Adventures Of The Infallible Godahl - Frederick Irving Anderson

Summary

Podcast Summary: “Adventures Of The Infallible Godahl” – Classic Science Fiction Books

Podcast: Classic Science Fiction Books
Host: solgoodmedia.com
Episode: Adventures Of The Infallible Godahl - Frederick Irving Anderson
Date: August 1, 2026
Narrator/Reader: Winston Tharp

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode features a complete reading of Frederick Irving Anderson’s Adventures of the Infallible Godahl, a collection of interlinked classic early 20th-century crime stories. The tales center on the enigmatic, masterful thief/detective Godahl, whose intellect and cunning elevate him into the upper echelons of criminal legend. Through Godahl’s exploits, Anderson explores themes of intellect versus law, the nature of genius, and the complex moralities of those who operate beyond the grasp of ordinary society.

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Key Discussion Points & Story Arcs

A. Introducing Oliver Armiston & Godahl (01:16–08:00)

• Oliver Armiston: An author and creator of the scientific thief Godahl. Armiston is methodical, always catching his train by the thinnest of margins, and gets embroiled in adventure due to his reputation and uncanny knack for being in the right/wrong place.
• Serendipitous Encounter: Armiston loses his money to a pickpocket, receives unexpected help from a brusque stranger (J. Borden Benson), and finds himself entangled in a web of crime, intellect, and mutual admiration for fictional mastermind Godahl.
• Meta-commentary: Throughout, Anderson plays with layers—Armiston writes Godahl, but events make Armiston live out stories almost as if directed by Godahl’s logic.

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Notable Quote

“I fully believe no thinking man could do otherwise. In just what way? I must confess I have never thought of his work as anything but pure invention.”
— Benson, discussing the dangers/inspiration of Armiston’s Godahl stories (18:30)

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B. The White Ruby and the Blurring of Reality (17:30–43:00)

• The White Ruby Plot: Benson challenges Armiston (unrecognized by Benson) with a story prompt: a legendary “white ruby,” presumably in the possession of Mrs. Wentworth, courted by thieves, jugglers, and exotics.
• Armiston Attends the Wentworths: To “case the joint” for his story, Armiston investigates the defenses—sealed doors, a deaf butler, and Mrs. Wentworth’s own history with the mysterious gem.
• Facts Blend with Fiction: As Armiston spins the tale into a Godahl story, real-life events eerily parallel those he pens: a murder, a jewel theft, media frenzy.

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Notable Quotes

“Great authors must really live in the flesh at times, at least the lives of their great characters.”
— Narrator, on Armiston’s entanglement with his fiction (32:45)

“If he is half the man I take him to be, from what you say, he wouldn’t stand for people fawning on him and telling him what a wonder he is.”
— Benson on the mythical Armiston (24:41)

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C. The Perfect Crime and Its Consequences (43:00–73:00)

• A Fiction Turned Factual: When Armiston’s story is published, a parallel real-world crime occurs—Wentworth’s “white ruby” is stolen, the butler murdered. The press runs Armiston’s story side-by-side with actual police reports, challenging readers to spot the difference.
• Police Investigation: Deputy Commissioner Burns suspects that Armiston’s fiction provided the criminal blueprint—and that the criminal mastermind is someone much like “Godahl” himself.
• Meta-Detective Work: Armiston and Burns, retracing steps, realize they were manipulated by a mysterious third party, and that reality is being not just inspired by, but orchestrated as, a Godahl story.

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Notable Quotes

“The mind that conceives, the intelligence that directs a crime is more guilty than the very hand that acts.”
— Narrator, paraphrasing the law’s accusation against Armiston as creator (52:10)

“Your infernal Godahl has told us just exactly how this crime was committed. Now your infernal Godahl must bring the guilty parties to justice.”
— Deputy Burns (56:25)

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D. Other Godahl Exploits: Roguery as High Art

1. The Blind Magician, Malvolio (79:07–112:00)

• Malvolio’s Heist: The blind magician with a legendary sense of touch and performance art manipulates the “50 little millionaires,” outwitting not just the clubmen but the listeners as well.
• Rivalry and Respect: Godahl acknowledges Malvolio as his equal—“No one knew how great Malvolio was except Godahl.”

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Notable Moments

• The supposed ‘imprisonment’ and clever escape from the cloakroom—an entire caper orchestrated with misdirection, sleight of hand, and clubbable arrogance.

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2. The Night of a Thousand Thieves (121:52–166:24)

• Mass Panic in the Diamond District: A meticulously synchronized breach of 1700 burglar alarms stuns New York’s jewelers—hundreds of police cordon off the streets.
• Clever Mechanism: The true target is Ludwig Telfin’s legendary safe, cracked with cunning and artistry—leaving only the most superb treasures taken.
• Ingenious Dupes: The caper unfolds like a meta-puzzle, with red herring after red herring for both law and crook alike.

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Notable Quote

“Not a thief, merely an artist had picked here. The Strong Room ... was tapped.” (145:30)

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3. Counterpoint: Mapes, Secret Agents, and Musical Ciphers (166:24–195:31)

• Espionage Intrigue: Godahl cracks a musical cipher used by the ancient villain Mapes, unraveling a clue about US military installations. Government operatives, foreign spies, and codebreakers tangle in a plot reminiscent of the great spy and criminal fiction of the era.
• Godahl as Puppetmaster: Even when undercover, Godahl gently manipulates government agents and rivals alike.

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Notable Moment

• The solution of the cipher embedded in a musical score, with the key explained (192:20–194:40).

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4. The Fifth Tube: The Alchemy of Theft (216:34–248:41)

• Audacious Gold Robbery: Gold is stolen from the US Assay Office—not in bar form, but as liquid, siphoned away via an ingeniously concealed “fifth tube” laid during construction.
• Science & Subterfuge: Anderson flexes early 20th-century fascination with chemistry and engineering—Godahl’s scientific mind is as much weapon as his criminal instinct.
• Investigators Bested: Despite pooling technical expertise, authorities only piece together the crime after the fact, as Godahl (once again in disguise) melts back into the city.

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Notable Quote

“I think, he mused, I shall reduce it to its absolute atomic and beat it into a frieze for the walls of my study. 61,000 drops to the gallon…”
— Godahl, contemplating stolen gold (216:20)

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5. An All-Star Cast: The Great Theatrical Heist (258:55–314:45)

• Society Masquerade: A young provincial (Grimsey) accidentally stumbles into a room full of famous millionaires—only for it to be revealed as a theatrical con peopled by master actors, orchestrated by the elusive David Hartman.
• Chase of Identity and Illusion: Scenes of moving house, evading press and police, and impersonations highlight the theme of reality as theater—a motif Anderson mines for both comedy and tension.
• Godahl’s Ethics: Godahl prevents harm to “the good”—the last great scene is a kind of mutual admiration and respectful parting between antagonist and protagonist.

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Notable Quotes

“The greatest actor the world has ever known is a man who has never been on the stage, and his name is David Hartman.”
— Godahl (273:50)

“You have been entertained…by a stock company composed of some of the most distinguished actors and actresses out of jail. Mrs. Trigg was moved out of this house yesterday... The cleverest gang of thieves this side of the River Jordan rigged up the rooms again for your especial entertainment this morning.”
— Warden (302:00)

“I do not believe I care to discuss the matter with you. I am presuming that you have the authority to ask me to accompany you.”
— David Hartman to Godahl, on art, crime, and resignation (312:05)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment/Storyline | |:----------:|:-----------------------------------------------------------| | 01:16 | “The Infallible Godahl” opening, Armiston’s philosophy, intro | | 17:30 | The white ruby challenge, airport meeting, and plot germ | | 32:40 | Armiston’s deepening involvement, real-life becoming fiction | | 43:00 | Theft/murder discovered, police-parallels, story’s climax | | 56:00 | Burns’ analysis, how fiction became blueprint for crime | | 79:07 | “Blind Man’s Bluff” – The Malvolio story | | 121:52 | “Night of a Thousand Thieves” – Diamond District heist | | 166:24 | “Counterpoint” – Musical ciphers and spy intrigue | | 216:34 | “The Fifth Tube” – The scientific gold theft | | 258:55 | “An All-Star Cast” – The society/theater/illusion heist | | 302:00 | Confrontation, explanations, and denouement | | 312:05 | Godahl and Hartman’s final encounter |

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Memorable Moments & the Spirit of the Episode

• Intricate Plots/Meta-fiction: The line between author/character, fiction/reality, thief/lawgiver, is continually blurred.
• Rogues’ Gallery: Godahl faces rivals and equals (Malvolio; Hartman) who are drawn with as much affection as his pursuers.
• Ethics of the Mastermind: Godahl’s crimes are as much about aesthetic fulfillment and the pursuit of challenge as about gain.
• Period Details: The stories are saturated with the flavor and bustle of Edwardian/early 20th-century New York—railways, clubs, brownstone mansions, Wall Street.
• Language/Tone: The narration—wry, sharp, and clever—carries a twinkle, underscoring both the audacity of Godahl’s exploits and the dry wit of the era’s best crime fiction.

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Closing Thoughts

This episode weaves together dazzling cons, high-stakes robberies, and piercing psychological insight, all bound by Frederick Irving Anderson’s exuberant, sly prose. Fans of classic detective and crime fiction will find “Godahl” a compelling bridge between Victorian “gentleman thief” archetypes and the later hard-boiled anti-heroes, with a current of existential and social musings running just beneath the surface.

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For Listeners New to the Episode

If you enjoy tales of master criminals, playful twists on detective convention, and a whiff of elegant roguery, Adventures of the Infallible Godahl is a classic worth reveling in. The episode presents not just suspense and style but a witty meditation on invention—both criminal and literary.

