Grand Rapids Herald-Review Newspaper, September 28, 1907, Page 9

By GUY CHAPTER XIil. The Tomb-Bound Man. Mr. Guest had visited his victim and had gone. Supper was over—beef tea and phos- phorus!—and Mr. Guest had said in mocking words of good night. “Sleep well, Mr. Rathbone! I shall not be compelled to ask you to wear the pret- ty metal cap until to-morrow, so 1 won't turn out the light. You have a book to read, you've had your supper, and I wish you a pleasant time alone. No doubt you will occupy your leisure in thinking of Mi Marjorie Poole. You'll recall that occasion in a certain room hung with pink, when you kissed her by the side of the piano in the white and gold case! I know you often recall that happy incident!” He had closed the heavy steel door with a last chuckle of malice and pow- er, leaving the prisoner white and shaking with fear. How did this sin- {ster and fiendish jailer know his inti- mate thoughts? He groaned deeply, and then, as he had done a thousand times _ before, gazed round the place in which he was in terror-struck amazement. Where was he? What was this hor- rible prison with all its strange con- trivances, its inexplicable mysteries? He was in a large Stone cell, bril- liantly lit at this moment by two in- candescent electric bulbs in the vault- ed ceiling far above his head. A long time ago now—how long he could not have said—he was Gerald Rathbone, a | man living in the world, seting the sunlight and breathing the air of day. He had been Gerald Rathbone, moving { honorably among his fellow men, see- } ing human faces, hearing the music of human voices, an accepted lover, and @ happy man. That was long ago—a dream, a vis- fon which was fading away. It seem- ed years since he had heard any voice but that of the pink, hairless man who ted him and whose slave he had be- come. Once more the prisoned thing that had been Gerald Rathbone gazed | round the cell, striving, with terrible intensity of thought, to understand it and penetrate its mysteries. Here he had been put, and here he had re- mained ever since that sickening | moment when he had been talking to | Sir William Gouldesbrough. He had j been standing in front of the baronet when his arms had been gripped from behind and unseen fingers held a damp cloth, with a faint, sickly, and aromatic smell, over his face. A noise | like the rushing of gr waters sounded in his ears, there was a sense of falling into a gulf of enveloping blackness. He had awakened in the place which he was now surveying again with frightful and fascinated curios- ity. In the brilliant light of the electric | bulbs every object in the cell was | clearly seen. The place was not} small. It was oblong in shape, some | 16 feet by feet. The walls were | built of heavy slabs of Po and stone } cemented together with extreme | nicety and care. The door of the cell i was obviously new. It was a heavy steel door with a complicated | system of locks, very much like the door of a safe. The whole place, in-}| deed, suggested that it had been used as a strong room at some time or oth- er. There was no window of any kind in the cell. In the center of the arched roof there was a barred ventilator, and close by an electric fan whirred and whispered unceasingly. The sound made by the purring thing as it re-| volved six thousand times a minute | was almost the only sound Gerald Rathbone heard now. The floor of the cell was covered with cork carpet of an ordinary pat- tern. The victim cast his glance on all this without interest. Then, as he did so unwillingly, but by the force of an attraction he could not resist, he stared, with lively doubt and horror | rippling over his face, at something | which stood against the opposite wall. He saw a long, narrow couch of some black wood, slanting upward toward the head. The couch stood upon four thick pedestals of red rubber, which in their turn rested upon four squares of thick porcelain. The whole thing had the appearance of a shallow box upon trestles, and at the head was a curious pillow of indiarubber. At the side of this thick pad was a collar- shaped circlet of vulcanite clamped between two arms of aluminum, which moved in any direction on ball-pivots. He stared at this mysterious couch, trying to understand it, to realize it. He rose from the narrow bed on which he sat and advanced to the cen- ter of the cell—to the center, but no farther than that. ‘Alive or Dead?’ The Strange Disappearance of Gerald Rathbone. THORNE. that hung far above his head and, in its turn, gave its central chain to an- other pulley and swivel fixed in the roof, In the half of his cell where his lit- tle bed was fixed the prisoner had fair 4iberty of movement, despite his shackles. He could sit or lie, and use his hands with some freedom. But whenever he attempted to cross the invisible line which divided one part of the cell from the other the chains tightened and forbade him. He stood now, straining to the limit of his bonds, gazing at the long couch of black wood with its rubber feet, its clamps and collar at the head. Above the mysterious couch, upon a triangular shelf by the door, was something that gleamed and shone brightly. It was a cap of metal, shaped like a huge acord-cup, or a bishop’s mitre. From an ivory stud in the center of the peak coils of silk- covered wire ran to a china plug in the wall. Rathbone stood upright for several minutes gazing at these things. Then, with a long, hopeless sigh, to the ac- companying jingle of his fetters, he turned and sat down once more upon his bed. As prisoners do, he had con- tracted the habit of talking aloud to himself. It was a poor comfort—this mournful echo of his own voice—but it seemed to make the profound soll- tude more bearable for a moment. He began a miserable monologue now. “I must understand it!” he said. “That is the first step of all. If I am to keep my brain, if there is ever to be the slightest chance of escape, I must understand this terrible and gecret business. What are these fiends doing to me? Let me go through the whole thing slowly and in order.” He began to recount the scenes of his frequent torture with the logic and precision with which he would have worked out a proposition of Eu- | clid. It was the only way in which he could keep a grip upon a failing mind; a logical process of thought alone and solve this horrid mystery. What happened every day—sometimes two or three times a day? Just this. He would be lying on his bed, reading, perhaps, if the electric lights were turned on. There would come a sudden creak and rattle of the big pulleys high up in the roof—a rattle which came with- out any warning whatever. Then the central chain, to which all the other thinner chains were fastened, would begin to tighten and move. Slowly, inch by inch, as if someone were turn- ing a winch-handle outside of the cell, | the chain wound up into the roof. As | it did so the smaller chains, which were fixed to the steel bands upon his limbs, tightened also. Struggle as he might, the arrangement and balance of the weights were so perfect that in less than a minute he would be swing- ing clear of the bed, as helpless as a | bale of goods at the end of a crane. Then the upward movement of the chain would stop, the door open with a clicking of its massive wards, and Guest would come in. In a moment ; more Gerald always found himself | swung on the long black couch. His | neck wags encircles by the collar of | thick vulcanite, his head was bent up- ard by means of an indiarubber pil- low beneath it, his hands and feet were strapped to the framework of the | couch: And finally Guest would take the | metal cap and fix it firmly upon his head, pressed down to the very eyes, so that he could in no way shake it off. The man would leave the cell, sometimes with a chuckle or a malici- ous sentence that seemed full of hid- den meaning, sometimes in silence. | And then the electric light invariably | went out. | | | | | { | | » Rathbone never knew how long he was forced to remain thus in the dark, the subject of some horrible experi-! ment, the nature of which he could | only guess. The periods seemed to} vary, but there was no possible test of | time. Long ago time had ceased to exist for him. Release would come at last—release, food, and light—and so the dreadful silent days went on. “What are these ghouls doing to me?” The hollow voice of reverie and self-communing cut into the silence like a knife. “It must be that I am being made a victim of an awful revenge and hatred. Charliewood was the decoy and tool of Gouldesbrough; it was all planned from the first. Marjorie was never really relinquished by Gouldesbrough. He meant all along to get me out of the way, to get Marjorie back if he | entirely hopeless and helpless. could. All this is clear enough. I thought I was dealing with an honora- ble gentleman and a great man, too proud to stoop even to anything petty or mean. I have been dealing with desperate and secret criminals, people who live hideous double lives, who Round his waist a circle of steel was welded, and from it thin steel chains ran through light handcuffs upon his wrists, and were joined to steel bands which were locked upon his ankles. ‘and all these chains, hardly thicker @han stout watch chains, but terribly strong, were caught up to a pulley walk the world and sit in high places and do unnamable evil in the dark. Yes; this is clear enough. Even now, perhaps, my darling is once more in the power of this monster Gouldes- brough!” The thin voice failed and died away into a tortured whimper. The tall form shook with agony, and