the effect upon the bell-boy, and the fact that no
wound was found on the body. Then, too, there was the fulminate of
mercury shell.”

“Of what possible use was that?” asked Professor Gehren.

“A question that I’ve asked myself, sir, a great many times over in the
last twenty-four hours. Perhaps Mr. Smith could answer that best.
Though—er—I think the shell was blown through the blowpipe to clear the
deadly fumes from the room by its explosion, before any one else should
suffer. Smith is, at least, not a wanton slaughterer.”

“You are right, sir, and I thank you,” said the foreigner. He drew
himself up weakly but with pride. “Gentlemen, I am not a murderer. I am
an avenger. It would have gone hard with my conscience had any innocent
person met death through me. As for that Turkish dog, you shall judge
for yourself whether he did not die too easily.”

From among the papers in a _tiroir_ against the wall he took a French
journal, and read, translating fluently. The article was a bald account
of the torture, outrage and massacre of Armenian women and girls, at
Adana, by the Turks. The most hideous portion of it was briefly
descriptive of the atrocities perpetrated by order of a high Turkish
official upon a mother and two young daughters. “An Armenian prisoner,
being dragged by in chains, went mad at the sight,” the correspondent
stated.

“I was that prisoner,” said the reader. “The official was Telfik Bey. I
saw my naked daughter break from the soldiers and run to him, pleading
for pity, as he sat his horse; and I saw him strike his spur into her
bare breast. My wife, the mother of my children—”

“Don’t!” The protest came from the Fifth Assistant Secretary of State.

He had risen. His smooth-skinned face was contracted, and the sweat
stood beaded on his forehead. “I—I can’t stand it. I’ve got my duty to
do. This man has made a confession.”

“Your pardon,” said the foreigner. “I have lived and fed on and slept
with that memory, ever since. On my release I left my country. The
enterprise of which I had been the head, dye-stuff manufacturing, had
interested me in chemistry. I went to England to study further. Thence
I came to America to wait.”

“You have heard his confession, all of you,” said young Mr. McIntyre,
rising. “I shall have him put under arrest pending advice from
Washington.”

“You, may save yourself the trouble, I think, Tommy,” drawled Average
Jones. “Mr. Smith will never be called to account in this world for the
murder—execution of Telfik Bey.”

“You saw the marks on my finger-nails,” said the foreigner. “That is
the sure sign. I may live twenty-four hours; I may live twice or three
times that period. The poison does its work, once it gets into the
blood, and there is no help. It matters nothing. My ambition is
satisfied.”

“And it is because of this that you let us find you?” asked Bertram.

“I had a curiosity to know who had so strangely traced my actions.”

“But what was the poison?” asked Professor Gehren.

“I think Mr. Jones has more than a suspicion,” replied the doomed man,
with a smile. “You will find useful references on yonder shelf, Mr.
Jones.”

Moving across to the shelf, Average Jones took down a heavy volume and
ran quickly over the leaves.

“Ah!” he said presently, and not noticing, in his absorption, that the
host had crossed again to the _tiroir_ and was quietly searching in a
compartment, he read aloud:

“Little is known of cyanide of cacodyl, in its action the swiftest and
most deadly of existing poisons. In the ’40’s, Bunsen, the German
chemist, combined oxide of cacodyl with cyanogen, a radical of prussic
acid, producing cyanide of cacodyl, or diniethyl arsine cyanide. As
both of its components are of the deadliest description, it is
extremely dangerous to make. It can be made only in the open air, and
not without the most extreme precaution known to science. Mr. Lacelles
Scott, of England, nearly lost his life experimenting with it in 1904.
A small fraction of a grain gives off vapor sufficient to kill a human
being instantly.”


“Had you known about this stuff, Average?” asked Bertram.

“No, I’d never beard of it. But from its action and from the lettered
cabinet, I judged that—”

“This is all very well,” broke in Mr. Assistant Secretary Thomas Colvin
McIntyre, “but I want this man arrested. How can we know that he isn’t
shamming and may not escape us, after all?”

