All the writers we have ever known (at least, all of them with a spark of �romance� in their creative souls) have had a compulsion to do a story based on the theme of chivalry � perhaps for no other reason than to prove, in modem terms, that chivalry is not dead. Stanley Ellin is no exception to this general rule, and his romantic spark was vital enough to ignite something in his mind that eventually became an Idea. It all started one day when he and his daughter were discussing knighthood and deeds of derring-do and that golden age when knights in shining armor rode off to battle for their ladies� honor. It was in that man-to-woman talk that �The Betrayers� was born.

Of course, the plot went through many changes before it took final shape. But through all its transformations the protagonist � a modern knight � remained true to Mr. Ellin�s original conception: �a ghost of all the Galahads before him.� Thus one modem detective story evolved: it had begun in Mr. Ellin�s memory of an ancient castle, dating back to 800 A.D., and ended in a contemporary apartment house, dated 1952 A.D.�� more than a century of transition to achieve a �tec theme!

Between them was a wall. And since it was only a flimsy, jerry-built partition, a sounding board between apartments, Robert came to know the girl that way.

At first she was the sound of footsteps, the small firm rap of high heels moving in a pattern of activity around her room. She must be very young, he thought idly, because at the time he was deep in Green Mansions, pursuing the lustrous Rima through a labyrinth of Amazonian jungle. Later he came to know her voice, light and breathless when she spoke, warm and gay when she raised it in chorus to some popular song dinning from her radio. She must be very lovely, he thought then, and after that found himself listening deliberately, and falling more and more in love with her as he listened.

Her name was Amy, and there was a husband, too, a man called Vince who had a flat, unpleasant voice, and a sullen way about him. Occasionally there were quarrels which the man invariably ended by slamming the door of their room and thundering down the stairs as loud as he could. Then she would cry, a smothered whimpering, and Robert, standing close to the wall between them, would feel as if a hand had been thrust inside his chest and was twisting his heart. He would think wildly of the few steps that would take him to her door, the few words that would let her know he was her friend, was willing to do something � anything � to help her. Perhaps, meeting face to face, she would recognize his love. Perhaps�

So the thoughts whirled around and around, but Robert only stood there, taut with helplessness.

And there was no one to confide in, which made it that much harder. The only acquaintances he numbered in the world were the other men in his office, and they would never have understood. He worked, prosaically enough, in the credit department of one of the city�s largest department stores, and too many years there had ground the men around him to a fine edge of cynicism. The business of digging into people�s records, of searching for the tax difficulties, the clandestine affairs with expensive women, the touch of larceny in every human being � all that was bound to have an effect, they told Robert, and if he stayed on the job much longer he�d find it out for himself.

What would they tell him now? A pretty girl next door? Husband�s away most of the time? Go on, make yourself at home!

How could he make them under-stand that that wasn�t what he was looking for? That what he wanted was someone to meet his love halfway, someone to put an end to the cold loneliness that settled in him like a stone during the dark hours each night.

So he said nothing about it to anyone, but stayed close to the wall, drawing from it what he could. And knowing the girl as he had come to, he was not surprised when he finally saw her. The mail for all the apartments was left on a table in the downstairs hallway, and as he walked down the stairs to go to work that morning, he saw her take a letter from the table and start up the stairway toward him.

There was never any question in his mind that this was the girl. She was small and fragile and dark-haired, and all the loveliness he had imagined in her from the other side of the wall was there in her face. She was wearing a loose robe, and as she passed him on the stairway she pulled the robe closer to her breast and slipped by almost as if she were afraid of him. He realized with a start that he had been staring unashamedly, and with his face red he turned down the stairs to the street. But he walked the rest of his way in a haze of wonderment.

He saw her a few times after that, always under the same conditions, but it took weeks before he mustered enough courage to stop at the foot of the stairs and turn to watch her retreating form above: the lovely fine line of ankle, the roundness of calf, the curve of body pressing against the robe. And then as she reached the head of the stairs, as if aware he was watching her, she looked down at him and their eyes met.

For a heart-stopping moment Robert tried to understand what he read in her face, and then her husband�s voice came flat and belligerent from the room. �Amy,� it said, �what�s holdin� you up!� � and she was gone, and the moment with her.

When he saw the husband he marveled that she had chosen someone like that. A small, dapper gamecock of a man, he was good-looking in a hard way, but with the skin drawn so tight over his face that the cheekbones jutted sharply and the lips were drawn into a thin menacing line. He glanced at Robert up and down out of the corners of blank eyes as they passed, and in that instant Robert understood part of what he had seen in the girl�s face. This man was as dangerous as some half-tamed animal that would snap at any hand laid on him, no matter what its intent. Just being near him you could smell danger, as surely the girl did her every waking hour.

The violence in the man exploded one night with force enough to waken Robert from a deep sleep. It was not the pitch of the voice, Robert realized, sitting up half-dazed in bed, because the words were almost inaudible through the wall; it was the vicious intensity that was so frightening.

He slipped out of bed and laid his ear against the wall. Standing like that, his eyes closed while he strained to follow the choppy phrases, he could picture the couple facing each other as vividly as if the wall had dissolved before him.

�So you know,� the man said. �So what?�

�...getting out!� the girl said.

�And then tell everybody? Tell the whole world?�

�I won�t!� The girl was crying now. �I swear I won�t!�

�Think I�d take a chance?� the man said, and then his voice turned soft and derisive. �Ten thousand dollars,� he said. �Where else could I get it? Digging ditches?�

�Better that way! This way... I�m getting out!�

His answer was not delivered in words. It came in the form of a blow so hard that when she reeled back and struck the wall, the impact stung Robert�s face. �Vince!� she screamed, the sound high and quavering with terror. �Don�t, Vince!�

Every nerve in Robert was alive now with her pain as the next blow was struck. His fingernails dug into the wall at the hard-breathing noises of scuffling behind it as she was pulled away.

�Ahh, no!� she cried out, and then there was the sound of a breath being drawn hoarsely and agonizingly into lungs no longer responsive to it, the thud of a flaccid weight striking the floor, and suddenly silence. A terrible silence.

As if the wall itself were her cold, dead flesh Robert recoiled from it, then stood staring at it in horror. His thoughts twisted and turned on themselves insanely, but out of them loomed one larger and larger so that he had to face it and recognize it.

She had been murdered, and as surely as though he had been standing there beside her he was a witness to it! He had been so close that if the wall were not there he could have reached out his hand and touched her. Done something to help her. Instead, he had waited like a fool until it was too late.

But there was still something to be done, he told himself wildly. And long as this madman in the next room had no idea there was a witness he could still be taken red-handed. A call to the police, and in five minutes...

But before he could take the first nerveless step Robert heard the room next door stealthily come to life again. There was a sound of surreptitious motion, of things being shifted from their place, then, clearly defined, a lifeless weight being pulled along the floor, and the cautious creaking of a door opened wide. It was that last sound which struck Robert with a sick comprehension of what was happening.

The murderer was a monster, but he was no fool. If he could safely dispose of the body now during these silent hours of the night he was, to all intents and purposes, a man who had committed no crime at all!

At his door Robert stopped short. From the hallway came the deliberate thump of feet finding their way down the stairs with the weight dragging behind them. The man had killed once. He was reckless enough in this crisis to risk being seen with his victim. What would such a man do to anyone who confronted him at such a time?

Robert leaned back against his door, his eyes closed tight, a choking constriction in his throat as if the man�s hands were already around it. He was a coward, there was no way around it. Faced with the need to show some courage he had discovered he was a rank coward, and he saw the girl�s face before him now, not with fear in it, but contempt.

But � and the thought gave him a quick sense of triumph � he could still go to the police. He saw himself doing it, and the sense of triumph faded away. He had heard some noises, and from that had constructed a murder. The body? There would be none. The murderer? None. Only a man whose wife had left him because he had quarreled with her. The accuser? A young man who had wild dreams. A perfect fool. In short, Robert himself.

It was only when he heard the click of the door downstairs that he stepped out into the hallway and started down, step by careful step. Halfway down he saw it, a handkerchief, small and crumpled and blotched with an ugly stain. He picked it up gingerly, and holding it up toward the dim light overhead let it fall open. The stain was bright sticky red almost obscuring in one corner the word Amy carefully embroidered there. Blood. Her blood. Wouldn�t that be evidence enough for anyone?

Sure, he could hear the policeman answer him jeeringly, evidence of a nose-bleed, all rights, and he could feel the despair churn in him.

It was the noise of the car that roused him, and then he flew down the rest of the stairs, but too late. As he pressed his face to the curtain of the front door the car roared away from the curb, its tail-lights gleaming like malevolent eyes, its license plate impossible to read in the dark. If he had only been an instant quicker, he raged at himself, only had sense enough to understand that the killer must use a car for his purpose, he could easily have identified it. Now, even that chance was gone. Every chance was gone.

He was in his room pacing the floor feverishly when within a half hour he heard the furtive sounds of the murderer�s return. And why not, Robert thought; he�s gotten rid of her, he�s safe now, he can go on as if nothing at all had happened.

If I were only someone who could go into that room and beat the truth out of him, the thought boiled on, or someone with such wealth or position that I would be listened to...

But all that was as unreal and vaporous as his passion for the girl had been. What weapon of vengeance could he possibly have at his command, a nobody working in a...

Robert felt the sudden realization wash over him in a cold wave. His eyes narrowed on the wall as if, word by word, the idea were being written on it in a minute hand.

Everyone has a touch of larceny in him � wasn�t that what the old hands in his department were always saying? Everyone was suspect. Certainly the man next door, with his bent for violence, his talk of ten thousand dollars come by in some unlikely way, must have black marks on his record that the authorities, blind as they might be, could recognize and act on. If someone skilled in investigation were to strip the man�s past down, layer by layer, justice would have to be done. That was the weapon: the dark past itself, stored away in the man, waiting only to be ignited!

Slowly and thoughtfully Robert slipped the girl�s crumpled handkerchief into an envelope and sealed it. Then, straining to remember the exact words, he wrote down on paper the last violent duologue between murderer and victim. Paper and envelope both went into a drawer of his dresser, and the first step had been taken.

But then, Robert asked himself, what did he know about the man? His name was Vince, and that was all. Hardly information which could serve as the starting point of a search through the dark corridors of someone�s past. There must be something more than that, something to serve as a lead.

It took Robert the rest of a sleepless night to hit on the idea of the landlady. A stout and sleepy-eyed woman whose only interest in life seemed to lie in the prompt collection of her rent, she still must have some information about the man. She occupied the rear apartment on the ground floor, and as early in the morning as he dared Robert knocked on her door.

She looked more sleepy-eyed than ever as she pondered his question. �Them?� she said at last. �That�s the Sniders. Nice people, all right.� She blinked at Robert. �Not having any trouble with them, are you?�

�No. Not at all. But is that all you can tell me about them? I mean, don�t you know where they�re from, or anything like that?�

The landlady shrugged. �I�m sure it�s none of my business,� she said loftily. �All I know is they pay on the first of the month right on the dot, and they�re nice respectable people.�

He turned away from her heavily, and as he did so saw the street door close behind the postman. It was as if a miracle had been passed for him. The landlady was gone, he was all alone with that little heap of mail on the table, and there staring up at him was an envelope neatly addressed to Mrs. Vincent Snider.

All the way to his office he kept that envelope hidden away in an inside pocket, and it was only when he was locked in the seclusion of his cubicle that he carefully slit it open and studied its contents. A single page with only a few lines on it, a noncommittal message about the family�s well-being, and the signature: Your sister, Celia. Not much to go on � but wait, there was a return address on the stationery, an address in a small upstate town.

Robert hesitated only a moment, then thrust letter and envelope into his pocket, straightened his jacket, and walked into the office of his superior. Mr. Sprague, in charge of the department and consequently the most ulcerated and cynical member of it, regarded him dourly.

�Yes?� he said.

�I�m sorry, sir,� said Robert, �but I�ll need a few days off. You see, there�s been a sudden death.�

Mr. Sprague sighed at this pebble cast into the smooth pool of his department�s routine, but his face fell into the proper sympathetic lines.

�Somebody close?�

�Very close,� said Robert.

Margery Sharp is famous for her utterly delightful stories of women � of all types from prigs and prudes to ladies of easy virtue. Her style is ingratiating, her plots are captivating, and the result is pure reading entertainment. But behind the light touch � the peacock-feather touch � is a wealth of shrewdness and perception. There is more in the smooth and glittering comedy than meets the eye...

Here is another short story by Margery Sharp which again explores the domain of the feminine. But this time the protagonists are a pair of spinster sisters. The Misses Pye might easily be called the British counterparts of that great American spinster of fiction, Mary Roberts Rinehart�s wonderful Tish � except that Miss Pye and Miss Roberta Pye have their own way of doing things, even when they are as much at a loss as if they had suddenly found themselves marooned on Mars. Did we say �at a loss�? Well, one man�s loss can be an embattled woman�s gain...

Anne said: �I�m so glad you can make it for dinner on Saturday. We�re having Gregor Stolz for the weekend. I think you�ll enjoy him.�

I said something noncommittal about how I was sure I would, and certainly wouldn�t think of missing one of Anne�s curries. I looked in the mirror as I hung up the phone and my face was as blank as my words. There wasn�t anything I could say � there wasn�t any way I could tell Anne that having Gregor Stolz for the weekend meant murder.