the rattle ‘of the steel chains mingled with the “purr-purr” of the electric fan in the roof. By a tremendous effort of will Rath- bone clutched at his thoughts again He wrenched his mind back from the memory of his dreadful plight to the ‘ solving of the mystery. Till he had some glimmering of the meaning of what was being done to him, he was ‘e be- gan to murmur to himself again. “In the first place Gouldesbrough has got me out of the way successful- ly. I have disappeared from the world of men, the field is clear for him. But he has not killed me. For some rea- son or other, dangerous though it may be for him, he is keeping me alive. It surely would have been safer for him to have murdered me in this secret place, and buried me _ beneath the stone flags here? I am forced to con- clude that he is keeping me for an even worse revenge than that of im- mediate extinction. It is torture enough to imprison me like this, of course. But, if the man is what I feel he is—not man, but fiend—would he not have tortured me in another way before now? There are dreadful pains that fiends can make the body suffer. One has read of unbearable agonies in old books, in the classics. Yet noth- ing of the sort has been done to me yet, and I have been long in this pris- on. My food has been plentiful and of good quality, even definitely stimu- lating, I have thought at times. “It is obvious, then, that I am not to be subjected to any of the horrors one has read of. What is being done to me? When, each day, I am fixed rig- idly upon that couch and the brass helmit is put upon my head, what is going on? I cannot feel any sensation out of the ordinary when I am tied down there. I am no weaker in body, my faculties are just as unimpaired when I am released as they were be- fore. At least, it seems so to me. I can discover no change in myself, eith- er mental or physical. “Something is being done by means of electricity. The coils of wire that lead from the helmet to the plug in the wall show that. The way in which the couch is insulated, the vulcanite collar, the rubber pillow, all lead to the same conclusion. At first I thought that a torturing current of electricity was to be directed into the brain— that my faculties, my very soul itself, were to be dissolved and destroyed by some subtle means. But it is not so. There is no current coming to me through the wire. Nowhere does my head touch metal; the cap is lined throughout with rubber. But yester- | day, as my jailer held up the helmet to examine it before putting it on my head, I had an opportunity of seeing the whole interior for the first time. “There was very little to see. At the top was a circular orifice which seemed to be closed by a thin disc of some shining material. That was all. It looked just like the part of a tele- phone into which one speaks. My brain, my body, are not being acted upon. Nothing is being slowly in- stalled into my being. Can it be that anything is being taken away?” He bent his head upon his © hands and groaned in agony. All was dark and impenetrable; there was no solu- tion, no help. He was in the grip of merciless men, in the clutch of the unknown. The electric light in the cell went out suddenly. (To Be Continued.) Snake-Killing Kitten. George Fornwald, substitute mail carrier, Bloomsburg, says the Will- iamsport Gazette, owns a cat which, strange to say, will not catch a mouse, but spends its time in the yards hunt- ing for garter snakes. The cat so far this season has caught three snakes and brought them to the house, and after laying a snake down on the porch it goes back again to the yard to hunt for more. Two of the snakes the cat has caught were captured in one day, while the other} was caught a day later. These three are the only ones Mr. Fornwald has seen, yet some of the neighbors say they often see the cat with a snake in its mouth. Whether or not the animal would tackle anything larger than a garter snake is hard to tell, yet from the fight it puts up when it gets hold of one of these smaller species it is evi- dent that it would probably be able to get away with a larger one. The snake-killing cat is not very large and is still nothing more than ‘a kitten. Senator Pettus’ Library. The late Senator Pettus of Alabama was a “Forty-niner,” going overland to California in the early days and en- gaging in placer mining. He took with him on that long and_ tedious journey three books, the Bible, Shake- speare and Burns’ poems. He said of them at one time not long since: “I read the Bible from cover to cover; I read the side notes; I read the captions of the chapters; I learned great parts of it by heart, and I haven’t forgotten them yet. I learned many of Burns’ poems by heart and much of Shakespeare in the same way, too.” Such reading of these’ three books