“By this,” retorted their host. He held aloft a small glass vial,
lead-seated, and staggered weakly to the door.

“Stop him!” said Average Jones sharply.

The door closed on the words. There was a heavy fall without, followed
by the light tinkle of glass.

Average Jones, who had half crossed the room in a leap, turned to his
friends, warning them back.

“Too late. We can’t go out yet. Wait for the fumes to dissipate.”

They stood, the four men, rigid. Presently Average Jones, opening a
rear window, leaped to the ground, followed by the others, and came
around the corner of the porch. The dead man lay with peaceful face.
Professor Gehren uncovered.

“God forgive him,” he said. “Who shall say that he was not right?”

“Not I,” said the young assistant secretary in awed tones. “I’m glad he
escaped. But what am I to do? Here we are with a dead body on our
hands, and a state secret to be kept from the prying police.”

Average Jones stood thinking for a moment, then he entered the room and
called up the coroner’s office on the telephone.

“Listen, you men,” he said to his companions. Then, to the official who
answered: “There’s a suicide at 428 Oliver Avenue, the Bronx. Four of
us witnessed it. We had come to keep an appointment with the man in
connection with a discovery he claimed in metallurgy, and found him
dying. Yes; we will wait here. Good-by.”

Returning to the porch again, he cleared away the fragments of glass,
aided by Bertram. To one of these clung a shred of paper. For all his
languid self-control the club dilettante shivered a little as he thrust
at it with a stick.

“Look, Average, it’s the ‘Mercy’ sign again. What a hideous travesty!”

Average Jones shook his bead.

“It isn’t ‘Mercy,’ Bert. It’s the label that he attached, for
precaution, to everything that had to do with his deadly stuff. The
formula for cyanide of cacodyl is ‘Me-2CY.’ It was the scrawly
handwriting that misled; that’s all.”

“So I was right when I suggested that his ‘Mercy’ had gone back on
him,” said Mr. Thomas Colvin McIntyre, with a semi-hysterical giggle.

Average Jones looked from the peaceful face of the dead to the label,
fluttering in the light breeze.

“No,” he said gravely. “You were wrong. It was his friend to the last.”




CHAPTER VI. BLUE FIRES


“Cabs for comfort; cars for company,” was an apothegm which Average
Jones had evolved from experience. A professed student of life, he
maintained, must keep in touch with life at every feasible angle. No
experience should come amiss to a detective; he should be a pundit of
all knowledge. A detective he now frankly considered himself; and the
real drudgery of his unique profession of Ad-Visor was supportable only
because of the compensating thrill of the occasional chase, the
radiance of the Adventure of Life glinting from time to time across his
path.

There were few places, Average Jones held, where human nature in the
rough can be studied to better advantage than in the stifling tunnels
of the subway or the close-packed sardine boxes of the metropolitan
surface lines. It was in pursuance of this theory that he encountered
the Westerner, on Third avenue car. By custom, Average Jones picked out
the most interesting or unusual human being in any assembly where he
found himself, for study and analysis. This man was peculiar in that he
alone was not perspiring in the sodden August humidity. The
clear-browned skin and the rangy strength of the figure gave him a
certain distinction. He held in his sinewy hands a doubly folded
newspaper. Presently it slipped from his hold to the seat beside him.
He stared at the window opposite with harassed and unseeing eyes.
Abruptly he rose and went out on the platform. Average Jones picked up
the paper. In the middle of the column to which it was folded was a
marked advertisement:

ARE you in an embarrassing position? Anything, anywhere, any time,
regardless of nature or location. Everybody’s friend. Consultation at
all hours. Suite 152, Owl Building, Brooklyn.


The car was nearing Brooklyn Bridge. Average Jones saw his man drop
lightly off. He followed and at the bridge entrance caught him up.

“You’ve left your paper,” he said.

The stranger whirled quickly. “Right,” he said. “Thanks. Perhaps you
can tell me where the Owl Building is.”

“Are you going there?”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t.”

A slight wrinkle of surprise appeared on the man’s tanned forehead.

