Evening Star Newspaper, January 31, 1932, Page 85

., JANUARY 31, 1932, 1n ' Potof Gold—BY JOHN A. MACKAYE > top ofl what ap[warwl to be a great rough box.” the avenue, his horse blocks away. Them laughing stock. Took one swell young chman by the neck and dropped him, like itten, from a second-story window when caught him with the girl.” 30 on,” insisted Reggie, as the story paused. t was my beat and I was looking for homi- I warncd him to keep off the Heights his own good or they'd get him in the The nights were murky with murder, n my soul. I expected it. Jealousy jostled Clancy at every corner up there and he hed To me he said, ‘Ye were never in with a girl whose folks didn't want ye e'd know better than tell me to stay away.” No wonder the women wanted him,” from reporter. pDne night, this swell guy he'd dropped from window, with a mcb of his own, caught coming from the girl's home. A riot call p in that night. He cleaned’them up before got there. Cleaned them like the blower a silo shooting chaff—flying everywhecre. this, after they had knifed him. Some le of a man. But he wouldn’t prosecute. . they were bitter!” /hat else?” I'he girl decided for him and that ended ith a wedding. They moved away, I guess.” I’he epic of a great lover, recited as his iem,” nodded Reggie. urtain,” said the chisf. “Let's go.” I'his is a private assignment, said Reggie rly. I'm not sending it to the Sentinel.” was thinking of Bonnie Kate Clancy and t the news would mean to her and to her her. He believed it might be the proper tion, after all. He had promised to call cffice for Kate at 11 o'clock. Now he hn to hesitate about keeping his word. Any- . he would have to get the story complete. re might be important details he had cd e was wondering if there might not be a h American angle to the story. Clancy. in far wanderings, might have incurred wild ities. 1ey left an officer on guard 3etter come to the hospital with me,” the f said to Reggie. “I have a chap there g Must have been drunk, too. Walked yerately in front of a car, the driver who him said.” NURSE led them to a cot where a figure, swathed in bandages, mumbled in delirium. him, L Suddenly he ( It was the chap by the hone pole. The chap whe oked as if he had seen a ghost. Reggie bent over the bed to be sure. “Don’t move the bed. Please don't move the bed.” From quivering, unconscious lips came this strange mumble. Nobody was touching the bed. The longer the reporter looked at the patient, the stronger grew the feeling that somewhere, in the past, he had encountered this man. But he groped vainly in his memory for a lead. This groaning wreck bore no re- semblance to the photograph of Kate's father in his pocket. It was a night of tragedy—the bane that trails a beauty. “There's nothing to identify him,” said Slos- ser, coming back from the hospital office, “un- less this address is his.” He showed Reggie a piece of paper. “This is on the far South Side, beyond Heidelberg Heights.” “Heidelberg Heights again,” nodded the sagacious chief. “Is he likely to live?” Reggie motioned to- ward the bed. “Doctor says it's touch and go. Likely to blow by morning.” “I'm off for the South Side. If he dies be- fore morning, Dick, call Inspector McArthur on the South Side. I'll not be far away. Where's the telephone?” Reggie got McArthur and arranged to be at police headquarters on the South Side in less than an hour. McArthur would be waiting for him. He sent no word to Kate. When he got a taxi, he urged the driver to speed, and whirled away. He was used to wild rides and wild nights. His trade was to buffet continually against the swirling rapids of excitement, to swim easily over curling breakers of emotion. But that battered face on the pillow, with its quivering lips, that trembling figure against the pole by the curb, with its fear filled eyes, troubled him and eluded him. His memory would not stir to it. McArthur was waiting for him on the side- walk. “The man on that beat says your place is an old shack in a truck garden. A crazy ped- dler owns it but he’s not in now.” “Could we get in?” While McArthur was making arrangements Reggie thought of a lawyer friend of his, Ted Ambrose. Calling him he asked that the lawyer come to the address on the outskirts of the Heights to meet him on a story. The idea of being with a star reporter on what was mest likely a midnight mystery, although Reggie gave him no details, was adventure and Ambrose was more than willing. In a patrol wagon with two officers Reggie and the inspector set out At the top of a steep street, ending in the woods that skirted the Heights, the wagon stopped. The police got out with flashlights. It was a remote spot. the shack stood in what had once been a weedy truck garden. The police, under orders of the inspector, made short work of a padlock. The interior of the shack was shabby. Cooking utensils were hanging, meticulously, on nails, a stove on one cide, a