I didn�t know it officially. There wasn�t any definite evidence I could point to, and my job is supposed to be cracking murders, not preventing them � though that�s any man�s job.

The oddest thing was that I not only didn�t know who might be killed, I had no idea who�d do the killing. I only knew that Gregor Stolz meant death.

I noticed him first on the Harkness case. You may not remember that � it didn�t get much of a play in the papers because Harkness cracked up and the psychiatrists took over and it never came to trial. Maybe you remember something about a man who was devilishly jealous of his sister and she got married secretly. Since he was old-fashioned enough to use a straight razor he was all equipped when he heard about the marriage.

Stolz came into it when we were trying to learn how Harkness had found out about the marriage. He was a friend of the family, I guess you call it. He admitted seeing Harkness earlier in the evening the night it all happened, and finally he admitted that he might have let something slip which gave the brother an idea of what was going on.

Something about him was familiar and it bothered me, but it wasn�t until the Harkness case was all wrapped up that I placed him.

He�d been a witness in the Bantock business, and I�m pretty sure you�ll remember that. It was splashed all over the papers. BERKELEY BANKER RUNS AMOK. Bantock came home plastered one night, took his World War I Service .45 and finished off his wife and his mother because they hated each other and both of them had threatened to leave and he couldn�t live without either of them. He didn�t either � live, I mean � not any longer than the time consumed by the trial and appeal.

And Gregor Stolz was the casual acquaintance whom Bantock had met in an Oakland bar that night. The defense had used him to emphasize how much Bantock had been drinking, to try and get a verdict of manslaughter instead of murder for him.

The name was familiar from some place else, too. I remembered it when Captain Strudd cited the Martin case as an example of how a murderer gets what�s coming to him. Young Martin at the University fed arsenic to his uncle only to learn that all Uncle�s money went to a foundation to prove that Queen Elizabeth wrote Shakespeare. He was furious on discovering the terms of the will, and kept saying that a friend named Gregor Stolz had assured him of his first-hand knowledge that he was Uncle�s heir. Martin was so mad about being fooled that he never even tried to play innocent. The trial was a formality, and Stolz never appeared as a witness.

Gregor Stolz had come to the Bay Region about six years ago. Since that time there had been seven murders and three suicides among the people he knew. For the most part, they didn�t know each other � he seemed to have many circles of friends. He got around. So did Typhoid Mary, I guess.

At first it might look like what insurance people call a �prone.� An accident prone is a guy who�s always around when industrial accidents happen � he doesn�t cause them, he doesn�t do anything, but if he�s in a plant the insurance company�s going to lose money. What sailors call a Jonah � same thing. And Gregor Stolz was a murder prone, a carrier, if you like that comparison better.

But you look closer and you see that Gregor Stolz had let something slip to Harkness, he had talked to Bantock in the bar while the banker was drinking himself into a killer, he had given young Martin an odd idea of Uncle�s will...

I was interested, to put it mildly. I did some checking on Gregor Stolz. His record was clean enough, on the surface. Born in Austria, came to America as a child, well-educated in the East, had a little money of his own and held a half-dozen insignificant jobs before he came into a good thing � a bequest almost as screwy as Uncle Martin�s. He was assured a good income from a trust for life so long as he wrote pamphlets and gave lectures propagandizing for a duodecimal system of numerical notation, whatever that was. I did check on the death of the man who had left him his trust fund. At the age of 87, he had died peacefully in his sleep while Gregor was a thousand miles away.

The first really distinguished anthology of detective stories to be edited by an American was Vincent Starrett�s FOURTEEN GREAT DETECTIVE STORIES, published in 1928 by The Modern Library. This book was small and unpretentious in format, but as the publishers so justifiably claimed, it contained �an all-star list.� The publishers made another claim which is well worth repeating even twenty-odd years after the fact: �FOURTEEN GREAT DETECTIVE STORIES is particularly recommended to readers who are inclined to sneer at detective fiction in general, for here they may learn how thrilling � and how well-written � these tales can be when fashioned by masters of the craft!� (The exclamation point is the publishers�, and we can�t help wondering if any publisher would think it necessary, or advisable, to make that same statement today.)

Vincent Starrett�s anthology remained constantly in print for twenty-one years � surely close to a world�s record in the detective-anthology field. Then the publishers decided that the contents should be brought up to date. Many new sleuthian stars had risen and now deserved consideration even in so limited a survey as is represented by only fourteen stories. Since the original editor found himself unable to undertake the revision of contents, the publishers � with laudable acumen � selected Howard Haycraft for the task of editing a new edition.

Mr. Haycraft had no easy pickings � he was confronted with an embarrassment of riches. His first decision � and how difficult it must have been!�� was to retain only six of the original fourteen stories � �all of them,� Mr. Haycraft explained, �belonging to what may be called the historical period.� The six survivors were, of course, absolute �musts� in any anthology, old or new. They were stories by such undisputed masters as Edgar Allan Poe, A, Conan Doyle, Jacques Futrelle, R. Austin-Freeman, G. K. Chesterton and Melville Davisson Post � note the perfect balance of authors� nationality, three American and three British. To these six classics, Mr. Haycraft added stories by E. C. Bentley, Agatha Christie, H. C. Bailey, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, Carter Dickson, and Cornell Woolrich � and so the pure detective story, as distinguished from tales of crime, mystery, and suspense, was brought up to date, as of 1949. And note again that Mr. Haycraft preserved the perfect, balance of geographical origin, for while the first four of the eight new stories were English, the last four were the work of Americans.

Thus, in the process of modernization, FOURTEEN GREAT DETECTIVE STORIES lost eight of its original selections. All eight of these stories were deserving of a better fate, but in justice to Mr. Haycraft and his multiple dilemmas, he really had no choice in the over-all picture. Eight stories simply had to go in order to make room for eight newer tales more calculated, to quote Mr. Haycraft, �to give the interested reader something of a panorama of detective fiction, its principal influences and mutations, through the years.� Most of these eight older stories are now completely unavailable to present-day readers. We deeply regret their passing, especially the loss of one of them � Owen Johnson�s excellent tale, �One Hundred in the Dark.�

This story first appeared in Mr. Johnson�s book titled MURDER IN ANY DEGREE, published in 1913. The book has long been out of print, and to the best of our knowledge �One Hundred in the Dark� is not included in any other anthology still current. So, to keep this fine old tale from sinking into oblivion, we bring it back alive, with all its fine suspense and puzzle, with all its fine conversation (almost a vanished art these days of terse prose and studied understatement), and with all the freshness that it has kept lo these 40 long years of what Mr. Haycraft has called �later developments and styles.�

They were discussing languidly, as such groups do, seeking from each topic a peg on which to hang a few epigrams that might be retold in the lip currency of the club � Steingall, the painter, florid of gesture and effete, foreign in type, with black-rimmed glasses and trailing ribbon of black silk that cut across his cropped beard and cavalry mustaches; De Gollyer, a critic, who preferred to be known as a man-about-town, short, feverish, incisive, who slew platitudes with one adjective and tagged a reputation with three; Rankin, the architect, always in a defensive explanatory attitude, who held his elbows on the table, his hands before his long sliding nose, and gestured with his fingers; Quinny, the illustrator, long and gaunt, with a predatory eloquence that charged irresistibly down on any subject, cut it off, surrounded it, and raked it with enfilading wit and satire; and Peters, whose methods of existence were a mystery, a young man of 50, who had done nothing and who knew everyone by his first name, the club postman, who carried the tittle-tattle, the bon mots and the news of the day, who drew up a petition a week and pursued the house committee with a daily grievance.

About the latticed porch, which ran around the sanded yard with its feeble fountain and futile evergreens, other groups were eying one another, or engaging in desultory conversation, oppressed with the heaviness of the night.

At the round table Quinny alone, absorbing energy as he devoured the conversation, having routed Steingall on the Germans and archeology and Rankin on the origins of the Lord�s Prayer, had seized a chance remark of De Gollyer�s to say:

�There are only half a dozen stories in the world. Like everything that�s true it isn�t true.� He waved his long, gouty fingers in the direction of Steingall who, having been silenced, was regarding him with a look of sleepy indifference. �What is more to the point is the small number of human relations that are so simple and yet so fundamental that they can be eternally played upon, redressed, and reinterpreted in every language, in every age, and yet remain inexhaustible in the possibility of variations.�

�By George, that is so,� said Steingall, waking up. �Every art does go back to three or four notes. In composition it is the same thing. Nothing new � nothing new since a thousand years. By George, that is true! We invent nothing, nothing!�

�Take the eternal triangle,� said Quinny hurriedly, not to surrender his advantage, while Rankin and De Gollyer in a bored way continued to gaze dreamily at a vagrant star or two. �Two men and a woman, or two women and a man. Obviously it should be classified as the first of the great original parent themes. Its variations extend into the thousands. By the way, Rankin, excellent opportunity, eh, for some of our modern, painstaking, unemployed jackasses to analyze and classify.�

�Quite right,� said Rankin without perceiving the satirical note. �Now there�s De Maupassant�s �Fort comme la Mort� � quite the most interesting variation � shows the turn a genius can give. There the triangle is the man of middle age, the mother he has loved in his youth and the daughter he comes to love. It forms, you might say, the head of a whole subdivision of modern Continental literature.�

�Quite wrong, Rankin, quite wrong,� said Quinny, who would have stated the other side quite as imperiously. �What you cite is a variation of quite another theme, the Faust theme � old age longing for youth, the man who has loved longing for the love of his youth, which is youth itself. The triangle is the theme of jealousy, the most destructive and, therefore, the most dramatic of human passions. The Faust theme is the most fundamental and inevitable of all human experiences, the tragedy of life itself. Quite a different thing.�

Rankin, who never agreed with Quinny unless Quinny maliciously took advantage of his prior announcement to agree with him, continued to combat this idea.

�You believe then,� said De Gollyer after a certain moment had been consumed in hair-splitting, �that the origin of all dramatic themes is simply the expression of some human emotion. In other words, there can exist no more parent themes than there are human emotions.�

�I thank you, sir, very well put,� said Quinny with a generous wave of his hand. �Why is The Three Musketeers a basic theme? Simply the interpretation of comradeship, the emotion one man feels for another, vital because it is the one peculiarly masculine emotion. Look at Du Maurier and Trilby, Kipling in Soldiers Three � simply The Three Musketeers.�

�The Vie de Boh�me?� suggested Steingall.

�In the real Vie de Boh�me, yes,� said Quinny viciously. �Not in the concocted sentimentalities that we now have served up to us by athletic tenors and consumptive elephants!�

Rankin, who had been silently deliberating on what had been left behind, now said cunningly and with evident purpose:

�All the same, I don�t agree with you men at all. I believe there are situations, original situations, that are independent of your human emotions, that exist just because they are situations, accidental and nothing else.�

�As for instance?� said Quinny, preparing to attack.

�Well, I�ll just cite an ordinary one that happens to come to my mind,� said Rankin, who had carefully selected his test. �In a group of seven or eight, such as we are here, a theft takes place; one man is the thief � which one? I�d like to know what emotion that interprets, and yet it certainly is an original theme, at the bottom of a whole literature.�

This challenge was like a bomb.

�Not the same thing.�

�Detective stories, bah!�

�Oh, I say, Rankin, that�s literary melodrama.�

Rankin, satisfied, smiled and winked victoriously over to Tommers, who was listening from an adjacent table.

�Of course your suggestion is out of order, my dear man, to this extent,� said Quinny, who never surrendered, �in that I am talking of fundamentals and you are citing details. Nevertheless, I could answer that the situation you give, as well as the whole school it belongs to, can be traced back to the commonest of human emotions � curiosity; and that the story of Bluebeard and The Moonstone are to all purposes identically the same.�

At this Steingall, who had waited hopefully, gasped and made as though to leave the table.

�I shall take up your contention,� said Quinny without pause for breath, �first, because you have opened up one of my pet topics and, second, because it gives me a chance to talk.� He gave a sidelong glance at Steingall and winked at De Gollyer. �What is the peculiar fascination that the detective problem exercises over the human mind? You will say curiosity. Yes and no. Admit at once that the whole art of a detective story consists in the statement of the problem. Anyone can do it. I can do it. Steingall even can do it. The solution doesn�t count. It is usually banal, it should be prohibited. What interests us is: can we guess it? Just as an able-minded man will sit down for hours and fiddle over the puzzle column in a Sunday balderdash. Same idea. There you have it, the problem � the detective story. Now why the fascination? I�ll tell you. It appeals to our curiosity, yes � but deeper to a sort of intellectual vanity. Here are six matches, arrange them to make four squares; five men present, a theft takes place � who�s the thief? Who will guess it first? Whose brain will show its superior cleverness � see? That�s all � that�s all there is to it.�

�Out of all of which,� said De Gollyer, �the interesting thing is that Rankin has supplied the reason why the supply of detective fiction is inexhaustible. It does all come down to the simplest terms. Seven possibilities, one answer. It is a formula, ludicrously simple, mechanical, and yet we will always pursue it to the end. The marvel is that writers should seek for any other formula when here is one so safe, that can never fail. By George, I could start up a factory on it.�

�The reason is,� said Rankin, �that the situation does constantly occur. It�s a situation that any of us might get into any time. As a matter of fact, now, I personally know two such occasions when I was of the party; and devilish uncomfortable it was too.�

�What happened?� said Steingall.