“Perhaps _you_ wouldn’t,” he returned coolly.

“In other words, ‘mind your business’,” said Average Jones, with a
smile.

“Something of that sort,” admitted the stranger.

“Nevertheless, I wouldn’t consult with Everbody’s Friend over in the
Owl Building.”

“Er—because—er—if I may speak plainly,” drawled Average Jones, “I
wouldn’t risk a woman’s name with a gang of blackmailers.”

“You’ve got your nerve,” retorted the stranger. The keen eyes,
flattening almost to slits, fixed on the impassive face of the other.

“Well, I’ll go you,” he decided, after a moment. His glance swept the
range of vision and settled upon a rathskeller sign. “Come over there
where we can talk.”

They crossed the grilling roadway, and, being wise in the heat, ordered
“soft” drinks.

“Now,” said the stranger, “you’ve declared in on my game. Make good.
What’s your interest?”

“None, personally. I like your looks, that’s all,” replied the other
frankly. “And I don’t like to see you run into that spider’s web.”

“You know them?”

“Twice in the last year I’ve made ’em change their place of business.”

“But you don’t know me. And you spoke of a woman.”

“I’ve been studying you on the car,” explained Average Jones. “You’re
hard as nails; yet your nerves are on edge. It isn’t illness, so it
must be trouble. On your watch-chain you’ve got a solitaire diamond
ring. Not for ornament; you aren’t that sort of a dresser. It’s there
for, convenience until you can find a place to put it. When a deeply
troubled man wears an engagement ring on his watch chain it’s a fair
inference that there’s been an obstruction in the course of true love.
Unless I’m mistaken, you, being a stranger newly come to town, were
going to take your case to those man-eating sharks?”

“How do you know I’ve just come to town?”

“When you looked at your watch I noticed it was three hours slow. That
must mean the Pacific coast, or near it. Therefore you’ve just got in
from the Far West and haven’t thought to rectify your time. At a
venture I’d say you were a mining man from down around the Ray-Kelvin
copper district in Arizona. That peculiar, translucent copper silicate
in your scarf-pin comes from those mines.”

“The Blue Fire? I wish it had stayed there, all of it! Anything else?”

“Yes,” returned Average Jones, warming to the game. “You’re an Eastern
college man, I think. Anyway, your father or some older member of your
family graduated from one of the older colleges.”

“What’s the answer?”

“The gold of your Phi Beta Kappa key is a different color from your
watch-chain. It’s the old metal, antedating the California gold. Did
your father graduate some time in the latter forties or early fifties?”

“Hamilton, ’51. I’m ’89. Name, Kirby.”

A gleam of pleasure appeared in Average Jones keen eyes. “That’s rather
a coincidence,” he said. “Two of us from the Old Hill. I’m Jones of
’04. Had a cousin in your class, Carl Van Reypen.”

They plunged into the intimate community of interest which is the
peculiar heritage and asset of the small, close-knit old college.
Presently, however, Kirby’s forehead wrinkled again. He sat silent,
communing with himself. At length he lifted his head like one who has
taken a resolution.

“You made a good guess at a woman in the case,” he, said. “And you call
this a coincidence? _She’d_ say it was a case of intuition. She’s very
strong on intuition and superstition generally.” There was a mixture of
tenderness and bitterness in his tone. “Chance brought that
advertisement to her eyes. A hat-pin she’d dropped stuck through it, or
something of the sort. Enough for her. Nothing would do but that I
should chase over to see the Owl Building bunch. At that, maybe her
hunch was right. It’s brought me up against you. Perhaps you can help
me. What are you? A sort of detective?”

“Only on the side.” Average Jones drew a card from his pocket, and
tendered it:

A. JONES, AD-VISOR

Advice upon all matters connected with
Advertising
_Astor Court Temple                    2 to 5 P.M._


“Ad-Visor, eh?” repeated the other. “Well, there’s going to be an
advertisement in the _Evening Truth_ to-day, by me. Here’s a proof of
it.”

Average Jones took the slip and read it.

