Evening Star Newspaper, November 8, 1930, Page 21

STAR WASHINGTON! D. CE SATURDAY, NOVEMBER SE 1939, . By S. S. Van Dine Copyright, 1930, by 8. 8. Van Dine. INSTALLMENT XXVil document was unquestionably | " shest of the yellow scratch- d we had seen in the museum; d on it were four lines of old Egyptian characters painstak- Ine,y 1imned 1 green ink. Thoos placed his finger on one of the f characters. he told us, lmg ." He shified his finger. “And that is the was sign . Ang “here, toward the end, is the tem sign’ “And then what?" Heath was frank- ly nonplussed, and his tone was far from civil. “We can't arrest guy be- cause he drew a lot of cock-eyed pic- | tures on a piece of yellow paper.” | ‘My word, sergeant! Must you al-| ways be thinkin' of clappin’ persons into oubliettes? I fear you haven't a wBumane nature. Very sad ‘Why not try to cerebrate occasionally?"” He looked up and I was startled by his seriousness. “The young and impetu- ous Mr. Salveter confesses that he has foolishly penned a letter to his Dulci- bella in the language of the Pharaohs. He tells us he has placed the unfinish billet-doux in the drawer of a table in “is the ankh | d ! and had decided to get rid of the let- | to find it the museum. We discover that it is not in the table drawer, but has been ruth- Jessly dismembered and thrown into mc; ‘wastebasket in Dr. Bliss's study | On what possible grounds could you | regard the Paul of this epistle as a| murderer?” | “I gin't regarding nobod. as any- | thing” retorted Heath violentl But | there's too much shenanigan going on sround here to suit me. I want ac- Vance contemplated him gravely. | “For once I, too, want action, ser-| t. If we don’t get some sort of ac- before long, we may expect some- | thing even worse than has already hap- | d. But it must be intelligent ac- | —not the action that the murdtwrl <wants us to take. We're caught in the | Iuhes of a cunningly fabricated plot; , unless we watch our step, the cul- wlll go free and we’ll still be bat- with the cobwebs. Heath grunted and began poring over the reconstructed letter. “That's & hell of a way for a guy to write to a dame,” he commented, with surly disdain. ‘“‘Give me a nice dirty shooting by a gangster. These flossy erimes make me sick.” m was scowling. ‘See here, Vance,” he said, “do you hllm the murderer tore up that let- and threw it in Dr. Bliss’ waste- | print “If that were the case, he -muldn‘l e admitted having writte: l WQH " Heath persevered, tore it up when you sent him lo find it a few minutes ago.” S'And then, after tearing it up, he came here and put it in the. basket, where it might be found. . . . No, sergeant. That's not entirely reason-| able. If Salveter had been frightened ter, he'd have destroved it completely— burned it, most likely, and left no traces of it about.” Markham, too, had become fascinated by the hieroglyphics Vance had pleced together. He stood regarding the con= joined bits of paper perplexedly. “You think, then, we were intended " he asked. “I don't know.” Vance's far-away “It may be There was only one chance in a thousand that we would come across it. The person who put it in the wastebaskel here couldn't have known, or even guessed, that Sal- veter would tell us of having written it and left it lying about.” “On the other hand”—Markham was loath to relinquish his train of thought he letter might have been put here in the hope of involving Bliss still fur- | ther—that is. it might have been re- garded by the murderer as another | planted clue, along with the scarab pin, the financial report and the foot- Vnnc! shook his head. “No. That couldn’t be. Bliss, d’ ye see, couldn't have written the letter— it’s too obviously a communication from | Salveter to Mrs. Bliss.” Vance picked up the assembled letter and studied it for a time. “It's not particularly difficult to read for any one who knows something of Egyptian. It says exactly what Salveter said it did.” He tossed the paper back on the desk. “There's something un- | speakably devilish behind this. And the | more I think of it the more I'm con- | vinced we were not intended to find the letter. My feeling is, it was care- lessly thrown away by some one—after | it had served its purpo: | “But what possible pur‘pose—w"' Markham began. “If we knew the purpose, Markham,” said