Transcript

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7 support, Grainger helps her keep the products she needs on hand so shelves stay stocked and buildings stay ready. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. Chapter 1 Part 1 of Adventures of the Infallible Go Doll this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public Domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Recording by Winston Tharp Adventures of the Infallible Go$, by Frederick Irving Anderson the Infallible Godall. Oliver Armiston never was much of a sportsman with a rod or gun, though he could do fancy work with a pistol and a shooting gallery. He had, however, one game from which he derived the utmost satisfaction. Whenever he went traveling, which was often, he invariably caught his trains by the tip of the tail, so to speak, and and hung on until he could climb aboard. In other words, he believed in close connections. He had a theory that more valuable dollars in sense time and good animal heat are wasted warming seats and stations waiting for trains than by missing them. The sum of joy to his methodical mind was to halt the slamming gates at the last fraction of the last second with majestic, upraised hand, and to stroll aboard his parlor car with studied deliberation while the Train crew were gnashing their teeth in rage and swearing to get even with the gate man for letting him through. Yet Mr. Armiston never missed a train. A good many of them tried to miss him, but none ever succeeded. He reckoned time and distance so nicely that it really seemed as if his trains had nothing else half so important as waiting until Mr. Oliver Armiston got aboard. On this particular June day, he was due in New Haven at 2. If he failed to get there at 2 o', clock, he had very easily arrived at 3. But an hour is 60 minutes and a minute is 60 seconds. And further, Mr. Armiston, having passed his word that he would be there at 2 o', clock, surely would be on this particular day. By the time Armiston finally got to the Grand Central, the train looked like an odds on favorite. In the first place, he was still in his bed at an hour when another and less experienced traveler would have been watching the clock in the station waiting room. In the second place, after kissing his wife in that absent minded manner characteristic of true love, he became entangled in a Broadway traffic rush at the first corner. Scarcely was he extricated from this when he ran into a socialist mass meeting at Union Square. It was due only to the wits of his chauffeur that the taxicab was extricated with very little damage to the surrounding human scenery. But our man of method did not fret. Instead he buried himself in his book, A treatise on cause and effect, which at that moment was lulling him with this soothing sentiment. There is no such thing as accident. The so called accidents of everyday life are due to the pre ordained action of correlated causes which is inevitable and over which man has no control. This was comforting, but not much to the point when Oliver Armiston looked up and discovered he had reached 23rd street and had come to a halt. A 60 foot truck with an underslung burden consisting of a 60 ton steel girder had at this point suddenly developed weakness in its off hind wheel and settled down on the pavement across the right of way like a tired elephant. This, of course, was not an accident. It was due to a weakness in the construction of that wheel. A weakness that had from the beginning been destined to block street cars and taxicabs at this particular spot, at this particular hour. Mr. Armiston dismounted and walked the block. Here he hailed a second taxicab and soon was spinning north again at a fair speed. Albeit the extensive building operations in fourth Avenue had made the street well nigh impassable, the Roughness of the pavement merely shook up his digestive apparatus and gave it zest for the fine luncheon he was promising himself. The minute he stepped aboard his train, his new chauffeur got lost three times in the maze of traffic around the Grand Central Station. This, however, was only human, seeing that the railroad company changed the map of 42nd street every 24 hours during the course of the building of its new terminal, Mr. Armiston at length stepped from his taxicab, gave his grip to a porter, and and paid the driver from a huge roll of bills. This same roll was no sooner transferred back to his pocket than a nimble fingered pickpocket removed it. This again was not an accident. That pickpocket had been waiting there for the last hour for that roll of bills. It was preordainedinevitable, and Oliver armiston had just 30 seconds to catch his train by the tail and climb aboard. He smiled contentedly to himself. It was not until he called for his ticket that he discovered his loss. For a full, precious second he gazed at the hand that came away empty from his money pocket. And then I find I left my purse at home, he said with a grand air he knew how to assume on occasion. My name is Mr. Oliver Armiston now. Oliver Armiston was a name to conjure with. I don't doubt it, said the ticket agent dryly. Mr. Andrew Carnegie was here yesterday begging car fare to 125th street, and Mr. John D. Rockefeller quite frequently drops in and leaves his dollar watch in hock next. And the ticket agent glared at the man blocking the impatient line and told him to move on. Armiston flushed crimson. He glanced at the clock. For once in his life he was about to experience that awful feeling of missing his train. For once in his life he was about to be robbed of that delicious sensation of hypnotizing the gatekeeper and walking majestically down that train platform that extends northward under the train shed a considerable part of the distance toward Yonkers. 20 seconds. Armiston turned round, still holding his ground, and glared concentrated malice at the man next in line. That man was in a hurry. In his hand he held a bundle of bills. For a second the thief instinct that is latent in us all suggested itself to Armiston. There within reach of his hand was the money, the precious, paltry dollar bills that stood between him and his train. It scared him to discover that he, an upright and honest citizen, was almost in the act of grabbing them like a common pickpocket. Then A truly remarkable thing happened. The man thrust his handful of bills at Armiston. The only way I can raise this blockade is to bribe you, he said, returning Armiston's glare. Here, take what you want and give the rest of us a chance. With the alacrity of a blind beggar miraculously cured by the sight of much money, Armiston grabbed the handful, extracted what he needed for his ticket, and thrust the rest back into the waiting hand of his unknown benefactor. He caught the gate by a hair. So did his unknown friend. Together they walked down the platform, each matching the other's leisurely pace with his own. They might have been two potentates, so deliberately did they catch this train. Armiston would have liked very much to thank this person, but the other presented so forbidding an exterior that it was hard to find a point of attack. By force of habit, Armiston boarded the parlor car, quite forgetting he did not have money for a seat. So did the other. The unknown thrust a bill at the porter. Get me two chairs, he said. One is for this gentleman. Once inside and settled, Armiston renewed his efforts to thank this strange person. That person took a card from his pocket and handed it to Armiston. Don't run away with a foolish idea, he said tartly, that I have done you a service willingly. You are making me miss my train, and I took this means of bribing you to get you out of my way. That is all, sir. At your leisure you may send me a cheque for the trifle. A most extraordinary person, said Armiston to himself. Let me give you my card, he said to the other. As to the service rendered, you are welcome to your own ideas on that. For my part, I am very grateful. The unknown took the proffered card and thrust it in his waistcoat pocket. Without glancing at it, he swung his chair around and opened a magazine displaying a pair of broad, unneighborly shoulders. This was rather disconcerting to Armiston, who was accustomed to have his card act as an open sesame. Damn his impudence, he said to himself. He makes me for a mendicant. I'll make copy of him. This was the popular author's way of getting even with those who offended his tender sensibilities. Two things worried Armiston. One was his luncheon, or rather the absence of it, and the other was his neighbor. This neighbor, now that Armiston had a chance to study him, was a young man, well set up. He had a fine, bronzed face that was not half so surly as his manner. He was now buried up to his ears in a magazine, oblivious of everything around him, even the dining car porter, who strode down the aisle and announced the first call to lunch in the dining car. I wonder what this fellow is reading, said Armiston to himself. He peeped over the man's shoulder and was interested at once, for the stranger was reading a copy of a magazine called by the Vulgar, the Whited Sepulchre. It was the pride of this magazine that no man on earth could read it without the aid of a dictionary. Yet this person seemed to be enthralled, and what was more, to the point, and vastly pleasing to Armiston. The man was at that moment engrossed in one of Armiston's own effusions. It was one of his crime stories that had won him praise and lucre. It concerned the infallible Godall. These stories were pure reason incarnate in the person of a scientific thief. The plot was invariably so logical that it seemed more like the output of some machine than of a human mind. Of course the plots were impossible because the fiction thief had to be an incredible genius to carry out the details, but nevertheless they were entertaining, fascinating, and dramatic at one and the same time, and this individual read the story through without winking an eyelash, as though the mental effort cost him nothing, and then, to Armiston's delight, turned back to the beginning and read it again. The author threw out his chest and shot his cuffs. It was not often that such unconscious tribute fell to his lot. He took the card of his unknown benefactor. It read, Mr. J. Borden Benson, the Towers, New York City. Humph. Snorted Armiston, an aristocrat and a snob, too. At this moment the aristocrat turned in his chair and handed the magazine to his companion. All his bad humor was gone. Are you familiar, he asked, with this man Armiston's work? I mean, these scientific thief stories that are running now? Yes. Oh yes. Sputtered Armiston, hastily putting the other's card away. Iin fact, you know, I take them every morning before breakfast. In a way this was the truth, for Armiston always began his days writing before breakfasting. Mr. Benson smiled a very fine smile, at once boyish and sophisticated. Rather a heavy diet early in the morning, I should say, he replied. Have you read this last one, then? Oh, yes, said the delighted author. What do you think of it? Asked Benson. The author puckered his lips. It is on a par with the others, he said. Yes, said Benson thoughtfully. I should say the same thing. And when we have said that, there is nothing left to say. They are truly a remarkable product. Quite unique, you know. And yet, he said, frowning at Armiston, I believe that this man Armiston is to be ranked as the most dangerous man in the world today. Oh, I say, began Armiston, but he checked himself, chuckling. He was very glad Mr. Benson had not looked at his card. I mean it, said the other decidedly. And you think so yourself? I fully believe no thinking man could do otherwise. In just what way? I must confess I have never thought of his work as anything but pure invention. It was truly delicious. Armiston would certainly make copy of this person. I will grant, said Benson, that there is not a thief in the world today clever enough, brainy enough to. To take advantage of the suggestions put forth in these stories. But some day there will arise a man to whom they will be as simple as an ordinary blueprint, and he will profit accordingly. This magazine, by printing these stories, is merely furnishing him with his tools, showing him how to work. And the worst of it is. Just a minute, said the author, agreeing for the moment that these stories will be the tools of Armiston's hero in real life some day. How about the popular magazines? They print 10 such stories to one of these by Armiston. Ah, my friend, said Benson. You forget one thing. The popular magazines deal with real life, the possible, the usual, and in that very thing they protect the public against sharpers by exposing the methods of these same sharpers. But with Armiston. No. Much as I enjoy him as an intellectual treat, I am afraid he didn't finish his sentence. Instead he fell to shaking his head, as though in amazement at the devilish ingenuity of the author under discussion. I am certainly delighted, thought that author, that my disagreeable benefactor did not have the good grace to look at my card. This is really most entertaining. And then aloud, and treading on thin ice. I should be very happy to tell Oliver what you say and see what he has to say about it. Benson's face broke into a wreath of wrinkles. Do you know him well? I declare that is a privilege. I heartily wish you would tell him. Would you like to meet him? I am under obligations to you. I can arrange a little dinner for a few of us. No, said Benson, shaking his head. I would rather go on reading him without knowing him. Authors are so disappointing. In real life, he may be some puny, anemic little half portion with dirty fingernails, and all the rest that goes with genius. No, offense to your friend. Besides, I'm afraid I might quarrel with him. Last call for lunch in the dining car, sang the porter. Amiston was looking at his fingernails as the porter passed. They were manicured once a day. Come lunch with me, said Benson heartily. I should be pleased to have you as my guest. I apologize for being rude to you at the ticket window, but I did want to catch this train mighty bad. Armiston laughed. Well, you have paid my car fare, he said, and I won't deny I am hungry enough to eat a hundred and ten pound rail. I will let you buy me a meal. Being penniless, Benson arose, and as he drew out his handkerchief, the card Armiston had given him fluttered into that worthy's lap. Armiston closed his hand over it, chuckling again. Fate had given him the chance of preserving his incognito with this person as long as he wished. It would be a rare treat to get him ranting again about the author Armiston. But Armiston's host did not rant against his favorite author. In fact, he was so enthusiastic over that man's genius that the same qualities which he decried as a danger to society in his opinion, only added luster to the work. Benson asked his guest innumerable questions as to the personal qualities of his ideal, and Armiston shamelessly constructed a truly remarkable person. The other listened, entranced. No, I don't want to know him, he said. In the first place, I haven't the time, and in the second, I'd be sure to start a row. And then there is another thing. If he is half the man I take him to be, from what you say, he wouldn't stand for people fawning on him and telling him what a wonder he is. That's about what I should be doing, I'm afraid. Oh, said Armiston, he isn't so bad as that. He is a. Well, a sensible chap with clean fingernails and all that, you know. And he gets a hair cut once every three weeks, the same as the rest of us. I'm glad to hear you say so. Mr. Benson fell to chuckling. By gad, he said, here we have been talking with each other for an hour, and I haven't so much as taken a squint at your card to see who you are. He searched for the card Armiston had given him. Call it Brown, said Armiston, lying gorgeously and with a feeling of utmost righteousness. Martin Brown, single read and write. Color white laced shoes and derby hat as the police say. All right, Mr. Brown. Glad to know you. We will have some cigars. You have no idea how much you interest me, Mr. Brown. How much does Armiston get for his stories? Every word he writes brings him the price of a good cigar. I should say he makes 40,000 a year. Humph. That's better than Godall his star creation would bag as a thief, I imagine, let alone the danger of getting snipped with a pistol ball on a venture. Armiston puffed up his chest and shot his cuffs again. How does he get his plots? Armiston knitted his ponderous brows. There's the rub, he said. You can talk about so and so much a word until you are deaf, dumb, and blind. But after all, it isn't the number of words or how they are strung together that makes a story. It is the ideas. And ideas are scarce. I have an idea that I always wanted to have Armiston get a hold of, just to see what he could do with it. If you will pardon me. To my way of thinking, the really important thing isn't the ideas, but how to work out the details. What's your idea? Asked Armiston hastily. He was not averse to appropriating anything he encountered in real life and dressing it up to suit his taste. I'll pass it along to Armiston if you say so. Will you? That's capital to begin with, Mr. Benson said as he twirled his brandy glass with long, lean, silky fingers a hand Armiston thought he would not like to have handle him in a rage. To begin with, Godall, this thief is not an ordinary thief. He is a highbrow. He has made some big hauls. He must be a very rich man now, eh? You see that he is quite real to me. By this time I should say Godall has acquired such a fortune that thieving for mere money is no longer an object. What does he do? Sit down and live on his income? Not much. He is a person of refined tastes, with an eye for the aesthetic. He desires art objects, rare porcelains, a gem of rare cot or color set by Venvenuto Cellini, a Leonardo da Vinci. Did Godall steal the Mona Lisa, by the way? He is the most likely person I can think of. Or perhaps a Gutenberg Bible treasures, things of exquisite beauty to look at, to enjoy in secret, not to show to other people. That is the natural development of this man, Godall, eh? Splendid. Exclaimed Armiston, his enthusiasm getting the better of him. Have you ever heard of Mrs. Billy Wentworth? Asked Benson. Indeed. I know her well, said Armiston, his guard down, that you must surely have seen her white ruby. White ruby? I never heard of such a thing. A white ruby? Exactly. That's just the point. Neither have I. But if Godall heard of a white ruby, the chances are he would possess it. Especially if it were the only one of its kind in the world. Gad, I do believe he would, from what I know of him. And especially went on Benson, under the circumstances. You know, the Wentworths have been round a good deal. They haven't been over scrupulous in getting things they wanted. Now, Mrs. Wentworth, but before I go on with this weird tale, I want you to understand me. It is pure fiction. An idea for Armiston and his wonderful Go doll. I am merely suggesting the Wentworths as fictitious characters. I understand, said Armiston.

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Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Mrs. Wentworth might very well possess this white ruby. Let's say she stole it from some potentate's household in the Straits Settlements. She gained admittance by means of the official position of her husband. They can't accuse her of theft. All they can do is steal the gem back from her. It is a sacred stone. Of course. They always are in fiction stories. And the usual tribe of jugglers, rug peddlers and so on. All disguised, you understand, have followed her to America seeking a chance, not on her life not to commit violence of any kind, but to steal that stone. She can't wear it, went on Benson. All she can do is hide it away in some safe place. What is a safe place? Not a bank. Godall could crack a bank with his little finger. So might these East Indian fellows, laboring under the call of religion. Not in a safe. That would be folly. How then put in Armiston eagerly. Ah, there you are. That's for Godall to find out. He knows. Let us say that these foreigners, in one way or another, have turned Mrs. Wentworth's apartments upside down. Down. They haven't found anything. He knows that she keeps that white ruby in that house. Where is it ask Godall. Do you see the point? Has Godall ever cracked a nut like that? No. Here he must be the cleverest detective in the world and the cleverest thief at the same time. Before he can begin thieving, he must make his blue prints. When I read Armiston, continued Benson, that is the kind of problem that springs up in my mind. I am always trying to think of some knot this wonderful thief would have to employ his best powers to unravel. I think of some weird situation like this one. I say to myself, good. I will write that I will be as famous as Armiston. I will create another Go Doll. But, he said with a wave of his hands, what is the result? I tie the knot, but I can't untie it. The trouble is, I am not a Go doll. And this man Armiston, as I read him, is Go Doll. He must be, or else Godall would not be made to do the wonderful things he does. Hello, New Haven already? Mighty sorry to have you go, old chap. Great pleasure. When you get to town, let me know. Maybe I will consent to meet Armiston. Armiston's first care on returning to New York was to remember the providential loan by which he had been able to keep clean his record of never missing a train. He counted out the sum in bills, wrote a polite note, signed it Martin Brown, and despatched it by messenger boy to J. Borden Benson. The Towers. The towers. The address Mr. Benson's card bore is an ultra fashionable apartment hotel on lower Fifth Avenue. It maintains all the pomp and solemnity of an English ducal castle. Armiston remembered having on a remote occasion taken dinner there with a friend, and the recollection always gave him a chill. It was like dining among ghosts of kings, so grand and funereal was the air that pervaded everything. Armiston, who could not forbear curiosity as to his queer benefactor, took occasion to look him up in the blue book in the club directory and found that J. Borden Benson was quite some personage, several lines being devoted to him. This was extremely pleasing. Armiston had been thinking of that white ruby yarn. It appealed to his sense of the dramatic. He would work it up in his best style and on publication have a fine laugh on Benson by sending him an autographed copy and thus waking that gentleman up to the fact that it really had been the great Armiston in person he had befriended and entertained. What a joke it would be on Benson, thought the author, not without an intermixture of personal vanity, for even a genius such as he was not blind to flattery properly applied. And Benson unknowingly had lighted on thick. And by gad, thought the author, I will use the Wentworths as the main characters, as the victims of Godot. They are just the people to fit into such a romance. Benson put money in my pocket, though he didn't suspect it. Luckily he didn't know what shifts we popular authors are put to for plots suiting the action to the words. Armiston and his wife accepted the next invitation they received from the Wentworths. Mrs. Wentworth, be it understood, was a lion hunter. She was forever trying to gather around her such celebrities as Armiston the author, Brackens the painter, Johansen the explorer, and others. Armiston had always withstood her wiles. He always had some excuse to keep him away from her gorgeous table where she exhibited her lions to her simpering friends. There were many undesirables sitting at the tableidle rich youths, girls of the fast hunting set, and so on, and they all gravely shook the great author by the hand and told him what a wonderful man he was. As for Mrs. Wentworth, she was too highly elated at her success in roping him for sane speech, and she fluttered about him like a hysterical bridesmaid. But Armiston noted with relief one of his pals was there. Johansen. Over cigars and cognac, he managed to buttonhole. The explorer. Johansen, he said, you have been everywhere. You are mistaken there, said Johansen. I have never before to night been north of 59th street in New York. Yes, but you have been in Java and Ceylon and the settlements. Tell me, have you ever heard of such a thing as a white ruby? The explorer narrowed his eyes to a slit and looked queerly at his questioner. That's a queer question, he said in a low voice to ask in this house. Armiston felt his pulse quicken. Why? He asked, assuming an air of surprised innocence. If you don't know, said the explorer shortly, I certainly will not enlighten you. All right, as you please. But you haven't answered my question yet. Have you ever heard of a white ruby? I don't mind telling you that I have heard of such a thing. That is, I have heard there is a ruby in existence that is called the white ruby. It isn't really white, you know. It has a purplish tinge. But the old heathen who rightly owns it likes to call it white, just as he likes to call his blue and grey Elephants White. Who owns it? Asked Emerson, trying his best to make his voice sound natural. To find in this manner that there was some parallel for the mystical white ruby of which Benson had told him appealed strongly to his super developed dramatic sense. He was now as keen on the scent as a hound. Johansen took to drumming on the tablecloth. He smiled to himself and his eyes glowed. Then he turned and looked sharply at his questioner. I suppose, he said, that all things are grist to a man of your trade if you are thinking of building a story round the white ruby. I can think of nothing more fascinating. But Armiston, he said, suddenly altering his tone and almost whispering, if you are on the track of thee white ruby, let me advise you now to call off your dogs and keep your throat whole. I think I am a brave man. I have shot tigers at 10 paces, held my fire purposely to see how charmed a life I really did bear. I have been charged by mad rhinos and by wounded buffaloes. I have walked along a clearing where the air was being punctured with bullets as thick as holes in a mosquito screen. But, he said, laying his hand on Armiston's arm, I have never had the nerve to hunt the white ruby. Capital. Exclaimed the author. Capital. Yes, for a man who earns his bread and gets his excitement by sitting at a typewriter and dreaming about these things. But take my word for it, it isn't capital for a man who gets his excitement by doing this thing. Hands off, my friend. It really does exist. Then Johansen puckered his lips. So they say, he said. What's it worth? Worth? What do you mean by worth? Dollars and cents. What is your child worth to you? A million? A billion? How much? Tell me. No, you can't. Well, that's just what this miserable stone is worth to the man who rightfully owns it. Now let's quit talking nonsense. There's Billy Wentworth shooing the men into the drawing room. I suppose we shall be entertained this evening by some of the hundred dollar a minute song words. As usual, it's amazing what these people will spend for mere vulgar display when there are hundreds of families starving within a mile of this spot. Two famous singers sang that night. Armiston did not have much opportunity to look over the house. He was now fully determined to lay the scene of his story in this very house. At leave, taking the sugar sweet Mrs. Billy Wentworth drew Armiston aside and said, it's rather hard on you to ask you to sit through an evening with these people. I will make amends by asking you to come to me some night when we can be by ourselves. Are you interested in rare curios? Yes, we all are. I have some really wonderful things I want you to see. Let us make it next Tuesday with a little informal dinner just for ourselves. Armiston then and there made the lion hunter radiantly happy by accepting her invitation to sit at her board as a family friend. Friend instead of as a lion. As he put his wife into their automobile, he turned and looked at the house. It stood opposite Central Park. It was a copy of some French chateau in gray sandstone with a barbican and overhanging towers and all the rest of it. The windows of the street floor peeped out through deep embrasures and were heavily guarded with iron latticework. Godall will have the very devil of a time breaking in there, he chuckled to himself. Late that night his wife awakened him to find out why he was tossing about so. That white ruby has got on my nerves, he said cryptically. And she, thinking he was dreaming, persuaded him to try to sleep again. Ugh, I have had no luck lately.