LOST—Necklace of curious blue stones from Hotel Denton, night of August
6. Reward greater than value of stones for return to hotel. No
questions asked.


“Reward greater than value of stones,” commented Average Jones.
“There’s a sentimental interest, then?”

“Will you take the case?” returned Kirby abruptly.

“At least I’ll look into it,” replied Average Jones.

“Come to the hotel, then, and lunch with me, and I’ll open up the whole
thing.”

Across a luncheon-table, at the quiet, old-fashioned Hotel Denton,
Kirby unburdened himself.

“You know all that’s necessary about me. The—the other party in the
matter is Mrs. Hale. She’s a young widow. We’ve been engaged for six
months; were to be married in a fortnight. Now she insists on a
postponement. That’s where I want your help.”

Average Jones moved uneasily in his chair. “Really, Mr. Kirby, lovers’
quarrels aren’t in my line.”

“There’s been no quarrel. We’re as much engaged now as ever, in spite
of the return of the ring. It’s only her infern—her deep-rooted
superstition that’s caused this trouble. One can’t blame her; her
father and mother were both killed in an accident after some sort of
‘ghostly warning.’ The first thing I gave her, after our engagement,
was a necklace of these stones”—he tapped his scarf pin—“that I’d
selected, one by one, myself. They’re beautiful, as you see, but
they’re not particularly valuable; only semiprecious. The devil of it
is that they’re the subject of an Indian legend. The Indians and
Mexicans call them “blue fires,” and say they have the power to bind
and loose in love. Edna has been out in that country; she’s naturally
high strung and responsive to that sort of thing, as I told you, and
she fairly soaked in all that nonsense. To make it worse, when I sent
them to her I wrote that—that—” a dull red surged up under the tan
skin—“that as long as the fire in the stones burned blue for her my
heart would be all hers. Now the necklace is gone. You can imagine the
effect on a woman of that temperament. And you can see the result.” He
pointed with a face of misery to the solitaire on his watch-chain. “She
insisted on giving this back. Says that a woman as careless as she
proved herself can’t be trusted with jewelry. And she’s hysterically
sure that misfortune will follow us for ever if we’re married without
recovering the fool necklace. So she’s begged a postponement.”

“Details,” said Average Jones crisply.

“She’s here at this hotel. Has a small suite on the third floor. Came
down from her home in central New York to meet my mother, whom she had
never seen. Mother’s here, too, on the same floor. Night before last
Mrs. Hale thought she heard a noise in her outer room. She made a
look-see, but found nothing. In the morning when she got up, about ten
(she’s a late riser) the necklace was gone.”

“Where had it been left?”

“On a stand in her sitting-room.”

“Anything else taken?”

“That’s the strange part of it. Her purse, with over a hundred dollars
in it, which lay under the necklace, wasn’t touched.”

“Does she usually leave valuables around in that casual way?”

“Well, you see, she’s always stayed at the Denton and she felt
perfectly secure here.”

“Any other thefts in the hotel?”

“Not that I can discover. But one of the guests on the same floor with
Mrs. Hale saw a fellow acting queerly that same night. There he sits,
yonder, at that table. I’ll ask him to come over.”

The guest, an elderly man, already interested in the case, was willing
enough to tell all he knew.

“I was awakened by some one fumbling at my door and making a clinking
noise,” he explained. “I called out. Nobody answered. Almost
immediately I heard a noise across the hall. I opened my door. A man
was fussing at the keyhole of the room opposite. He was very clumsy. I
said, ‘is that your room?’ He didn’t even look at me. In a moment he
started down the hallway. He walked very fast, and I could hear him
muttering to himself. He seemed to be carrying something in front of
him with both hands. It was his keys, I suppose. Anyway I could hear it
clink. At the end of the hall he stopped, turned to the door at the
left and fumbled at the keyhole for quite a while. I could bear his
keys clink again. This time, I suppose, he had the right room, for be
unlocked it and went in. I listened for fifteen or twenty minutes.
There was nothing further.”

