"Did you tell any one of all this?" I asked.

"Not a word to any one. But I decided to investigate."

"How?"

"By staying in this room at night."

I could guess from her tone what the resolution had cost her.

"And you did?"

"Yes. I came up right after dinner, leaving word that I was not to be disturbed. I went first to the desk to assure myself that the tray was empty and that there was no writing on the top sheet of paper. Then I switched off the light and sat down here by the fire and waited."

"That was brave," I said. "What happened?"

"For an hour, nothing. Then I was suddenly conscious of an odor of tobacco, as though some one smoking a cigar had entered the room, and an instant later I heard that chair before the desk creak as though it had been swung around. I switched on the light at once. The chair had turned. It had been facing away from the desk, and it was now faced toward it."

She stopped a moment, and I saw that her excitement of the morning was returning. Indeed, my own heart was beating with a quickened rhythm as I glanced around at the desk. I saw that the chair was facing away from it.

"The odor of tobacco grew stronger," went on Mrs. Magnus, "and, even as I watched, a little mass of ashes fell into the tray."

"From nowhere?"

"Apparently from nowhere, but of course it was from the cigar that he was smoking."

"Did you see the smoke?"

"No; how could I?"

Really, I didn't know. I wished that I had given more study to the details of spirit manifestation. I didn't remember that I had ever heard of a ghost smoking a cigar, but doubtless such cases existed. The point was this: Why, if the ashes from the ghost's cigar became visible when knocked off, shouldn't the smoke become visible when expired? Or did the fact that it had been inside an invisible object render it permanently invisible? I fancied this was what Mrs. Magnus had meant by her question. Perhaps she had studied the subject. At any rate, it was too deep for me.

"A moment later," she went on, "another mass of ashes fell; then perhaps five minutes passed, and I saw the remnant of the cigar placed on the tray. I confess that my nerves gave way at that point, and I fled from the room."

"Locking the door after you?"

"No; but I came back and locked it ten or fifteen minutes later."

"Did you enter the room?"

"Yes; I had left the light burning and entered to turn it off. I found on the desk another note beginning, 'My dear wife.'"

"And then what?"

"I was here the next night and the next. There was something about it that fascinated me, and I saw that there was no reason for fear. In the end it came to seem almost natural—almost as if he were here in the flesh."

"And always the same things happened?"

"Yes, or nearly so, the writing growing more legible all the time."

"And then?"

"Then, three nights ago, I grew brave enough to go and stand by the desk, and look over his shoulder, as it were, while he wrote the note which I showed you this morning."

"You mean that he actually did write it while you were looking over his shoulder?"

"I mean that the words formed themselves on the sheet of paper under my eyes, precisely as they flowed off his pen."

"And there wasn't any pen?"

"There wasn't anything. Only the ashes and the odor of tobacco."

I glanced across at Mrs. Magnus sharply. Could it be possible that she was inventing all of this incredible tale?

"No," she said, answering my thought; "it happened precisely as I tell it. I am hoping that you will see for yourself before long. It is almost time for him to come."

I felt the hair crawling up my scalp as I glanced around again at the desk. Like everybody else, I had always professed a lively interest in ghosts and a desire to meet one; but now that it seemed about to be gratified, the desire weakened perceptibly.

"I didn't at first intend to give him the money," she went on. "I didn't see why I should. He was dead. It was mine. He had never, in his life, given me fifty thousand dollars. But when, the next night, the money wasn't there, he expackets over to Mrs. Magnus.

"In writing?"

She nodded and held another sheet of paper out to me. On it, in Peter Magnus' hand, was written:

MY DEAR WIFE: Do not delay. I must right a great wrong before either of us can rest in peace.

"And from this you judge that he wants the money to—to—"

"Yes," she said, not waiting for me to finish. "Even then I hesitated. I did not see that I had any concern in his misdeeds. But last night—"

She stopped, and I saw sweep across her face the sudden, pallor I had noted in the morning.

"Yes," I encouraged, "last night—"

She was clutching the chair arms convulsively, trying to force her trembling lips to form the words. What horrible thing was it had happened last night? What—

And at that instant I was conscious of the odor of tobacco in the air, and distinctly heard the low grating of the office chair as it swung around.



CHAPTER III

I suppose the student of the supernatural always has to fight against the excitement of the unknown—an excitement which clouds the judgment and confuses reason. Certainly, as I turned my head and sprang to my feet, I was very far from being a cool and collected observer; yet, indisputably, the chair had turned. Indeed, I snapped my head around in time to see the last of its movement toward the desk. And at the same instant my nostrils caught more strongly the sweet and heavy odor of Peter Magnus' cigar. For a moment all was still. Then Mrs. Magnus rose and beckoned me forward.

"Come," she said, and with an effort I compelled my feet to follow her.

It was a battle between instinct and reason. Instinct was trying to hurl me out of the room and out of the house. Reason was telling me—in a very faint voice, it is true—that there was nothing to be afraid of. I have always been proud of the fact that I did approach the desk, instead of making for the door.

And I was even brave enough to glance behind it. One glance was sufficient. The triangular space between the walls and the back of the desk was empty. I don't know why that should have afforded me any relief, but it did.

Then, before my eyes, not three feet away from them, a little gob of ashes dropped from the empty air into the tray.

I am free to confess that that sight swept away any remnant of doubt I may have had in the reality of the unreal—if I may use such a term. Peter Magnus was sitting in that chair. There could be, to my mind, no question of it.

But if any doubt had existed, it would have been ended by what followed.

For my eye was caught by the pad of paper on the desk, and, even as I watched it, I saw unfold upon it, one after another, these words:

MY DEAR WIFE: Place the money on this desk and leave me. I shall be at rest. Good-by.

I wish I could describe to you the sensation which shook me as I witnessed this miracle. For there the words were, and I had seen them flow smoothly from an invisible pen—from Peter Magnus' pen, for the writing was his.

"I have the money," I said, and I caught up my bag from the floor, unlocked it, and took out the five sealed packets. "There are one hundred hundred-dollar bills in each," I explained, almost as if he could hear me—indeed, I was quite sure at the moment that he did hear me; and I passed the packets over to Mrs. Magnus.

Without a word she placed them on the desk, then turned to me.

"Come," she said. "That is all. Good-by, Peter," she added, and there was a little sob in her voice. "God bless you."

Was it my fancy, or did something like a sigh come from that unseen presence in the chair? It was in a sort of maze that I followed Mrs. Magnus from the room. She switched off the light and then closed the door.

"Thank God that is over," she said.

I suddenly realized that my face was dripping with perspiration, and I mopped it feverishly with my handkerchief.

"I would never have believed," I began stammeringly; "I never thought—why, it's a miracle—it's—"

"Yes, a miracle," repeated Mrs. Magnus. "Though there have been many instances of the dead returning."

"Have there?" I asked. "Well, of course, I have heard of them, but I never thought them worthy of belief. But now—"

We had reached the foot of the stairs, and I got my coat down from the rack and struggled into it. I found that I had mechanically picked up my bag as I left the room overhead.

"I want to thank you, Mr. Lester," said Mrs. Magnus, facing me, "for coming here to-night. You have been of the greatest help to me."

"Certainly," I agreed. "Very happy—a great privilege."

I felt that I was talking nonsense, but what, in Heaven's name, is a man to say who has just been through an experience like that? But Mrs. Magnus seemed to understand.

"Thank you," she said, and gave me her hand. Then she opened the street door, and a moment later I found myself groping my way down the steps. Once down, I paused for a deep breath; then I started up the street. But I had scarcely taken a dozen steps when a hand fell upon my arm and drew me into the shadow of a doorway.



CHAPTER IV

For an instant, with the thought of spirits still upon me, I tried to shake away the hand; then, as I started around at my assailant, I saw that it was Godfrey.

"Well, Lester," he said, "did you leave the fifty thousand?"

