The evening world. Newspaper, November 19, 1921, Page 15

on ea —<« 7 .rpeg ce a - THE EVENING WORLD'S FICTION SECTION, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER _19, 1921. 8 minutes on end. Nothing there—it re- quired exquisite patience. And then, under her very elbow, some one yawned incautiously three times, and gaid lazily, “Oh, dear, oh, dear!’" So- phie showed herself her little white teeth in the mirrow, that looked down on her eavesdropping. Her nimble mind drew a picture: it would be a big bare room, with a lazy man in a blue uniform, with receivers strapped to his ears, seated at a desk; and this police ear grafted to her wire would always be attentive. Once Sophie was rewarded by hear- ing a door open, in that vague room. Again she heard the tread of feet: then the murmur of cautious voices. But it was the ticking of a clock—two cf them, in fact—that pleased her most of all. How like a stupid cop, to lie in wait breathless at the mouth- piece of @ microphone, with a blatant’ ciock at his elbow! Sophie giggled. HE end of the fourth week found Parr yawning and scowling. “The damned thing is frozen— cold!” he muttered, ‘settling himself heavily in his favorite elbow chair by Armiston's desk. Armiston said nothing. It wasn’t frozen, to him. It was merely that the element off time has entered in. This yarn had “written itself,” as he would fay professionally. _He had merely brushed the tips of his clairvoyant fin- gers, invoked the oracular keys of his faithful ‘ypewriter, and the congealed action which Parr had laid at the feet ct his Medicine had straightway come to life. He had written Finis, and locked his typewriter, and packed for Lakewood. Then he waited for his triend Parr to call on him. Leaning back in his chair Armiston idly tinkered with the needle of some electrical contrivance, The grand- father clock ticked, the fire crackled, and the Deputy scowled misanthropi- eally at the fat Buddha tn the sorner. The needle Oliver held in his hands made a spontaneous gesture. It swung over to the middle of a calibrated arc —and stayed there, as if intent on something. Armiston, with a yawn, ret the thing down, and presently picked up the telephone. He rested on «ne elbow, watching his friend Parr while he waited. “Rotten service!"" he mumbled, after a jong wait. Parr nodded gravely, ~ “Parr,” said Oliver abruptly, over the top of the telephone, “have you made any effort to find the husband? Fe's the one that squealed, of course. I suppose the poor devil got tired of hiding out.” The effect of these words, or rather of this act, on the Deputy of Police was electric, He reached out with one gorilla-like hand and snatched the tel- ephone from Oliver's grasp. “Was she on there?” he demanded. “Certainly,” said Oliver easily. He pointed to the electric needle, trembling over the middle of the card. That telltale needle gave warning every time a receiver was lifted off tts hook in No. 142, To the two watchers at that moment, that tremulous needle personified the woman herself, the eavesdropper, probably at that instant cocking her pretty head with the swift movement of a startled doe. “So you tip her off—under my nose, eh? Eh!” snarled Parr. Oliver continued to watch the spy- ing needle on his desk. A/bruptly, as if released by an unseen force, it flopped back to zero, nothing, on the calibrated scale, It was as significant as the strap of a dry twig. The Jurker was withdrawing, on tiptoe, Parr jammed his hat down, rushed from the room, While the Lakewood train was pick- ing its way across the drawbridges that span the estuaries of Newark Bay, the Dresden china widow was rolling over hill and dale to Byam, a little lake among the hills where her ttylish hackneys were acquiring win- ter coats and new hoofs in drowsy case, On the spur of the moment this morning she had thought of her be- joved horses, with a tinge of self- and accusation. It was honest John Han- vahan, the red-headed mechanic, as usual who conducted her. Some dis- tance behind, coming into sight now and again as her car topped a rise, came on the man in the brown derby; only for this occasion he had discarded his derby for a cap, thrown away his cold cigar and acquired a mustache. Life had become a. bed of thorns for the red-headed mechanic. Perched out there in the open where the widow could watch him breathe wasn’t his idea of being a detective, But ahead cf him this morning was a taste of paradise, Arriving at the farm, he was waiting in the kitchen, when there entered a pert little French maid, « round pink yerson of Chippendale pattern, on high heels which gave to her walk the tilt of a Gallic poodle. derstand nothing he said. With a twitch of a shoulder, she conferred vpon him the freedom of the house. On the first landing he picked out a coor toward the front of the house and lapped sharply. He listened. Then he rapped again and again, louder and louder, Doors above him opened and shut, but the door he attacked stared at him blankly. He retraced his steps to the street. At the corner he sighted a policeman. “What's that?” said the policeman, bending his head to listen, Together they crossed the street, “There,” said the motorman, “I think that man is dead. He's been sit- SOPHIE HANDLED HER TELEPHONE WITH THE UTMOST DELI- CACY—THEY HAD TAPPED THAT, OF COURSE. She tripped daintily over to him, sat cown on the edge of his bench, and in- dicated with a propelling shove that he was to move over a little—not too much. She folded her hands primly cn her little lace apron, regarded him under her lashes. Then they both fixed their eyes on the woodbox and smiled happily. An hour jater, when his lady up- Stairs called for her motor, the