Average Jones looked at Kirby with lifted brows of inquiry. Kirby
nodded, indicating that the end room was Mrs. Hales’.

“How was the man dressed?” asked Average Jones.

“Grayish dressing-gown and bed-slippers. He was tall and had gray
hair.”

“Many thanks. Now, Mr. Kirby, will you take me to see Mrs. Hale?”

The young widow received them in her sitting-room. She was of the
slender, big-eyed, sensitive type of womanhood; her piquant face marred
by the evidences of sleeplessness and tears. To Average Jones she gave
her confidence at once. People usually did.

“I felt sure the advertisement would bring us help,” she said
wistfully. “Now, I feel surer than ever.”

“Faith helps the worst case,” said the young man, smiling. “Mr. Kirby
tells me that the intruder awakened you.”

“Yes; and I’m a very heavy sleeper. Still I can’t say positively that
anything definite roused me; it was rather an impression of some one’s
being about. I came out of my bedroom and looked around the outer room,
but there was nobody there.”

“You didn’t think to look for the necklace?”

“No,” she said with a little gasp; “if I only had!”

“And—er—you didn’t happen to hear a clinking noise, did you?”

“No.”

“After he’d got into the room he’d put the key up, wouldn’t he?”
suggested Kirby.

“You’re assuming that he had a key.”

“Of course he had a key. The guest across the ball saw him trying it on
the other doors and heard it clink against the lock.”

“If he had a key to this room why did he try it on several other doors
first?” propounded Average Jones. “As for the clinking noise, in which
I’m a good deal interested—may I look at your key, Mrs. Hale?”

She handed it to him. He tried it on the lock, outside, jabbing at the
metal setting. The resultant sound was dull and wooden. “Not much of
the clink which our friend describes as having heard, is it?” he
remarked.

“Then how could he get into my room?” cried Mrs. Hale.

“Are you sure your door was locked?”

“Certain. As soon as I missed the necklace I looked at the catch.”

“That was in the morning. But the night before?”

“I always slip the spring. And I know I did this time because it had
been left unsprung so that Mr. Kirby’s mother could come in and out of
my sitting-room, and I remember springing it when she left for bed.”

“Sometimes these locks don’t work.” Slipping the catch back, Average
Jones pressed the lever down. There was a click, but the ward failed to
slip. At the second attempt the lock worked. But repeated trials proved
that more than half the time the door did not lock.

“So,” observed Average Jones, “I think we may dismiss the key theory.”

“But the locked door this morning?” cried Mrs. Hale.

“The intruder may have done that as he left.”

“I don’t see why,” protested Kirby, in a tone which indicated a waning
faith in Jones.

“By way of confusing the trail. Possibly he hoped to suggest that he’d
escaped by the fire-escape. Presumably he was on the balcony when Mrs.
Hale came out into this room.”

As he spoke Average Jones laid a hand on the heavy net curtains which
hung before the balcony window. Instead of parting them, however, he
stood with upturned eyes.

“Was that curtain torn before yesterday?” he asked Mrs. Hale.

“I hardly think so. The hotel people are very, careful in the up-keep
of the rooms.”

Jones mounted a chair with scant respect for the upholstery, and
examined the damaged drapery. Descending, he tugged tentatively at the
other curtain, first with his right hand, then with his left; then with
both. The fabric gave a little at the last test. Jones disappeared
through the window.

When he returned, after five minutes, he held in his hand some
scrapings of the rusted iron which formed the balcony railing.

“You’re a mining man, Mr. Kirby,” he said. “Would you say that assayed
anything?”

Kirby examined the glinting particles. “Gold,” he said decisively.

“Ah, then the necklace rubbed with some violence against the railing.
Now, Mrs. Hale, how long were you awake?”

“Ten or fifteen minutes. I remember that a continuous rattling of
wagons below kept up for a little while. And I heard one of the drivers
call out something about taking the air.”

“Er—really!” Average Jones became suddenly absorbed in his seal ring.
He turned it around five accurate times and turned it back an equal
number of revolutions. “Did he—er—get any answer?”

“Not tha

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