was an education in itself. It is not likely that many miners en. gaged in that search for wealth spent their leisure in as profitable a way. Golf Ball Killed Fish. When driving to the fourth green on Newark golf course a local solicitor sent his ball into the River Devon, England,’and killed a two-pound fish. Both ball and fish were found together, the latter bearing marks of its injury. Priestly Jubilee. Bishop John Scarborough of New Jersey plans to celebrate his priestly golden jubilee on Afg. 14, 1908. He has been a bishop for thirty-two years, He was born in Castle Wellan, Coun: ty Down, on April 25, 1831. ——————————E—— ee IN THE SCANDINAVIAN NORTH Gleanings of Important News of Norway, Sweden and Denmark, with Occasional Comments. By MARTIN W. ODLAND. NORWAY. The tobacco harvest in Lyster will be far better than was to be expected, considering the cold, wet weather that has prevailed during the summer. * * «& The new paper, the Free Press, of Christiania, has been duly organized. Leading citizens of the capital were elected members of the board of di- rectors. oe te The mechanical works of Fredrick- stad has leased those portions of Aasgaard that border on the river for a period of 200 years, the yearly rent being 8,000 crowns. aie ee New veins of copper and iron ore have been discovered in Telemarken, and the work of exploring goes merrily on. So far there have been no sale of land, but these are sure to follow. *_ * * Edward Jenson of Uteng, Onso, has been compelled to abandon his pro- fession as pilot, after a service of thirty years, during which he estab- lished a reputation as one of the best pilots in the land. He lost the sight of an eye by over-exertion, *. *¢ € O. Reed, a school master of Skien, has celebrated his golden jubilee as a teacher. He is an instructor in the public high school of that city, being | first assigned to that institution in 1863. He is 72, but is apt to continue for several years more in the service. zs * € The herring fishing in Norway has been very good, indeed. During the week ending Aug. 24 some 30,000 bar- rels were salted down, as against only 5,000 barrels the same week last year. In Trondhjemfjord the fishing is car- ried on on a large scale, as is also the case in Nordland. a 8 8 The agricultural department of the j government has recommended the ap- pointment of Mr. Winsnes as chief; forester in the Lesje district, in place | ot L. Nicolayson, resigned. More and more importance is being attached to such positions in Norway, owing to the fact that the government is begin- ning to appreciate the necessity of preserving the forests from destruc- tion. es Jonas Aasgaard of Aasgaard has set an example of progressiveness to his farmer friends that has attracted no little attention. He has erected large, well lighted and well ventilated build- ings on his farm, and in the basement of the principal one is a well appoint- ed tool room, a bath house, a dairy, a water works system, with pipes run- ning to the upper stories and to the other buildings, turbines and an elec- trical dynamo, which operates the eream separator, the churn, thfeshing macnine, feed mill, meat chopping machine, grindstone and wood saw. + 2 2 Much has been said about the “fresh air” children of the large cities of the United States. There are also plenty of them in Christiania. This summer hundreds of poor children of the cap- ital were sent out into the country to breathe the fresh mountain ai expenses being borne by pri scription. The children are sent out in colonies of 25 or 30 and kept till September, when the schools open. The children have been helped so much by their outings that the good work will be undertaken on a larger scale in future years. se 8 The royal family has spent a quiet, restful summer at the private royal} residence in the country outside of Christiania. There Queen Maud has enjoyed a visit from her mother, Queen Alexandra of England; her aunt, the empress dowager of Russia, and her ster, Princess Victoria of England. As this visit has been a family affair, there have been no fetes or public Jemonstrations to speak of. Toward the close of September, —o when the royal family returns to the palace in the city, the social season of 1907-8 will re-open, and the capital will witness some brilliant functions. {n October King Haakon and his queen will pay a visit to the “old folks” at the court of St. James, London. ee te SWEDEN. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the organization of the Swedish sugar trust. Now comes the disquieting news that the distillers of Sweden have organized a liquor trust, which will contral the output of about 10,- 900,000 gallons of liquor annually. Swedish lovers of a good time will soon” be wondering where this trust ousiness will end, anyway. ae Mrs. Catherine Tingley, the famous American theosophist who, is at the head of the Point Loma institute at San Diego, Cal., is in Sweden for the purpose of organizing a similar insti- tution on the beautiful island of Visinge, where ruins of the medieval convents of Sweden are still to be seen. Her Point Loma institute has been a remarkable success, and in the light of her accomplishments there, Mrs. Tingley may be relied upon to make the Swedes “sit up and take notice.” ————— The laborers on the great estate, Kaellesjo, have demanded that their employer must protect them at his ex- pense against accidents. This is an indication of how exacting the labor- ing people of Sweden are becoming. *- *€ * Two inspectors who have been ex- amining the records of the custom house in Gothenborg, have reported to the government that a majority of the custom house officials have committed gross frauds against the government. oe It now looks as if there will be no distress on account of crop failures in Norrland, as was predicted some time ago. The hay crop, which is of great importance there, will be excellent, and the rye may also turn out bretty well. . Pie ae A Swedish technical periodical pub- lishes the fact that Sweden furnishes the United States with 398 engineers, over five times as many as any other nation of Europe. This reflects credit upon the Swedish schools of technol ORE cs 2 * A Swedish-American company has instituted explorations for gold at Abisko, in the Swedish Lapland. It is believed that, owing to the strong geological similarity of that landscape with Klondike, a discovery of rich gold ore in that region is probable. ‘se & A notable change is taking place in the lumber industry of Norrland. I have occasionally mentioned changes in tie ownership of sawmills in that district and I understand other changes will be announced in the near future. The men taking over the mills have a better appreciation of the value of the timber and will avoid wastefulness. Tar and turpentine fac- tories will be erected by them and operated along with the mills, and the “cut-over” lands will be reforested. It is estimated that the lumber turned out this year in Norrland wif¥be worth from seventy to eighty million crowns. se @ . A recent dispatch from Stockholm 8a. “Dr. C. Skottsberg and two scient ists of the Swedish Scientific academy, im Halle and Perry Queerse, have started for Buenos Ayres, and they will go to the Falkland islands. Dur- ing next summer they will engage in biological and geographical research there, and then go to the extreme southern parts of Pogano, where a year will be passed in geographical and ethnographical research. After doing some field work along Beagle channel and the Magellan straits in the spring of 1910 the expedition will return to Sweden.” ee ts DENMARK. It is only twenty years since the first packing house for the slaughter- ing of swine was opened in Denmark. There are now thirty-four public pack- ing houses and twenty-four private ones in the country. * * # There is trouble within the Home Mission Society of Denmark, due to the expulsion of a couple of minjsters as members. The leader of the agita- tion against the officers of the society is Rev. N. P. Madsen. =e About 400 horses were recently im- ported from Iceland by a society whose business it is to provide horses for the Danish farmers. They were all found to be in fine condition and sold for 300 crowns per team. - * * € J. P. Mueller’s famous work, “My System,” is being published in transla- tions in all of the civilized nations. Six editions of it have been sold in Germany, or a total of 345,000 copies, and two editions have been sold in France. se Crown Prince Christian came near being killed at a_ railroad crossing while inspecting the military maneu- vers. His team was frightened at the approach of a train and was scarcely A MISSOURI WOMAN Tells a Story of Awful Suffering and Wonderful Relief. Mrs. J. D. Johnson, of 603 West Hickman St., Columbia, Mo., says: “Following an operation two years ago, dropsy set in, and my left side was so swollen the doctor said he would have to tap out the water. There was constant pain and a gurgling sensation around my heart, and I could not raise my arm above my head. The kid- ney action was disor- dered and passages of the secretions too frequent. On the advice of my husband I began using Doan’s Kidney Pills. Since using two boxes my trou- ble has not reappeared. This is won- derful, after suffering two years.” Sold by all dealers. 