I nodded; I was even yet scarcely capable of connected speech.

Godfrey looked at me curiously.

"You look like you'd seen a ghost," he said.

"I have."

He laughed amusedly.

"Peter Magnus?"

I nodded.

"How is the old boy?"

"Look here, Godfrey," I said, "this isn't a thing to speak of in that tone. There's something sacred about it."

His face sobered as he looked at me. It grew serious enough to suit even my mood.

"So you were imposed on, too," he said at last.

I didn't like the words, nor the tone in which they were uttered.

"No, I wasn't imposed on," I said tartly. "I must be getting along, Godfrey. I haven't anything to tell you."

"Not just yet," he said. "Come over here across the street, Lester, where I can have an eye on the Magnus house. Don't you see—if I was wrong this morning, then you were right."

"Right?"

"If she told you the truth, some one is trying to do her out of fifty thousand dollars."

"She's given it to her husband," I said. "She thinks he's going to use it as you said."

"Given it to her husband?"

"Well, placed it on the desk in front of him."

"Did you see him?"

"I saw him write a note," I said doggedly. "You can't see a spirit, you know—its impalpable."

By this time we were deep in the shadow of another doorway across the street, and Godfrey leaned back against a pillar and mused for a moment.

"Of course," he said at last, "I don't want you to do anything unprofessional, Lester, but I really think you'd better tell me. You didn't hesitate to call me in this morning."

"I thought then that somebody was trying to bunco Mrs. Magnus."

"And I think so now," said Godfrey. "Surely you know you can trust me."

I demurred a while longer, but finally told him the whole story. When I had ended, he gave a little low whistle of amazement.

"Well," he said, "that's what I call clever. There's a certain artistic touch about it—only one man—"

He fell silent again, absently gnawing his under lip.

"How long are you going to stay here?" I demanded at last.

"Not long," he answered. "Only until that light goes out over yonder."

He nodded toward one of the upper windows of the Magnus house. Even as I looked at it, the light disappeared.

"Now," he said, "we'd better be moving up a little closer, Lester. Around this way, so we can't be seen from the door."

"You mean you think somebody is coming out of that house?"

"Certainly. The ghost's coming out. You didn't expect him to stay there all night, did you? That would be a little—well—indelicate, don't you think?"

"But how—"

"How am I going to see him? Well, I think I'll see him all right. Besides, the money would be visible, wouldn't it? Or does it become invisible when the ghost puts it in his pocket?"

"The cigar was invisible," I said weakly, "and the pen."

Really, out here with Godfrey, it did seem pretty ridiculous.

I was going to say something more—perhaps to try to excuse myself for my credulity—but Godfrey silenced me with a gesture. We had crept along in the shadow of the adjoining building until we were beside the entrance to the Magnus house.

"Maybe he'll go out the back way," I breathed.

"There isn't any back way. All built up. It's this way, or none."

The thought occurred to me that a brick wall would make no difference to a spirit, but I felt that I was lapsing into a state of imbecility, and stood silent, shivering a little. For it had started to drizzle again.

Then from the direction of the house came the sound of a door softly closing, and I saw a shadow flit down the steps. It certainly looked like a ghost; but I heard Godfrey chuckle softly; then, with a bound, he was upon the figure and had it by the throat. I caught the sound of a sharp struggle, but it was over before I could collect myself sufficiently to go to Godfrey's assistance.

When I did get there I found him grimly surveying a small and wizened creature, whose arm he had linked to his own by means of a handcuff.

"Lester," he said, "allow me to introduce you to the ghost of Peter Magnus—otherwise Mr. Jemmy Blum, the Tom Thumb of con men. Jemmy," he added, "aren't you ashamed to be playing such tricks on my friend, Mr. Lester?"

The small creature's eyes twinkled maliciously as he glanced up at me.

"Ho," he said contemptuously, "'twasn't no trick to fool him. But I didn't know he was your friend. If I had, I'd 'a' let him alone."



CHAPTER V

I deserved the taunt, of course, but I winced a little at Godfrey's chuckle.

"You'd fool the devil himself, Jemmy," said his captor. "And now I'll thank you to pass over to me those five little packets which my friend here left on that desk up yonder."

Without a word Jemmy unbuttoned his coat and produced the five packets. I could not but admire the coolness with which he accepted defeat.

"Take 'em, Lester," said Godfrey, "and put 'em back in your bag. We'll leave 'em over at the Tenderloin station, where we'll lodge this gentleman for the night. No use to disturb Mrs. Magnus till morning," he added, with a glance at the gloomy house. "Then we'll have Jemmy give us a special performance of his impersonation of the ghost of Peter Magnus."

The prisoner laughed.

"Glad to," he said. "I think you'll find it A one."

"No doubt," assented Godfrey. "As soon as Lester told me the story I knew you were the only man who could have worked it. And then there was the desk."

"Of course," agreed the prisoner. "You'd see that."

This was all Greek to me, but I knew the explanation would come in time. Meanwhile I carefully stowed away the five precious packets in my bag.

"Why can't we go over to my rooms at the Marathon and hear the story?" I suggested. "It's right across the street from the station."

"All right," said Godfrey, and led the way down the street, with Jemmy keeping step with him as well as his short legs would permit. Five minutes later we were in my rooms, and I switched on the lights and got out the cigars.

"If you'll see that the doors are locked, Lester, I'll open this handcuff temporarily," said Godfrey. "But first," and he ran his hands over his prisoner's person. "Ah, I thought so," he said, and produced a small revolver of exquisite workmanship. "You always were a connoisseur, Jemmy," he added, examining the weapon, and then slipping it into his own pocket. "All right. Now you sit down over there and be good."

"Oh, I'll be good," said Jemmy. "I guess I know when I'm crimped. Thanks," he added, accepting the smoke I offered him.

When the cigars were drawing nicely we were ready to hear the story. Not until then did I fully realize what a little fellow Jemmy was. Now I saw that he was almost a dwarf, little if any over four feet in height, and very slightly built. His face, shrunken and wrinkled, had that look of prenatural wisdom which dwarfs sometimes have, and his little black eyes were incredibly bright. He was evidently something of a dandy, for his clothes were immaculate. I admired again the aplomb with which he accepted the situation.

"Well," he began, "to make a long story short, I started on this lay just after old Magnus' death, when a friend of mine in the fortune-tellin' line told me Mrs. Magnus was a spiritualist."

"A spiritualist?" I queried, in surprise.

"Oh, yes; had been for years. That give me my clue, so I—ah—got into the house."

"How?" demanded Godfrey.

"That's telling."

"Bribed a servant, of course," said Godfrey. "We'll look them over in the morning. Go on."

"I got inside the house, looked over the ground, an' decided on my line of operation. I wanted something neat an' effective, an' I worked on it a good while before I had it goin' just right. There were so many little details. It took a lot of practice—these things do—an' then I had to remodel the inside of the desk—shorten up the drawers, an' make room for myself behind them. Luckily I'm little, an' the desk was one of the biggest I ever saw."

"So you were in the desk?" I asked.

"Sure," he chuckled. "Where else? Lookin' at you out of one of the pigeon-holes, an' wonderin' if I'd better risk it."

"And you decided you would?"

"Yes," said Jemmy slyly; "I saw you were scart to death, an' I was afraid if I didn't demonstrate for the old lady, I wouldn't get the money."

"How did you know she had it?"

"I heard you tell her you'd brought it, down in the parlor."

"Oh," I said; "then it was your step I heard in the hall?"

"I guess so, if you heard one. I just had time to get upstairs an' make my plant before you came in. The rest was easy."

"But the ashes?" I said.

"Flicked out through a pigeonhole. That's what took practice, to make 'em fall just right. Also the cigar."

"And the odor of tobacco?"

He got a little vial out of his pocket, uncorked it, and again I caught the sweet and heavy odor of Peter Magnus' cigar.