Vance with much gravity, “we might avert another tragedy. Markham compressed his lips grimly. I knew what was going through his| mind: He was thinking of Vance’s ter- “I know it isn't over. The plan isn't complete. We forestalled the murderer by releasing Dr. Bliss. And now hn must carry on. We've seen only the dark preliminaries of his almubh scheme—and when the plot is flnllly !revealed it will be monstrous. Vance went quietly to the door lead- ing into the hall and, opening it a few inches, looked out. “And, Markham,” he said, reclosing the door, “we must be careful—that's what I've been insisting on right along. ‘We must not fall into any of the mur- derer’s traps. The arrest of Dr. Bliss was one of those traps. A single false step on our part, and the plot will suc- ceed.” He turned to Heath. “Sergeant, will you be so good as to bring me the yellow pad and the pen and ink from the table in the museum? . . . We, too, must cover up our tracks, for we are being stalked as closely as we are stalking the murderer.” Heath, without a word, went into the museu and a few moments later re- turned with the requested articles. Vance took them and sat down at the doctor’s desk. Then placing Salveteer's letter before him he began copying | roughly the phonograms and ideograms on a sheet of the yellow pad. “It's best, I think,” he expiained as he worked, “that we hide the fact that we've found the letter. The person who tore it up and threw it in the basket may suspect that we've discovered it and look for the fragments. If they're not there, he will be on his guard. It's merely a remote precaution, but we can’t afford to make a slip. We're con- fronted by a mmd of diabolical clever- | ness. . When he finished transcribing a dozen or so of the symbols, he tore the paper into pieces of the same size ar those of the original letter, and mixed them with the contents of the waste- basket. Then he folded up Salveter's original letter and placed it in his pocket. “Do you mind, sergeant, returning the paper and ink to the museum? “You oughta been a crook, Mr. Vance.” Heath remarked good-naturedly, picking up the pad and ink stand and disappearing through the steel door. “I don't see any light,” Markham commented gloomily. “The farther we g0, the more involved the case becomes.” mberly. mmn'wamaonw but ‘Thus hr we've but he one of await checked the murdenu ki still has several moves. It's tell just what was in his mind when he n the assault. And he may produce a combination that will clean the board and leave us defenseless. Heath reappeared at this moment, looking uneasy “I don’t like that damn room,” he grumbled. “Too many corpses. Why do these scientific bugs have to go dig- ging up mummies and things? It's what you might call morbid.” “A perfect criticism of Egyptologists, sergeant,” Vance replied with a sympa- thetic grin. “Egyptology isn't an arch- eological science—it's a pathological condition, a cerebral visitation—demen- Atia scholastica. Once the spirillum ter- “igenum enters your system. you're lost— cursed with an incurable disease. If you dig up corpses that are thousands of years old, you'rs an Egyptologist; if you Gig up recent corpses you're a Burke or a Hare, and the law swoops down on you. It all comes under the head of | body snatching. . ." (Vance was here indurging in hyprrbolr and be- lieved it no more than John Dennis be- lieved that “a man who could make so vile a pun would not scruple to pick a pocket.” Vance knew several Egyptolo- | gists and respected them highly. Among them were Dr. Ludlow Bull and Dr. Henry A. Carzy of the Metropolitan Mu- seum of Art, who had once generously assisted him in his work on the Menan- der fragments.) | " “Be that as it may,” Heath was still | troubled and was chewing his cigar vic- jously—"I don't like the things in that morgue. And I specially don't like that black coffin under the front windows. What's in it, Mr Vance?" “The granite sarcophague? Really, T don’t know, sergeant. It's empty in all probability, unless Dr. Bliss uses it as a storage ches hich isn't likely, coi siderin’ the, !