�Why, there is no story to it particularly. Once a mistake had been made and the other time the real thief was detected by accident a year later. In both cases only one or two of us knew what had happened.�

De Gollyer had a similar incident to recall. Steingall, after reflection, related another that had happened to a friend.

�Of course, of course, my dear gentlemen,� said Quinny impatiently, for he had been silent too long, �you are glorifying commonplaces. Every crime, I tell you, expresses itself in the terms of the picture puzzle that you feed to your six-year-old. It�s only the variation that is interesting. Now quite the most remarkable turn of the complexities that can be developed is, of course, the well-known instance of the visitor at a club and the rare coin. Of course every one knows that? What?�

Rankin smiled in a bored, superior way, but the others protested their ignorance.

�Why, it�s very well known,� said Quinny lightly. �A distinguished visitor is brought into a club � dozen men, say, present, at dinner, long table. Conversation finally veers around to curiosities and relics. One of the members present then takes from his pocket what he announces as one of the rarest coins in existence � passes it around the table. Coin travels back and forth, everyone examining it, and the conversation goes to another topic, say the influence of the automobile on domestic infelicity, or some other such asininely intellectual club topic � you know? All at once the owner calls for his coin.

�The coin is nowhere to be found. Everyone looks at everyone else. First they suspect a joke. Then it becomes serious � the coin is immensely valuable. Who has taken it?

�The owner is a gentleman, does the gentlemanly idiotic thing of course � laughs, says he knows someone is playing a practical joke on him and that the coin will be returned tomorrow. The others refuse to leave the situation so. One man proposes that they all submit to a search. Everyone gives his assent until it comes to the stranger. He refuses, curtly, roughly, without giving any reason. Uncomfortable silence � the man is a guest. No one knows him particularly well � but still he is a guest. One member tries to make him understand that no offense is offered, that the suggestion was simply to clear the atmosphere, and all that sort of bally rot, you know.

� �I refuse to allow my person to be searched,� says the stranger, very firm, very proud, you know, �and I refuse to give my reason for my action.�

�Another silence. The men eye him and then glance at one another. What�s to be done? Nothing. There is etiquette � that magnificent inflated balloon. The visitor evidently has the coin � but he is their guest and etiquette protects him. Nice situation, eh?

�The table is cleared. A waiter removes a dish of fruit and there under the ledge of the plate where it had been pushed � is the coin. Banal explanation, eh? Of course. Solutions always should be. At once everyone in profuse apologies! Whereupon the visitor rises and says:

� �Now I can give you the reason for my refusal to be searched. There are only two known specimens of the coin in existence, and the second happens to be here in my waistcoat pocket?� �

�Of course,� said Quinny with a shrug of his shoulders, �the story is well invented, but the turn to it is very nice � very nice, indeed.�

�I did know the story,� said Steingall, to be disagreeable; �the ending, though, is too obvious to be invented. The visitor should have had on him not another coin, but something absolutely different � something destructive, say, of a woman�s reputation � and a great tragedy should have been threatened by the casual misplacing of the coin.�

�I have heard the same story told in a dozen different ways,� said Rankin.

�It has happened a hundred times. It must be continually happening,� said Steingall.

�I know one extraordinary instance,� said Peters, who up to the present, secure in his climax, had waited with a professional smile until the big guns had been silenced. �In fact, the most extraordinary instance of this sort I have ever heard.�

�Peters, you little rascal,� said Quinny with a sidelong glance, �I perceive you have quietly been letting us dress the stage for you.�

�It is not a story that will please everyone,� said Peters, to whet their appetite.

�Why not?�

�Because you will want to know what no one can ever know.�

�It has no conclusion then?�

�Yes and no. As far as it concerns a woman, quite the most remarkable woman I have ever met, the story is complete. As for the rest, it is what it is, because it is one example where literature can do nothing better than record.�

�Do I know the woman?� asked De Gollyer, who flattered himself on passing through every class of society.

�Possibly, but no more than anyone else.�

�An actress?�

�What she has been in the past I don�t know � a promoter would better describe her. Undoubtedly she has been behind the scenes in many an untold intrigue of the business world. A very feminine woman, and yet, as you shall see, with an unusual instantaneous masculine power of decision.�

�Peters,� said Quinny, waving a warning finger, �you are destroying your story. Your preface will bring an anticlimax.�

�You shall judge,� said Peters, who waited until his audience was in strained attention before opening his story. �The names are, of course, disguises.�

It is a pleasure to welcome Leslie Bigelow and his prize-winning story to the pages of EQMM. The author is in his early forties and a Special Lecturer in English at Arizona State College. He tells us, somewhat ruefully, that this is the eleventh American college and university where he has �menaced the minds of the young.� (Read Mr. Bigelow�s story, absorb his love for English literature, and judge for yourself how much of a �menace� he is in a classroom!) The author has had the good luck to travel extensively in Europe, and during the war he served with the Air Force in the Philippines. Out of all this background � especially out of his knowledge of London and its literary associations � has come a tale of a fabulous treasure and a pea-soup fog and a trio of sinister spivs and a �gross and greasy globe of a man� who proved to be the real menace � to the whole world...

You know me, of course: I am Henry Winford Platt, the Des Moines accountant and amateur litterateur. You know what I found in London, and you know that I sold it to the British nation for three pounds, ten shillings � about $10.

Just 31 sheets of yellowed paper, eight inches by six and one-half, watermarked with a court jester�s bauble. Yellowed sheets of paper. But I tell you that the cobra-guarded vaults of maharajahs glitter with nothing so precious, and the loot of Attila, buried with him on the Danube shore, is not half so bewitching.

Do you say, �Well, I�ll take Attila�s plunder?� Then you don�t know that I declined seven cabled offers, including one of $975,000 (about one-tenth of the true value of those sheets) from a well-known collector of manuscripts in Dallas, Texas...

�My first case?� inspector Appleby looked at his friends with the appearance of considerable surprise. �Do you know that nobody has ever asked me about that before? It�s always the latest case that people are curious about.�

The Vicar nodded. �News is more popular than history nowadays. It is only one symptom, I fear, of a deplorable��

�Precisely, my dear Vicar.� The Doctor�s interruption was hasty. �How right you are. But let Appleby tell us his story. For I can see that there is a story. That manner of squinting into the bowl of his pipe is an infallible sign.�

�My first case was quite a small one.� Appleby finished squinting and began to puff. �I�d say about eighteen inches by ten. And certainly not more than three inches deep.�

The Vicar looked bewildered. �This case was about a case?�

�It was about this rather small case. But then, of course, I was rather small too.�

Author�s age: late thirties. Education: graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University. Occupation: newspaperman � Sunday editor of �The Youngstown Vindicator�... But such bare facts do not give a true insight into how and why Browning Norton wrote a story like �The Panther.� To know the how and why, we have to dig deeper...

The author was born in a small village in a rural county and lived there until he was sixteen years old. (Ah, now we�re getting at it!) For his prizewinning story, Mr. Norton went back to that small village, back in his memory to the people he knew as a child and teen-ager. (It�s clear now why �The Panther� is such an American story!) People in those days � people who lived in communities of 500 or less � were different somehow; at least, that is what Mr. Norton thinks in mature retrospect. They were, as he expresses it, �individualists with a capital I,� and the older Mr. Norton gets, the more clearly he seems to remember them.

So, there is the how and why... Mr. Norton�s story is rooted in memories of his own boyhood. It is a country story � of farmers and dogs and henhouses; of country men talking, at the grist mill and in the general store � talking of crops and feed prices and the terror lurking in the neighborhood after dark; of country women attending their weekly Sewing Circle and also talking about the terror hiding in the hills; and of the silence in country woods, �punctured by the cry of tree toad and cricket, the owl�s call, soft vague plops, swishes and whirs, that told of a world of night creatures abroad...�

It began when the farmers around the north district of Conroy County complained about something breaking into their henhouses. Hardly anyone padlocked henhouses those days, chickens being kind of a side issue in that end of the county, and henhouse doors were mostly flimsy affairs held by a peg. That served to keep out small predators � skunks and weasels � and anyhow the farm dogs usually took care of them. But an animal big enough to put some weight against a henhouse door could undoubtedly force it open.

That�s why the Conroy farmers figured whatever this was, it was big; that and some other things. It happened at the Coulter place, and at Parsons�, and at Dunlaps� on the river road, and several other places at the foot of the hills. One or two fat hens missing, blood and feathers on the floor, and the thing so quiet and slick that the other chickens weren�t even disturbed. Another funny thing: all the farms had dogs, big shaggy cow dogs people called shepherds, and not afraid of anything. But only one of those dogs set up a fuss, and that was Dunlaps� Caesar.

Caesar cut loose with a savage volley of barking about 3 a.m. and aroused old man Dunlap out of a sound sleep.

�Next thing I knowed,� old man Dunlap said later, �Caesar was yipping and kiyiing like a scared pup, an� I heard him tear around the house and I knowed he was going under the porch. Hadn�t done that since he was weaned. Well, I got up and lit a lantern and grabbed my shotgun and went out back. One of my hens was a-laying on the ground all chewed up bloody. Pretty soon Caesar heard me cussing, and he came slinking out mighty sheepish. I gave him a look, and blamed if he wan�t trembling! I went to the henhouse and I see by the way the lower part of the door was sprung and the peg all skeejawed around, something good and strong thrun some weight against it. Two hens missing, one that was a-laying there on the ground, and another gone slick and clean!�

All this wouldn�t have got the district too excited, but there was something else. The dogs simply refused to trail the critter. The Coulter boys and Marv Parsons had coon dogs, and Pete Frazer foxhounds, but those dogs wouldn�t take the scent. They just sniffed around the farmyards and then quit cold, with a look that as much as said, �Sorry, this just ain�t in our line.�

Now, up to that time nobody had seen hide nor hair of any thing, but one night Merle Biggins, who lived over on Maple Grove Road, heard a go-round in his sheep pen, and he up and out with his gun � not waiting to get a lantern, for it was moonlight; and when he busted out the back door there was his old Shep holding up one foot and whimpering, but not making a move.

�Why, dang you, Shep!� Merle squalled. �Get outa the way if your belly�s turned yellow!� He kicked at him and went raring down to the pen and shed. The sheep were in a lather, tearing around and bleating, and when he made a fast count one of the lambs was missing.

Merle squinted around, under that three-quarter moon, and up toward the foot of the hills back of his place he saw something big and black sort of galloping along, and he thought he caught a glimpse of white, like maybe the lamb was in the thing�s mouth. So Merle up with his twelve-gauge and banged away, more to ease his feelings than anything else, for the range was too long for a shotgun, and when he lowered the gun and took another look, the thing was gone.

Next morning he was down to Delbert Tomkins� grist mill at Hickock�s Corners, and naturally he embellished the story a little.

�Danged thing was big�s a calf and black as midnight!� he told the farmers who were in with their feed wagons. �Its fur kind of glistened in the moonlight. When I shot at it, it turned around and glared at me, holding the lamb in its mouth, and its eyes blazed like fire.�

Delbert�s tongue was hinged in the middle, and between him and the farmers who listened to Merle, the story went all over the district. Farmers whose places lay at the foot of the hills vowed to set a watch over their sheep pens and henhouses and see if they couldn�t get a crack at this varmint.

That afternoon the Seven Thrifty Sewers Club was meeting to Mrs. Irv Whitcomb�s place on Shanower Road.

�Kind of scairy,� the widow Bartlett said, settling back in a wing-chair, her hands fluttering over her hemstitching, �something prowl-prowling around amongst our places at night, soft-like, a-taking and a-taking, big and hot-breathy, and nobody a-knowing what it be.�

�Oh, stuff!� said bosomy Mrs. Kilrain. �I�m a mind Merle made it up for a joke.� But the others rejected the idea immediately.

�Oh, no, Pauline,� Mrs. Parsons protested. �Merle, he lost a lamb, all right. And we lost a couple hens last week. That makes five farms on Applegate Road.�

�Turn out t�be a fox, prob�ly,� Mrs. Kilrain said.

�But the dogs won�t trail!� put in Mrs. Dunlap.

�And the henhouse doors... all twisted!� said Mrs. Morse.

�Well,� Mrs. Kilrain demanded, �just what did Merle say he saw?�

The widow Bartlett dropped her needlework in her lap, her eyes looking afar. �Big and black,� she said dreamily, �the innocent lamb in its teeth, and kind of galloping away into the hills.� She lowered her voice. �Look for a cloven hoof, I says!�

Mrs. Irv Whitcomb stared. �Big and black... kind of galloping... Good land o� Goshen!�

She was out of the room in a rush, startling them, and they stared at her rocker still rocking away as if she was in it. Presently she came back loaded down with an armful of newspapers. A great newspaper saver, Mrs. Whitcomb was, but everybody kind of saved papers those days. They got the city papers a day or two late on rural delivery.

Mrs. Whitcomb pawed through the back issues. �I know I seen it here not too long ago,� she said. And then she let out a little cry of triumph. �Here it is!� She hunted for the dateline. �The third... let�s see... three weeks ago. Look!�

They gathered around, peering over her shoulders, pushing glasses up, or down, as the case warranted. It was a brief account in the middle of the page. How the Dunbar Brothers Circus had lost a valuable panther. A dangerous animal, it said. Five hundred dollars reward. A keeper told of finding the cage door open and the panther gone when the circus train arrived in Portersville. The keeper was positive, he said, that the panther was in its cage when the train left Bolton. The panther�s name was Satan.