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Spinquest is a free to play social casino. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Great authors must really live in the flesh at times, at least the lives of their great characters. Otherwise these great characters would not be so real as they are. Here was Armiston, who had created a superman in the person of Godall the thief. For 10 years he had written nothing else. He had laid the life of Godall out in squares, thought for him, dreamed about him, set him to new tasks, gone through all sorts of queer adventures with him. And this same Godall had amply repaid him. He had raised the author from the ranks of struggling amateurs to a position among the most highly paid fiction writers in the United States. He had brought him ease and luxury. Armiston did not need the money any more. The serial rights telling of the exploits of this Godall had paid him handsomely. The books of Godall's adventures had paid him even better and had furnished him yearly with a never failing income like government bonds, but at a much higher rate of interest. Even though the crimes this Godall had committed were all on paper and almost impossible. Nevertheless, Godall was a living being to his creator. More, he was Armiston, and Armiston was Godall. It was not surprising then, that when Tuesday came, Armiston awaited the hour with feverish impatience. Here, as his strange friend had so thoughtlessly and casually told him, was an opportunity for the great Godall to outdo even himself. Here was an opportunity for Godall to be the greatest detective in the world in the first place, before he could carry out one of his sensational thefts. So it was Godall, not Armiston, who helped his wife out of their automobile that evening and mounted the splendid steps of the Wentworth mansion. He cast his eye aloft, took in every inch of the facade. No, he said, Godall cannot break in from the street. I must have a look at the back of the house. He cast his eyes on the ironwork that guarded the deep windows, giving on the street it was not iron after all, but chilled steel sunk into armoured concrete. The outposts of this house were as safely guarded as the vault of the United States Mint. It's got to be from the inside, he said, making mental note of the fact the butler was stone deaf. This was rather singular. Why should a family of the standing of the Wentworths employ a man as head of their city establishment who was stone deaf? Armiston looked at the man with curiosity. He was still in middle age. Surely then, he was not retained because of years of service. No, there was something more than charity behind this. He addressed a casual word to the man as he handed him his hat and cane. His back was turned and the man did not reply. Armiston turned and repeated the sentence in the same tone. The man watched his lips in the bright light of the hall. A lip reader and a dandy, thought Armiston, for the butler seemed to catch every word he said. Fact number two, said the creator of Godall the thief. He felt no compunction at thus noting the most intimate details of the Wentworth establishment. An accident had put him on the track of a rare good story, and it was all copy. Besides, he told himself, when he came to write the story, he would disguise it in such a way that no one reading it would know it was about the Wentworths. If their establishment happened to possess the requisite setting for a great story, surely there was no reason why he should not take advantage of that fact. The great thief. He made no bones of the fact to himself that he had come here to help. Godall accepted the flattering greeting of his hostess with the grand air that so well fitted him. Armiston was tall and thin, with slender fingers and a touch of gray in his wavy hair for all his youthful years. And he knew how to wear his clothes. Mrs. Wentworth was proud of him as a social ornament, even aside from his glittering fame as an author. And Mrs. Armiston was well born, so there was no jar of their being received in the best house of the town. The dinner was truly delightful. Here Armiston saw, or thought he saw, one of the reasons for the deaf butler. The hostess had him so trained that she was able to catch her servant's eye and instruct him in this or that trifle by merely moving her lips. It was almost uncanny, thought the author, this silent conversation the deaf man and his mistress were able to carry on unnoticed by the others. By gad, it's wonderful. Godall, my friend, underscore that note of yours referring to the deaf butler. Don't miss it. It will take a trick. Armiston gave his undivided attention to his hostess. As soon as he found Wentworth entertaining Mrs. Armiston, and thus properly dividing the party, he persuaded her to talk by a cleverly pointed question here and there. And as she talked, he studied her. We are going to rob you of your precious white ruby, my friend, he thought humorously to himself. And while we are laying our wires, there is nothing about you too small to be worthy of our attention. Did she really possess the white ruby? Did this man Benson know anything about the white ruby? And what was the meaning of the strange actions of his friend Johansen when approached on the subject? In this house, his hostess came to have a wonderful fascination for him. He pictured this beautiful creature, so avid in her lust for rare gems, that she actually did penetrate the establishment of some heathen potentate in the Straits simply for the purpose of stealing the Mystic Stone. Have you ever by any chance been in the Straits? He asked indifferently. Wait, Mrs. Wentworth said with a laugh as she touched his hand lightly. I have some curios from the Straits. And I will venture to say you have never seen their like. Half an hour later, they were all seated over coffee and cigarettes in Mrs. Wentworth's boudoir. It was indeed a strange place. There was scarcely a single corner of the world that had not contributed something to its furnishing. Carvings of teak and ivory, hangings of sweet scented vegetable fibers, lamps of jade, queer little gods all sitting like Buddha with their legs drawn up under them, carved out of jade or sardonyx, scarves of baroque pearls, Darjeeling turquoises, armiston had never before seen such a collection, and each item had its story. He began to look on this frail little woman with different eyes. She had been and seen and done, and the tale of her life which he had actually lived outshone even that of the glittering rascal Godall, who was standing beside him now and directing his ceaseless questions. Have you any rubies? He asked. Mrs. Wentworth bent before safe from the wall. With swift fingers she whirled the combination. The keen eyes of Armiston followed the bright knob like a cat. Fact number three, said the go doll in him as he mentally made note of the numbers. 5, 8, 7, 4, 6. That's the combination. Mrs. Wentworth showed him. Six pigeon blood rubies. This one is pale, he said carelessly, holding a particularly large stone up to the light. Is it true that occasionally they are found white? His hostess looked at him before answering. He was intent on a deep red stone he held in the palm of his hand. It seemed a thousand miles deep. What a fantastic idea, she said. She glanced at her husband, who had reached out and taken her hand in a naturally affectionate manner. Fact number four, mentally noted Armiston. Are you not in mortal fear of robbery with all this wealth? Mrs. Wentworth laughed lightly. That is why we live in a fortress, she said. Have you never then been visited by thieves? Said the other boldly. Never, she said. A lie, thought Armiston. Fact number five. We are getting on swimmingly. I do not believe that even your Godall the infallible could get in here, Mrs. Wentworth said. Not even the servants enter this room. That door is not locked with a key, yet it locks. I am not much of a housekeeper, she said lazily. But such housekeeping as is done in this room is all done by these poor little hands of mine. No? Most amazing. May I look at the door? Yes, Mr. Godall, said this woman, who had lived more lives than Godall himself. Armiston examined the door, this strange device that locked without a key, apparently indeed without a lock, and came away disappointed. Well, Mr. Godall, his hostess said tauntingly. He shook his head in perplexity. Most ingenious, he said. And then suddenly. Yet I will venture that if I turned Godall loose on this problem, he would solve it.

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She cried, clapping her hands. You challenge him? Asked Armiston. What nonsense is this? Cried Wentworth, coming forward. No nonsense at all, said Mrs. Wentworth. Mr. Armiston has just said that his Godall could rob me. Let him try if he can. If mortal man can gain the secret of ingress and egress of this room. I want to know it. I don't believe mortal man can enter this room. Armiston noticed a strange glitter in her eyes. Gad, she was born to the part. What a woman, he thought. And then aloud, I will set him to work. I will lay the scene of his exploit in, say, Hungary, where this room might well exist in some feudal castle. How many people have entered this room since it was made the storehouse of all this wealth? Not six besides yourself, replied Mrs. Wentworth. Then no one can recognize it if I describe it in a story. In fact, I will change the material details. We will say that it is not jewels Goodall is seeking. We will say that it is a Mrs. Wentworth's hand touched his own.

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a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. The tips of her fingers were called a white ruby, she said. Gad, what a thoroughbred. He exclaimed to himself or to go doll. And then aloud capital. I will send you a copy of the story autographed. The next day he called at the Towers and sent up his card to Mr. Benson's apartments. Surely a man of Benson's standing could be trusted with such a secret. In fact, it was evidently not a secret to Benson, who in all probability was One of the six Mrs. Wentworth said had entered that room. Armiston wanted to talk the matter over with Benson. He had given up his idea of having fun with him by sending him a marked copy of the magazine containing his tale. His story had taken complete possession of him, as always had been the case when he was at work dispatching Godall on his adventures. If that ruby really exists, Armiston said, I don't know whether I shall write the story or steal the ruby for myself. Benson is right. Godall should not steal any more for mere money. He is after rare unique things now, and I am Godall. I feel the same way myself. A valet appeared, attired in a gorgeous livery. Armiston wondered why any self respecting American would consent to don such raiment, even though it was the livery of the great Benson family. Mr. Armiston sir, said the valet, looking at the author's card he held in his hand. Mr. Benson sailed for Europe yesterday morning. He is spending the summer in Norway. I am to follow on the next steamer. Is there any message I can take to him, sir? I have heard him speak of you, sir. Armiston took the card and wrote on it in I called to apologize. I am Martin Brown. The chance was too good to miss. You will pardon me, won't you? For the next two weeks, Armiston gave himself over to his dissipation, which was accompanying Godall on this adventure. It was a formidable task. The secret room he placed in a Hungarian castle, as he had promised. A beautiful countess was his heroine. She had seen the world mostly in man's attire, and her escapades had furnished vivacious reading for two continents. No one could possibly connect her with Mrs. Billy Wentworth. So far, it was easy. But how was Godall to get into this wonderful room where the countess had hidden this wonderful rare white ruby? The room was lined with chilled steel. Even the door, this he had noted when he was examining that peculiar portal, was lined with layers of steel. It could withstand any known tool. However, Armiston was Armiston and Godall was Godall. He got into that room, he got the white ruby. The manuscript went to the printers, and the publisher said that Armiston had never done anything like it since he started Godall on his astonishing career. He banked the check for his tail, and as he did so, he gad, I would a hundred times rather possess that white ruby. Confound the thing. I feel as if I had not heard the last of it. End of the Infallible Go Doll I. Chapter 1 Part 2 of Adventures of the Infallible Godall by Frederick Irving Anderson. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. The Infallible GodAll Part 2 Armiston and his wife went to Maine for the summer without leaving their address along. In the early fall, he received by registered mail, forwarded by his trusted servant at the townhouse, a package containing the envelope he had addressed to J. Borden Benson the Towers. Furthermore, it contained the dollar bills he had despatched to that individual, together with his note, which he had signed Martin Brown. And across the note, in the most insulting manner, was written in coarse, greasy blue pencil, Damnitable impertinence. I'll cane you the first time I see you and no more. That was enough, of course, quite sufficient. In the same mail came a note from Armiston's publishers saying that his story, the White Ruby, was scheduled for publication in the October number out September 25th. This cheered him up. He was anxious to see it in print. Late in September they started back to town. Aha, he said as he sat reading his paper in the parlor car. He had caught this train by the veriest tip of its tail and upset the running schedule in the actual Ah, I see my genial friend J. Borden Benson is in town. Contrary to custom at this time of year, life must be a great bore to that snob. A few days after arriving in town, he received a package of advance copies of the magazine containing his story, and he read the tale of the White Ruby as if he had never seen it before. On the COVID of one copy, which he was to despatch to his grumpy benefactor, J. Borden Benson, he charmed to be caned. Call any time. See contents Oliver Armiston. On another he wrote, Dear Mrs. Wentworth, see how simple it is to pierce your fancied security. He despatched these two magazines with a feeling of glee. No sooner had he done so, however, than he learned that the Wentworths had not yet returned from Newport. The magazine would be forwarded to them. No doubt the wentlet's absence made the tale all the better, in fact, for in his story Armiston had insisted on Godall's breaking into the castle and solving the mystery of the keyless door during the season when the chateau was closed and strung with a perfect network of burglar alarms connecting with the gendarmere in the nearby village. That was the 25th day of September. The magazine was put on sale that morning. On the 26th day of September, Armiston bought a late edition of the afternoon paper from a leather lunged boy who was hawk extra in the street. Across the first page the headlines met his eye. Robbery and Murder in the Wentworth Mansion. Private watchman summoned by burglar alarm at 10 o' clock this morning find servant with skull crushed on floor of mysterious steel doored room murdered man's pockets filled with rare jewels. Police believe he was murdered by confederate who escaped. The Wentworth butler, stone deaf, had just returned from Newport to open house at time of murder. It was 10 o' clock that night when an automobile drew up at Armiston's door and a tall man with a square jaw, square shoes and a square mustache alighted. This was Deputy Police Commissioner Burns, a professional detective whom the new administration had drafted into the city's service from the government's secret service. Burns was admitted and as he advanced to the middle of the drawing room without so much as a nod to the ghost, like Armiston, who stood shivering before him, he drew a package of papers from his pocket. I presume you have seen all the evening papers, he said, spitting his words through his half closed teeth with so much show of personal malice that Armiston, never a brave man in spite of his godall, cowered before him. Armiston shook his head dumbly at first, but at length he managed to say, not all, no. The Deputy commissioner, with much deliberation, drew out the latest edition and handed it to Armiston without a word, it was the evening news. The first page was divided down its entire length by a black line on one side, and occupying four columns was a word for word reprint of Armiston's story the White Ruby. On the other, the facts and deadly parallel was a graphic account of the robbery and murder at the home of Billy Wentworth. The parallel was glaring in the intensity of its dumb accusation. On the one side was the theoretical Godall, working his masterly way of crime step by step, and on the other side was the plagiarism of Armiston's story, following the intricacies of the master mind with copybook accuracy. The editor, who must have been a genius in his way, did not accuse. He simply placed the fiction and the fact side by side and let the reader judge for himself. It was masterly. If, as the law says, the mind that conceives the intelligence that directs a crime is more guilty than the very hand that acts, then Armiston here was both thief and murderer. Thief. Because the white ruby had actually been stolen. Mrs. Billy Bentworth, rushed to the city by special train attended by doctors and nurses, now confirmed the story of the theft of the ruby Murderer. Because in the story, Godall had for once in his career stooped to murder as the means and had triumphed over the dead body of his confederate. Scorning in his joy at possessing the white ruby, the paltry diamonds, pearls and red rubies with which his confederate had crammed his pockets, Armiston seized the police officer by his lapels. The butler. He screamed. The butler. Yes, the butler. Quick, or he will have flown. Burns gently disengaged the hands that had grasped him. Too late, he said. He has already flown. Sit down and quiet your nerves. We need your help. You are the only man in the world who can help us now. When Armiston was himself again, he told the whole tale, beginning with his strange meeting with J. Borden Benson on the train and ending with his accepting Mrs. Wentworth's challenge to have Godall break into the room and steal the white ruby. Burns nodded over the last part. He had already heard that from Mrs. Wentworth, and there was the autographed copy of the magazine to show for it. You say that J. Borden Benson told you of this white ruby in the first place? Armiston again told in great detail the circumstances. All the humor now turned into grim tragedy. That is strange, said the ex Secret Service chief. Did you leave your purse at home or was your pocket picked? I thought at first that I had absentmindedly left it at home. Then I remembered having paid the chauffeur out of the roll of bills, so my pocket must have been picked. What kind of looking man was this Benson? You must know him, said Armiston. Yes, I know him, but I want to know what he looked like to you. I want to find out how he happened to be so handy when you were in need of money. Armiston described the man minutely. The deputy sprang to his feet. Come with me, he said, and they hurried into the automobile and soon drew up in front of the towers. Five minutes later they were ushered into the magnificent apartment of J. Borden Benson. That Worthy was in his bath, preparing to retire for the night. I don't catch the name Armiston. And the deputy heard him cry through the bathroom door to his valet. Mr. Oliver Armiston, sir. Ah, he has come for his caning. I expect I'll be there directly. He did not wait to complete his toilet, so eager was he to see the author. He strode out in a brilliant bathrobe, and in one hand he carried an alpenstock. His eyes glowed in anger, but the sight of Burns surprised him as well as halted him. Do you mean to say this is J. Borden Benson? Cried Armiston to Burns, rising to his feet and pointing at the man. The same, said the deputy. I swear to it, I know him well. I take it he is not the gentleman who paid your carfare to New Haven? Not by a hundred pounds. Exclaimed Armiston as he surveyed the huge bulk of the Elephantine Clubman. The forced realization that the stranger he had hitherto regarded as a benefactor was not J. Borden Benson at all, but someone who had merely assumed that Worthy's name while he was playing the conceited author as an easy dupe did more to quiet Armiston's nerves than all the sedatives his doctor had given him. It was a badly dashed popular author who sat down with a deputy Commissioner in his library. An hour later, he would gladly have consigned Godall to the bottom of the sea. But it was too late. Godall had taken the trick. How do you figure it? Armiston asked, turning to the deputy. The beginning is simple enough. It is the end that bothers me, said the official. Your bogus J. Borden Benson is of course the brains of the whole combination. Your infernal Godall has told us just exactly how this crime was committed. Now your infernal Godall must bring the guilty parties to justice. It was plain to be seen that the police official hated Godall worse than poison and feared him, too. Why not look in the Rogues Gallery for this man who befriended me on the train? The chief laughed. For the love of heaven, Armiston, do you, who pretend to know all about scientific thievery, think for a moment that the man who took your measure so easily is of the class of crooks who get their pictures in the Rogues gallery? Talk sense. I can't believe you when you say he picked my pocket. I don't care whether you believe me or not. He did or one of his pals did. It all amounts to the same thing, don't you see? First he wanted to get acquainted with you. Now the best way to get into your good graces was to put you unsuspectingly under obligation to him. So he robs you of your money. From what I have seen of you in the past few hours, it must have been like taking candy from a child. Then he gets next to you in line. He pretends that you are merely some troublesome toad in his path. He gives you money for your ticket to get you out of his way so he won't miss the train. His train? Of course. His train is your train. He puts you in a position where you have to make advances to him. And then, grinning to himself all the time at your conceit and gullibility, he plays you through your pride, your Go doll. Think of the creator of the great Go Doll falling for a trick like that. Burns last words were the acme of biting sarcasm. You admit yourself that he is too clever for you to put your hands on. And then. Went on. Burns, not heeding the interruption, he invites you to lunch and tells you what he wants you to do for him, and you follow his lead like a sheep at the tail of the bellwether. Great Scott. Armiston. I would give a year's salary for one hour's conversation with that man. Armiston was beginning to see the part this queer character had played. But he was in a semi hysterical state and like a woman in such a position, he wanted a calm mind to tell him the whole thing in words of one syllable to verify his own dread. What do you mean? He asked. I don't quite follow. You say he tells me what he wants me to do. Burns shrugged his shoulders in disgust. Then, as if resigned to the task before him, he began his explanation.