"An' here's a fine point I'm proud of," said Jemmy. "I had this made from half a dozen of Magnus' cigars I found in a box in his room. So the smell was just right. I thought for a while of showin' some smoke, but didn't dare risk it."

"But the note," I said. "That was the cleverest of all."

Jemmy chuckled and glanced at Godfrey.

"You'll understand that, Jim," he said. "You remember I worked it backward in that National City Bank case."

Godfrey nodded.

"I remember the signature disappeared from old Murgatroyd's check."

"Backward or forward, it don't make no difference. It all depends on the acid."

"What acid?"

"Ah," chuckled Jemmy, "you'd like to know, wouldn't you? You never will. But it all depends on it. If I put the acid in before the salt, the writin' disappears at the end of two hours; if I put the salt in before the acid, the writin' don't appear for the same length of time. It took me five years to work it out."

"But the writing didn't all appear at once," I objected.

"Of course not," said Jemmy impatiently. "It wasn't all wrote at once, was it? It appeared just like it was wrote."

"How could you time it?"

"Why," answered Jemmy still more impatiently, "I began operations at the same time every night, didn't I? I timed the writin' for eight-forty-five."

"But the chair?" I persisted.

Jemmy shot a disgusted glance at Godfrey.

"Any faker on Sixth Avenue can do that," he said. "A hook on a thread. Anything else?"

"Yes," I said, "one thing. What horror did you perpetrate last night?"

Jemmy grinned mechanically as he looked at me, and I even fancied he reddened a little.

"Did she tell you about that?" he asked.

"She tried to, but couldn't. What was it?"

"Well, you know," said Jemmy apologetically, "I had to bring matters to a head some way, for the old girl certainly did hate to shell out. I was sorry to have to scare her, but I couldn't help it."

"But what did you do?"

Jemmy blew a ring, and watched it fade away in front of him.

"I don't think I'll tell," he said at last.

Godfrey had been listening with an amused smile.

"We'll get that detail from Mrs. Magnus," he said. "Accept my compliments, Jemmy. It was cleverly done. I'm almost sorry you didn't get away with it."

"Oh," answered Jemmy, with studied indifference, "that's all in the day's work, you know. But thank you all the same, Jim."

He was flicking the ashes from the end of his cigar as he spoke, and I saw that he didn't meet Godfrey's eyes.

The latter looked at him an instant; then, with a low exclamation, sprang to his feet, and snapped open the bag in which I had stowed the packets Jemmy had given me. He ripped one of them open, and disclosed, not ten thousand dollars in currency, but a neat bundle of blank paper!

Jemmy was looking at him now, and his face was alight with triumph.

"How did you know I was there?" Godfrey demanded.

"I didn't," grinned Jemmy. "But I wasn't takin' any chances."

"Who was your pal?"

"That's tellin'," answered Jemmy easily.

"Did you see any of the servants, Lester?"

"Only one," I said. "I didn't notice anything about her, except that she was rather good-looking, and—oh, yes—the little finger of her left hand was missing."

Godfrey grabbed the telephone, and I heard him call headquarters, and give terse orders to send a detail at once to the Magnus house, to watch all ferries and trains, and to search all the thieves' haunts in the city for Kate Travis—"Lady" Kate. Headquarters seemed to know perfectly whom he meant.

"You won't get her," said Jemmy calmly, as Godfrey hung up the receiver. "She got away as soon as we turned the corner. She's got a good half hour's start."

"Come along," said Godfrey roughly, and snapped the handcuffs on again. I could see that he was deeply chagrined. "Good night, Lester. I've made a botch of this thing. I've got to catch that woman."

But he hasn't caught her yet, and I suppose, when Jemmy finishes his term, he will find his share of that fifty thousand dollars waiting for him.

I hope so, anyway.



THE EPISODE OF THE BLACK CASQUETTE

BY JOSEPH ERNEST

Yes, I have encountered him at last, the veritable birdman! Almost I had commenced to believe that such an individual did not in effect exist—with the exception, bien entendu, of myself. For, as I told them when they offered me a vin d'honneur on the occasion of my decoration with the Cross of the Legion, the recognition was long overdue. Indeed, I assured them, the only circumstance that prevented me from flying at the age of three was the fact that messieurs the inventors had not then produced an aeroplane.

But now I have encountered, as I say, another such instinctive aviator to whom flight appears to be as natural as walking. And thou seest by my bandages, my poor friend, what it is that has in consequence arrived to me!

Unhappy meeting! It is with pain and difficulty still that I lift an arm. I can no more, since my accident, illustrate my remarks with appropriate gesture. Forgive, therefore, mon ami, a story inadequately picturesque, vivid, mouvant. And yet—we have brought each other fortune, this young Monsieur Power and I. Fix a little the pillows up, and you shall hear.

A man-eagle, I assure you! A veritable condor of the Andes hatched in human shape, who has, nevertheless, discovered his gift only to renounce it at once and forever.

Our first meeting was curiously disturbing. He appeared suddenly at a door of my ateliers on the flying ground at Mineola, very tall, very soigne, smiling in the way he had that showed all his strong, square teeth as he recognized me in conversation, with my faithful mechanician, Georges. This latter, grown portly and nervous since marrying a Montmartre shopkeeper, I have since promoted to be my chief designer.

"Pardon the intrusion," said the stranger. "I perceive you are about to murder the stout gentleman. I will wait your convenience."

"Quite on the contrary, monsieur," I explained, bowing. "We discuss merely the theory of the explosion turbine. If monsieur will give himself the trouble to enter—"

"That is my card," he replied, advancing. "I want a strong, swift biplane, and a mechanic to attend to it."

I glanced from the card to this extraordinary young man with interest. For the name itself, John Hamlin Power, told me of a career in Wall Street—brief, but conspicuous in its daring and success; a career in which this immaculate, smiling young cotillion leader had made the very monarchs of finance fear the elan of his attack, the relentless quality of his grip.

"I have taken a fancy," he went on, "to possess the identical machine with which you accomplished your recent Mount McKinley record. It is perhaps for sale?"

"Perfectly, if monsieur wishes," I responded, with another bow. "But it is a machine of unusual speed and power. Monsieur can already fly, no doubt?"

"I do not anticipate any difficulty. As a matter of fact, I have not yet attempted it. It is for that purpose that I have come to buy a machine. It would be a favor if you would arrange to deliver it to me in Westchester to-morrow. The mechanic will, of course, arrive at the same time, as I shall wish to commence practice at once."

He turned aside to inspect a motor that lay dismounted on a wooden stand, as if there were nothing further to discuss. Indeed, though his speech was rapid and incisive, and his every movement full of an allure that spoke of splendidly poised muscles, he was in face and manner alike the most singularly immobile man I had ever met. He gave the impression of employing neither words nor actions except in case of clear necessity.

I exchanged glances with Georges, who had turned up his eyes, spread his arms, and allowed them to fall again limply to his sides. I coughed. Monsieur Power drew himself up from his inspection of the motor and smiled again expectantly.

"But the question of tuition?" I stammered. "Monsieur has no doubt arranged for the services of an instructor?"

There was the slightest twinkle in that steadfast gaze of his. He had the bravest, and yet the tenderest, eyes in the world.

"I'm afraid I have not sufficient time for the regular course," he said. "I am a rather busy man, as you possibly know. I have consequently taken lessons in advance, by mail. May I expect the machine to-morrow as arranged?"

I murmured something to the effect that he had perhaps underestimated the difficulties of aviation.

"Are they not exaggerated?" he inquired. "You taught my friend, Miss Hamilton Warren, to fly, did you not?"

"Mademoiselle, it is true, flies here almost daily," I admitted.

"Just so! It does not seem to me that there can be anything very difficult in what a girl can do. However, if you will be so good as to deliver the biplane we will see."