�The train goes across the northeast corner of the county,� Mrs. Morse breathed.

�Not ten miles from here,� Mrs. Parsons added.

�Yes, but its 80 miles from Bolton to Portersville,� Mrs. Kilrain objected. �It could have escaped anywhere along the line. No reason to think��

�Satan!� the widow Bartlett gasped. �I told you! Satan!� She nodded her head rapidly.

A panther, a dangerous animal. That got around the district fast. People began going through old newspapers, pulling them off jelly cupboard shelves, out from under butter crocks on cellar floors, hunting the one that told about the circus animal. And when everybody had read it, the county began to get scared. Not in the daytime. Not with the sun shining down and work to be done. A cat is a night animal, sleeping by day and slinking around under the moon; and when the crickets began their evening song and dusk settled gently down, the district tensed up, moved jerkily, and watched from the corners of its eyes. Mothers spoke sharply to children wanting to linger outside, and hired men, plodding late up the pasture lanes, eyed every bush and took to peering over their shoulders.

Each morning some fresh depredation was reported and multiplied in the telling, now on the creek road... now Applegate... over Maple Grove way, but at last a pattern took shape. The raids were confined to a limited area, the farms bounded by Applegate Road, Maple Grove, and the river road that ran through Hickock�s Corners, a rough square whose fourth side was the hill called Little Mountain.

In Chatfield�s General Store at the Corners, Carl Morse held forth. �Ain�t safe for women and children t�be out after dark. I say the thing�s holing up on Little Mountain. We got to get us a posse and hunt it down!�

�Trouble is,� old man Dunlap said, shifting his chew, �the danged dogs won�t trail it, an� can�t say�s I blame �em. What you figure on, tramping that whole blamed mountain over? All you�ll do is kick it out ahead of you and never see it. It�ll circle around behind you laffin� itself sick.�

The picture he conjured up was not heartening. Other farmers in Chatfield�s nodded, no one offered himself as a posse member, and some decided privately that setting a watch over henhouses wasn�t worth it either, all things considered. What was a twelve- or sixteen-gauge shotgun against a jungle critter you couldn�t hardly see until maybe it was too late?

But down Applegate Road, at the very foot of Little Mountain, Bill and Bob, the Coulter twins, were too riled up mad to be scared. Didn�t aim to keep their kids in the house forever for no damned cat, big or small, or worry and fuss about hens and stock. To say nothing about having the livers pestered out of them by their aunt, the widow Bartlett who lived on the next place over, with her constant jabbering about Satan and cloven hooves and being scared to stay alone. So the twins got down their heavy deer rifles, cleaned and oiled them, and talked it over.

�What we need,� Bob said, �is a dog ain�t scared to trail this here panther. Once we find out where he�s a-laying��

�Ain�t but one dog like that around,� Bill said. �Old Major Tattersall�s Bones.�

�That�s the one,� Bob agreed.

�Come to think of it, I ain�t seen the major around lately.�

�Maybe,� Bob suggested, �he�s down to the county infirmary again. Funny geezer, the major.�

They sat in silence thinking about it while they put the deer rifles in working order. A gigantic gaunt old man, Bide Tattersall claimed to have been a major in the Union Army. None ever called old Bide a liar to his face, and anyway he had one thing that kind of proved it, a Union officer�s blue greatcoat, and he was as proud of it as the knights of old were of their armor. Hardly ever seen without it save in the hottest weather, and Old Bide, muffled to the chin in that greatcoat, with the gray mastiff, Bones, at his side, was a familiar figure striding along the roads of the district. He lived on his soldier�s pension, and had a cottage up on the ridge for him and Bones. Bide Tattersall claimed a rifle ball had creased his skull at Shiloh, Tenn. Sometimes the skull-ache made him go kind of queer; but he could always tell, he said, when a spell was coming on, and then he�d take Bones down the other side of the ridge and leave him with his neighbor, Leeland Stack, and walk the fifteen miles to the county infirmary at Conroy Village. Major Bide would stay there till he was all right again, and then come home.

�Well, let�s be going,� Bill Coulter said, �if we�re gonna ask the major to borrow Bones. It�s quite a walk up there.�

They took the deer rifles along just in case and began to foot it up the Little Mountain road. The dirt track wound up for half a mile under a canopy of trees, then leveled out for a ways into the ridge that circled the lower section of the mountain. They walked silently, with the distance-eating stride of country men, and all they saw was dappled sunlight on the pine beds, saucy jays, and frisking woodpeckers, and now and then a chipmunk and a slithering grass snake. They made the ridge and moved along it for another mile, and there on the right stood Bide Tattersall�s little house under a great elm.

�Bones shoulda winded us and been out by now,� Bob said in a low voice.

The cottage had a vacant sightless look, but just for luck Bill called out politely, �Major Tattersall... Major Tattersall, sir! Anyone about?�

No answer save an echo off Little Mountain�s rising face, and Bob shrugged. �Ain�t here.�

�Now we come this far,� Bill said. �Might as well cut down to Stack�s and see if he�s got Bones.�

When they got to his, place, Stack, a shiftless man, was resting on his shoulder blades under a pear tree, and he pulled himself up grudgingly to greet them. �Howdy, boys. Why the shooting irons? You hunting that wildcat that�s loose over in your section?�

�Just looking around,� Bill said. �You see Major Tattersall or Bones?�

�Yup,� Stack said, picking his teeth. �I got Bones on a line put back. The major, he felt another queer spell coming on couple weeks back and lit out for the �firmary.�

�We�d like t�borrow Bones t�do a little hunting,� Bill said. �Don�t expect the major�d care, d�you?�

Stack hesitated and Bob spoke up. �We�ll take care of Bones, Lee. We�ll keep him on a chain. We just want to find out where this thing�s holing up. We�ll be responsible for Bones.�

�Well, all right,� Stack said. �If you will. Guess the major�d be willing. Come on, I�ll give you a chain.�

When they got Bones home they gave the big gray boy a pan of cool water in the shade and a good feed. Bones ate as if maybe Stack hadn�t been too generous, then he heaved a sigh and flopped down, looking at them with his tough knowing eyes like he was saying, �So, what next?�

Bob chuckled. �He�ll do! I�ll snap his chain on this here clothes wire, so he can move around, and we can put him in the barn nights. We�ll just have to wait till that cat cuts up some more didos somewhere, and then we�ll see.�

They didn�t have long to wait. About 3 o�clock in the morning Bob�s wife shook him awake.

�Listen!�

The frantic jerky clanging of Aunt Minnie Bartlett�s dinner bell cut into his sleepiness, and Bob hit the floor on the jump and was out in the hall yelling for Bill. The twins hustled into some clothes wordlessly, grabbed their rifles and a lantern, and took off on the run, and all the while that dinner bell kept clanging enough to wake the dead.

They had to take the widow Bartlett�s hands off the bell rope by main force. She was standing on the back stoop in a wrapper, a lantern at her feet, mouth contorted, and a wild glazed look in her eyes. They got her inside and into a kitchen chair, but they couldn�t get much sense out of her.

Bob slipped out for a moment, and when he returned he said quietly, �Henhouse door pushed in. Blood and feathers. Guess it was here.�

�He was!� The widow�s voice rose hysterically, then she moaned and covered her face with her hands. �Satan was here! I saw him!�

�Please, Auntie,� Bill urged, �tell us what happened. Bob and me aim to get this panther varmint.�

�Varmint?� she cried. �Oh, no, Satan it was!�

�Well,� Bill said edgily, �Satan, panther, varmint, whatever you want t�call it. Now, Auntie, please!�

She made a real effort. �I... I heard a noise outside, and I came down. I didn�t want to, but something seemed to make me. I lit a lantern and � and went out on the stoop. He was crouching fight there in the yard, gnawing on one of my hens, a-tearing at the feathers. Oh, horrible!� She raised her hands to her eyes again and began to shudder.

�What�d it look like, Auntie?� Bill urged sharply.

�Monstrous big and black,� she whispered. �Mouth all bloody... the devil�s face, Satan himself! Snarled at me and scurried away in the dark.�

In spite of themselves the twins were shaken.

�Shall I get Bones?� said Bill.

Bob considered. �Only two hours till daylight. Track won�t cool off too much, and I�d a sight rather see where I�m going. Go get Ma to stay with Auntie. We�ll start out with Bones soon�s it�s light.�

The sun had not yet risen, but dawn was in the sky and near objects were visible when the twins, leading Bones, returned to the Bartlett farmyard. If there was any thought in their minds that he might act like the shepherds had, it was quickly erased, for the mastiff sniffed over the yard eagerly, a small whimper of sound in his throat, and they could sense his rising excitement. They grinned at each other in satisfaction, and then Bones started off with a rush, nearly jerking Bill from his feet.

�I knew he�d do it!� Bob exulted, swinging his rifle high. �Good old Bones!�

The dog moved forward eagerly, the little whimper in his throat, and hauling Bill along like a monkey on a string. He led them a merry three-hour chase, sturdy legs churning, through the fields, across the corner of Parsons� meadow and woodlot, then circling back, and shortly after 8 they were moving up a timber slash that led to the Little Mountain ridge. Suddenly Bones stopped stock still, stuck his great blunt nose in the air and seemed to test the wind, ears pricked. Then without warning he gave a great lunge, ripping the chain from Bill�s hand, and went kiting up the grade, and disappeared.

Cursing fervently, Bill danced around, holding his hand where the skin was ripped off by the chain jerk, and Bob stared.

�Well, where in the devil�s he going?�

�Damn him,� Bill said feelingly. �Hope he runs right into that panther! Hope he sticks his ugly head smack in its mouth!�

Bob grunted. �We got to follow him. We�re responsible.�

They changed course, moving along briskly, climbing, and soon they neared the rim of the ridge.

�Know where we�re gonna come out?� said Bob.

�Sure. Ridge Road, pretty close to the major�s cottage.�

Bob nodded and they went silently up over the rim and onto the ridge plateau, stepped out on the road, and sure enough, there was the major�s place a hundred yards to their left. On the tiny porch the major himself, in his shirt sleeves, sat quietly rocking, one hand absently fondling Bones, who lolled happily beside him. The twins waited for him to speak out as custom dictated, but he didn�t, so they moved toward the cottage anyhow. When they were just below it Bob said, �Morning, Major.�

Major Bide started. �Good... good morning.�

�We thought you was down t�the inf � the county seat,� Bill said.

The major frowned. �No,� he said. �Uh, that is, I was, but I got to feeling better, so I�� He stopped and seemed to ponder for a time, and then he added, �I come back.�

The twins exchanged a glance. The major looked a little off his feed, eyes sunken, beard ragged and yellow, not his usual style, and his big hands trembly.

�We took the liberty of borrowing Bones,� Bob said. �We got him off Stack to hunt down a varmint. He was trailing on the hill, and I guess he decided you was back. He broke away from us and came a-sailing up here. Hope you didn�t mind our using him.�

�What? Oh, no. No I didn�t mind.� He stroked Bones, and when the twins kept standing there he bestirred himself as if in thought. �You want to take Bones now?�

�If you don�t mind, Major.�

�No, I don�t. Go down to them, Bones. Go down, sir!�

The mastiff went unwillingly, dragging the chain, and Bob picked it up. �We�re obliged to you, Major. We�ll bring him home soon.�

Bide Tattersall didn�t answer, so they turned, feeling awkward, and moved away leading the reluctant mastiff. They walked down the road a long way out of earshot before Bob spoke again.

�Funny. Guess he come back too soon.�

�Yeah,� Bill agreed, �guess he did.�

�Too late to pick up that cold track now. I don�t even remember just where we were when Bones bolted.�

�Nor I, neither,� Bill said.

�Time we spend another hour casting around it�ll be stone cold. Bones ain�t got a hound�s nose; Better wait for another try.�

�Guess we had.�

The zest had slipped out of the day somehow, and they didn�t know why. But when they came down into the valley, lying hot under the high sun, and turned into their own farmyard, something happened to change the whole complexion of the affair. Marv Parsons was standing on the porch talking to Bill�s wife, and now he came hustling out across the yard, eager and anxious.

�Find anything?�

�Trail got cold,� Bob said briefly.

�Well, we found something!� There was hot excitement in Marv, and the twins felt their interest reviving. �Me and my oldest boy, Sam, was on the knoll this morning hunting genseng. Just above the ridge we run smack into the mouth of a kind of den where a big oak�d uprooted above a little hollow and made an overhang. Something�s been going in and out, and fresh chicken bones scattered around!�

Bill began, �See anything��

�Hell, no! We lit out fast! Us with a couple baskets on our arms. Didn�t aim to tangle with no panther!�

�Find the place again, can you?�

�Sure.�

�Take us up and show us?�

�Well... Wanta get my shotgun. I talked Dunlap and Merle Biggins into saying they�d go along if you fellows went. All we got is twelve-gauges. Feel a lot better behind your rifles.�

It was late afternoon before the six � Bill and Bob, Marv Parsons, Merle Biggins, Dunlap, and Bones on his chain � had pushed up the ridge to the place where Parsons motioned for them to stop.

�Now,� he whispered, �right up off the road here to our left, �bout a hundred yards in.�

They scrambled up, Merle taking Bones� chain to leave the twins free with their rifles, and slipped quietly into the woods. Presently they came to the edge of a glade.