cupboard at another wall and a queer, long box, a coffinlike bed. Reggie and the inspector searched around in the cup- board. in the empty stove, in jars and crocks. They tried to lift the bed. It was immovable, and, when they looked, they found no way in which it could be secured to the floor. It seemed to be just too heavy for them. They strained at it but could not budge it. Then, like a flash: “Don’t move the bed. Please don't move the bed.” That quavering mumble of the man, dying on the hospital cot at Planeport, was in Reggie's ears. Could there be any connection between this outrageous divan and the unconscious fear that racked the delirious brain of the mumbler? They had tossed the rumpled bedclothing aside and were tearing the top off of what looked like a great rough box. It came vay with a ripping crash The box was filled with big stones. Nothing else. The inspector swore and Reggie grinned at him. Then, like the sudden glow in z signal bulb, that flashes for a moment and fades, Re ¢ heard again the mumble “Don’t move the bed. Please don’'t move the bed.” “Let’s take the rocks out and see what's under it,” he suggested. So the d its weight and then pulled the coffi box to one side There were shovels inst the wall, outside the shack, and the 0 policemen began to dig They uncovered another box and under the lid of thi leather pouch, resting on top of a jumble of crocks, old cash boxes and tin cans In all of them were rolls of money. Some contained silver and a few had gold coins. Rainbow gold! Reggie had opened the leather pouch and fumbling with a very old, creased paper Ambrose came shouting to the dcor from ar and the cops let him in, just as the inspector had emptied a lot of money from a box and begun to count it. “What's this? Capt. Kidd's treasure un- earthed " he roared. “This paper will explain it,” said Reggie handing him the folded old document. The lawyer looked at it for a full minute. “This is a will,” he roared again. *“And, by tippity! It's witnessed by you, Reggie. How come?” < “This may sound like a fairy story, but any- thing can happen to a reporter. When I was a cub I was sent to a banquet and, after I had my story in, I went back to the feast and con- tinued the motion until the early hours. Three of us went.to the South Side and landed in a saloon, just before saloons closed forever. While we were drinking in came a shabby fellow, peddling mint and other greens in bunches. He was well known as ‘Old Mint' all over town and was a character. We bought him drinks and he became weepy Finding I was a re- porter and, therefore, as he thought, a writer and educated, he wanted me to write his will. We were at the stage where anything was a joke to us and I wrote his will and signed it «&s a wiltness. ‘Old Mint’ was at the stage where he told us the story of his life. In this will he left all he had, and at the time I didn’'t think he had anything, to Kate Clancy and the daughter of Patrick Clancy and Cath- erine Freyvogel. ‘Old Mint' claimed that this Kate was his daughter. What he meant by that, I think, was that he should have married Catherine Freyvogel and so become the father of Kate. He hated Paddy Clancy and sald, at the time, he ought to be hanged for leaving his wife to run off to South America.” “But who is Pat Clancy?” roared Ambrose. “I found him murdered tonight at Planeport. That's why I'm here.” “You think the peddler who lives here did it?” asked the inspector with some relief. He had begun to wonder about the legality of the entire rumpus. “I'm sure of it now. He's dying, too, in Planeport.” “This man wasn't always a peddler.” Reggie was recalling some of the things Slosser had told. “He was cut out by Clancy when they both courted Catherine Freyvogel. That morn- ing in the saloon, when I wrote this will, he declared he would hang Clancy if he could. There have been rumors lately that Clancy was at Planeport. That's why I was up there to- night. This chap Fritz von Solkild, that was, and the ‘Old Mint whom I met in the saloon must have heard Clancy was back. Notice in this will, he says the property is to go to Kate Clancy when her mother is a widow and to be held in trust until that time. ‘Old Mint’ tonight made Mrs. Clancy a widow with his own hands. He killed Pat Clancy. I met him in Planeport on his way from the murder, but did not recognize him then. He is dying in the hospital there now. Ambrose, you take the wiil and attend to it. The inspector will look after the mc = Reggie and Ambrose went back to the police station to wait for the inspector, bringing the treasure As they opened the door of the in- spector’s room Reggie gasped “There’s nothing mysterious about my being here,” smiled Kate Clancy from across the police desk. “You caid Slosser at Planeport was a friend of yours and when you did not phone I called him and he said you'd be here.” “I was too late,” ted Reggie. “Then father was at Planeport?” “He