Under that clear, steady gaze of his I was powerless to protest. Behind him I could see the good Georges struggling palpably for breath, and waving his hands to the rafters. I contented myself with a profound bow; whereupon, with the same quick, alert movement with which he had appeared, this strange young man departed. Georges and I fell gasping upon each others' necks, and stared together after his tall, receding figure.

"Without doubt he is mad, this Monsieur Power," I said at last. "You remember that he has just made two millions in a bear raid. Doubtless it has turned his brain. Name of a name! He pretends to have taken flying lessons from an institute of correspondence, and I have promised him a biplane of one hundred horse power! Georges, mon ami, you must yourself accompany it and give him counsel lest he break his neck!"

Not satisfied with this precaution, I myself flew the biplane over to Westchester on the morrow, and explained the controls to Monsieur Power in an extended passenger flight. He was, it appeared, an amateur of the balloon, and accustomed to great heights. When I handed the machine over to him, with the engine throttled down so that he might try rolling practice on the ground, he waited until he was out of our reach, whipped the motor into its full power, heaved himself into the air, and flew back the whole length of his grounds—alighting gently as a falling leaf.

"It seems pretty simple," he said, as he swung himself out of the nacelle. "I do not think I need detain you, Monsieur Lacroix, if your assistant Georges will be good enough to consider himself my guest, and keep the motor running."

It was in vain that I besought him to have patience. He replied only that his time was limited, and that he had given the subject careful study in theory.

And with that assurance I had to depart, little content. First, however, I warned him of one or two pitfalls—as, for instance, that he must never stop his engine in an emergency, as one does instinctively in an auto, because the greater the danger the more need he would have of motive power to get him out of it. Also, I told him not to fly above trees or water, where the currents would suck him downward, but to steer over the darkest patches of land, where the heat of the sun is absorbed, and the air in consequence rises.

In what state of emotion I was maintained by the letters of Georges during the ensuing fortnight, I will make you judge.

"A moi!" he writes to me in the first week. "I am in the clutch of a madman! Each morning I am awakened at six, that I may plunge with him in the lake of cold water attached to the mansion, he having first made la boxe noisily with a fist ball on the floor directly above. To-day in his machine he has described figures of eight in the space of his grounds even, banking the planes at an inclination affreuse!"

Again he writes: "I am now to accompany him on a cross-country raid. Farewell to my wife and little one. I will die like a Montmartrois for the honor of France!"

Finally an appeal—urgent, pitiful, telegraphic:

"Take me away, je t'en prie! This maniac wishes now to discuss the possibility of a somersault in the air. I can no more—Georges."

Thereupon I replaced him with another mechanic, and he returned, appearing worn and noticeably thinner.

"It seems to me, tout de meme," I remarked, "that this young monsieur knows very well what he is about. We have not been asked to repair a single stick of his machine."

"True," replied Georges. "But that is not his ambition, to break wood. It was his neck that he wished to break, and incidentally my own. Wait, my friend, until you have seen him fly. I, who speak to you, have faced death daily these weeks past, and my clothes hang loose upon me!"

And I was fated to see this monsieur, also, before very long, on the occasion of his dramatic appearance upon the grounds of my flying school. I must explain that Mineola had become a social institution, for already I taught the younger members of the rich sportsman set the new diversion that science had placed within their reach. Crowds assembled each fine day to witness the first flutterings or the finished flights of their friends.

On this occasion the lawn before the hangars was bright with flowers and gay with the costumes of pretty women, in deference to whom I had even permitted what the society reporters began to call "aviation teas," placing little tables about the grass, where the chatter was not too much interrupted by the vicious rattle and the driving smoke of motors under test. I did this the more readily as it prevented the uninstructed from wandering into the path of the machines, which buzzed about the grounds like crippled beetles trying to rise into the air.

The grounds, particularly in expectation of a flight by Miss Warren, bore very much in consequence the appearance of a garden party, and I looked with pride upon a scene such as only the historic flying schools of my dear France had hitherto witnessed.

It was with a start that I recognized, while gazing upon this throng of flower-like women and gallant young men, the figure so tall, so commanding of the aged Monsieur Warren himself. I knew that he did not belong to this plutocratic young sporting set, of which he even disapproved. Moreover, the old financier had never before condescended to recognize the prowess of his daughter as an aviator. Indeed, I understood that the least reference to it had been forbidden in his presence. I hastened forward to welcome him, with joy in this new and powerful convert to the science of flight, and together we watched the preparation of Miss Warren's great French biplane, her beautiful Cygne, which she had insisted upon bringing with her from Paris.

Ah, mon vieux, I cannot describe to you the emotion that seized me as she advanced from the hangars, this beautiful girl, to mount her great white bird! The Comte de Chalons, who had followed her from Europe, and rarely left her side, hurried after her with her leather flying gauntlets—for while it was warm on the ground, there came from aloft reports of a chilling wind. I saw the tall, bent old man, her father, gaze with eyes moist with pride and affection on that superb figure of young womanhood as she swung gracefully out toward the gallant machine that awaited her in the sunlight, chatting gayly with her companion as she walked. She wore a thick-knitted jersey of brown silk, a simple brown skirt, and leather gaiters, and a brown leather automobile cap covered her shining, dark hair. Like a slim, brown statue she stood at last on the step of her biplane in the breeze, and I saw the Comte de Chalons bend over her hand as he assisted her into the nacelle.

Well, he had reason, that one! She is a better flier than I can ever make out of him.

A run of fifty yards, and she was aloft with the practiced leap of the expert pilot. The next minute she was breasting the breeze far above our heads, the rear edges of the huge planes quivering transparent against the sky, her motor roaring impetuously. As she passed, I had a single glimpse of her face—bathed in full sunlight, radiant, joyous!

I looked then with curiosity upon the aged Monsieur Warren. The great financier leaned upon his cane, and I saw that the hand that held it was blue and trembling. As he gazed skyward, his breath came deeply as in a sob.

"Ah, monsieur," I thought, with a surge of pride, "it is I, Lacroix, who have enabled you to enjoy a parallel triumph. She is your daughter whom they applaud, truly—but she is also my pupil!"

Figure to yourself my surprise, therefore, when he turned to me suddenly in appeal, and, with a hand that trembled on my arm, besought me to take him away.

"I cannot stand it, my dear Lacroix—it isn't safe!" he said, in a low voice.

He repeated these words several times, his lip quivering like that of a child who suffers, as I led him into the drawing office of the ateliers. There he seated himself, bent and gray, upon the edge of an armchair.

"It's no use, I can't stand it," he said again. "I assure you that I could see the thing shaking, as it passed overhead, in every stick and wire of it. It can't be safe! And there she is, five hundred feet high, with her life hanging on a thread."

"I assure you also, monsieur," I protested, "that I have this very morning examined every nut and bolt, every brace and valve and stay in the entire appareil. Never have I permitted your daughter to ascend without such an inspection. I would stake my life upon the perfect integrity of the machine."

He smiled, a little querulously.

"You are accustomed to stake your life, Monsieur Lacroix. As for me, I am an old man. The old are obstinate and selfish. I abhor the entire proceeding."

Plaudits came from the gay crowd outside as mademoiselle's machine again roared above the hangars. The old man shook his massive head.

"Of course, you don't see it as I do," he went on. "If you had considered risks, you would have accomplished nothing. It is natural that you should think only of the glory and conquest of flight. But I think of the little girl I held on my knee the night her mother died, and I can neither stay away in peace when Ella flies, nor can I bear to watch her."

"But you are powerful, Monsieur Warren," I said, "a commander of the captains of finance. If you said even that a country should not make war, its cannon would rust in the parks, and its soldiers play leapfrog in the casernes. Surely you can bend the will of a young girl who is also your daughter?"

The old man's smile became grim.