Parsons pointed nervously. �See that little knoll? Just beyond�s the hollow. See that overhang there? That�s the uprooted oak. There�s a clutter of chicken bones on the knoll.�

Bill said guardedly, �Bob and me�ll go up. If he gets by us he�ll have lead in him. Let Bones loose, if he does, and blaze away.�

The twins slipped forward softly, crossed the glade and crept slowly up the knoll. They peered down into the den. Hard-packed earth. A welter of bones, a lamb skin. A stench. The den was vacant.

The brothers came back. �Ain�t there,� Bob said, �but that�s his place. We�ll wait.�

�Wait?� Merle Biggins� voice was shrill. �Flow long? Not into dark?�

Bill looked at him. �Came to get him, didn�t we? Nobody�s got to wait that don�t want to. Bob and me�ll stay.�

Parsons, old man Dunlap, and Merle studied each other. Old man Dunlap shrugged and spit. �If they�re game I am.�

�Well�� Parsons said. �Well��

�All right,� Merle said. �We�re a bunch of damn� fools, but all right!�

�Be a moon later,� Bob said, �but I�d like to have our dark lantern. We could use some sandwiches, too. I�d go back myself, or Bill would, but rifles are the best up here. Marv, will you go? My wife�ll fix some grub on the run, and don�t forget the lantern. Hate to ask you, but��

�Sure,� Parsons said with alacrity. �Glad to.�

They settled down to wait, and the peace of the woods gradually eased the tension. They began to talk in low tones of everyday things � crops and feed prices, county doings. Parsons came back at sundown with the lantern and a basket of food. They ate standing up, as the shadows lengthened, and Bones fared as well as the rest. They finished in silence. Bob lit the dark lantern and closed the opening. Bill stationed them against trees around the rim of the glade. It was full dark now.

They settled down to wait. Time ran and ran on the spool, and nothing happened.

�Wish to lordy I could smoke,� Merle groaned at last.

�Go ahead,� Bob said.

A match flared briefly over Merle�s pipe, showing for an instant his strained face. Then darkness and silence. Not complete darkness, for the moon rode up now, throwing soft radiance into the glade, a half-light; and the silence only a woods silence, punctured by the cry of tree toad and cricket, the owl�s call, soft vague plops, swishes and whirs, that told of a world of night creatures abroad.

From far below came a familiar sound. The squawk of a hen.

�Ssh!� old man Dunlap rasped. �You hear that?�

They heard it again. Faint still, but nearer.

Bones whimpered deep in his chest, and Bob said fiercely, �Be quiet, sir!� He handed the chain to Parsons. �Keep him still, Marv!�

They stood for an eternity, then the hen squawked again very close down below them. They listened till their eardrums like to burst, hearts thudding, neck hair crawling. Then a snuffling panting sound behind them nearly sucked their hearts right out. A soft pad-padding and the thing was right in the glade, a great black shadow slinking toward the den opening.

Two sheets of flame as Bill and Bob fired together. A high tearing scream seared the night. They�d heard how a panther screams. They braced themselves for the rip of flesh-tearing claws and fangs, but instead came a scrambling, and the swish of bushes. Then silence. Bones gave a great howl, lunged, broke away from Marv, and rushed toward the den.

�Back, Bones, back!� Bill yelled. But Bones was gone. They waited fearfully, expecting sounds of mortal combat, but there was no sound at all. Nothing.

�We got him!� Bill exulted.

�Have to wait,� Bob warned.

And waiting for daybreak was the hardest job the five Conroy men had ever tackled. But they did it, with the lantern on the ground out in the glade where Bob carried it. At intervals Bill called, �Bones, Bones!� and got no answer. Finally he gave up, and the five of them stood like stone men, guns at the ready in cramped hands. But at last daylight sifted into the glade, paling the lantern; birds twittered and frisked in the trees, and a chipmunk ran into the open and stared curiously. It was light.

Three pairs of eyes in grim faces questioned Bill and Bob. The twins looked at each other. �You ready?� Bill said.

Bob nodded. They began to inch slowly up the knoll, guns well out in front of them. They were at the top now. One more step and they would look down into the den under the oak roots. They stood there and stared. Bob turned and motioned for the others to come up. Now all five were standing on the knoll gazing down unbelievingly. At the great body sprawled there. At the dead pullet.

Bones was lying there, too, head on forepaws, eyes mournful. The blue greatcoat was splotched and splattered with blood and grime. Blood and dirt matted the beard. But there was no madness marring the tired old face. Major Bide Tattersall was at peace.

He was tall and scraggly looking and the colors on the band of his straw hat brightened up the office a lot. Just inside the door he halted; smoke from a cigarette, that dangled just a little from full lips, curled past a left ear that wasn�t shaped much like the other. Blue eyes squinted at me.

�You Dion Davies?� he asked.

�I am Dion Davies,� I told him. �And sure �tis an Irish name that me mither was proud of.�

�Your brogue�s rotten,� he said disgustedly. �I�m damn� sure your mither wouldn�t be proud of that.�

He did a better job on the word �mither� than I�d done. Got more roll to the �r�, and the cigarette still stayed between his lips.

I said: �I�m sorry, Mr. McQuirter. Circumstances have forced me to move, ofttimes, in circles of culture and refinement. In so doing I have, perhaps unconsciously��

McQuirter�s long face smiled in several places.

�Say � what we getting like this for?� he demanded cheerfully. �Maybe it�s the heat, eh? The boss told me you were a good guy. And me � I got a reputation for being right.�

I said: �Sure you have, Mac. You don�t mind if I call you Mac, do you? Somehow, I feel as though we�ve known each other for a long time.�

The cigarette he was holding just below the level of his chin rolled from his fingers into the palm of his hand. He closed the hand until it made a white knuckled fist. Smiling at me, he opened the hand slowly and surprise showed in his blue eyes as he looked at it. He whistled softly.

�Look what I done!� he said.

I smiled and nodded. �I noticed it, Mac. A symbol, wasn�t it?�

There was a brief silence.

�I don�t get you,� he said quietly.

I pointed to the waste-basket, and then to a chair.

�Dump the pill and squat,� I suggested.

While he was doing it Julie came in and handed me a telegram. I held it while she said:

�Everything is under control in the Faber case, Mr. Davies. Marks has just reported in from Cleveland. Rader and Leftovich are using the files. Connelly won�t be in tomorrow. Mr. Dancer will telephone you tomorrow at 10, from Chicago.�

I said: �Thanks, Miss Ryan. Finish up those letters, please.�

She said: �Yes, sir,� and went out.

McQuirter eased his scraggliness into a chair at one end of my desk.

�So we both can put on an act, eh, Dion?� he said pleasantly. �You don�t mind my calling you Dion, do you? Somehow, I feel as though I�d known you a long time.�

I tore open the envelope of the telegram and unfolded the yellow paper. Julie�s even handwriting was easy to read. �Gun in left hip pocket � bumped into him outside purposely � left-handed.�

Folding the yellow paper, I replaced it in the envelope, nodded thoughtfully, slipped the envelope in a drawer of the desk.

�My real intimate friends call me Dee, Mac,� I said without looking at him. �And I want you to feel right at home with me.�

McQuirter got a very clean handkerchief from his coat pocket, carefully tied a knot in one corner. He leaned back in the chair, held the handkerchief between two fingers by another corner and swung the knotted end in a slow circle.

� �Dancer and Davies, Limited,� � he recited slowly. �The second biggest detective agency in New York, and maybe tougher than the first biggest.�

He grinned. �They say around Broadway that Dancer was a lawyer, and a smart one. Maybe too smart. So now he�s a senior partner. A quiet partner.�

I looked at the electric clock. �They say around Broadway that Jim McQuirter is as smart a fellow as Joey Tay, only so far he hasn�t had the breaks. So now he�s Joey�s right-hand man.�

McQuirter swung the knotted handkerchief slowly, his blue eyes watching the swing.

�A lady by the name of��

He broke off, looked at me sharply. �This is just between the two of us, Dee,� he said.

I nodded. �Private chat.� I opened the Tower left drawer of my desk a few inches, which cut in the dictograph, put my feet on the drawer.

�A lady named Greenway,� he went on � �Sylvia Greenway � owns the old American Theatre near Ninth on 42nd. She�s about 80 years old, a sort of crusader. You know � when she gets an idea she stays with it. She�s been running highbrow plays for the poor in her theatre, for years. And losing plenty. Lately the poor have been getting poorer and she�s been losing too much. A couple of weeks ago she leased the theatre for ten years to a guy named Reginald Fox.�

I nodded. �Read about that � a theatrical man from the West. Had an arty theatre out in Seattle or some place. Came into some money and felt that he could carry on Mrs. Greenway�s ideas, only in a better way. Calls the new spot The American Gardens.�

�Yeah,� he said. �That was the idea. Then something funny happened. This fellow Fox changed his mind. He figured maybe a beer spot in the theatre would go better. It�s a big house; he could run entertainment on the stage, even use the balconies. The location was right � a thirsty neighborhood and not so far from Broadway. So he started alterations.�

I whistled a few bars from a tap-dance song. McQuirter looked at me.

�The old lady got wise, found out what was going to happen. That was about a week ago. She started to raise hell. You see � she�s been dead against the return of beer. She crusaded against it for years.�

I grinned. �Didn�t Joey Tay know that when he sent in his man Fox?�

McQuirter looked hurt. �You don�t think Joey would worry about that, do you, Dee?�

I lighted a cigarette. McQuirter shrugged. �There was a lot of lawyer talk, but Fox had the lease and it didn�t say anything about not changing things around and serving beer. The old lady had fallen hard for his art talk.�

I said: �Well, what�s worrying Joey?�

McQuirter frowned. �The old lady�s a scrapper,� he said. �She owns half a block directly across from the theatre. Some empty stores and a few with short leases. She bought up the short leases and a couple of days ago a big squad of workmen started in. Want a guess?�

I widened my eyes a little. �Don�t tell me the old lady hit on the one scheme to make Joey yelp,� I said �Not another beer garden, maybe a better one, to give him too much competition?�

McQuirter said bitterly: �You guessed it the first time. With a million or more fish behind her, and plenty of fight, even at 80. And to make it worse � she can fix an entrance on Ninth Avenue and she�s on the best side of 42nd.�

I grinned. �And as soon as Joey�s licked � she�ll close up.�

McQuirter swore. �Sure � and go back to losing money on orange juice and chocolate nut bars. But that won�t help Joey any. He�s got a lot of coin sunk in the lease and in contracts for fixing over.�

�Well, well,� I said. �That�s what Joey gets for trying to rob the cradle.�

McQuirter untied the knots in the handkerchief and narrowed his eyes.

�The boss suggested Dancer and Davies for a tailing job,� he said.

I stared at him. �Frame the old-lady � at 80?�

McQuirter didn�t smile. �Ever hear of Nancy Gale?�

I nodded. �Park Avenue stuff. Composes tone poems. Sings once in a while. Had a concert at Carnegie not long ago. A looker. Engaged to Jason Cummings � lawyer and definite dry.�

McQuirter chuckled. �You been reading the papers. Well, Nancy is the old lady�s granddaughter. And her weak spot. That�s the big point � Sylvia Greenway thinks Nancy couldn�t do wrong. She�s crazy about her � and her tone poems and her dry husband to be.�

I waited. McQuirter lifted a lean finger and pointed it directly at me.

�The boss wants Nancy tailed. And about three nights a week you can pick her up at the Tree Club. Upstairs, where the boys and girls try to beat the cards and wheels.�

I looked at McQuirter thoughtfully. He stood up, ran the handkerchief across his forehead, put it away.

�Retainer?� he asked.

I said: �A hundred to start.�

He tossed the hundred on my desk without much fuss. I said: �Receipt?�

He shook his head. �The boss and me � we�ve got good memories.�

I took my feet off the desk drawer and stood up. McQuirter said:

�The sooner we get the reports � the better. And the tougher they are for the old lady to look at � the better. And the easier they are for the newspapers to grab � the better.�

His tall, scraggly body reached the door; a lean arm was lifted. The door opened and he went out.

I shut off the dictograph, lit a cigarette from the tip of my short one. After a few seconds Julie came in, walked to the chair McQuirter had vacated, sat down.

Her dark eyes were narrowed and her fine lips pressed closely together. I looked at her black hair, almost jet, in the reddish light of the low sun. Her features were small and strong.

�Well, Miss Dancer?� I said slowly. �Joey Tay and Jim McQuirter. Two Chicago boys who made good in a bigger city. They�re tough, fast and smooth. You listened in on the little bed time story. Do we stall out?�

Julie lifted her head and smiled.

�Stall hell!� She said simply. �We�ll ease right into it!�

I can�t pretend to explain how it happened, but I can swear that I saw it happen � just two weeks ago this evening, beginning at exactly 9 p.m. Since then I have talked to scientists and television engineers, telling them something of the story, and those who didn�t laugh in disbelief could do no better than to remind me of the old theory that no light-wave ever ceases and no sound-wave ever dies. Perhaps they should not be asked to do better, perhaps that is explanation enough. In any case, this is what happened:

It was, as I have said, exactly two weeks ago this evening. I was alone in the house because my wife was on night duty at the local filter-board center, where she is working in connection with the national air-defense program. I had eaten a cold supper and was planning to get into bed early and read myself to sleep. But before doing that I decided to watch a half-hour television program that promised to be better than average. I did watch it, sitting in a comfortable chair, with a drink that I could easily replenish on the table beside me, in a room that was completely dark except for the light from the television screen. And the program was really quite good; at least, it seemed so with the help of the drinks. When it was finished I got up to turn off the set � but before I could reach the dial I saw something on the screen that didn�t look like a closing commercial. Nor did it sound like one.