is at Plancport—but—I was too late to talk to him.” The girl's eyes widened as she looked at him. He reached out and held her hands. “He's dead,” she gasped “Perhaps it's the best way out.” “Pocr mother!” She cried softly. “Your mother will have your father home-- for a little while,” soothed Reggie. “It will kill her,” sobbed the girl. “She has lived with this dread for years. It may be a great burden lifted. And she will be comforted to know that he probably meant to come back to her. He'd been hurt, they say, and his memory was probably affected. Maybe some vague homing instinct drew him back this way—to meet his mortal enemy. Two men loved your mother, but your father won her. The other man never forgave him. Tonight they met in Planeport. Your iather was watchman on the bridge. They were alone and the man who never forgave had not forgotten. Long continued hate, like that, often ends in foul play. He settled the debt he thought your father owed him. He, too, is dying.” The girl continued to cry, softly. “So much did this other man love your mother and you that he has left everything he owned to you. Mr. Ambrose, here, will loo after it for you. I'll go home with you now. You may need help when you get there.” So Kate Clancy lost a protector who had failed in his duty and found another one, her knight, Reggie. But what of that other passionate heart? The lover who had lost and for years kept his vow. Stinted and scraped and denied himself to hoard for a child that was not his! (Copyright, 1932.) Neglect of Sports by Artists Continued from Fifth Page subject. He touches as lightly as possible on drapery, ornaments and externals, so they don't detract attention from the spiritual, emotional life he is trying to convey. '] PERSONALLY have too much work ahead to undertake any athletic figures,” he ex- plained very regretfully, “but I hope to live to see the day when my fellow sculptors devote themselves exclusively to reflecting the virile, colorful life of their own nation, and particu- larly sports. “If we had wars or any other highly dra- matic episodes the artistic energy and inspira- tion would flow along that direction, but in time of peace the heroic struggles on our playing fields, and particularly at the univer- sities, are the next best opportunity. “For example, I should like to walk into the Yale Bowl in a few years and see, in suitable positions, life size figures in bronze of a hun- dred, or five hundred, of the greatest athletes in Yale's history. In their togs, of course, and in forceful attitudes. The same goes for every important school in the United States. It would be a knockout from every point of view —beauty, inspiration, gratitude, prestige and putting sports on a higher plane than ever. The artigtic effect would be gorgeous; the mental reaction on players and spectators electric. Many persons will be scandalized, but all ob- jections will simmer down to this—that the thing has never been done before. “After all, the dominant note of America, compared with other countries, is youth— striving, triumphant youth, and not languid ladies or meditating sages. “I feel that if some one could only start a trend along this line it woul¢d open up the most piring opportunities f our sculptors that one can conceive. How much more re- freshing, invicorating, to catch a fine pose amid the exciting atmosphere of an athletic combat than to model some listless female in a dopy studio! It would put a vim, a living spirit, a throbbing inspiration, intp work which we rarely see. It would lift American artists above this confusing complex of trying to imitats Europe and give our sculpture a credit that the whole world will acknowledge. “We cannot excel the Greek and Renaissance men by using their forms, for they carried their own ideas to perfection. But both && these great schools largely ignored the emes tional qualities of their subjects, and this emotional side is so characteristic of America, and particularly in sports. I think that is an opportunity for us to perfect a new and almost unworked form of art, something that fits us racially. “With this inspiring theme, sports plue emotions, we can produce Donatellos and Michelangelos, too.” FEirst Buckwheat in Asia UCKWHEAT, the tasty ingredient of pan- cake flour, is believed to be a native of Asia. It is referred to by the French as Saracen wheat. Because of its adaptability to poor soils, 1 is often grown on steep hillsides where it is difficult to raise other types of grain. It ma- tures slowly and irregularly, so that at the time of harvest much of the grain is lost through immature or through over-ripening. Being constantly in flower, it is rich in honey and supplies a long season for bees. This char- acteristic of the wheat makes it valuable to bee-keepers. Buckwheat is more popularly used in Europe than in the United States, but it still finds a considerable market in this country.