"I may be all that you say," he sighed. "But, nevertheless, if you chose to wring my neck at this moment, I could do little to prevent you. Neither dare I stand between an American girl and the desire of her heart."

I looked with sympathy upon this gaunt, mighty, old warrior of Wall Street, bent under the shadow of apprehension and anxiety, and I knew why he had at last visited Mineola. And as I looked, I, too, my friend, saw clearly for the first time the reverse of the bright medal of aerial conquest. I saw the graves of lost comrades, I saw the homes in mourning, I saw mothers who wept for their bravest boys. Truly the price was heavy, and I knew in my heart that it had not been paid in full.

"Monsieur knows," I said, "that I was once a poor mechanician. What I am now, flight has made me, and I have worked for the glory of flight. But now I perceive that in encouraging mademoiselle your daughter to fly, I have perhaps done wrong. I promise you that in future I will do my best to dissuade her."

He rose, and pressed my hand in gratitude.

"I am wealthy," he said. "I am rich beyond dreams. I can buy anything for my little girl that she desires—except a single moment's safety up in the air, or a single moment's true happiness on the earth. And in pursuit of this flying craze of hers, she may easily miss both."

He frowned suddenly as we emerged into the sunlight and saw the Comte de Chalons hasten to assist mademoiselle to dismount. Above the hangars the red storm cone had been hoisted, prohibiting further flight by pupils. Already the treetops were swaying ominously.

"After all, there are some things that can happen to a girl," said Monsieur Warren bitterly, "that may well be worse than breaking her neck in an aeroplane."

He departed in search of his automobile without another word. But I thought I knew what he meant.

It was at this moment that I first saw him fly, this marvelous birdman of a Hamlin Power. Away in the direction of New York, so high that he seemed to hang motionless just under the driving clouds, the spectators had caught sight of his huge biplane, and had delayed their departure to watch his approach. It was Georges, dancing on the grass beside me, who first proclaimed his identity.

"It is he, the crazy pupil!" he cried. "I have seen through my glass the little silk flag he attached to the nacelle. Now you are going to marvel that I still live!"

In a few moments the sound of his motor fell faintly on our ears as a whisper from the clouds. Then—chut!—it stopped, and in a single leap he dived a sheer thousand feet.

That in itself was amazing temerity for one who had flown just long enough to justify him in piloting an aero bus in a dead calm. But I was little prepared for what followed. Instead of continuing his flight horizontally at the end of that headlong dive, this tyro pulled up his elevator, sweeping through a sharp curve into an upward leap with all the dizzy impetus gained in his descent.

The crowd gasped. At my side Georges danced with anxiety upon the turf.

"You are right," I said. "He is certainly crazy, this young Monsieur Power."

"He calls it the montagnes russes, this trick," said Georges. "I have told him that everybody who ever did it is long dead, with the single exception of yourself, but that to him is entirely equal. See, he has dived again only just in time!"

And, in truth, another moment of upward flight would infallibly have caused him to lose headway, and fall backward, to flatten himself upon the ground. But he had with superb coolness entered upon a second dive of the most impressive, continuing his species of switchback descent until within a few hundred feet of the hangars. I saw his head protruding from the nacelle, incased in a flying helmet of perfectly black leather. At that height the remous and gusts hit him at unexpected angles, and his machine rose and fell and rocked, as if upon the waves of an invisible ocean. It was buffeted about until I knew that he could not be on his seat half the time. First one wing tip and then the other was blown upward, threatening irrevocable side slip, but always at the last moment his instinct—for it could have been nothing else—saved him in masterly fashion.

At one moment, indeed, as he banked high to turn down wind, it seemed that he was lost, and a woman in front of me turned away with a little cry of horror, her hands before her eyes.

But no! Blown like a leaf straight toward us, he wheeled again into the teeth of the wind at the same astonishing angle, finally landing neatly in front of the hangars. It was with an exclamation of relief that I saw him leap from his machine safe and sound.

With a number of mechanicians, I ran to greet him, and he held out a gloved hand, smiling in boyish delight and complete unconcern, and showing all his square, white teeth. I burst at once into protests.

"Bunk!" he exclaimed, with an irreverent laugh. "You fellows make a voodoo mystery of flight because it pays you. There's nothing very difficult about it, after all. One has only to keep cool."

I was going to reply with I know not what appeal to his reason, when the clear, contralto voice of Miss Warren came suddenly from behind me. She hastened to meet him, holding out both her hands.

"Jack, this is good of you!" she cried. "It's just your generous way—you couldn't possibly have forgiven me more gracefully. To think that you, of all people, should be the mysterious airman of Westchester who has set every one talking and wondering! Why, it was the pleasantest surprise in life to see you get down from that machine after such a wonderful flight. And my father has been here to-day, also. Two such converts in one afternoon is a coincidence that seems too good to be true."

The young Monsieur Power was regarding her, I noticed, with a sort of curious reserve.

"Maybe there's something in that," he said. "You mustn't get the idea that I've altered my ground in the least, Ella."

"But you are flying yourself, now!"

"Certainly, but that doesn't mean that I approve of it as an amusement for you."

"When did you begin?"

"Last month, when I bought the machine. Since then I've been practicing around home."

The girl started from him in amazement.

"Last month! Why, don't you know you might have killed yourself, cutting capers on a day like this?"

"Precisely what I have allowed myself to point out to monsieur," I interposed. "He attempted feats full of danger even for the expert."

"Well, I guess that's all right," he responded shortly. "A man's life wasn't given to him to nurse. Besides, flying is a great relief after a week in the city."

I turned aside, then, to superintend the disposal of the aeroplanes in their sheds, as it had become evident that a gale was in prospect. It was some minutes later that I received a sudden intimation from Miss Warren that she desired my presence outside her hangar.

"Mademoiselle wishes you to denounce the young American monsieur," added on his own account the mechanic who brought the message.

I found her confronting Monsieur Power, who was leaning in an attitude characteristically immobile against the landing carriage of his machine. The Comte de Chalons stood on one side, pulling at his mustache and staring from one to the other. Monsieur Power chewed a grass stem and smiled in a fashion a little narquois.

"Why not give in, Ella, and admit you have been in the wrong? You know you'll have to come to it, sooner or later."

He spoke quite pleasantly, but the girl's magnificent dark eyes were blazing with suppressed anger.

Give in! A thing unheard! She had never suffered compulsion in a young lifetime of following her own sweet way, this dollar princess. As they gazed upon each other, I could see a titanic battle of wills in progress beneath the outward calm of the discussion.

"You would not be so foolhardy, Jack," she said, controlling her voice with an effort. "You know, or at least if you don't know, Monsieur Lacroix and everybody else does, that you couldn't live two minutes in this wind."

"Monsieur Power, you are annoying mademoiselle in a grave degree," broke in the count, suddenly glaring. "My friends will lose no time in waiting on you."

The American swung round with one of those rapid, definite movements so habitual with him.

"Don't trouble your friends," he replied. "We can do without them. Come up and fly with me right away. We'll toss a quarter to decide who steers."

"It would be madness!" exclaimed the count, and his jaw dropped.

"Then kindly mind your own business," said Monsieur Power, chewing again on his grass stem, and talking through his teeth. "Now, Ella, time's up! Am I to go?"

The girl bit her lip, and seemed to struggle vainly for a reply, but the look in her eyes would have withered any man less accustomed to strife than this iron-jawed young soldier of fortune from Wall Street. In my turn, anger seized me as I saw her hesitate.

"You will pardon a further interruption, monsieur," I cried. "I can permit no such madness on my flying ground, and no such discourtesy to my pupils."

I beckoned the head mechanician.

"You will at once remove to a hangar the biplane of Monsieur Power," I told him, "and disconnect the ignition. Should he attempt to enter the nacelle again, you will cause him to evacuate it in march time and three movements!"

"And the first dago that tries it will get hurt," added Monsieur Power pleasantly.