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Visit spinquest.com for more details. Here man, I will draw a diagram for you. This gentleman friend of yourswe shall call him John Smith for convenience, wants to get possession of this white ruby. He knows that you are in the keeping of Mrs. Billy Wentworth. He knows you know Mrs. Wentworth and have access to her house. He knows that she stole this bauble and is frightened to death all the time. Now John Smith is a pretty clever chap. He handled the Great Armiston like hot putty. He had exhausted his resources. He is baffled and needs help. What does he do? He reads the stories about the great go doll confidently. Mr. Armiston, I will tell you that I think your Great Godall is mush. But that is neither here nor there. If you sell him as a gold brick.

[Bluff]

All right.

[Narrator]

But Mr. John Smith is struck by the wonderful ingenuity of this Godall. He says, ha. I will get Godall to tell me how to get this gem. So he gets hold of yourself, sir, and persuades you that you are playing a joke on him and by getting him to rant and rave about the Great Go Doll, then and here the villain enters. He says, here is a thing the great Godall cannot do. I dare him to do it. He tells you about the gem whose very existence is quite fantastic enough to excite the imagination of the wonderful Armiston. In my clever suggestion he persuades you to lay the plot at the home of Mrs. Wentworth. And all the time you are chuckling to yourself, thinking what a rare joke you are going to have on J. Borden Benson when you send him an autographed copy and that he was talking to the distinguished genius all the time and didn't know it. That's the whole story, sir. Now wake up. Burns sat back in his chair and regarded Armiston with the smile a pedagogue bestows on a refractory boy whom he has just flogged soundly. I will explain farther, he continued. You haven't visited the house yet. You can't. Mrs. Wentworth, for all she is in bed with four dozen hot water bottles would tear you limb from limb if you went there. And don't you think for a min that she isn't able to. That woman is a vixen. Armiston nodded gloomily. The very thought of her now sent him into a cold sweat. Mr. Godall, the obliging continued the deputy notes one thing. To begin with, the house cannot be entered from the outside, so it must be an inside job. How can this be accomplished? Well, there is the deaf butler. Why is he deaf? Godall ponders. Ha. He has it. The Wentworths are so dependent on servants that they must have them round at all times. The butler is the one who is constantly about them. They are worried to death by their possession of this white ruby. Their house has been raided from the inside a dozen times. Nothing is taken, mind you. They suspect their servants. This thing haunts them. But the woman will not give up this foolish bauble. So she has as her major domo a man who cannot understand a word in any language unless he is looking at the speaker and is in a bright light. He can only understand the lips. Handy, isn't it? In a dull light, or with their backs turned, they can talk about anything they want to. This is a jewel of a butler. But, added Burns, one day a man calls. He is a lawyer. He tells the butler he is heir to a fortune, $50,000. He must go to Ireland to claim it. Your friend on the train. He is the man, of course, sends your butler to Ireland. So this precious butler is lost. They must have another. Only a deaf one will do. And they find just the man they want. Quite accidentally, you understand? Of course. It is Caudall with forged letters saying he has been in service in great houses. Presto. The great Godall himself is now the butler. It is simple enough to play deaf. You say this is fiction. Let me tell you this. Six weeks ago the Wentworths actually changed butlers. That hasn't come out in the papers yet. Armiston, who had listened to the deputy's review of his story listlessly, now sat up. With a start he suddenly exclaimed gleefully, but my story didn't come out until two days ago. Ah, yes, but you forget that it has been in the hands of your publishers for three months. A man who was clever enough to dupe the Great Armiston wouldn't shirk the task of getting hold of a proof of that story. Armiston sank deeper into his chair. Once Godall got inside the house, the rest was simple. He corrupted one of the servants. He opened the steel lined door with a flame of an ox acetylene torch. As you say in your story, that flame cut steel like wax. He didn't have to bother about the lock. He simply cut the door down. Then he put his confederate in good humor by telling him to fill his pockets with the diamonds and other junk in the safe which he obligingly opens. One thing bothers me, Armiston. How did you find out about that infernal contraption that killed the Confederate? Armiston buried his face in his hands. Burns rudely shook him. Come, he said. You murdered that man, though you are innocent. Tell me, how is this the third degree? Said Armiston. It looks like it, said the deputy grimly as he nodded his stubby mustache. Armiston drew a long breath, like one who realizes how hopeless is his situation. He began to speak in a low tone. All the while the deputy glared at Godall's inventor with his accusing eye. When I was sitting at the treasure room with the Wentworths and my wife playing auction bridge, I dismissed the puzzle of the door as easily solved by means of the brazing flame. The problem was not to get into the house or into this room, but to find the ruby. It was not in the safe. No, of course not. I suppose your friend on the train was kind enough to tell you that he had probably looked there himself. Gad, he did tell me that, come to think of it. Well, I studied that room. I was sure that that white ruby, if it really existed, was within 10ft of me. I examined the floor, the ceiling, the walls. No result. But, he said, shivering as if in a draught of cold air, there was a chest in that room made of Lombardy oak. The harassed author buried his face in his hands. Ugh, this is terrible. He moaned. Go on, said the deputy in his colorless voice. I can't. I tell it all in the story. Heaven help me, I know you tell it all in the story, came the rasping voice of Burns. But I want you to tell it to me. I want to hear it from your own lips as Armiston, you understand, whose devilry has just killed a man not as your damnable go doll. The chest was not solid oak, went on Armiston. It was solid steel, covered with oak to disguise it. How did you know that? I had seen it before. Where? In Italy, 15 years ago. In a decayed castle back through the Solidini Pass from Lugano. It was the possession of an old nobleman, a friend of a friend of mine. Humph, Grunted the deputy. And then? Well, how did you know it was the same one? By the inscription carved on the front. It was. But I have told this all in print already. Why need I go over it all again? I want to hear it again from your own lips. Maybe there is some point you did not tell in print. Go on. The inscription was Sanctus Dominus. The deputy smiled grimly. Very fitting, I should say. Praise the Lord with the most diabolical engine of destruction I have ever seen. And then, said Armiston, there was the owner's name. Arno Petroniqueer. Name that. Yes, said the deputy dryly. How did you hit on this? As the receptacle for the white ruby. If it were the same one I saw in Lugano, and I felt sure it was, it was certain death to attempt to open it. That is, for one who did not know how. Such machines were common enough in the Middle Ages. There was an obvious way to open it. It was meant to be obvious. To open it that way was inevitable death. It released tremendous springs that crushed anything within a radius of 5ft. You saw that? I did, said the deputy, and he shuddered as he spoke, then, bringing his fierce face within an inch of the cowering Armiston. He knew the secret spring by which that safe could be opened as simply as a shoe box, eh? Armiston nodded his head, but Godall did not. He said, having recognized this terrible chest, went on the author. I guessed it must be the hiding place of the jewel for two reasons. In the first place, Mrs. Wentworth had avoided showing it to us. She passed it by as a mere bit of curious furniture. Second, it was too big to go through the door or any one of the windows. They must have gone to the trouble of taking down the wall to get that thing in there. Something of a task, too, considering it weighs about 2 tons. You didn't bring out that point in your story. Didn't I? I fully intended to. Maybe, said the deputy, watching his man sharply. It so impressed your friend who paid your car fare to New Haven, that he clipped it out of the manuscript when he borrowed it. There is no humor in this affair, sir. If you will pardon me, said Armiston, that is quite true. Go ahead. The rest you know. Godall and my story. The thief in real life had to sacrifice a life to open that chest. So he corrupted a small kitchen servant filling his pockets with those other jewels and told him to touch the spring. You murdered that man in cold blood, said the deputy, rising and pacing the floor. The poor deluded devil, from the looks of what's left of him. Never let out a whimper. Never knew what hit him.

[Bluff]

Ugh.

[Narrator]

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[Bluff]

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[Bluff]

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[Narrator]

Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Here, take some more of this brandy. Your nerves are in a bad way. What I can't make out is this, said Armiston after a time. There was a million dollars worth of stuff in that room that could have been put into a quarter quart measure. Why did not this thief, who was willing to go to all the trouble to get the white ruby, take some of the jewels? Nothing is missing beside the white ruby, as I understand it. Is there? No, said the deputy. Not a thing. Here comes a Messenger boy from Mr. Armiston. Yes, he said to the entering maid. The boy handed him a package for which the deputy signed. This is for you, he said, turning to Armiston as he closed the door. Open it. When the package was opened, the first object to greet their eyes was a roll of bills. This grows interesting, said Burns. He counted the money. $39. Your friend evidently is returning the money he stole from you at the station. What does he have to say for himself? I see there is a note. He reached over and took the paper out of Armiston's hands. It was an ordinary bond stationery with no identifying marks of any consequence. The note was written in bronze ink in a careful copper plate hand, very small and precise. Most Excellency, sir, herewith, most honoured dollars, I am despatching complete regretful extremely of sad blood being not to be prevented except trifle from true friend. That was all. There is a jeweller's box, said Burns.

[Bluff]

Open it.