50 cents a box. Foster-Milburn Co., Buffalo, N. Y. No matter how good your credit may be, your cash is better. SHIP YOUR CREAM to Crescent Creamery Co., St. Paul, Minn. Write to-day for tags and prices. Every man would be a prohibitionist if there’ wasn’t anything but water to drink. WE PAY TOP PRICES FOR CREAM. Cash every day. Write for prices and tags. MILLER & HOLM St. Paul, Minn. in human nature that makes it always want to shift the responsibility. MeMURRAY’S VANILLA Worth a dollar a drop, sold by all grocers at a low price. No man is worth much to society until he learns to make the most of himself. SHIP YOUR CREAM TO US. We always pay highest market price. Samels Bros., Minneapolis, Minn. Every man possesses something that some other man envies. HIGHER CREAM PRICES. Write_us to-day for particulars and tags. MILTON DAIRY C St. Paul. Minn. CARE OF THE LAWN. Mow It Often Water It Well, Use a Good Commercial Fertilizer. The oftener grass is mowed the bet- ter it will withstand dry weather. If it becomes necessary to apply water during July or August, do it thorough- ly. A litttle wetting with the good for nothing lawn sprinkler is worse than none. Enough water should be applied, says the Village, so that the ground below the sod becomes theroughly soaked, thus attracting the roots down- ward. Do not use the lawn mower when the grass is wet. Try using a commercial fertilizer on the lawn at intervals during the sum- mer. The result will surprise you. All fertilizer manufacturers make a lawn fertilizer that is much more effi- eacious than stable manure, more cleanly and sanitary. If old, well rotted manure could be applied very thick and allowed to re- main, some good might be accom- plished, but the usual custom is to spread a_ thin coat, leave it a few weeks and then rake it off. It might about as well not be used at all. Prevented from dashing in front of the locomotive. te 2 The Danish minister of agriculture has just been decorated by the king of Norway with the Order of St. Olof, and in return for this honor the king of Denmark has decorated the Norwegian minister of agriculture, Aarestad, with the Cross of Dannebrog. eee A company, capitalized at a million crowns, has been organized in Copen- hagen for the purpose of rebuilding the houses in the so-called “Vogn- magergade” (wagonmaker) quarter of the city. The chief men behind the enterprise are Bank Director Heide and Attorney Liebe, and the Private Bank of Copenhagen is furnishing the money. s 4 * A hotly debated character among the school men of Denmark is William Rasmussen, a radical socialist. His program is to drive religious instruc- tion out of the schools of the country. But he is not content with that; par- euts are not to be allowed to give their children religicus instruction at home, if the learned Mr. Rasmussen is to have his way. His proposition is that if the parents violate this rule they forfeit the control over their dear ones, who may be taken from them, as is now done in the case of cruel, in- human parents. The commercial fertilizer is much better in every way. By its use an old, worn out lawn may be rejuven- ated. Any fertilizer dealer who knows his business is able to give full infor- mation about its cost and use. If you have a thin, weedy spot in your lawn scratch it and sow grass seed very thick. If at first you don’t succeed in getting turf try again. Thick grass will drive out the weeds in time. PUTS THE “GINGER” IN. The Kind of Food Used by Athletes. A former college athlete, one of the long distance runners, began to lose his power of endurance. His experi- ence with a change in food is interest- ing. “While I was in training on the track athletic team, my daily ‘jogs’ be- came a task, until after I was put on Grape-Nuts food for two meals a day. After using the Food for two weeks I felt like a new man. My digestion was perfect, nerves steady and I was full of energy. “I trained for the mile and the half mile runs (those events which require so much endurance) and then the long daily ‘jogs,’ which before had been such a task, were clipped off with ease. I won both events. “The Grape-Nuts food put me in per- fect condition and gave me my ‘ginger.’ Not only was my physical condition made perfect, and my weight in- creased, but my mind was made clear and vigorous so that I could get out my studies in about half the time for- merly required. Now most all of the University men use Grape-Nuts for they have learned its value, but I think my testimony will not be amiss and may perhaps help some one to learn how the best results can be ob- tained.” There’s a reason for the effect of Grape-Nuts food an the human body and brain. The certain elements in wheat and barley are selected with special reference to their power for re- building the brain and nerve centres. The product is then carefully and scientifically prepared so as to make it easy of digestion. The physical and mental results are so apparent after two or three week’s use as to produce a@ profound impression. Read “The Road to Wellville,” in pkgs. “There's @ reason.”