"It's cowardly, Jack!" she cried hotly. "It's unworthy of you, a childish bluff like this!"

He must have been planning all the time how he would spring into his seat and start the motor, for when I looked round he was already there, and the great tractor screw was spinning as the exhaust spluttered viciously, making it impossible to reach him except from behind. With all my legs I ran round to the tail, calling upon the mechanicians to aid me.

Too late! The exhaust ripped out as he whipped his motor into her full horse power, and he leaped into the teeth of the wind with a swerve that almost tore off his lower plane against the ground.

"Imbecile!" I roared, but he no longer heard me. To save myself from a violent collision with his tail planes I was compelled to cling desperately to the frail wood and wire girder of the fuselage, and it was in this position that I was carried the length of the flying ground. The gale tore at my hair and distended my cheeks, the turf slipped away beneath me as smooth as green water in the speed of his mad attempt to force the machine into the air.

Slowly and with extreme care I edged my way inch by inch along the fuselage toward the main planes and the pilot's seat. Casting back a glance I saw the hangars, a mere white bar across the plain. A few spectators who had pursued us in a desultory, ineffectual manner stood now at long intervals in our wake, and gesticulated spasmodically.

The next moment we ran into a hollow, and they were lost to view behind the grassy slope.

It was then that the young American looked behind him for the first time, and realized that he had a passenger. Promptly he throttled down his engine into a slow splutter, and turned in his seat as the machine came to a standstill.

"I suppose you've had an uncomfortable minute or two," he grinned. "But it really wasn't your affair. I am perfectly entitled to fly whenever I feel like it."

Pleading that the roar of the motor had deafened me, I climbed up onto the passenger seat.

"It is beyond doubt, monsieur, that you are sane," I said. "But it is equally certain that you propose the act of a madman. Fortunately I have accompanied you, and it is impossible to rise from the ground with my weight on the tail, and my grip upon the elevator wires."

"Meaning that you refuse to let me ascend?"

"Most categorically!"

"But why?" he demanded. "Do you want Miss Warren to think that I was only bluffing, after all? I promised to show her something startling, and I'm going ahead with it."

"To begin with, it would be suicide," I rejoined. "In addition, you would be inflicting gratuitous distress upon mademoiselle."

At this he rose from his seat with the first sign of emotion I had seen in his manner.

"And what is it that she has inflicted for months on me?" he demanded hotly. "And on her father, too, and on all her friends? We can't pick up a newspaper any day, without going cold with fear that we will read of her maimed or dead in some accident. After all, it's only her own medicine."

He took off the black leather helmet, placed it on the seat, and wiped the motor grease from his brow. When he spoke again, it was in the even tones of a man who issues an ultimatum against an intolerable situation.

"There has been altogether too much of this flying business. It's no game for a girl. There is getting to be too much of this count thing. We don't want his sort around here. I've known Ella Warren since she was as big as a glass of milk! Do you think I am going to stand down for the first scented dago—forgive me if I speak disrespectfully of your countryman—whom she chooses to bring across the Atlantic at her heels? No, sir! It has to be stopped somewhere."

He halted a moment, and regarded me carefully. I could see that he was measuring with his eye the distance between us.

"I'm going to scare her stiff," he said, nodding. "Get down off this plane, Monsieur Lacroix!"

"Pardon me," I replied, with a low bow. "But that is for you to do."

And before he could seize me, with one blow of the foot planted suddenly in his chest I shot the young Monsieur Power squarely off his biplane onto the grass. Even as he measured his long length on the ground, I had seized the controls, and the aeroplane spurted fifty yards ahead of him. Ever since he had removed the black casquette, a wild idea, of a dramatic quality irresistible, had formed itself in my brain. I now seized the helmet and thrust it down upon my own head.

"It shall be finished as you wish," I cried. "But it is I, Lacroix, who am best qualified for the task!"

For I had seen, during that wild flight over the ground as I clung to the frail framework of the tail, a figure that I loved—a figure in brown, tall and graceful before the white hangars, a figure that clasped its hands in terror. And some instinct told me that the life of this Monsieur Power was necessary to the happiness of my beloved mademoiselle. I knew also that I alone without undue risk might break down the barrier of iron pride that had arisen between these two autocratic young people.

Qu'est-ce que tu veux que je te dise? I might have paid more heavily for the mad intoxication of that last flight. In a month or two I shall be again aloft.

I have often maintained that sooner or later a moment of emotion, of sheer joy in the struggle and risk, will cause the soberest pilot to throw discretion to the winds. It was so in this case.

Parbleu! I leap, I dive, I twist in figures of eight, I fight my way by inches against the wind, and, turning, I shoot back upon its current with the speed of a projectile. I am shaken and buffeted until I gasp for breath. I swerve, I dance, I caracole—I pirouette on a wing tip, catching my side slips on the rudder as one plays cup and ball. I dangle myself at the end of a single wire on the brink of eternity, crying defiance to the winds! C'etait de la folie—the madness of battle. Far below me I could see an occasional spectator running like a rabbit, grotesquely waving his arms.

"Oh, yes, he is doubtless clever, this Power," I cry in my pride. "But he is, after all, nothing but a buzzard. It is I, Lacroix, who am alone veritable king of the air!"

Coquin de sort! I do not know exactly when the wire controlling the right aileron parted. I became aware merely that that side of the machine canted downward and refused to rise again in response to the lever. Like a flash, I thrust forward the elevator, hoping to reach the earth by a glide. But I arrived by a quicker maneuver—a whirling gust, a tourbillon of the most terrific, hurled the biplane sidelong to destruction.

The man who has been accustomed to face death meets it at last with a gentle sneer on his lip, as one who is vanquished by an enemy whom he knows to be in reality his inferior.

"So here he is at last, then, this Death," I said to myself. "Well, let us see what he will do!"

And in that instant the graceful biplane crashed into splinters, and I lay pinned in the wreckage beneath a shroud of torn white canvas. In the black casquette, later, they discovered a hole two inches wide, torn by the jagged edge of a broken stay.

I found them at my bedside when I awoke some days later, my Mademoiselle Warren and Monsieur Power. They leaned together, arm in arm, upon the rail at the foot, and the lovely face of my dear pupil was radiant with sympathy and happiness.

"Ha! What is it that it is, then?" I demand.

"Mr. Power won," said Miss Warren.

The young broker smiled with all his teeth.

"But he was unfairly abetted by a certain Monsieur Lacroix," went on Miss Warren. "That was a terrible practical joke you played on me with the black casquette, you know. They carried us away in the same auto, and they tell me that I looked as lifeless as you."

"And now I have lost my pupil!" I exclaimed ruefully.

"Dear Monsieur Lacroix, I had no choice," she responded, and moved to the bedside and held my hand. "I cannot oppose the wishes of all the people I love. Besides, it is a fair bargain. We have promised each other, Mr. Power and I, never to fly again."

"It is in one way a pity," I murmured. "For monsieur is without doubt a species of born birdman. But any one would make a parallel renunciation to stand in his shoes."

"You are dangerously romantic, Monsieur Jules," said mademoiselle. "If it were not your supreme virtue, it would be your principal fault."

"Too true, mademoiselle," I replied. "But it cannot be denied that I am at the same time a very pretty flier."

It was not until some time after they had departed that I found upon the table among my medicines two envelopes. One, small and dainty, was a formal announcement of the fiancailles of Miss Warren and the young Monsieur Power. The other, long and of an official shape, contained—ah, what do you guess?

It was a draft of the incorporation of a company to control my flying schools, and realize my dream of the all-steel monoplane of stability positively automatic. At the head I read the names of Messieurs Warren and Power as guarantors. There remain only blank spaces requiring my signature.

Bien alors! In a few days more I shall be able to hold a pen!