[Narrator]

Inside the box was a lozenge shaped diamond about the size of a little fingernail. It hung from a tiny bar of silver, highly polished and Devoid of ornament. On the back, under the clasp pin were several microscopic characters. There were several obvious clues to be followed. The messenger boy, the lawyers who induced the deaf butler to go to Ireland on what later proved to be a wild goose chase, the employment agency through which the new butler had been secured, and so on. But all of these avenues proved too respectable to yield results. Deputy Burns had early arrived at his own conclusions by virtue of the knowledge he had gained as government agent. Yet to appease the popular indignation, he kept up a desultory search for the criminal. It was natural that Armiston should think of his friend Johansen at this juncture. Johansen possessed that wonderful Oriental capacity of aloofness which we Westerners are so ready to term indifference or lack of curiosity. No, I thank you, said Johansen. I'd rather not mix in. The pleadings of the author were in vain. His words fell on deaf ears. If you will not lift a hand because of your friendship for me, said Armiston bitterly, then think of the law. Surely there is something due justice when both robbery and bloody murder have been committed. Justice. Cried Johansen in scorn. Justice, you say? My friend, if you steal from me and I reclaim by force that which is mine, is that injustice? If you cannot see the idea behind that, surely then I cannot explain it to you. Answer one question, said Armiston. Have you any idea who the man was I met on the train? For your own peace of mind, yes. As a clue leading to where you so glibly term justice. Pshaw. To night sundown would be easier for you to catch than this man, if I know him. Mind you, Armiston, I do not know. But I believe. Here is what I believe. In a dozen courts of kings and petty princelings that I know of in the east there are Westerners retained as advisers. Fiscal agents, they usually call them. Usually they are American or English or occasionally German. Now I ask you a question. Say that you were in the hire of a heathen prince, and a grievous wrong were done that prince, say, by a thoughtless woman who had not the least conception of the beauty of an idea she had outraged merely for the possession of a bauble valueless to her except to appease vanity, she ruthlessly rode down a superstition that was as holy to this prince as your own belief in Christ is to you. What would you do? Without waiting for Armiston to answer, Johansen went on. I know a man. You say this man you met on the train had wonderful hands. Did he not. Yes, I thought so. Armiston. I know a man who would not sit idly by and smile to himself over the ridiculous fuss occasioned by the loss of an imperfect stone, off colour, badly cut, and everything else. Neither would he laugh at the superstition behind it. He would say to himself, this superstition is older by several thousand years than I or my people, and this man whom I know is brave enough to right that wrong himself if his underlings failed. I follow, said Armiston dully. But, Said Johansen, leaning forward and tapping the author on the knee, but the task proves too big for him. What did he do? He asked the cleverest man in the world to help him, and Godall helped him. That, said Johansen, interrupting Armiston with a raised finger, is the story of the White Ruby. The story of the White Ruby, you see, is something infinitely finer than mere vulgar robbery and murder. As the author of the Infallible Godall conceived it, Johansen said a great deal more. In the end he took the lozenge shaped diamond pendant and put the glass on the silver bar that his friend might see the inscription on the back. He told him what the inscription signified. Brother of a king, and furthermore, how few men alive possess the capacity for brotherhood. I think, said Armiston as he was about to take his leave, that I will travel in the straits this winter. If you do, said Johansen, I earnestly advise you to leave your Godall and his decoration at home. End of the Infallible Go Doll. Chapter 2 of Adventures of the Infallible Godall by Frederick Irving Anderson. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Blind Man's Bluff Godall attend, said that adept in smart crime to himself as he paused at the curb. You think you are clever, but there goes your better. He had to step into the street to make way for the crowd that overflowed the pavement. Men and women, newsboys, even unhorsed actors, leaving their pillars for the time for the passing sensation, the beginning of the homing matinee, crowds all elbowing for a place around a tall, slender man in black who, as he advanced, gently tapped a cane point before him. What attracted the vortex, however, was not so much the man himself as the fact that he wore a black mask. The mask was impenetrable. People said he had no eyes. It was Malvolio, the magician, born to eternal darkness from a child, so the story went. His fingers had been schooled with the same cruel science they ply in Russia to educate the toes of their ballet dancers until his fingers saw for him, head erect, shoulders squared, body poised with the precision of a skater, his handsome clear cut features almost ghastly in contrast to the band of silk ribbon that covered the sockets and where sight should have been. He advanced with military step in the cleared circle that ever revolved about him, his slender cane shooting now and again with the flash of a rapier to tap, tap, tap on the flags. Why pay for an orchestra chair to witness his feats of legerdemain? Peopling silk hats with fecund families of rabbits, or even discovering a hogshead of boiling water in an innocent bystander's vest pocket was as nothing to this theatric negotiation of Broadway in the rush hour of late Saturday afternoon. Malvolio the magician seemed oblivious to everything save the subtle impulses of that wand of a cane. He stopped suddenly, alert to some immediate impression. The vague features relaxed, the teeth shone. Ah, Godall, my friend. He cried. He turned and advanced deliberately through the crowd that opened a path in front of him. Those wonderful hands reached out and touched Godall on the arm without hesitation as to direction. Godall could not repress a smile. Such a trick was worth a thousand a week to the front of the house, and nobody knew better than the great Malvolio the value of advertising. That was why he walked Broadway unattended twice a day. When he spoke, it was in French. I am sickened of them all, he said, sweeping his cane in a circle to indicate the gaping crowd straining to catch his words. See, we have at hand a public chauffeur with nothing better to do than follow in the wake of the great Malvolio. Godall, my friend, you are at leisure. Then we will enter. And Godall, playing his cards with enjoyment and admiration as well, permitted the blind man to open the door and help him. Godall, possessing five senses into the cab, pleased doubly indeed to note that the magician had managed to steal his wallet in the brief contact to the park, ordered Malvolio, showing his teeth to the crowd as he shut the door. Godall had known Malvolio first in Rome, the great of the Earth gravitated toward each other.

[Bluff]

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[Narrator]

play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. No one knew how great Godall was except himself. He knew that he had never failed. No one knew how great Malvolio was except Godall. Once he had attempted to imitate Malvolio, and it almost failed. The functions of the third finger of his left hand lacked the wonderful co ordination possessed by the magician. Malvolio knew Godall as an entertaining cosmopolitan of which the world possesses far too few. I would exercise my English, said the mask, if you will be so good, my friend, tell me you know the Lake Shore in that city of Chicago as a book, said Godall. You are about to parade there, eh? I am about to parade there, replied Malvolio, imitating the accents of the other. Therefore I would know it as a book. Read it to me slowly, page by page, my friend. I walk there shortly. Godall possessed first of all a marvellous facility of visualizing. It was most necessary, almost as much so, in fact, for him in his profession as for Malvolio and his Malvolio without eyes, in a matter of fact manner, like a mariner charting some dangerous channel, he plotted the great thoroughfare from the boulevard entrance to the auditorium. The other listened attentively, recording every word. He had made use of Godall in this way before and knew the value of that man's observations. Then suddenly, impatiently, one moment. There is another thing of immediate need. The Pegasus Club we are passing at this moment.

[Bluff]

Eh?

[Narrator]

You are one of the. What is it they say? Ah, yes, the 50 little millionaires. Ha ha ha. Yes. Godall looked out of the window. Indeed they were passing the club now. They had been proceeding slowly, turning this way and that, halted now and again, or hurried on by traffic policemen. Until now they were merely a helpless unit in the faltering tide of Fifth Avenue. It was past five in the evening and all uptown New York was on the move afoot. And a wheel, it was said of Malvolio that he would suffer himself to be whirled round 20 times on being set down in some remote neighbourhood of a strange city, and with the aid of his cane find his way back to his hotel with the surety of a pigeon. But even that faculty did not explain how he knew that they were passing a certain building, the Pegasus Club, at this moment. Unless, thought Godall, who was better pleased to study the other's methods than to ask questions. Unless the sly fox had it recorded in his strange brain map that carriage wheels rattled over car tracks a Hundred yards below the spot point. Godall smiles. It was simple. After all, I perform for your club Tuesday night. $1,000 they will pay me. The monkey who sees without eyes. My friend, it is good to be a monkey, even for such as these who but he paused and laid his hand on his companion's arm. If I could but see the color that is called blue. Once they tell me it is cool, they cannot make me feel how cool it is. You will go to sea with me next summer and tell me about it, eh? Will you not, my friend? But three of these, what you call the 50 little millionaires. You will tell me why they are called that. Three of these came to me in my hotel and would grasp my hand. And why not? I would grasp the hand of the devil himself if he but offered it. They are surprised. They would blindfold my poor eyes. My poor eyes. Goral, blindfold them again and again offer me their hands, thinking Malvolio are a charlatan. Ha ha. Again I must shake hands with them. One wears a ring with a great greasy stone. See, I have it here with me. It is bottle glass. Yet would this barbarian wear it until I in pity took it from him. Godall burst into a laugh. So this was the thief Caldwell, one of the so called 50 little millionaires who gave the Pegasus Club its savor, who exhibited their silk hats and ample boot soles in the plate glass windows every Sunday afternoon, had been crying over the loss of a ringstone, a garish green affair for which he had paid hugely abroad. I am a marvellous man, eh, friend Goral? Indeed, yes, agreed the other smiling Mavolio the magician sought Godall his friend this afternoon. Petrov, my manager. He walks 10 steps behind me in the crowd. He taps three times with his stick three steps to the right. Ha. There is Godall. Can I applaud? Even Godall must smile, my friend. Tuesday night Petrov is too clumsy. You will be my manager, but you must be somewhere else. Indeed not. Cried Godall warmly and to himself. What does he drive at? Indeed yes, said the blind man, laying his hand on the other's arm. I ask it of you. You will be in other places. If you but say yes, you will take me to sea in June and tell me what is the colour? Blue. Listen. First Malvolio will play the monkey. Then I am to be locked in a room for five minutes. At the end of five minutes, if I am gone, that which I have is mine, even to their fat wallets. Fat wallets like this one of yours, which I now Return intact. Godall accepted the return of his wallet absentmindedly. It is what Mr. Colwell calls a sporting proposition. See, I have it in writing. It is in addition to the $1,000 that I already possess now. These 50 little millionaires, friend Godall, are they all like the three who came to me in my hotel? The one with the slippery stone in his ring. The stone that I have. That one had $8,000. 40,000 francs in one wallet. In $1,000 notes. Does the American nation make new money, especially for such as these? The notes were new, the imprint still crisp like the face of my watch. 40,000 francs in one wallet. I know because I had the wallet as he talked. No, my friend, I have it not now. I put it back. Ha. What? And there are 50 of them like that. I am to carry away what I can find. Godall. It is told that the very servants of the club own rows of brick houses and buy consols at. Correct. But 50 little millionaires and Malvolio is to be locked in a room alone. I have it in writing. A passing street lamp looked in and caught Godall in the act of blinking. Godall, my friend, if you will tell me what I must know, then I will teach you what you wish to know. You wish to know many things, eh? I can tell, for I always feel your eyes when you are by. Tell me now. Every inch of the way. Play it as the lake front in that city of Chicago. Godall chuckled. He did not love the 50 little millionairesthose marvelous fingers. Malvolio was playing with them in the air now in his earnestness. They could rob a poor box. Godall, smiling grimly, began to draw the map his friend desired. Three steps up from the street, then the first glass door inside, two vestibules past them. On the right, the smoking room and lounge. A log fire at each end. On the left, the street parlour. A great table in the centre and heavy chairs all upholstered. None far from the walls between the rooms. On the left wall, the electric switch panel. Would he play with light and darkness? It would be as well to hold the secret of this panel on the floors. Deep carpets. Deep carpets, repeated the magician. It is well. I know. I do not like deep carpets. And this room where I shall be left alone behind locked doors. It would have to be the cloak room on the left of the main entrance, said Godall. Yes, that would be the only available room for such a test. No other rooms off the street. Parlor could be locked, as there were no doors in this cloak room. There were two doors, one on the main corridor and one on the first vestibule. There was a small window, but it was not to be thought of for one of Malvolio's girth. The doors were massive, of oak, and the locks, Godall remembered the locks well, having had need to examine them on a recent occasion, were tumbler locks. It would be rare business to see a man, even a magician, leave the cloakroom without help. And that too was in the bond, this sporting proposition. The locks have five tumblers, laughed Godall, more and more amused. Let there be 50, whispered the other contemptuously. Tell me, my observing friend, who counts the tumblers of a lock from the outside, do these doors open in or out? In, said Godall, and the long fingers closed on his wrist in a twinkle. In, you say? In, repeated Godall, and he made a mental note to study the particular characteristics of doors that open in. Malvolio buried himself in his furs. The car sped on through the winding thoroughfares of the park, and Godall fell to counting the revolving flashes of the gas lamps as they rushed by. This is the one place in your great city where I find joy, said the blind man at length. There are no staring crowds. I can pick my thoughts. And the pavements are glass. Outside of these walls, your city is a rack that would torture me. Tell me, why is blue so cool? June will be too late for the Mediterranean. We will start before, if you will. But tell me, friend Godall, so that I can feel it, I will give you half. No, I will not. What? What is money to you? Are you quite sure about the doors opening in? Yes. That is good, Godall. If I could see, I think I would be like you, looking on and laughing. Let me tell you something of doors that open in what we are traveling at an unlawful speed, Monsieur Auvergier. Indeed, yes. The great Malvolio. Pity his poor eyes. Here is money falling from your hair. You are not a frugal man. So careless. The park policeman who had stopped them to warn them against speed stood staring at the crisp bill the blind man had plucked from his hair. As the taxicab sped forward again, Malvolio directed the driver to his hotel through the speaking tube, and a few minutes later they were set down there. Godall declined dinner with his queer friend. I have here your wallet once more, friend Godall, laughed the blind magician. 50 little millionaires. Ah, you promise you will not be there when I am there? You have my stick pin, said Godall. I believe you are collecting bogus stones. That one is bogus. But it was thought to be a fine gift by a friend who is now dead. The other, with evident disappointment, returned the pilfered stick pin. You promise you will not be there when I am there, my friend? Godall held the blue white hand in his own for a moment as they parted. No, I promise you, he said, and he watched his queer friend away, Malvolio erect, smiling, unfaltering in his fine stride, conscious to the last dregs of the interest he excited on all sides. He shunned the elevator and started up the broad marble stairs, his slender cane tap, tap, tapping, lighting the way for his confident tread. Godall dined at his club, looking on and laughing, as Malvolio had said, with a directness that rather startled the easy rogue into wakefulness. Godall's career had defied innuendo. His was not an art but a science, precise, infallible. But several times that afternoon in the sombre shadows of their cab, he had felt, with a strange thrill, that black impenetrable mask turn on him, as though an inner vision lighted those darkened orbs. Frankly, he avoided afflicted persons in the pursuit of his trade, not because of compunctions which troubled him not at all, but because a person lacking in any of the five senses was apt to be uncannily alert in one of the remaining four. He was intensely a materialist, a gambler who pinned his faith to marked cards, never to superstition. He believed intuition largely a foolish fetish, except as actuated by the purely physical cravings. Yet he recognized a strange clarity in the mental outlook of the afflicted that seemed unexplainable by any other means. Malvolio, too, played with marked cards. After all, magic is but the clever arrangement of properties. But why had Malvolio picked him? Why had Malvolio confided in him at all? There were a dozen other members of the Pegasus Club who would have served as well so far as furnishing the business of the affair, who would have entered the game as a huge joke to hold up the 50 little millionaires in their upholstered wallow would surely set the whole town by the ears. Something of the sort was needed to bring the ribald crew back to Earth. But, thought Godall, if the task were to be done, he would much prefer to do it himself, not look on as a supernumerary. Malvolio, of course, was a thief. The only reason he did not practise his profession was that he found the business of playing the monkey paid better Then too, as a thief, he must bury his talents. And there is nothing so sweet to the Latin as applause. Malvolio could not keep his fingers quiet. Godall had permitted himself to be stripped in their ride through sheer enjoyment of observation. There was nothing too small to be learned, and learned well. Nevertheless. It had irritated him to think that this master had whispered in his ear familiarly. It smacked too much of kinship. Godall knew no kin. As he swept the magnificent dining room with his eyes, however, he could not repress a chuckle of sheer delight. It would be a hundred day jest. They all conformed pretty well to type. A type against which the finer sensibilities of Godall revolted. In the beginning, the Pegasus had been the coming together of a few kindred souls. Modest, comfortable, homelike, a meeting place of intellectual men who took their chiefest pleasure in the friction of ideas. In this way the organization had come to have a name him even among the many clubs of the city. Godall had adopted it as his home, and he cynically paraphrased it. He might be without honour in his own country, but never in his own home. He had always been pleased to think that when he entered there, he left the undesirable something outside, like the dust of his shoes on the door mat. Not that he lacked the lust of the game or a conscious pride in that slick infallibility which had made him a prince for whom other men went poor. There are times and places for all things, and this had been home until one by one, this tribe had crept in, overturned traditions, substituted the brass of vulgar display for the gold of the fine communion that they did not profess to understand, much less to practice. A newspaper wag had finally dubbed them the club of the 50 little millionaires, and the name had stuck. It happened that a handful of them had been brooded in the same coop, that of a copper king who had begun at the slag pile and ended in philanthropy. As the newcomers gained ascendancy, the old sect of friends gradually drifted away. The pace was too fast for them. There is truth in what Malvolio had said of the servants, and there is nothing quite so unappetizing as the contempt of those who serve one meat and drink. But Godall, looking on and laughing, still preserved the habit of picking his meals here with discriminating taste, though now he was less particular about wiping his feet on the doormat than formerly. He even indulged in play occasionally. And while he played, he listened to the talk about things worth knowing. Tonight the talk was all Malvolio at the particular rubber where he chose to play. It was to be a rare occasion. True, they were to pay the magician roundly for the seance, and it offered him besides a sporting proposition in the shape of a written permission to carry off all his fingers could lift, but they chose to interpret sport according to their own lights. Two centuries ago it was sport in Merrie, England to tie a game cock to a stump and shy brickbats at it. It the game was conducted according to rules, carefully worked out, and was popular with all concerned except the gamecock. Godall, at length getting his fill, rose in disgust and passed out at the corner. The street lamp winked at him in its knowing way, and Godall, forgetting the gorge that had risen in him, returned the wink, smiling. Caldwell, the master of ceremonies, was venturing to a chosen few that a certain faker would be ineligible for dates on a kerosene circuit in Arkansas before the evening was over. When the telephone boy brought him a message from the Victoria, Malvolio had started and was driving to avoid the inevitable crowd that dogged his steps. The committee was giving a last touch to its properties, a camera and flashlight apparatus arranged behind a screen, when there came the familiar tap, tap, tapping of the cane on the marble steps. If the lilith of his gait were any criterion, the mask was in fine fettle. So he was whispering three steps up from the street, two vestibule and deep carpets. Deep carpets. A bath. As he passed through the first vestibule, this strange, impassive figure in dead black ran his fingers along the wall. There was the door indeed, by which he would escape. Malvolio the magician cried a flunkey in gold lace. As the inner doors swung open, Calwell was there with extended hand. The hand of the other closed on it without hesitation, holding it for a moment. You speak no French? No. It is most unfortunate. I speak things. And I am most awkward. In your tongue is there the color blue here? I would touch it before I play. He waved his cane toward the entrance. The corridor. It is empty. Yes, it is so in the bond. Thus. He cried, his teeth glowing at the circle of faces before him. Thus am I to take away that which is mine, is it not? Colwell elevated a knowing eyebrow at his companions. Colwell had not been a plumber's assistant for nothing. In the days of his youth, he had plugged the key slots with molten lead. Once closed, it would require the aid of a carpenter, not a locksmith, not even a magical locksmith to negotiate the doors of the cloak room. Colwell did not begrudge his wallet full of small change at Auction Bridge, but he was decidedly averse to letting it fall into the hands of this blind beggar.