What I could see and hear was a play that was already in progress. Judging by the costumes of the man and woman who were on the stage, of which the television camera was giving me a close view, it was a costume piece, and, judging by the accents of the actors, it was an English comedy. In fact, the man was obviously an Englishman of the Lord Dundreary type. At that precise moment he was cackling, �Ha! ha! ha!� In the face of this highly intelligent utterance his pretty companion asked: �What�s the matter?� And he replied: �That wath a joke, that wath.�

As he spoke these words, the camera � or probably one of a battery of cameras � cut from the stage to what looked like a real audience in a real theatre. I barely had time to calculate that the theatre probably held a thousand people, and to note with surprise that all the spectators seemed to be dressed for a costume party, when the entire audience rose to its feet and began to applaud vigorously, with a few cheers sounding above the handclapping. But the faces were not turned towards the stage. They were turned toward the rear of the theatre.

To the back of the theatre the television camera took me, and I saw that the cause of the demonstration was a party of four persons who had just arrived. Two men and two women were in the party. The younger man was wearing an old-fashioned uniform of an American army officer, with what I managed to recognize as a major�s epaulets. He had thick hair, a high forehead, heavy sideburns, and a military mustache, and he looked as if he might be in his late twenties. The younger woman had a rather plain but intelligent face, and I noticed that she was wearing a heavy, elaborate necklace. The older woman was a plump, apparently placid middle-aged person, in an evening dress that revealed her full, smooth shoulders and short, fat arms. There were � rather coquettishly, I thought � flowers in her hair.

But it was the fourth member of the party, the second and older man, who instantly caught my eye and held it fascinated. He was tall and gaunt and stooped and homely. There were deep furrows in his lean cheeks, and his great eyes looked as if they had brooded over all the sorrows of mankind. His hair was shaggy, his upper lip clean-shaven, his beard close-cropped. He was wearing a dark suit, with a black tie folded across the front of his white shirt.

While I stared at him in amazement, the party of four began to move, guided by an usher and another man, a nondescript fellow � possibly some sort of attendant � bringing up the rear. The camera followed the group, and so did I.

I watched them go up a short stairway, pass through what I took to be a side aisle of the dress circle, go through a door into a narrow hallway, and from the hallway enter a stage box. (To be completely accurate, they did not all enter the box. The nondescript man stopped outside the door that led into the hallway.) The young officer and the young woman took the seats nearest the front of the box. The older woman chose to sit a little farther back. The older man lowered himself into a large rocking-chair that was placed in the rear of the box. From this comfortable position he could see the stage, but only a small portion of the audience � and only a few of the audience could see him.

As soon as the party was seated, the camera panned over the audience, showing their glances upturned towards the box, and their momentary indifference to what was happening on the stage. And then the camera swung round again to move in on the box from the audience�s point of view. I saw that the double box in which the party of four sat was decorated with draped Union flags, and I saw that the flags framed a picture of George Washington. But I did not need this view to tell me what I was watching or where I was. I had known for some time. I was, by the grace of my television screen, in Ford�s Opera House, on Tenth Street, between E Street and F Street, in the city of Washington, D. C.�� and the time was the night of April 14, 1865.

I was also sitting in an armchair in the living-room of my own house, and I had a drink in my hand. But I had no idea of how I had got back to my chair, after being checked in the act of switching off the TV set, or of when I had mixed the new drink.

Moment followed moment now, with relentless fatality, as I watched the great drama unroll, while the little play upon the stage claimed, from time to time, my fleeting attention. The television cameras gave me complete freedom of vision. They enabled me to study the President�s worn, kindly face in all the intimacy of a close-up. They made it possible for me to sit beside the President�s wife, and to marvel that so placid an exterior could conceal the mad jealousies that I knew were there. I looked with interest at the young officer whom I now remembered to be Major Henry Reed Rathbone, attached to the War Office. I even managed to work up some interest in his fianc�e, Miss Clara Harris, who previously had been only a printed name to me. She was not my type, but I found her pleasant enough.

From the TV screen came the voice of the actor who was playing the absurdly exaggerated role of �Our American Cousin� � and adding exaggerations of his own to the written part. Through the camera�s eye I could see the peephole that had been bored, only that afternoon, in the door of the President�s box; and I could see the wooden bar that had been so placed that the door from the dress circle into the little hallway could be barricaded from within. Through the camera�s eye I could see the nondescript man � now known to me as John F. Parker, bodyguard � desert his post by that same door, desert the man in the big rocking-chair, and stroll downstairs and out into the street in search of a drink.

The scenes came and went, on stage and off. My tension grew. I looked at the luminous dial of my wrist watch. It was 10 o�clock. I realized that the second scene of the third act was drawing to a close. I sat there as if hypnotized, but at the same time with a passionate feeling that I should, be able to do something. After all, I thought wildly, I was the only person present � the only person in Ford�s Opera House � who knew what was about to happen. Surely there must be some way for me to stop it, some way for me to give a warning in time!

Then, suddenly, I saw what I had been waiting for. I saw the dark, slim man, with the black mustache, with the actor�s face and the actor�s walk, stroll into the theatre. For a moment the camera brought me so close to him that I fancied I could smell the liquor that I knew he had been drinking. I followed him as he climbed the stairs to the dress circle. I followed him as he went through the unguarded door � the door that should have been guarded � into the little hallway. I saw him put the wooden bar in place, securing himself against surprise from without. I stood at his side � and thought I could hear the beating of his heart � as he looked through the peephole at the President. And then I saw him take out the little brass derringer and hold it in his right hand, take out the steel dagger and clutch it in his left hand, silently open the door, and enter the box: I watched him as he paused for at least two full seconds � and let me assure you that two seconds can be a long, long time. The seconds passed. He pointed the pistol. I saw the flash and I heard the shot. And I saw the shot go home.

After that all was confusion and uproar. Rathbone sprang at the assassin, grappled with him, and was stabbed in the arm. Waving his dagger, the slim dark man with the actor�s face � flushed now with drink and hate and triumph � jumped onto the railing of the box and leaped from it to the stage, catching his spur in one of the flags as he leaped, and landing with a leg crumpled under him. Loud above the uproar, the cries of the President�s wife were horrible to hear. The man with the dagger struggled to his feet. Hands clutched to hold him, but he evaded them all � and just before he vanished in the wings he paused dramatically, flourished his dagger aloft, and shouted three words defiantly. Men swarmed onto the stage. One man, yelling that he was a surgeon, climbed from the stage into the Presidential box. The President�s wife had to be pulled away forcibly from the slumped figure of her husband. The surgeon leaned above the President. And then�

Then the television screen went dark.

It stayed dark, because � as I learned later � it had blown out all its tubes simultaneously. And I stayed in my chair, motionless in the blackness, marveling at what I had seen. But most marvelous of all, most unbelievable, was what I had seen during those two long seconds when the man with the derringer and the dagger had paused. I had seen something then that is not in any of the history books.

Even now, in this year of 1953, I am not sure whether or not it would be right for me to make public what I saw. I have submitted that question, along with my story, to the highest governmental authorities; and I am still awaiting their decision.

But, in the meantime, I can tell you one thing. I can tell you, with all the certainty of an eye-witness, that it was not John Wilkes Booth who killed Abraham Lincoln.

If a good tailor could have got hold of Hugo Stanwicz, he would have covered the great slabs of fat with a neat, loose-fitting gray suit in a quiet pattern. Then, when Hugo rolled through the lobby of the Edwinet Hotel on his way to make a soft buck, only the uninformed would stare. They might say to the man at the cigar counter: �Are they making a movie in here?�

And the man would answer: �Friend, that is Hugo Stanwicz and he will be glad to make you a small wager on anything you care to name � after he�s checked the odds and bought insurance.�

But Hugo didn�t wear a quiet gray suit. He wore spectacular creations, padded in the shoulders, nipped in at the waist, flaring over the massive haunches. A surprisingly thin and exceedingly long nose, appearing to swing when he walked, bisected his vast and muddy face, giving Hugo the look of a happy and stunted elephant which had been taught during its formative years to walk on its back legs. His little gray eyes, imbedded in pads of doughy flesh, looked out at the world with vacant amiability. He carried, hidden away in his clothes, a silver coin the size of a small saucer. On one side was written, in tiny, rose-cut diamonds, the word, Heads. Under it was engraved I win. On the other side was an appropriate Tails and the mystic You lose.

It was the center and focus of Hugo�s code. And it had made innumerable trips to Benjamin�s Emporium � loans freely granted. The silver saucer was always good for $8.50 with Benjamin.

Hugo had learned, at an early age, that he was of a type unsuited to manual labor. Being an heir to nothing more than a lease on a railroad flat and a shovel caked with cement, living off his income appeared unfeasible. His way became clear at the time of the long-count Dempsey-Tunney fracas. A month before the bout, Hugo found a citizen who was willing to wager $5 even money on the outcome. In a fit of recklessness, Hugo bet on Dempsey. It troubled him, as it was most probable that he would not have the five to pay off should he lose � and the other party was a man with big hard fists. In the middle of a sleepless night Hugo grunted his way out of bed and made many figures on a piece of paper. At last he was able to sleep, and the next day he found an ardent Dempsey supporter and wagered $2 at three to one on Tunney.

After the fight Hugo collected his $6 from the Dempsey supporter and paid five of it to the Tunney supporter. He spent long hours with his fat white hand deep in his pocket, fingering the dollar profit. If the fight had gone the other way, he would have made $3 profit.

A great light dawned for Hugo: it was possible for a man to bet without any possibility of loss!

He never returned to the Brooklyn grocery store. He had the secret of permanent income without labor. True, it came much harder for Hugo to live with the profits of insured betting than it did for those persons, nimbler mentally and physically, who had been making a nice living for years at the same occupation. The tip of Hugo�s tongue was permanently stained from sucking on the stub of a pencil, puffy brow knotted, while he strained at the simple mathematics of the racket.

But years lent a certain dexterity, and in time Hugo should have become an expert. He would have, but for one thing. Deep in his massive frame was hidden a small spark of gambling fever � an insidious little spark. Hugo, with cool and careful restraint, would accumulate a reasonable chunk of money, and then, feeling that he had inside information, would wager it without insurance on the outcome of anything from a dog race to the Kentucky Derby.

He lost oftener than he won. And then his heart hung in his breast like a soggy turnip fried in deep fat. He visited Benjamin... the saucer changed hands... and Hugo began again with very small stakes � insured.

He recognized this failing within himself and indulged in fits of morose self-reproach. But he kept on doing it again and again.

Now, as he walked through the lobby of the Edwinet Hotel, there was a tilt to his pearl-gray hat that would have been jaunty on another head. He had pyramided his insured winnings to an imposing level � and he was full of resolve never to make another uninsured bet.

Hugo turned sideways to squeeze through the narrow doors of the elevator, and the twisted melody of a popular song rumbled in his throat as he rode upwards to the third floor where Barney O�Gay made book in a converted suite.

He walked in, nodded to his myriad acquaintances � he had no friends. No man who plays the angles for a soft buck ever has friends. The world is full of faces and in the faces are sharp eyes � and behind the eyes are many plots, each of them calculated to impoverish all other men. Hugo didn�t find this strange. He didn�t know that any other attitude existed.

He walked heavily to the board and looked it over. Fights at the Garden. Basternick against Codey at even money. Hmmm. Codey�s a colored boy. Odds ought to be different in Harlem. He made a mental note. And Chavat versus Antonelli. Six to five in favor of Chavat. There ought to be good Antonelli money in Brooklyn.

He located Barney and counted out $800 in the O�Gay paw. �Hole onta this, Barney. I�ll phone in a hour.�

Barney said: �Eight hunnert. Check. What�s today�s spread?�

Hugo smiled sadly and said: �Now, Barney, you know I can�t tell ya until I get my dough down.�

Hugo left and Barney sauntered over to his assistant, a small, frightened-looking man with the sad eyes of a kicked spaniel. Barney said: �That fat clown, that Hugo, he gives me 800 today. It�s guys like him give honest bookies a black eye.�

�What you going to do, Barney?�

He shrugged. �What can you do? When guys as dumb as him can bet it so they can�t lose...� He left the sentence unfinished, and walked away.

Hugo had to hurry. This was the part of the business he didn�t like. In fact, he had to run three steps to make the closing door of an uptown express. He sat on the wicker upholstery, patting his face dry with a big pale-green handkerchief. He walked from his stop to a cigar store in Harlem, nodding to the habitues as he went. There was no board in the back room, but one quick question gave the answer that Codey was being quoted as a seven to five favorite.

Hugo did some scribbling on the back of an envelope. It was a nice spread. He said: �May want some of that. Wait�ll I phone.� He squeezed into a booth and called Barney. �Codey and Basternick quoted even? They are? Put six hunnert of what I give you on Codey. I�ll pick up the slip. Yeah. Thanks.� He hung up, eased out of the booth, and bet 500 to 700 on Basternick.

He walked out, feeling very satisfied. If Codey should win, he�d lose 500 in Harlem and win 600 at Barney�s. If Basternick should win, he�d win 700 in Harlem and lose 600 at Barney�s. One hundred bucks in his pocket for sure.