CHEAP

BY MARJORIE L.C. PICKTHALL

Ransome said that you might pick up specimens of all the unprettiest afflictions of body and soul in Herares ten years ago. He also said that when he saw any particularly miserable bit of human wreckage, white or brown, adrift on the languid tides of life about the jetty, he always said without further inquiry, "It's Henkel's house you're looking for. Turn to the left, and keep on turning to the left. And if God knew what went on under these trees. He'd have mercy on you."

The house was the last house on the last road of the town. You don't find it now, for no one would live in it after Henkel; and in a season or two the forest had swamped it as the sea swamps a child's boat on the beach. It was a white house in a garden, and after rain the scent of vanilla and stephanotis rose round it like a fog. The fever rose round it like a fog, too, and that's why Henkel got it so cheap. No fever touched him. He lived there alone with a lot of servants—Indians. And they were all wrecks, Ransome said, broken down from accident or disease—wrecks that no one else would employ. He got them very cheap. When they died he got more.

Henkel was a large, soft, yellowish man. Ransome said, "I don't mind a man being large and yellowish, or even soft in reason; but when he shines, too, I draw the line." Henkel had thick hands with bent fingers, and large, brown eyes. He was a Hollander, and in that place he stood apart. For he didn't drink, or gamble, or fight, or even buy rubber. He was just a large, peaceful person who bought things cheap.

He was very clever. He always knew the precise moment, the outmost low-water mark, of a bargain. His house was full of things he'd bought cheap from wrecked companies or dying men, from the mahogany logs in the patio to the coils of telegraph wire in the loft. His clothes never fitted him, for they belonged to men whom the fever had met on the way up the Mazzaron, and who had therefore no further use for clothes. The only things for which Henkel ever paid a fair price were butterflies.

"I went to his house once," said Ransome—"had to. A lame Indian in a suit of gaudy red-and-white stripes opened the door. I knew that striped canvas. It was the awnings of the old Lily Grant, and I saw along the seams the smoke-marks of the fire that had burnt her innards out.... Then the Indian opened the jalousies with a hand like a bundle of brown twigs, and the light shone through green leaves on the walls of the room. From ceiling to floor they flashed as if they were jeweled, only there are no jewels with just that soft bloom of color. They were the cases full of Henkel's butterflies.

"The Indian limped out and Henkel came in. He was limping, too. I looked at his feet and I saw that they were in a pair of some one else's tan shoes. That and a whiff from the servants' quarters made me feel a bit sick. I wanted to say what I had to say and get out as quick as I could. But Henkel would show me his butterflies. Most of us in that place were a little mad on some point. I was, myself. Henkel was mad on the subject of his butterflies. He told me the troubles he'd had getting them from Indians and negroes, and how his men cheated him. He took it very much to heart, and snuffled as he spoke. 'And there's one I haven't got,' he said, 'one I've heard of but can't find, and my lazy hounds of hombres can't find it either, it seems. It's one of the clearwings—transparent. Here's a transparent silver one. But this new one is gold, transparent gold, and the spots are opaque gold.' His mouth fairly watered. 'I tell you, I will spend anything, pay anything, to get that gold butterfly. And if the natives can't or won't find it for me, my friend, I'll send for some one who can and will.'

"I quite believed him, though I was no friend of his. I didn't know much about butterflies, but I guessed that in Paris or London his collection would be beyond price. But I wasn't prepared, two months later, for Scott and his friend.

"Derek Scott. Ever meet him? A very ordinary kind of young Northerner. He was remarkable only in having everything a little in excess of his type—a little squarer in jaw and shoulder, a little longer in nose and leg, a little keener of eye and slower of tongue. I'd never have looked at him twice, as he landed from the dirty steamer with a lot of tin boxes, if it hadn't been that he was hale and sound, with hope in his eyes. Health and hope, at Herares!

"Then little Daurillac ran up the gangway, laughing. I looked at him—every one did—and wondered. And then, to cap the wonder, the two came up to me with their friendly, confident young faces, and asked for Henkel's house.

"'Turn to the left,' I said. And then I added, 'You'll excuse me, but what does Henkel want of you?'

"Scott didn't answer at first, but looked me over with his considering eyes, and I remembered a collarless shirt and a four days' beard. But Daurillac said, 'He wants butterflies of us, Monsieur. I am an entomologist, and my friend he assists me.' He drew up very straight, but his eyes were laughing at himself. Then we exchanged names and shook hands, and I watched them going along the path to Henkel's.

"Next day Scott came down to the jetty. He sat on a stump and stared at everything. He was ready enough to talk, in his guarded way. Yes, he was new to the tropics; in some ways they were not what he had expected, but he was not disappointed. He was here for the novelty, the experience. But his friend, Louis Daurillac, had been in the Indies, and with some of Meyer's men in Burma after orchids. Louis's father was a great naturalist, and Louis was very clever. Yes, Henkel had got hold of him through Meyer. He wanted some one to find this butterfly for him—this golden butterfly at the headwaters of the Mazzaron—some one whose name was yet in the making, some one he could get cheap.... So Louis had come. He was very keen on it. Henkel was to bear all costs, to supply food, ammunition, trade-goods, etc., and pay them according to the number of the new specimens that they found. 'So you see,' said Scott, with his clean smile, 'Louis and I can't lose by it.'

"We talked a bit more, and then young Scott said to me, suddenly: 'Henkel has everything ready, and we start in the morning. You seem to be the only white man about here. Come and see us off, will you?' I said yes; afterward it struck me as curious that he should not have counted Henkel as a white man. He laughed and apologized for the touch of sentiment. 'It's like plunging head first into a very deep sea,' he explained, 'and one likes to have some one on the shore. You'll be here when we come back?' And I said yes, I'd be either unloading on the jetty or in the new cemetery by the canal. But he didn't smile. His light Northern eyes were gravely considering this land where life was held on a short lease, and he looked at me as if he were sorry for me.

"I saw them off the next day. There were six or eight men of Henkel's, loaded with food and trade-goods, and I saw that two of them were sickening where they stood. I looked in Daurillac's brilliant young face, and I hadn't the courage to say anything but, 'Have you plenty of quinine?' He tapped a big tin case, and I nodded. 'And what are you taking for the Indies?' I asked.

"He fairly bubbled over with laughter. 'You would never guess, Monsieur, but we take clocks, little American clocks. The Indies of the Mazzaron desire nothing but little clocks; they like the tick.'

"Their men had turned down one of the jungle paths. They shook hands with me, and Scott met my eyes with his grave smile. 'Just drawing breath for the plunge,' he said, with a glance at the forest beyond the last white roof. Daurillac slipped his arm through Scott's, and drew him after their slow-going hombres. At the bend of the path they turned and waved to me—Scott with a quick lift of the hand. But little Daurillac swept off his hat and stood half turned for a minute; the sun splashed on his dark head, on his Frenchified belt and puttees, on his white breeches, and on an outrageous pink shirt Henkel seemed to have supplied him with. He looked suddenly brilliant and unsubstantial, a light figure poised on the edge of the dark.... One gets curious notions in Herares. The next moment they were gone. The jungle had shut down on them, swallowed them up. They were instantly lost in it as a bubble is lost in the sea.

"Two days before I hadn't known of their existence. But I was there to see them off, and I was there when Scott came back.

"It was well on into the rainy season, and I was down with fever. I was in my house, in my hammock, and the wind was swinging it. It was probably the hammock that did all the swinging, but I thought it was the house, and I had one foot on the floor to try and steady it. But it was no use. The walls lifted and sank all in one rush, like the sides of a ship at sea. Outside I could see a pink roof, a white roof, a tin roof, and then the forest, with the opening of a path like the black mouth of a tunnel. I wanted to watch this tunnel, because I had an idea I'd seen something crawl along it a good while before. But I couldn't manage it; I had to shut my eyes. And then I felt the scratching on my boot.

"I caught hold of the sides of the hammock, but it was some time before I could manage to pull myself up. Then I looked down.