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Spinquest is a free to play social casino. Visit spinquest.com for more details. They helped him out of his coat. My cane too, he said as he handed the cane to Calwell. It was of ebony, as thin as a baton, and without ornament of any kind save a platinum top. It is my faithful ached. It is a little brother to my poor senses. It is wonderful. He swayed slightly and put out a hand to steady himself against Caldwell to night. Gentlemen, in your honor, Malvolio disarms himself for the how is it the 50 little millionaires, ah, who are so good as to receive me? Am I? He continued to have the honour of shaking the hands of the gentleman. I do not know. He paused as though embarrassed, shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly, and then smiling myself as a person is not present if you so desire. Only my talents which you buy and pay for. Ah, I am awkward in your tongue. Sometimes, gentlemen, I am the guest. Sometimes I am only the monkey with his tricks, you understand? I thank you, sir. Saunders of Texas Union, ah, of the landed gentry of this great country, I am indeed pleasured. A smile went the rounds. Saunders of Texas Union, who was shaking the hand of the mask with one hand and discreetly feeling the muscles under the black sleeved arm with the other, had been a puddler at Homestead until his talents for ragtime rescued him from oblivion and gave him Texas Union. As a pocket piece he brought forward Jones of Pacific Cascade, Welton of Topaz, Magnet, Smithers of Excelsior Common, Jamison of Allegheny Western, and so on down the line. The guest, in his naivete, seemed under the impression that the handles to the names referred to ancestral acres. These men had been named in the daily paper so often in connection with their pet manipulations in the market that they themselves had come to accept the nomenclature, using it much as an Englishman would say Kitchener of Khartoum or Marlborough of Blenheim. So the mask was passed around the room. He was well worth seeing at close range. He accepted each hand with a steely grip, concentrated the vague blackness of his mask on each face, and spoke briefly and in halting phrases. In laying aside his cane, he seemed to have lost something of the poise that distinguished the great Malvolio on the street or on the stage, and he leaned heavily on a shoulder here, on an arm there. As he was passed from one to another, there was a tremor of excitement in the room. A diversion had been promised, but what it was to be the honorable gentlemen of the committee had kept to themselves and their confederates, Caldwell, Sanders and Mason of Independent Guano whispered together for a moment, and when the circle of introductions was complete, the guest was led to the center of the room. He took his place at the head of the big table, exploring it nervously with his fingers while he waited for the company to be seated. What followed was somewhat tame, and they expressed themselves to that effect occasionally behind their hands. They had seen the same thing before. A two dollar bill gave the Veriest street loafer the same privilege every afternoon and evening at the Victoria, except for a few parlor pieces the magician reserved for private entertainments. But even the makings of these were to be had for a few pennies in any one of the numerous shops in 6th Avenue devoted to the properties of magic. It was merely quickness of hand against slowness of eye. It is said that the persistency of vision amounts to one hundredth of a second. These fingers found ample room to work in that slit of time, yet the circle looked on languidly like an audience at a championship fist fight. Tolerating the preliminaries, the performer had borrowed a pack of cards bearing the unbroken seal of the club, and was playing a solitary game at whist. Cards faced a trick of Malvolio's, by the way, which has never been satisfactorily explained, when suddenly the Barons of Tonopah, Alleghany, and so forth sat up with a thrill of anticipation. It was evident to all, except perhaps the performer himself, that the apex of the evening was at hand. Mason softly opened the electric switch cabinet. Colwell and Saunders moved carelessly toward the table, taking up positions on either hand of the mask as though for a better view of the game. Then came blank, overwhelming darkness. There was the scuffle of feet, the snapping impact of body against body, a gasp, a half uttered cry of pain. Then confound him. It was the voice of Colwell, breathing hard. He's like a bull. Gad, can't you? Then another voice, that of Saunders. Steady. I've got him. Ready. The unseen struggle ceased suddenly. There were several in that thrilled circle that grew sick. It seemed evident that the honorable gentlemen of the committee had overpowered the magician, were about to strip him of his mask to show him up as the charlatan who had too long duped the city. They wanted their money's worth. Caldwell was laughing. Short, sharp. He had the mask now. They could hear the silken ribbon rip as it came away. Now, Mason, let him have it. The words ended in the roar of mingled rage and pain. There came a sharp snap, snap as of bones coming away from their sockets. And simultaneously the muffled explosion and the blinding glare of the camera flashlight. And in the 100th of a second of incandescence, there was indelibly imprinted on the vision of the audience, the figure of the magician holding two men at arm's length, each by the wrist, their features hideously contorted. Then dead. Darkness fell, in the midst of which hung the imprinted scene and silhouette against a phosphorescent pall. Someone thought of the lights. It was the magician himself. This curious circumstance was not noted until later. The switch clicked and the chandeliers sprang into being again. Colwell held the torn mask in his hand. Every eye, still straining for sight after the shock of the flashlight, sought the blind face of the performer. It was horribly blind now, stripped of its silk ribbon. Covering the eye sockets like plasters were great black disks, larger than silver dollars. He stumbled across the room, almost fell against the table. His uncertain hand sought Colwell's arm, traveled down its length and took from the fingers the torn mask and replaced it. The master of ceremonies gazed at the cadaverous face, fascinated. The room was deathly silent. The magician flashed his teeth in a poor attempt at a smile. His voice, when he spoke, was in whispers, as crisp as leaves. Ah, my poor eyes. I do not sell, gentlemen. I am clumsy with your words. Let me not offend those who are my friends among you when I say I do not sell you my private self. It is only the monkey in me you can buy. Colwell and Saunders were making efforts to soothe their arms, which were suffering exquisitely. Several men pushed forward, ashamed to bridge the embarrassment with their apologies to the magician, who stared at them imperturbably with the mask.

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Mask.

[Narrator]

Things gradually came to rights, except for the honorable gentlemen of the committee, who took the first chance to retire with their troubles. The hands of the mask were like steel, and when he wrenched the bones in their sockets, he had not dealt lightly. We proceed, said the magician with a deprecating wave of his hand. The room. I am to be your prisoner. It is so written. The few members who knew of Colwell's precautions of plugging the key slots with lead thought wryly of the fact now if this thing went any further, the Pegasus Club would be the butt of the town. We will forget that, said Welton of Tonopah Magnate, assuming leadership in a movement to make amends. Besides, he said with a laugh, we haven't given you a chance to go through our pockets yet. You would have to escape empty handed. Your pardon, said the Mask with a grand bow, I have already taken the opportunity. So saying, he displayed the contents of his capacious pockets. He had at least a score of wallets and several rolls of bank notes. The room exploded in a cry of amazement. Then the truth flashed upon them when they passed the guest from hand to hand. His nimble fingers had been busy substituting wads of paper for wallets. The hour is late, he continued, feeling the face of his watch. I must be gone in five minutes. The room, if you will. Welton of Tonopah, Magnet roaring with laughter, took the magician. They admitted now he was at least that, and led him to the door of the cloak room. One favour, said the mask at the threshold. My coat. My hat. The faithful Cain. Ah. I thank you. I bid you good night. The naivete of the words was masterly. Welton of Tonopah Magnate drew the door shut with a slam and the lock clicked. He faced the others and turned his trousers pockets inside out comically. He was not worrying about the safety of his cash, but he did admire the deftness of those fingers. I am glad to say he left my watch, he said, and he put his watch on the table. It was lacking five minutes of midnight. What gets me, he continued, turning toward the closed door, as how we are going to get the poor devil out without a battering ram? Caldwell has most certainly earned everlasting fame by his brilliant entertainment this evening. The keys were useless now that the spring locks had snapped on the prisoner. Someone suggested sending for the engineer, but one and all agreed that the game must be played out in common decency. They all retired to the lounging room to give the blind beggar five minutes to find out the trick that had been played on him. At the end of five minutes they sent for the engineer, and that grimy individual appeared loaded down with tools. He expressed it as his reverend opinion. A damned fine door was about to be turned into scrap. There was one chance that a gasoline torch might blow the lead from the key slot but no. The molten metal only completed the upsetting of the fine mechanism. There was nothing to do but cut round the lock with a compass saw. Cheer up, Malvolio, said Welton through the door. We will be with you in another minute. Just then Godall ran in from the street. He threw his hat and coat to an attendant. Ha. The devil to pay, eh? He cried excitedly. I just this minute heard of it and I rushed here.

[Bluff]

What?

[Narrator]

Said a number of voices at once. The usually exquisite Godall was somewhat dishevelled and his eyes were red. Malvolio. Cried he, staring at them as though perplexed at their blandness. Do you mean to say you don't know why he didn't show up this evening? Didn't show up? What do you mean? You really don't know? Cried Godall, his eyes blazing. No. What? Tell us the answer, said someone with a laugh. The police found him bound and gagged in a deserted cab in Central Park. They've got him in Bellevue Hospital now, raving. By gad, if I. The room laughed. Even the grimy engineer, boring a hole to start his compass saw, looked over his shoulder and grinned at Godall. Don't excite yourself, Godall, said Welton of Tonopah Magnate. Somebody's been stringing you. We've got Malvolio here now. Gad, I wish you didn't have him. You're just in time to help us out of a devil of a mess. That humorist Calwell has plugged the locks with lead and we can't get the blind beggar out without sawing the door down. He's sweating blood in there now. In there. Cried Godall, pushing his way through the ring around the engineer. In there, repeated Welton. The kleptomaniac has got a cool 10,000 of mine. No. Yes. Said Welton, mimicking Godall's tone. You didn't know there was that much money in the world, eh? Let me get this straight, said Godall, laying a hand on the engineer's arm to stop his work. You think you have Malvolio locked in there with your wallets? I tell you, Malvolio hasn't been within a mile of this place tonight. I'd lay you a thousand on it, cried Welton. Tut, tut. Believe me, you are betting on the wrong card. Godall's eyes danced. I'd lay you a thousand on it, reiterated the Tonopah magnate. We'll have to let Malvolio hold my stake until we get him out. Gad, he went through me so clean I couldn't swear it this minute that I've got on socks. You are betting on a sure thing. I'm taking candy from a child, retorted Welton. I take you. Cried Godall, his eyes twinkling. Anybody else want candy? I warn you. There were several. It wasn't every day in the week that they could get Godall on the hip. I warn you again, said Godall as he accepted the markers, that Malvolio is not in that room. If anybody is in there, he's an impostor. You can prove it in a minute. By telephoning Bellevue, the biting saw completed its half circle about the lock. The door swung open. The room was empty. Several volunteers ran to the rear door. Their sharp chorus of amazement started the crowd tumbling after them. The rear door was off its hinges. It stood propped against the jamb. A child could see what happened. The prisoner, laden with a cash of the 50 little millionaires, had simply drawn the bolts of the two hinges and lifted the door out of its frame. On the floor was a wad of handbills like those the rogue had left in his dupes. Pockets in place of their wallets they read, Malvolio. He HAS no eyes. Watch his fingers. The 50 little millionaires gazed at each other, dumbfounded, feeling their pockets the while the infallible Godall fell into a chair, roaring with laughter. He threw back his head, kicked out his heels, buried his hands waist deep in the crisp bills that lined his pockets, all in cold, hard cash. On the whole, he had never spent a more profitable evening. As for Malvolio the magician, that charlatan could be mighty thankful that it was not he whom the honorable gentleman of the committee had subjected to manhandling, for Malvolio had the eyes of a hawk. So much, Godall had ascertained earlier in the evening when he, in the guise of a murderous cabby, was subjecting the Italian to the indignity of a gag. End of Blind Man's Bluff. Chapter 3 of Adventures of the Infallible Go Doll by Frederick Irving Anderson. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. The NIGHT of A THOUSAND Thieves Tucked away toward the apex of the island at the Battery are a few irregular city blocks over which the figure of Sleep seems to hover with a finger on her lips. The stillness that falls here when the day's work is done is sepulchral. To the west is lower Broadway, feebly sensuous even in the small hours, a thin stream of cars and the occasional rumble of the underground still evidencing that the line of life linking two days is not yet broken. To the north is Newspaper Row, glowing with its perpetual flame of eternal wakefulness, functioning stridently at the approach of dawn, when only the cock should be crowing. To the east is the river, gleaming with the arching lights of the bridges, dull with the shadows of silent, looming ships and creeping barges turning to and fro sluggishly with the tide. It is drowsing, but it does not sleep. A winch rattles, the exhaust of a straining engine breaks a blank wall of darkness, and a blinding beam of intense electric blue breaks through the dull shadows of a freight house to show that labor still strains and sweats even at the darkest hour. The heart is slow, but it still pulses. The city never sleeps, except here in this tiny triangle, an inverted triangle, its base the lane where the greatest jewelers in the world are massed, its apex the street, the financial vortex of the nation, where fortunes change hands every minute. Here, where life is at its highest tension during daylight hours. It is as silent as death now, its towering facades of marble, granite and sandstone as dull as some long forgotten city. A footfall among the long shadows starts a hollow song of echoes. A policeman drowsing against some grill lets fall his club, and the rattle is like the roar of artillery. No wheel is stirring, no human being abroad, except the slouching night watchman gossiping together in some dark arch, in whispers. Within a stone's throw. On each hand are riches beyond definition, beyond the power of a mint to duplicate. Here are cold vaults of gold and storehouses of jewels so rare that guardians of flesh and blood have been swept aside and intricate, unerring mechanism installed in their stead. Hidden wires as sensitive as raw nerves creep hither and yon to every corner into honeycombs of cells encased with concrete, steel and live steam. One officer, 004, was sorrowfully executing a vampire on the tessellated pavement of the corridor of the International Life Building, interjecting syncopations with snaps of his fingers to the tune of meditation that was running through his head. It was a cruel task for a young man to be condemned to the very silences of these ghoulish defiles. All must serve, but some must stand and wait. To stand and wait with majestic, uplifted finger in the maelstrom of 34th street and Fifth Avenue was one thing. To haunt a graveyard that could not even boast a rabbit was quite another, and not at all in keeping with the dignity he had absorbed from his book of rules when he was presented with his shield and heard his chief depicting the glory of his calling. Occasionally a night watchman in heretical gray slunk by, but it is more simple to extract blood from a stone than companionship from one of these low caste civilians. At this hour even the nocturnal scrub women had long since put on their shoes and gone home. At the lower end of his beat toward the river dwelt the one human being whom Officer 004 could cultivate consistently through the six weary hours of his watch. That was Long John, the hot dog man, whose steaming kettle of frankfurters simmered plaintively through the hours of the night, inviting passing sailormen or spelling night toiling longshore foreman. Stealthily the whisking feet of the policeman wiped the pavement of the corridor to the tempo of his snapping fingers as he meditated on the sorrows of life and the lonesomeness of death. Suddenly the resonant air of the ghoulish defiles was smitten with the bang, bang of an automobile exhaust. Now, an automobile in itself was as welcome a sight to our policeman as a sportive whale to a ship in the doldrums. But an automobile that came to a jarring standstill with a squealing of brakes jammed on by no tender hand suggested not only an event, but an adventure. The quick brain of our officer noted, furthermore from the gloom of his corridor, that this car came to a stop on the left side of the street, hard against the curb.