He took a long subway ride out to Brooklyn and went to three places he knew before he found Chavat versus Antonelli at even money. He figured again, phoned Barney and told him to bet the 200 left on Antonelli at the short end of the six to five price. Then he bet 220 on Chavat at even money. If Chavat should win, he�d win 220 in Brooklyn and lose 200 at Barney�s. If Antonelli should win, he�d lose 220 in Brooklyn and win 240 at Barney�s. A sure twenty bucks either way.

His activities had taken a large slice out of the morning, but it meant a net of $120 so far for the day. He picked up his slips from Barney, ate a heavy lunch at a joint just off Times Square, and found a movie where a double bill, two horse operas, were showing. He sat in deep contentment, his stomach rumbling over the big meal, solmenly eating popcorn, and watching with wide, bland eyes as the hero fired 69 shots from a six-shooter without reloading. Westerns were Hugo�s weakness.

While he sat, monolithic and content munching his popcorn, a trio of extroverted citizens sat in their shirtsleeves in a plush apartment in the Sixties, drinking scotch, smoking dollar cigars, and planning a big push. There was Joe Banto, numbers king of a large eastern city, a flamboyant little swarthy man who talked with very little lip movement; Judson Gale, whose gambling ships anchored offshore had made many headlines, a plump little man with rosy cheeks, white hair, and scarred knuckles; Hillary Moyer, wan and ineffectual heir to a fortune once thought inexhaustible, but crippled by the large nibbles of six divorced wives.

Joe Banto said: �Now I�ll run over it again lightly. The championship fight between Mole Anderson and Junior Gee is scheduled for three weeks from today. Time�s getting short and we got to move fast. Moyer, you�re putting up 500,000, same as Gale and me. That makes the syndicate capital a million and a half. Now, through the local contacts, I got a list of the soft dollar boys that�ll farm out the bets for us. Mole Anderson is a five to one favorite. Our problem, boys, is to get 500,000 bet on Junior Gee so fast that we catch it all at the present rate. We got to have timing. Now, let�s��

Hillary Moyer said: �Why do we have to deal with these middlemen? Why can�t the bet be placed all at once?�

�Shut up, dope,� Banto said. �No one place could handle it, and by the time they farmed it out, the price would be wrong. I got ten dependable guys to place 50Gs apiece, and place it so fast in so many different places that we�ll catch the low price. We can�t do it ourselves. We�d be tipping the deal off. Besides, we don�t want to attract the attention of the tax boys.�

Judson Gale asked: �Where will that drive the price to?�

�My guess is five to three. Maybe five to four, but I don�t think so. Then comes the gimmick. I bought me a guy with a sports column, and the week before the fight he�s going to stick in some talk about Mole Anderson being way off his timing, getting a bad cut in training, and having a torn tendon in his wrist. That�ll drive it to an even-money bet. Then is when we jump in with the million. We can�t figure on placing it all at even money, but with the same technique we can maybe place half of it at even and the rest at five to four. Then, if Junior wins, we net a million and a half, deducting the million we bet on Mole from the two and a half million we clean if Junior wins. If Mole wins, we net about 400 grand. We can�t lose either way. It�s done all the time, but never this big before. In the meantime, I�ll see if I can get Mole to dive for fifty thousand. It�ll help, but we still win even if he crosses us.�

�I�m afraid, gentlemen, that I don�t follow all this,� Hillary Moyer said.

�Shut up!� said Banto.

The three men unlocked the cases they had brought with them and the cash was counted. Judson Gale said: �It�s only fair to tell you, Joe, I�ll have a tail on you all the time. I trust you, you know, but it�s just good business.�

�Sure. Hell, it won�t bother me,� Banto said lightly.

Hillary Moyer looked wistful as his cash disappeared into Banto�s suitcase. He hoped that the unpleasant little man knew what he was talking about.

One look from her and storm signals began flying from Hatteras to the top button of my tuxedo vest. This girl meant trouble � beautiful trouble, but that was okay by me. Women like her and trouble are easy mixers, but you can wash �em both out with a Martini.

But the Martini situation wasn�t too good right now. There was one left on the tray and we both wanted it. She reached for it the same time I did. Our hands touched, our eyes met. Suddenly I needed a drink like never before.

�Sorry,� I mumbled.

�So am I.� Her voice was throaty and cool, and I knew she wasn�t a bit sorry. Neither was I.

She moved with the grace of a panther � a panther in a shimmering gown that clung to her with loving care. She smiled and the most kissable mouth in my memory parted to show a row of white, even teeth. I could almost feel them nibbling at my ears. She lifted the glass.

�We both want it, so let�s share it,� she said. It was a fair proposition, I thought. Anything involving this baby would be a fair proposition.

She took my arm and we picked our way across the floor, all the time shoulder-deep in the Social Register. Most of the old dowagers had retired to the sidelines and more than one deb had passed out. Mrs. J. Chauncey Hadley was marrying off her last and homeliest daughter � no small achievement!�� and it was a moment of rejoicing among the clan. Lots of Hadley cash was being spilled to spread this one.

We found a spot in a shadowy corner, not too far away from the center of things, and sipped the glass dry by turns.

�Having fun?� she wanted to know.

�Once in a while,� I said. Despite the pleasant business at hand I was keeping my eye on Mrs. Hadley. For perhaps the hundredth time my gaze fastened on the big emerald that swung by a thin chain over her overstuffed frontispiece.

�Lovely, isn�t it?�

�The party?�

The beautiful eyes gleamed. �That little number Mrs. Hadley is wearing, I mean.� Her voice dropped to a whisper. �It�s worth at least $100,000,� she breathed.

I hoped she didn�t see the way my eyebrows lifted. Maybe my little chum wasn�t here for a purely social evening, either.

�Dance?� I said. She squeezed my hand for reply and we stepped out to the floor. The music was low and sweet.

Maybe she liked to dance like that all the time or maybe it was just me, but she certainly loved close-quarter work. Somehow, I couldn�t get around to telling her that all this was happening five years too late. She was my type, all right, but I wasn�t toying around these days. My ever-loving wife saw to that. She�s much too good a detective, almost psychic, and I know when I�m licked. So I just danced on, piloting my little chum through the crowd so I never lost sight of Mrs. Hadley�s emerald.

Finally, we stopped dancing and stood in the shadow of some potted palms, just watching. The party was beginning to slow down. Most of those noble old backs were probably creaking by now and even the eyes without monocles were getting glassy. But not my eyes. They weren�t missing a trick.

At the other end of the ballroom was a table freighted with silverware and other wedding presents, guarded by several bored but watchful guys who looked like they trained on rare beef. They were dicks from the Gloria Crawford Security Agency � boys to look out for. The silver was their job. But the emerald was my job.

Warm, scented breath curled around the back of my neck. She loved to be near me, that girl. I reached for her hand, then dropped it quickly when I heard Mrs. Hadley scream. She was fumbling at her neck � her suddenly bare neck.

There was a clatter as the big stone, chain and all, fell to the parquet floor.

�My emerald,� she gasped. I took a step forward involuntarily, and then stood still, cursing inwardly for making myself conspicuous.

But some old johnny came to her rescue � and mine. Scooping up the stone from the floor, he handed it back to her with a bow. The thing danced in green fire at the end of the chain. The old lady practically snatched it from his hands, muttered some few words of thanks, and turned toward the stairs.

I watched her go, wondering what my next move was. Fingers fondled my arm. My little friend inched closer. We were alone in the palm shadow.

�I�ve been thinking...� Her husky whisper trailed off.

�Yes?� I was scarcely thinking of her. My mind was on the emerald.

As she smiled, her eyes were half-closed, like those of a sleepy cat. �With a man like you,� she said softly, �a girl sort of expects things to happen.� It was right on the line. She was asking for it. Emerald or not, I couldn�t resist.

The white softness of her skin and the invitation in her eyes were all I could see. Handling her shoulders, I put my lips to hers so hard that I drew blood in my mouth. She wilted, twisted away, and broke free.

�Oh.� It was as close to a genuine gasp as this girl would ever get in her life. Then she smiled. �Fix your mouth,� she said.

She carried a funny little fur muff in her hand. She fished out a mirror. Then: �Wait for me,� she whispered. �This won�t take long. If you want, you can drop me home.�

She disappeared toward the stairs and I was left dabbling lipstick off my mouth. Then I swore. The stone! What a chump I was to let it go like that. Playing lover boy when all the time that emerald was vanishing up that stairway!

Stuffing my handkerchief back in my pocket, I reached the stairs in a cautious, broken-field run through a crowd of footmen, drunks, and dames.

I took the stairs fast, heading for the third floor. The sight of Mrs. Hadley coming down delayed me at the second landing. Fortunately, she was staring straight ahead and I was able to hide behind a convenient statue. I watched her puff by on her way back to the party. Then I resumed my trek up to the third floor, my mind reviewing the floor plan that I had committed to memory.

Reaching the third floor, I went down a short hallway to the left, then a long one to the right. Sure enough, the glow from a night lamp showed over the transom of the end room. I tiptoed down to it and swung the door ajar noiselessly. By the lamp�s yellow light I saw a figure with the grace of a panther.

The wall safe was open and the emerald dangled from her hand. The picture became clear then. That kiss had been a plant, giving her an excuse to break away from me and follow Mrs. Hadley upstairs. After seeing Mrs. Hadley stash the stone away, she waited until the coast was clear and then sneaked in and fingered the safe.

I moved into the doorway. �Pretty,� I said. �Very pretty.�

She turned, and her eyes flattened. Her mouth was a scarlet line. �I asked you to wait,� she said coolly. �Mrs. Hadley�s a little upset, and she asked me to see that this gets tucked away safely. Wait downstairs, will you, like a nice lad?�

Her gesture of dismissal was worthy of Mrs. Hadley herself, but I shook my head and smiled. �Oh, no, beautiful. This nice lad wouldn�t think of leaving you at a time like this.�

She balled the emerald up in her hand and put her fist into the little muff. I moved toward her. �You�ll change your mind if you know what�s good for you,� she said. I was close enough now to see the green lights flickering in her eyes.

�Fast worker,� I said admiringly. �You even got your lipstick fixed.�

�Quit being cute.� Her voice cut like a January wind. �The police don�t appreciate it.�

�The police?� I felt myself go tense.

The corner of her mouth twisted. �Listen, my hard-kissing friend, I�ve had your number all evening,� she said. �You couldn�t let this stone out of your sight, could you?� She paused, then let me have it hard. �It may be of interest for you to know that there are several of my operatives here tonight. Not one of them rates less than heavyweight honors. Like most big-money social affairs, this party is under the protection of the Gloria Crawford Agency��

I let that sink in. �Oh,� I said, �and you��

�I am Gloria Crawford.�

That was Surprise Number One. Surprise Number Two was the dainty little automatic that she flicked out of the muff. Surprise Number Three � and this was for her � was the fact that I moved in time.

A slug whistled over me, and then I had her wrists, forcing the gun and the emerald to the floor. She struggled furiously, with her clenched teeth showing, but it was no use. The noise of the shot had broken up the party. I could hear the sound of voices and footsteps hurrying down the half to ward us.

�Baby,� I said regretfully. �You and your Martini and your lovin� � they were fun, but they didn�t fool me, not for a minute. And when it comes to your being Gloria Crawford � well, Gloria couldn�t make it tonight. She�s home having a baby. It�s our first.�

Aljean Meltsir�s �Doublecross� is one of the thirteen �first stories� which won special awards in EQMM�s Eighth Annual Contest. We shall tell you nothing about the story itself except to warn you that it is deceptively clever and to urge you to read the story clear through to the end � don�t dare stop anywhere in the middle! The author is in her early twenties, a graduate of Stanford University where she majored in journalism and was first in her class of 1500 students. She is Phi Beta Kappa, was managing editor of the campus newspaper, and worked her way through school by what she calls �hashing.� Does that mean serving food? If so, you never saw a prettier waitress in any college in the country! (Miss Aljean Meltsir, conscious of her unusual name, sent us a photograph to prove that the name was not a pseudonymous invention.) And when we tell you that in the time-honored tradition of most great literary figures, Miss Meltsir started writing at the age of six � her first story was �a bloodthirsty epic about a talking dog that was captured by cannibals� � we think you will agree with us that this Stanford alumna should go far in journalism and writing.

Mr. Arthur Colton had come 2000 miles, had crossed the Allegheny, Susquehanna, Illinois, Mississippi, and Missouri Rivers and a great many of their tributaries to repay the loss of an arm. Strictly speaking, an arm ought to be repaid by an arm, but Mr. Colton, calculating six years of interest on the debt, had decided that one life was proper payment.

It was a debt of honor, and he was an honorable man. His sense of honor was the one thing he had retained from an excellent college education. He had always considered himself an honorable man, had always divided his loot equitably among his associates. It was for this reason that the doublecross of Jackrabbit Durward had embittered him.

Reflecting, Mr. Colton lit a cigarette awkwardly with his left hand. Everything that he did with his left hand was awkward. But professionally, Jackrabbit Durward�s bullet had actually been an asset. Leaving second-story work to other men, Mr. Colton had entered the confidence racket, where his horn-rimmed glasses, small, pudgy body, and awkward fumbling had quickly made him a success. People seemed to want to give their money to the ill-fated, balding gentleman with only one arm.