"A man was lying on the floor, face down, just as he had crawled into my hut and fallen. The yellowish fingers of one hand clawed on my boot, and that was the only sign that he was alive. He lay quite still, except for the slow working of his fingers; and I sat still, also, staring down at him with the infinite leisure that follows a temperature of one hundred and five. It was only by slow degrees that I realized that this was Derek Scott come back, and that he was probably dying.

"I got to my feet and bent over him, but I wasn't strong enough to raise him, of course. I was afraid he'd die before any one came. So I took my revolver and aimed as well as I could at that tin roof beneath which my man Pedro was eating his dinner. The barrel went up and down with the walls of the hut, but I must have hit the roof, for the next thing there was a lot of smoke and noise, and Pedro's face, eyes, and mouth open, rushing out of it. There seemed no interval before I found myself sitting in the hammock and saying over and over again, 'But where's the little chap? Where's the little French chap?'

"Scott was still on the floor, but his head was on my man's shoulder, and Pedro was gently feeding him with sips of brandy and condensed milk. He turned and looked at me, and his eyes were clear and considering as ever, though his answer didn't sound quite sane. He said, 'The clocks wouldn't tick.'

"He said it as if it explained everything. Then he unstrapped a tin case from his belt, laid his head on it, and was instantly asleep.

"I cried out, 'Is it the fever, Pedro?' But my man said: 'No, Senor, it is the hunger.' He rolled Scott up very cleverly in a blanket. 'This senor has had the fever, but it is not upon him now. Without doubt he is a little mad from being in the forest so long. But when he wakes he will be stronger.' So much I heard, and no more. Unconsciousness came down on me like a wave. But into the dark heart of that wave I carried the certainty that Pedro knew all about the matter and that he hated Henkel. How or why I was certain of this I don't know. But I was.

"I woke in the cool of the evening. The fresh wind off the river was like the breath of life, and Pedro's face, thrust close to mine, no longer grew large and small by fits. I noticed that it was quite gray, and that his lips twitched as he muttered, 'Senor, Senor—'

"I said: 'Where is the Senor Scott?'

"'He woke a little while ago, and called for water to wash in, and a clean coat, and he used the hair-brush. Then he took the little tin box and went out—went out.'

"I got to my feet, threw an arm over Pedro's shoulder, and he ran with me out into the moonlit street. The track to the fountain lay like a ribbon of silver, and the houses were like silver blocks. And every house was shuttered and silent—breathless. Not a man lounged under the shade of the walls, not a girl went late to draw water, not a dog barked. The little place was deserted in the hold of the forest. It lay like a lonely, luminous raft, in the midst of a black sea. Only ahead of me a man stumbled slowly in the center of the road, and his shadow staggered beside him. I have said there was no other living thing visible. Yet, as this man stumbled past the shuttered houses the very blades of grass, the very leaves on the wall, seemed to have conscious life and to be aware of him. When the wind moved the trees, every branch seemed to be straining to follow him as Pedro and I followed.

"We followed, but we could not gain on him. It was like the dreams of delirium. Pedro and I seemed to be struggling through the silence of Herares as if it were something heavy and resistant, and Scott reeled from side to side, but always kept the same distance ahead. We were still behind when we turned into Henkel's garden, and the scent of the flowers beat in our faces like heat. At the veranda steps we met the servant who had admitted Scott.

"The man was running away. He was a cripple, and he came down the steps doubled up, bundled past us, and was gone. Somewhere a door clashed open. There was no other sound. But in a moment the garden seemed, full of stampeding servants, all maimed, or ill, or aged. They melted silently into the bushes as rats melt into brushwood, and they took no notice of us. I heard Pedro catch his breath quickly. But when a light flared up in one of the rooms it showed no more than Scott talking with Henkel.

"They showed like moving pictures in a frame, and the frame was of dark leaves about the window, which was open. I leaned against the side of it, and Pedro squatted at my feet, his head thrust forward as if he were at a cockfight. I did not know just why I was there. Henkel sat at a table, wagging his head backward and forward; Scott was sitting opposite him. And he looked as Lazarus might have looked when first he heard the Voice and stirred.

"Henkel was saying, 'Dear me, dear me, but why should this have happened?' And Scott answered as he had answered me, in that strange, patient voice:

"'The clocks wouldn't tick.'

"'But they were good clocks,' cried Henkel.

"Scott shook his head. 'No, they were not good clocks,' he explained, gently; 'they were too cheap. They would not go at all in the jungle. An Indian of the Mazzaron does not care what time his clock tells, but he likes it to tick. These were no good. And the food was not good. The things in tins were bad when we opened them.'

"'Mismanagement, mismanagement,' said Henkel, but Scott went on as if he had not heard:

"'We followed the river for two days, and then turned east. In a week after that two of your men were dead. They died of fever. No, the quinine was no good; there was a lot of flour in it. Two days more, and another man died, but he would have died anyhow. It was very hard to see them die and be able to do nothing.

"'The men who were left went so slowly that nearly all our food was gone when we reached the country of the Indies. We made our camp and I shot a pig. That gave us strength, but Louis was very bad then with the fever.

"'The Indies came down, and we spoke with their head men. They thought we were mad, but the clocks pleased them; and they sat round our tents and shook them to make them tick louder until Louis cried out in his fever that all the world was a great clock that ticked. They gave us leave to hunt in their country for butterflies, and the head men told off six to help us. One was very clever. He used to wear his net on his head, with the stick hanging down behind, and he snared the butterflies with a loop of grass as if they were birds.

"'Our tents were of cheap cotton stuff that would not keep the rain out, and the wet came in on Louis and made him worse. But he was young, and I saw to it that he had food, and your men loved him. I do not think he would have died if the clocks had ticked properly.'

"'I do not understand,' said Henkel, blinking his heavy brown eyes.

"'No? They were so cheap that they broke at the first winding. The Indies brought them back and asked for better ones. I had no better ones.'

"'Still I do not understand,' said Henkel, smoothly, and blinked in the lamplight.

"Scott's tired voice went on. 'The Indios were very angry. They brought us no more butterflies, and no more food. And presently, as we went about the camp, or the paths of the forest, the little arrows began to fall in front of us and behind us, though we never saw those who shot at us.'

"'The little arrows?' asked Henkel, heavily. 'I do not understand. Go on.'

"'There is very little to tell. Only a nightmare of hunger, of wet, of fever, of silence, and the little poisoned arrows quivering everywhere. And one day a little dart flickered through a rent in the cotton tenting and struck Louis. He died in five minutes. Then I and the men who were left broke through and came down the Mazzaron. The Indies followed us, and I am the only one left. It is a pity the clocks wouldn't tick, Mister Henkel.'

"'Ya, ya,' said Henkel, leaning over the table, 'but the butterfly? The golden butterfly? You have found it?'

"Scott opened the tin case slowly and clumsily, drew out the perfect insect, and laid it on the table. But it is wrong to speak of that wide-winged loveliness of glittering and transparent gold as an 'insect.' Henkel sat staring at it, one big yellowish hand curved on either side of it, too happy to speak. His lips moved, and I fancied he was saying to himself, 'Cheap, cheap.'

"'It is very good,' he said at last, cunningly, 'but I am sorry there is only one. I do not know that it is worth very much. But now I will pay you as I promised. There was no agreement that you should receive the other young man's share, and there is only one insect. But I will pay you.'

"Scott was fumbling in his belt. 'Yes,' he said, 'you will pay me,' and he leaned forward with something in his hand. We saw Henkel's face turn to yellow wax, and he tried to stand up, but he was too stout to lift himself quickly. He had no time to turn before Scott shot him through the heart.

"When I broke through the vines, Scott was moving the butterfly out of the way. He looked up at me with his old, considering look, his old clean smile. 'It was cheap at the price,' he said, touching one golden wing with his finger."

THE END