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[Narrator]

play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Rule no. 26 in the Little blue book he carried buttoned inside his blouse stated plainly that such an offense against well seasoned traffic rules is punishable by fine or imprisonment or both. However, from the look of things, and particularly from the sounds that emerged from the two passengers, this automobile was enjoying rare good fortune to be able to come to a stop at all regardless of the rules of the road, when the muffler of the engine suddenly blew its head off with a loud bang, the car was sliding down the incline in the canyon that dumps Nassau street into the hollow that was once in the long ago a meandering brook flanked by a romantic cow path still known by the name of Maiden Lane. Our officer brought his vamping feet to a standstill and exercised his discretion. He might vary the monotony, establish a reputation for himself, in fact, by bringing in a prisoner from this solemn spot, which slept with both eyes shut at night. But, he reflected, the misdemeanor was just round the corner from the confines of his beat, and was therefore the concern of his partner Mulligan, who was not in sight. Also to morrow is his day off, and he must choose, and choose quickly, between going to court and and going fishing. He decided in favor of the latter, as the season was well advanced, late October, and weak fish would be migrating at the first opportunity. He tinctured his decision with the reflection that traffic rules are made solely for traffic, a condition that obviously did not exist at the moment, and Therefore Rule number 26 would never know the difference if it were not called into use for the present emergency. The decision was proved especially happy by what followed. Evidently his new friends were in for quite a stay. At least, it appeared they would tarry to keep him company until his relief arrived. Strange noises were emerging from the engine even now. After the pistons had come to a halt, one of the passengers dismounted with much difficulty on account of a greatcoat. He stretched himself, yawned, and divested himself of his greatcoat, and then carefully picked out the sharply corrugated surface of a manhole cover as the couch on which he might rest while he made astronomical observations under the car. Why a man should pick out a manhole cover sharply corrugated in the first place was beyond the wit of our officer. Why the man should strike a match to examine the manhole cover to be sure that he had the right one, was another rather asinine trick. This person was at length satisfied, for he rolled over on his back, and with much exertion because of his girth, worked himself under the chassis. Our officer, seeking companionship, softly resumed his vamp and propelled himself toward the stalled car and its horizontal mechanician. The passenger in the seat was enveloped in bearskins to his chin. His chin was shrouded with a truly Bismarckian moustache, and a pair of obsolete goggles bridged the gap between the bow of the moustache and the peak of the cap. He looked exactly like the cartoons of motorists before the days of windshields. At sight of the sculling policeman, the man in bearskins mechanically began exploring the depths of his furs and produced therefrom two cigars, one of which he handed without a word to the officer. The other he applied to the recesses of his moustache, igniting the tip with a pocket lighter, which evidently he carried palmed for such occasions. He nodded a greeting to the policeman and watched with some curiosity as Officer 004 deftly transferred the cigar to the crown of his helmet. Here's another for your brother, said the man in bearskins, producing another cigar. And our policeman, not at all nonplussed by the windfall, sent this second offering to join the first. Breakdown, said the policeman, by way of opening a vein of sympathy and understanding. His words seemed for the first time to awaken the man under the engine to a consciousness of his presence, for the man below himself, enveloped in goggles, thrust out his head. No, said the man under the car, not a breakdown. We are sewer inspectors testing manholes. The policeman readily traced the source of this wit to the waffle like manhole cover on which the man lay prostrate and smiled indulgently. He could while away the remaining few minutes of his watch, giving advice. In these days of foolproof motors with needle valves, butterfly shutters, and tubes so placed that they can be docked doctored from above instead of below, the sight of a horizontal motorist was becoming rare, even in the barbershop papers. 197 Herkimer, said the policeman to himself, scornfully taking note of the hub. Once before he became an officer, he had begun a correspondence course in automobile engineering, and he had progressed so far that he was able to classify machines according to the cryptic designs of their hubs. That was long ago. A motorist of to day who was so far put to it that he drove a Herkimer of 1907 model. Must be far put to it indeed. Don't mind my friend, said the man in bearskins, contentedly, drawing at his cigar. He has been sitting up all night with his sick car, and it is getting on his nerves. Do you happen to have the correct time, officer? It lacked five minutes of the hour of two. This seemingly innocent fact caused quite a commotion between the two motorists, and for a moment they argued in lively fashion back and forth. The only thing they agreed on was that their respective watches differed by 3 minutes and 10 seconds of eternal time, as indicated by the policeman's timepiece. Indeed, the exactness of the hour seemed of such importance to these two, apparently hung up for the rest of the night with her sick car, that the obliging officer ran across the street to verify his faith in his own timepiece by a jeweller's cross chronometer ticking away in the half shadow of a barred window. When he returned, the man in furs had submerged himself to the ears in his great collar, and only the lazily winking cigar protruding from the enveloping folds gave signs of life. The policeman squatted on his heels and held matches in close proximity to the gasoline feed while the man underneath sweated and swore but did not remove his goggles. Then came the welcome clatter of a distant nightstick on the pavement and as strident as a drum beat, and officer 004 took his leave gracefully and made his way toward the river with light foot. His relief was calling. His day off had begun. His head was full of fish. He did not once glance round. Had he done so, he might have seen the head of the man in furs emerge from its enshrouding collar and turn. Cautiously. The man lifted a heavy instrument which looked like a pair of bloom shears but might have been an automobile jack, and set it down on the pavement beside the car. Then he waited for 30 seconds. At the end of that time, apparently unmindful of his mechanician, he touched the button of an up to date starter. The engine purred softly and the car slid away as easily as if coasting downhill instead of uphill, for the car turned into the upgrade of Maiden Lane to Broadway and then north. The hollow silence shut down again. The canyon was deserted. Only the manhole cover now marked the spot where five minutes before Providence had presented policeman 004 with two cigars against his day off on the banks. A two hours wink on his cot in the dormitory would fortify our sportsman for the pleasures of the day ahead. So he reflected as he divested himself of his shoes and belt and lay down to lull himself to sleep with the problem of whether the weather would be more propitious for shrimps than bloodworms as bait. But it was not to be. Later in his career, officer 004 more than once used the incident of this morning to drive in his lessons to the rookies who came his way that a patrolman of the first grade must on no account exercise his discretion. Discretion is all right for captains, or even for lieutenants on occasion, but the little blue book states clearly what a patrolman must do under certain circumstances. Rule no. 26 covers the case in point. If our policeman had done his duty as he saw it, he would have jugged those two night birds and appeared in court at the break of day to witness against them for violating the rules of the road. The judge would have listened to three words. Ten dollars, he would have said, and with fair winds blowing, policeman 004 might have caught the 8 o' clock boat and the 9 o' clock train to Huguenots and had his play with a fish in spite of himself. Traffic rules are traffic rules even in Nassau street at 2 in the morning. The superiority of blood worms in spite of the price had won the debate when suddenly the slumbers of officer 004 were interrupted by a crashing clamor that seemed to jar the very plaster of the room. It was followed instantly by the thumping of stockinged feet falling off the forests of cots. Sharp cries and indistinct commands burst in through the door of the drill room. A volley of musketry which seemed to come from the street told the sleepy senses of the fisherman that the automobile reserve wagon was waiting with noisy impatience at the curb. He fell into his shoes, scooped up his belt, his club, his revolver and his helmet, and joined the rush to the front room. He was Buckley on his belt as he said, here to the roll call. He was buttoning his blouse as he stumbled on the heels of the man ahead of him in the double trot to the street. He was climbing into the green wagon that holds 40 men on a pinch and takes them where they want to go at 40 miles an hour if necessary, when he discovered that he had tipped his precious cigars out of his helmet. Cedar street, straight across William the Broadway. Remember a solid line, not a man to pass. Someone was shouting to the lieutenant who swung on the footboard and they were off around the first corner at a gate that threatened to capsize them.

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[Narrator]

SpinQuest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details at. William the police wagon began spilling policemen as peas rolling out of a pod. Officer 004 tumbled out at Nassau and his feet stuck to the pavement where they struck. That was orders. Not a man was to pass. Every 20ft stood a policeman trying his best to gather his still slumbering wits and to make head or tail out of the situation. There was not the familiar sting of smoke in the air that usually accounts for such a midnight upheaval. Neither was the clang of the police wagon to be heard on all sides, now met by the answering wail of fire truck sirens, that strange wail which in the dead of night is like nothing so much as the howl of a panther with its head buried in some mud cavern. But bells, bells, bells. Everywhere the angry clang of bells, fast, slow, whimpering, booming. They shiver the early morning air with their insistent clamor. First precinct reserves, close order forward double quick, came the bellowing order of a megaphone from the Broadway end, and the men closed up and started forward on a run. At Broadway they were shunted to the north. At Maiden Lane they were dropped 20ft apart east to William. Not a man to pass, roared the megaphone. And its echoes had scarcely died away when a little police automobile sped up and came to a stop. Two men got out. One was the inspector of the district. The other was a man in civilian's clothes. He was roaring at the top of his voice. Hell no. Who said? The lane number three cable is gone. Now throw this line across Fulton Street. And before the blown reserves could get their breath, they were bellowed into double quick again and shot up Broadway another eighth of a mile. As they were thrown cross town at Fulton street, they were met by the advance line of scouts from Park Row. Emergency reporters panting, some of them without hats or coats in the rush of the moment of alarm. You can't get through, said the lieutenant, running forward to meet them. Instantly there was the flashing of silver stars and reporters, police cards, the sesame by which the press crowds to the front row of the thrillers that are staged every hour of the day and night in this city of 5 million souls. I don't give three whoops if you're the angel Gabriel. You can't get through them's orders. Roared the lieutenant. And he reached out and caught one daring fellow by the collar and sent him spinning to the gutter. Here's a man through from the other end. Cried one of the angry reporters. They all turned. A young man, his ulster flapping in the wind, was running toward them. You can't pass. Cried the lieutenant, barring his way. Who says I can't? Inspector Wiegand. Put me through at John Street. Take your hands off me. What the devil is the matter with you mutts anyway? Every reserve south of 42nd street is here, and you've got a line strung solid around 20 blocks. And there isn't a man among you with wit enough to know what's Happened. Gad, look at that. His last exclamation was caused by a sudden bursting into light of the tall towers of the international life. One by one, the floors counted themselves as some hand threw on the current at the electric switch. Then a neighboring building began to wink light through its windows. Then another and another. The Wall street and Maiden Lane district was opening its eyes wide. In the dead of night. The shiny pavement was flooded with reflection. The dull sky overhead caught the glare and threw it back as a luminous cloud. In the Pearl street converting station, the Edison superintendent sprang from his couch at the clang of a warning bell and ran to the switchboard. The needle of the dial he looked at was jumping toward a thousand amperes at a time. The lone set of converters carrying for the night load south of Canal street was as hot to the touch as a flat iron. Under the stress of a sudden excess of electric current. The superintendent threw in one machine after another at the giant switchboard. The needle had now touched the index of the peak of the load, the normal capacity of the electric service to be had from this station. Who the devil is celebrating at this hour? He exclaimed, glancing over at the clock. It lacked five minutes of three. He ran up a flight of iron steps to a balcony hanging on the side of the south wall and peered out of the window. The skyscraper line of the lower part of the island was like a huge heap of glittering yellow jewels. Every window to the topmost of the towers was aglow with light. Two at seven o' clock on that momentous October morning, which was always afterward referred to by the Edison superintendent as the time we hit the peak of the load with a jump of 4000amps at 3:00am and by officer 004 as the day I did not go fishing. At 7:00 clock that morning, the cordon of police was still being drawn tight across Fulton to Williams, down William to Pearl, down Pearl to the spot where it crosses Broadway for the second time in that street's crooked career through lower New York and up Broadway to meet the start of the line at Fulton. Gradually, however, the excitement focused itself at a point in Dutch street where the New Manufacturing Jewelers building stands a stone's throw from Maiden Lane. This building is the last work in the art of safety devices as applied to fire and burglar hazards. It is absolutely unburnable, they say. Dizzy Sunday story specialists have attempted to compute the wealth in gold and precious stones that finds its way into this tall skyscraper given over entirely to manufacturing jewelers. In the course of a year, a Knowledge of logarithms is necessary in the calculation. Knights of the road occasionally stop on the opposite side of the street and look with longing eyes at the tall facade, every window of which seems to nod an invitation. Usually these gentlemen, if they stand too long in one spot, are tapped on the shoulder by total strangers and requested to move on back, not forward. The old dead line, relic of the days of a great policeman, has long since passed into history as a police institution. In the Maiden Lane district, the public did not take to the idea of a squad of plainclothes police telling a man in which direction he might walk the free streets of the city, no matter what the record of the man might be. But the association of jewelers themselves, recognizing the value of the old deadline, have always maintained it at their own expense. At seven in the morning, two squads of men, one of police and the other of grey coated specials, getting no response to repeated knocking of the big bronze gate that closed the corridor in the night time, set to work with sledges and jacks and soon had the gate open.