The train pulled into the station, and Arthur Colton looked at his wrist watch. It was almost 6. A little dust � the legacy of a rainless summer � swirled at his feet. He hoped it would be a dark night.

He walked down the town�s main street with the interest of a man who has never before been farther west than Pittsburgh. He smiled at a group of young girls in front of the drug store. He looked inside the bank at the merchants depositing their week�s receipts. He listened to two farmers talking about crops. He was interested in everything. At the thought of Jackrabbit as a farmer, he smiled � a kindly, heartwarming smile. And yet being a farmer had been successful for Jack-rabbit. It had taken Colton six years to trace him.

Arthur Colton was not in the least secretive about being in town. When he had seen everything of interest on the main street, he toured the other streets. It was too early to go about his business, and it was pleasant to wander around. He saw some rather astonishing roses. He had always been a rose-fancier. In fact, in his athletic youth he had refused to rob a certain house when he found a group of extraordinary rose bushes in the garden.

Now he thoroughly enjoyed his browsing. In the last six years he had learned that human beings are only interested in themselves, and he quite seriously thought that he could lead a bear down the main street of the town without attracting any special notice from farmers immersed in politics and from housewives planning dinner in their heads.

Arthur Colton did not expect to be caught. Jackrabbit Durward had taken a new name and a new wife when he had moved west. The new wife had quickly tired of rural delights and had headed farther west with a less wealthy but more generous husband. From prudence, Durward had cut all his old friends, and there was nothing but a set of fingerprints to identify him with the lower circle of a large eastern city. Arthur Colton did not expect the townspeople to think it decent to check on the fingerprints of one of their leading citizens.

But for all his poise, Arthur Colton was a little nervous. He ran his fingers through his thick black hair. He had never killed a man before. He felt the knife pressing into his hard, lean stomach, and the steel chilled him. Then he considered the issue in another way and relaxed. He was only soliciting payment for a long-standing debt.

If was now quite dark, and the roofs of the houses were obscured by the blackness. Still, Arthur waited. It was not yet time. It had been Wednesday, September 11, at 8:52 P.M. when Jackrabbit�s doublecross had reached its deafening climax. It would be Wednesday, September 11, at exactly 8:52 when Colton would exact payment.

Colton looked up. There was no moon and even the stars were covered by clouds. Cautiously he began to walk, bending his tall frame double when someone came into a yard across the road. He must not be noticed, and sweat tickled the back of his head as he crouched. Whoever it was had only stepped out for a breath of air. Colton could not see, but he heard a screen door close, and he straightened up again.

He left the main road then, cutting across fields, circling and recircling, crossing the dry stream-bed of the town�s small creek. He arrived at his destination at 8:40.

The farm was quiet. Colton slid into the barn and prodded the cows into uneasiness. Restlessly they lowed. Colton waited for Jackrabbit to come into the barn to find out what was the matter.

The kitchen door opened and for one moment the back steps of the farmhouse were framed in light. Jack-rabbit stood there, confident, ugly, annoyed at having to investigate what was troubling the stupid cows. Annoyed only. Not frightened. Not alarmed. That was consistent with Colton�s theory of human nature. Six years was too long for any man to remain frightened.

Jackrabbit had entered the barn now, but Colton did not use his knife. It lacked a few minutes of the proper time, and besides, a man was entitled to know who was exacting payment.

�You shouldn�t have dropped all your old friends when you became wealthy,� Colton said. �It shows lack of breeding.�

There was no answer except the restless murmurs of the cows.

�Have you spent it all? How, I wonder? Making monthly business trips to the big cities and then coming back to be a model farmer?�

�I didn�t...� The voice tried huskily to say something and then stopped.

Arthur Colton smiled warmly. �I�m not asking for the money back. That�s included in the debt.�

�What debt?� The voice sounded less hoarse, as though the paralysis of shock were wearing off.

�I have it all figured out here somewhere.� Arthur Colton pushed up his coat sleeve. His arm was bare from his elbow to the tasteful signet ring on his little finger. �Here is my tally,� he said and drew his knife.

�I don�t...�

�Please let me finish,� Arthur Colton said in the prim fashion of a schoolteacher. �You owe me $7,298 plus 4 per cent interest on that for six years, roughly $1,750; doctor and hospital expenses amounting to about $1,000, one arm, on which the interest is not easily calculable, and endless mental anguish.� His voice changed. �Your life will adequately cancel out the debt, I think.�

Jackrabbit Durward suddenly realized what the prim voice was saying. He began to run, but it was too late.

Arthur Colton walked the 50 feet that separated him from the body and looked down. He thought for a moment of looking for Jackrabbit�s wallet, quite probably a well-filled wallet. He eliminated the thought instantly. The debt had already been paid, and Arthur Colton was an honorable man.

Before entering the railroad station Arthur Colton stopped to straighten his tie and scrape the mud off his shoes. Then he boarded the 10:15 train. He joined a group of businessmen who were in the club car and complimented them on their county. They bought him a drink and asked him his business.

�I came to collect a bad debt. It�s awful how dishonest some people are.� He smiled at his companions. �Man bought some mining stock from me and refused to pay my commission when the mine struck a rich vein.�

He showed the stock certificates casually to his companions. They were very interested. They bought him another drink.

Mr. Arthur Colton had a very profitable journey home.

Author�s Note: I do not hope to have deceived the creators of Ellery Queen (editors� note: We hasten to confess that we were completely fooled!). So I will assume that you have already discovered that Doublecross is a doublecross only on the reader.

I am afraid that the average detective-story reader is getting to be a lazy chap, who prepares for his murders with a good dinner and a comfortable couch. He is good-naturedly inclined to believe anything an author tells him, and the authors have lately been taking advantage of this good-nature by inventing monstrous coincidences and solutions which introduce five new characters on the next-to-last page.

Doublecross is an experiment to see how far an author can go. As a story, it is contradictory, improbable, and, in some places, impossible.

Arthur Colton is described as tall and short, pudgy and lean. He is balding and yet he has thick black hair. He looks at the merchants of the town banking their week�s receipts on a Wednesday in a bank that is curiously open at 6 o�clock in the evening. Dust from a dry summer swirls at his feet and he crosses the dry bed of a creek, yet he must scrape mud from his shoes when he returns to the railroad station.

He has never been in this town before, but he can leave the main road and accurately cut across fields, make tortuous circles, traverse creeks � all in total darkness!�� and still arrive at his destination at the right time. He looks at his wrist watch when he enters town and his knowledge of the time is important afterwards, but at a crucial point his arm � his only arm � is bare from elbow to fingers! It would also be extremely improbable, to say the least, for the same date to fall on the same day six years later.

He cannot easily light a cigarette with his left hand, but he can throw a knife well enough to hit a man 50 feet away in total darkness! There is no moon, the stars are clouded over, and the fact that it is completely dark is mentioned in five different ways. I do not believe that anyone could throw a knife well enough to kill a man instantly while he is running away at full speed and in complete darkness. I do not think anyone in his right mind would even attempt it.

To tally my own experiment and see if the story was cunningly enough contrived, I have tried it on several inveterate readers of Ellery Queen�s Mystery Magazine. The average result was � of one error caught per reader. For example, one caught no mistakes at all; another realized that the man was both tall and short; another realized that he was balding and had thick hair. No one realized that the story as a whole could not have taken place anywhere on this planet!

We are often ashed the question: �Which is the best book of detective stones ever written?� And after more than a century of the modem form, the answer remains the same. As G. K. Chesterton once wrote: �I do not think that America has ever lost that great Challenge Cup won long ago by one of her first literary champions; or rather designed by him with a craftsmanship that was entirely original... In other words, I do not think that the standard set by a certain Mr. Edgar A. Poe... has ever been definitely and indisputably surpassed.�

Nevertheless, it would be easier to answer the question if it were changed to �Which are the four best books of detective short stories ever written?� � as it would be easier still to nominate the 40 best.

The four best? Can there be any real doubt as to the answer? In our opinion, two were written by Americans and two by Englishmen. The very best and the most important (not always the same thing) is, of course, Edgar Allan Poe�s TALES, containing the three immortal stories about Dupin; and second to Poe�s TALES, by an American writer, is Melville Davisson Post�s UNCLE ABNER. The best and most important British book of detective short stories also, in our opinion, admits of no disagreement � surely it is Arthur Conan Doyle�s THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES; and second to that masterwork, by a British author, is G. K. Chesterton�s THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN.

As we once said in QUEEN�S QUORUM (of beloved memory): �These four books are the finest in their field � the cr�me du crime; they are an out-of-this-world target for future detective-story writers to take shots at � but it will be like throwing pebbles at the Pyramids�...

Now, all the Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Father Brown short stories are known, and it has long been believed that the eighteen Uncle Abner stories, included in the only volume ever published about the �protector of the innocent and righter of wrongs,� represent all the stories Melville Davisson Post ever wrote about his famous Jeffersonian squire. That one and only volume first appeared in 1918, and to the best of our knowledge it is the only book of detective short stories which has not only been kept in print all these years but has never been taken out of its original edition � no, there has never been a �cheap� reprint of the Uncle Abner book.

But what is not generally known is that nearly ten years after Uncle Abner made his debut between covers, his creator wrote another series of tales about that stalwart, rugged �voice and arm of the Lord.� This new series included three short stories, and we are happy to inform you that EQMM has been given the extra-special privilege (and we use the adjective advisedly) of printing these three tales for the very first time since they originally appeared in �The Country Gentleman� in 1927.

Imagine, three �new� Uncle Abner stories! Only three other �tec triples could match or top that � three new tales of Dupin (although we would settle for one), three new adventures of Sherlock Holmes, or three new innocent intuitions of Father Brown...

Here, then, is the first of the �new� Uncle Abner stories � one of the finest in the entire saga � and bearing the perfect title for a murder investigation by that grand old Virginia gentleman and biblical scholar...

Abner used to say that one riding on a journey was in God�s hand.

He never knew what lay before him; death standing in the road, invisible, as before the prophet; or a kingdom as in the case of Saul. One set out with his little intention, and found himself a factor in some large affair.

It is certain that my uncle had no idea of what he would come into when he rode on this early summer morning to Judge Bensen�s house. It was some distance through the hills and he traveled early, with, the dawn. He wished an hour with Bensen before the judge rode in to the county seat; for it was in the court term, and Bensen was the circuit judge.

It was a custom remaining in Virginia after the dominion of King George had passed.

The circuit judges were persons of property and distinction. They traveled on their circuits, holding their courts here and there about the country. There would be a group of counties in a circuit. And the county seat would take its name, not infrequently from the fact that it was the domicile of these circuit courts. One finds the name remaining � Culpepper Court House, and the like.

Land was the evidence and insignia of distinction in Virginia.

One�s importance was measured by his acres.

Every man who would command the attention of his fellows stood on an estate in lands. Judge Bensen lived some miles from the county seat. He had got a thousand acres from his father, and added to it. He had never married. He lived alone, with Negro servants, in their whitewashed quarters, at some distance from his ancient house. His earnings and his salary from the state went to the purchase of new lands.

He had introduced the Hereford, and turning aside from the customs of the men about him, he bred young cattle, instead of fattening the beef bullock for the market. It happened then that Bensen�s young cattle were not easily to be equaled. If one bought from him one got a drove of bullocks of one type, with no mongrel to be sold off to the little trader. Bensen had 200 young cattle � stockers, as they were called � for sale. And my uncle went, early, on this summer morning to see the drove; and to buy the cattle if he could, before Bensen set out for his court � on his horse with his legal papers in his saddle bags.

It was scarcely daylight when Abner descended into the long valley that extended north to the county seat, and in which lay the Bensen lands. At the foot of the hill where the road entered the valley he came on a man sitting his horse in the road. It was early, an hour before the sun, and there was a vague mist in this lowland.

The man and the horse looked gigantic.

Beyond them through an avenue of trees was the heavy outline of a house, still dark, from which the life within it had not yet awakened to the new day.

The whole earth was dry and the road bedded down with dust. My uncle was almost on the man before he knew him. It was Adam Bird, a traveling preacher of the hills, on his gray mare. The big old man was sitting motionless in his saddle looking up through the avenue of maples toward the shadowy house. He did not hear my uncle�s horse in the soft dust until it was nearly on him. His hands lay on the pommel of his saddle and his face was lifted like one in some deep reflection.

He called out when he saw my uncle.

�Abner,� he said, �do you see that house.�

He did not pause for a reply from Abner nor for any formality of salutation. He went on, and directly, as though he merely uttered now aloud the thing that was passing in his mind.

�Caleb Greyhouse lived there until the devil took him. He married Virginia Lewis � for a woman when she is young will be a fool. She is long dead but she left a daughter that is a Lewis too. Not a Greyhouse, by the mercy of God! And now Abner,� and he brought one of his big hands, clenched, down on the pommel of the saddle, �these accursed judges are going to dispossess her of her inheritance!�

My uncle knew what the man meant. It was common knowledge. Caleb Greyhouse had left a will written some years before, when the girl was young, leaving his estate, houses and lands, to his daughter, with a bequest to his brother who was to be the guardian and administrator of it. It had been written by Coleman Northcote, one of the best lawyers in Virginia, and so remained, until the girl had grown up. Then, when she had fallen in love, and wished to marry the son of a neighbor with whom Greyhouse had quarreled over a few acres of ridge land, the irascible old man had added a codicil to the will giving the whole estate to his brother, and no dollar and no acre to the girl.