‘Nghb of the lid." There cai Snitkin informed us that Guilfoyle had arrived with Dr. Bliss “There are one or two questions,” Vance said, “that I want to ask him. Then, I think, Markham, we can toddle along; I'm fainting for muffins and| mm’mulnd? “Quit now? mnmhed disgu: demnnded Heath in as- ‘'What's the Cutstanding Values NEW NORTHEAST HOMES 1223 Owen St. (Open Until 9 P.M.) 1715 C St. (Open Until 9 P.M.) a knock on the hall door, | Alekhine's chess combinations—we can't | u| | | ‘We've just begun this investigation!™ “We've done more than that,” Vance told him softly. “We've avoided every snare laid for us by the murderer. We've t all his calculations and forced to reconstruct his trenches. ' As the case stands now it’s a stalemate. The board will have to be set up again— and, fortunately for us, the murderer gets the white pleces. It's his first move, He simply has to win the game, d' ye see. We can ord to play for a draw. 'm beginning to understand what you mean, Vance,” Markham nodded slowly. “We've refused to follow his false moves, and now he must re-bait his tri “‘Spoken with a precision and clarity wholly unbecoming a lawyer,” returned Vance, with a forced smile. Then he sobered again. “Yes, I think he will re- bait the trap before he takes any final steps. And I'm hopin’ that the new bait will give us a solution to the en- tire plot and permit the sergeant to make his arrest.” “Well, all I've gotta say,” Heath com- plained, “is that this is the queerest case I ever was mixed up in. We go and eat muffins and wait for the guilty guy to spill the beans! If I was to out- line that technic to O'Brien he'd call an ambulance and send me to Bellevue.” (Chief Inspector O'Brien was at that %mmmmmmmmflm@mmmmmmmm : AN OUTSTANDING VALUE LaSalle Park 18th and Michigan Ave. N.E. time In of the entire Poljce De- nmiul:lmto(‘ m%"’;“’”m “Tl see that you don’ a psycho- mhlc ward, sergeant,” nlrkhun sald tably, walking toward the door, (To be continued.) DAY BECOMES PARTNER OF REDMOND COMPANY | Former Sinclair Associate ‘“‘Start- ing Life Anew” With Wall Street Bankers and Brokers. By the Associated Press. NEW_YORK, November 8-—Henry Mason Day, one-time associate of Harry | F. Sinclair, has become a partner of | Redmond & Co. bankers and brokers of Wall Street. Mr. Day, who served a term in jail for contempt as a result of the Teapot Dome investigation, has been affiliated with the Redmend concern, primarily as | a customers’ man, since last April, when he resigned from the Sinclair interests. “I am starting life anew,” Mr. Day smilingly told newspaper men yesterday. His jail term resuited from a purely technical, not a criminal, charge. REAL ESTATE “Except love, money or pull, stenography is a woman’s shortest cut to a big job.” —Helen Woodward., h-um" “Can there be any doubt of 1t?” Vance in return. "But vlhl in . Heaven's name, could have . ! dnn‘t knuw—ye! ‘That's why I'm Vance gazed out of the “But the destruction of The location is only one fea- ture that helps sell these homes. 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National 6799 Or Your Broker ritying predictions in the Greene and the hop cases—predictions which | came true with all the horror of fln:l and ineluctable catastrophe. “You believe this affair isn't over| yet?” he asked slowly. on all kitchen and bath room walls, detached garage, street, alley and side- walk already in. We invite the public to inspect this and other houses under construc- ton. We offer this as today's best value for any one seeking a real home. Priced at $12,950 To inspect, drive out Mich. Ave. to 15th St., or take bus right to property. Sullivan Brothers Regular Delivery Over 100,000 tamilies read The Star every day The great ma- jority have the paper delivered reguilrly every evening and Sun- day morning at a cost of 1% cents daily and 5 cents Sunday If you are not taking advan- tage of this regular service at this low cost, telephone National 5000 now and service will start temorrow. able evidence, we're helpless. “Still,” persisted Markham, “if the letter was incriminating, it strikes me it would have been valuable to the Tearing it up doesn’t help y one. Helfl:hl:okfid first at Vance and then “Maybe.” he offered, “Salveter tore it himself “When?” Vance asked quietly. * “How do I know?” The sergeant was 819 15th St. SRR MICHIGAN MANOR A Highly Restricted Community of Semi-Detached Brick Homes Almost Completeiy Surrounded by Beautiful Park Grounds C. H. 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