red- headed mechanic (city-bred) had changed this ideas about the attrac- tions of the country. As the motor rounded the drive and passed the gate cityward the maid tossed a kiss to the moon-struck sleuth. N West Broadway, the elevated I trains growl all day and all night, peering in at the upper floors as they pass, where life is frankly un- curtained, A man in seamy uniform, and a lLrass-bound cap, with a number, that proclaimed him an elevated motorman, examined doorway after doorway, al- ways with a glance at the upper win- cows, as he picked his way along the sidewalk, Finally ascending three rickety steps he rang a grimy bell, in response to which there appeared a capacious Sicillan woman, with a baby squatting on one hip, She could un- ting in that window for thirty-six hours.” . . He went on to explain that he had passed and repassed that face in the window on his day shifts at the con- troller of his train—until finally it got on his nerves, so he had come on foot to see what was up. The policeman pushed his way through the halted traffic and stamped up the stairs. He put his shoulder to the door and it fell with a weak splintering crash. The man was dead—quite. The officer threw up a smeared window and blew on his whistle. Shortly other police- men appeared, running. A little while later a black wagon backed up to the door and carried away the man in the chair covered with a _ horse-blanket, Another wagon bore off the fat Sicil- jan woman and her baby, and several other terrified denizens of the house, They said he had been a lodger for some months, a poor man, oh, yes, very poor. It was his habit to sit in that window by the hour, by the day sometimes. Had he any friends come to see him? Who could say? The whole world might pass up and down that dingy staircase, without question, In the little building on the river front at the foot of East 2%th Street, where Diack wagons drive up at all hours of the day and night and deposit burdens covered with horse-blankets, _ brated mystery. ® man stands, smoking, languidly {ne terested. Dead souls come here; they must be inspected, suspected, like any object offered in pawn. Others come here, anxious mothers, brothers, friends, seeking. An attendant pulls cut drawer after drawer for their tn- spection. Sometimes a shriek tells the hangers-on that a quest has ended. A stocky man, evidently a mason, who had come directly from his work, was whispering to the attendant, trem- bling. The attendant listened, and nodded. He knew—yes, it was here; and he rolled out a drawer. The mason inclined his head, brushing his cyes with a lime-stained hand. His brother, he said. The attendant made ® grimace over his shoulder, and the man with the cigar approached, eye- ing the mason with a bleary look. He teok out a note book, and they talked in low tones, the policeman making ene tries as the other answered. “You will have to be corroborated, of course,” said the policeman, not une kindly. “But why?” ejaculated the mason, horrified. The policeman said he couldn’t say why—they had to be care- ful. The mason produced his union card and other credentials to establish his identity, HE next day a little funeral party departed from that side-street “parlor,” with what pomp the poor may give to their dead. There were four carriages, three of them empty with blinds drawn, and in the iirst the only mourner, the mason. On their return, the policeman with the cigar met the foremost carriage— there were some final papers to sign for the records, When the mason stepped down, he, looked up and saw they were at the porticoed door of a big building. He drew back involun- tarily, but the man with the cigar had a double twist on his coat sleeve. “Come along quietly, and don’t start anything,” he said amiably and led the mourner up the stone steps and into a room—a big room—in which sat ® man at a desk. The man at the éesk was Parr, Deputy Commissioner of Police. “Ha, ha! At last. Well, how'd it #0?" asked Parr, looking up. The ma- eon straightened up, breathing hard, “Sophie almost got away with it,” sdid Parr—“enocking the old duffer off like that with arsenic in his dope! And turning the stiff over to us to hand out to the first claimant that comes along to identify it—you dhought you weren't even taking a chance, didn’t you, William?” It was William, the footman—wWill- jam redrawn, some lines erased, as plausible as a raised check. He swale lowed hard. Parr pointed to a_ glass weight on his desk. “Did you ever see that before? An- éwer me!" he snarled, with sudden fe- rocity, William looked from Parr to the paper-weight, ang back again, but naintained silence. “What did Amos P, Huntington call himself twelve years ago when he left his finger-prints on that paper weight, in the Park Place murder?” Parr referred to a crime that had fone down in the annals as a cele- It was a mystery no The obscure man who wag found dead tn his chair in West Broad- way had the same finger-prints, Will- fam did not answer, paper more, “What did you blow up in your rubs ber plant, William?” asked Parr, “Was it a basket of cats—or dogs—or did you borrow another of your brothers from East 26th Street? Sophie put the remains through the crematory so fast we didn’t have a look in.” Parr laughed. So did William, By that laugh Parr knew that questions were useless. At that moment the door opened, and Armiston came in, swinging a stick. “Take him downstairs!" growled Parr to an attendant. “Charge him with—complicity in the murder of Joha Doe, alias Amos P. Huntington.” Parr's eyes twinkled, When William had been led out he said to Armistom with some relish; “As a matter of fact, Armiston, you Order Your Evening World in Advance