[Bluff]

Open.

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Their fears were doubled by the fact that the din occasioned by the battering did not bring the body of watchmen who guarded this building. During every hour of the day and night the building was fully illuminated like the rest, showing that some hand had manipulated the switch at the first alarm. Next they attacked the inside doors. These proved to be more easily negotiable. On the floor in front of the elevator cage, they found the captain of the night watch bound and gagged, an ugly streak of dried blood matting his hair and covering his forehead. He was released, but he was found to be in so serious a condition that it was necessary to transfer him at once to Governor Hospital. Inside an elevator, the rescue party found two more of the watch bound together back to back, all but unconscious from the choking effect of ligatures around their necks. They had been chloroformed and were still in so dazed a condition that they could throw little light on the situation. Indeed, later, their sole knowledge appeared to be that they had been suddenly set on, overpowered and bound. They had seen nothing. The captains of the two squads telephoned their chiefs at once. They had found the storm center. Deputy Burns of the police was a former secret service man, drafted into the city service because of his knowledge of crime and criminals. Captain Dunstan of the private corporation, the burglar alarm system that was living a night of history, had been one of the deputy's chief aides in the government work, and he possessed, in addition to a knowledge of crime and criminals, a technical skill that had enabled him to perfect the burglar alarm system believed by experts to be absolutely invulnerable. And now, at this moment, the vaunted mechanism was a tangle of useless wires. Three of the main cables had been cut, and at the moment that officer 004 was tumbled out of bed by the riot call, the indicators on the sensitive burglar alarm switchboard in John street, if they were voracious, reported the astounding fact that over 1700 safes were being tampered with. At the same moment, 1700 strong boxes bulging with wealth were shrieking for help. Not exactly at the same moment, however, for the cunning thief had cut the cables with intervals of one minute between first the lead enclosed sheaf carrying nearly 500 pairs of wires, the sensory nerves of the rich vaults lying below Cedar Street. At the deafening persistent clang of that first alarm, the authorities, dumbfounded at the extent of the catastrophe, had thrown their cordon of police around this small district, drawing it so tight that it seemed no man could escape. Then, with a crash, the switchboard of district number two went to pieces and. And in another 60 seconds, district number three added its bells to the bedlam. Then it was that the police lines were moved as far north as Fulton, and the call was sent forth for all reserves south of 125th Street. Burns and Dunston, summoned from opposite quarters to the jewelers building, arrived simultaneously grave, as was the crisis. As their eyes met and they clasped hands, they burst into a laugh. This outdistanced even their experience picked up. Anybody? Asked Dunston. I'll wager you haven't nabbed the man who had brains enough to touch off these 1700 burglar alarms at once. Oh, we've got the usual riff raft, said Burns, some bums, a couple of scrub women, a handful of firemen from the big buildings, and so on. It's hard on them, but it can't be helped. The only thing promising was one man who had a reporter's card. But he bluffed a lieutenant and got through the lines.

[Bluff]

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[Narrator]

free to play social casino. Boyd. Where prohibited visit spinquest.com for more details. Well, Captain, said the deputy, turning to one of his men. What is it? Where did they spring the trap? The police captain saluted and led the way to the second floor of the building. This entire floor was occupied by Ludwig Telfin. If you are fortunate enough to possess an ornament enclosing jewels of something finer than usual water, the chances are that if you take a sharp glass and look on the reverse side, you will find a little mark formed by the looping together of the capitals L and tea. And you can rest assured that if Ludwig Telfen made the setting, the gems it encloses are worth far more than the gold that clasps them. No matter how exquisite the setting, no matter if Benvenito himself made the design. Ludwig Telfin once came into prominence by his refusal to assemble a certain famous brooch of pearls that had paid $100,000 in customs duties on the ground that they were imitations. He of a dozen jewellers and experts was the only one to discern the fraud. Whew. Old Telfyn, eh? That's bad as a starter. Exclaimed Burns under his breath. The main entrance to the suite occupied by Telfin stood open. A new light as to the daring of this deed burst on. Burns, used to shocks as he was. Rough work, that, he said, turning to Dunstan. What was the exact hour the first switchboard went off? 2:45 to the second, hell broke loose. I was asleep upstairs. I thought the roof had caved in. Then came the second and the third. 1700 and 56, all at once. I never expect to hear a record like that again. 1700 and 56 chances to 1, said Burns, and they proceeded, examining every step of the way. Here a door was battered, there a litter of glass on the floor. With nearly 1800 strong boxes within a radius of half a mile, shrieking burglars. The master thief had gone straight to the mark. There was no mistaking the mark. It stood in the middle of a great room, the famous safe of Ludwig Telfen. The grating about it was crumpled like cloth. This safe has been described so many times in the press that it is worth only a line here. Not content with harvey ized steel, the makers constructed an envelope of armored concrete, 18 inches thick on all four sides. The safe stood in the middle of the room like a four square tomb in its cathedral crypt. Even after the wonderfully ingenious locks had been manipulated, a section of the floor must be lowered before the door could be opened. That section of flooring, solid concrete, was lowered now it lay 6 inches below the surrounding level. Burns sprang forward. With a cry of amazement, he seized the pilot wheel and whirled it. The great door of the safe swung silently open like some animate thing, and the darkness of the interior yawned on the tense little party. Burns turned with a queer gesture. The gesture said, it's all over. When the door once started on its half revolution touched a certain angle, an electric contact was made, and the interior suddenly glowed with scores of incandescent lights. On the floor lay a crude appearing mechanism consisting of two unusually long carbon rods bound together, though insulated from each other and connected with an electric transformer such as is used in welding. On the floor, too, were scores of crumpled envelopes, all empty. Metal doors that lined the walls of the interior hung slatternly on rudely twisted hinges, disclosing metal boxes empty. Burns himself, matter of fact unromantic, stirred more easily by deeds than by poetic suggestion, found himself trying to decipher the symbols with which the empty envelopes were pencilled. Each symbol held its story of treasures of gold and gems, men's greed, women's vanity and tears. How much was gone? How much remained? Only old Telfin himself, with shrewd pasty mask of a face with its high, thin nose and lips as thin as a slit in ivory, only old Telfit himself could tell but the thief, what a thief. On the floor, carefully laid aside, was the ransom of a king. Rare designs and special metals. Fragile baskets woven of threads of gold as fine as silk, wreaths of stubborn platinum worked with infinite patience and skill into little nests to receive their precious jewels. The almost medieval trappings designed for the oratory of the wife of a multimillionaire, these magnificent in themselves were thrust aside, ignored as dross for the masterpieces the famous vault contained. While 1800 bells were shrieking, crying in terror, while cordons of police were being thrown about so that even a crawling animal could not escape, while guardians of the mammoth treasure were rushing frantically about, seeking the thousand thieves in one or the one thief in the thousand. This master rogue had with unerring hand cracked the biggest prize in the city, and with the coolness of a connoisseur, had tested, weighed and rejected and taken his fill. Then Ludwig Telfit himself came, white and terrible, to behold. Burns established field headquarters on the spot, and his lieutenants were coming and going. With his tense commands he reinforced the lines around the desolated blocks until, in police parlance, the four streets that held the cordon together were one continuous circle of peg posts. But no One realized more than Burns himself the futility of such a course. He tightened the lines merely because it was the obvious thing to do. There was one chance in a thousand that the bird had not yet flown. Newspaper men were assaulting the lines on all sides, but all for no purpose. There was no juice in the turnip for them. Extras were flooding the streets. Throngs were hurrying downtown by every line of cars surging against the impregnable police wall by thousands. But the best they could get in the way of information was the fact that nearly 2,000 burglar alarms had gone off at the same moment and left uncovered the richest camp in the world, measured in terms of gold and gems. That the reserves of the whole island had now been summoned to hold the impregnable wall was in itself a drug that fed the popular imagination beyond the heights of reason. A mechanical system, fairly devilish in its ingenuity, invulnerable beyond its double and redoubled lines of defense, had been swept away by a single stroke as a tornado levels a plain or a flood engulfs a valley. Bankers, brokers, merchants, jewelers, goldsmiths, the aristocracy of wealth and trade that hives in this quarter in the daylight hours and draws on the world for capital rushed to the scene frantically importunate hurling themselves against that stubborn line that knew no orders except from one source. The huge, silent man with square jaws, square mustache, and square shoes, who was sitting in the offices of Ludwig Telfin, examining a set of powerful bloom shears that had been found in a manhole in Nassau Street. The blades of this set of shears had a cutting strength of thousands of pounds. A child, executing gentle pressure on the powerful lever could slice a great piece of metal in twain as if it were sausage. The emergency crew of the protective system had discovered the spot where the cables had been rent asunder. Early in the excitement, with their charts showing the location of every trunk of the monster nerve system of burglar protection, they had followed up the main cables manhole by manhole, until they finally came to the corrugated cover on which the fat man in goggles had rusted himself, himself to get a view of the astronomical inaccuracies of the inside of his car. The manhole was a roomy affair. It had to be to accommodate men working at the cables, which are tested regularly with the finest instruments known to science. The expert who had cut the cables had evidently spent some time awaiting the mystic hour. A dozen cigarette butts scattered about the cement well showed that he had awaited the appointed second without Impatience. And having accomplished his task, he had left his set of bloom shears behind as a clue, whatever that might be worth, and had gone to the trouble of putting the manhole cover back in its seat. With some care he had probably escaped by Broadway. That meant running a hundred yards before the first section of the police cordon could be summoned. The blades of the shears were covered with a coating of lead and copper like a film of grease. There was a calm, cool insolence about the whole thing that got on Byrne's nerves. A bureau of Identification was established at 8 o' clock for the clamoring bankers and jewelers. Every mother's son of them had to be identified before he could enter the lines. And then he entered under guard and opened his safes under guard. One by one the treasure vaults were checked off as their contents were found to be intact. As the vaults were surrendered to their owners, the guard would move on to the next and the next. It was not until noon that the inventory had been made throughout the district. District. Of all the district, only the Strong Room, the fabled Strong Room of Ludwig Telfen, had been tapped. The genius of the night then, had jammed the entire machinery of the street and the lane, rousted it from its bed with shrieking clamors for the police simply for the opportunity of attacking this one prize. The white faced Telphan, inscrutable even in this hour, deciphered the stories of the empty envelopes one by one. It was at 10 o' clock when he crumpled up and was carried away. The Bentore crucifix was gone with its one matchless sapphire, the Dalgoda Pearl, the great Canary diamond, the diamond of the Saffron's family with its creepy history. A Hindustani ruby called the well, a pale blue hyacinth on whose broad table had been carved a symbol that had baffled the greatest archaeologists and a baker's dozen of unset diamonds carefully matched as to size and color. Not a thief, merely an artist had picked here. The Strong Room of Ludwig Telfen, as we have said, stood in the middle of the room like a tomb in a crypt. With its sheathing of concrete, it was like a monolith the size of a dozen elephants. A workman with the coldest drawn chisel would laugh at an order to drill through the Adamants in an eight hour day. Yet a hole the size of a man's thigh penetrated the mass leading straight and true to the very heart of the ingenious mechanism hidden within a mechanism in itself believed to be indestructible. It was not indestructible. The same brain that had known the spot to tap the monolith and then had devised the means of tapping it, had played with the safe as though it had been a toy instead of a thing. Hundreds of men of talent had made their life work. A pellet of some explosive at the right spot had destroyed the spark of life and once destroyed, the mechanism of the doors, as beautiful as the inside of a watch became merely a jumble of senseless cogs. Can you figure it? Asked Burns, inspecting the huge hole in the monolith. It's beyond me, I must admit. I don't know, said Dunston. But I am going to find out. He connected the set of carbon rods to the electric switch panel in the corridor through a transformer. If I figure it right, he said, there are a thousand amperes of electricity flowing through these rods. When the current is turned on, one tenth of an ampere will kill a man under certain conditions. Look at this. He kicked the switch with his foot and instantly a blue white flame, an arc of blinding intensity, shot across the gap between the ends of the carbon rods, hissing ominously. He handled the rods with his bare hands. Harmless as a kitten, he said as Burns cried out in dismay. He held the hissing arc against the side of the vault. The cement seemed to shrink before it and melt. It dissolved into a fine dust that hung in the air. They tell us that that concrete will withstand any fire. It did in San Francisco. Look at that. Concrete will stand 2,000 degrees of heat, but it won't stand this heat. Burns. He cried, sobered as he kicked over the switch and dropped the electric torch. When they come this good, we can't beat them. We just haven't got the brains. That's all there is to it. 3 Cap' n Halfpenny, that blue eyed son of Yorkshire who patrolled the waters of Raritan Bay at night to locate the universities of fish for his customers in daytime, waited long and finally impatiently at the musty Huguenots wharf that memorable morning for policeman 004. Finally he gave up and went out to his lobster pots. As for officer 004, he dozed away the morning on his peg post in Fulton street, dimly conscious that a cataclysm had occurred in his immediate neighborhood of such proportions as to rouse that hard sleeping locality for once in its life. On the whole, it pleased him to consider that there were rabbits in this graveyard after all. Such a scurrying he had never seen before in his short period as patrolman of the first grade. Shortly after noon the order came to break ranks and the mystic cordon, the wonder of a gaping crowd dissolved into thin air and was gone. Our officer purchased a copy of the press and verified his fears that high tide was due off the hook at 11:33am which meant that the only promise his disrupted day off now held for him was to take all his clothes off, go to bed and luxuriate in sleep. So he wended his way slowly to the old slip station. The surroundings were beginning to take on their usual air. The rattle of trucks and the odour of fish from the Fulton market filled the senses. A shock awaited him as he ascended the steps and clumped across the floor to report himself out at the desk. The fragrance of cigar smoke smote his nostrils. His captain, bleary eyed with his unusual exertions, was leaning back in his big chair, his feet cocked on the corner of the desk. And he was pulling at a cigar, painting the atmosphere with spirals of smoke as if he had at last found the solace he read about in books. It was not the undignified sight of his captain with feet higher than his head that roused the dull mind of policeman 004. It was the band of the cigar. The band was a brilliant red and blue. The policeman scratched his head and churned his memory. He was painfully extracting a swollen foot from a shoe. When light broke on him, it was as clear as day. Now that was his cigar. He distinctly remembered the band. A kind though not over sociable gentleman in a stalled automobile had presented him with that cigar earlier in the morning. In fact had presented him with two of them. Them one for his brother. And this low life captain had cribbed them out of his helmet while officer 004 stared vacantly at a spider constructing an engineering work at a window pane with a skill beyond human. He slowly pushed his suffering foot back into a shoe and his head traveling like a Coney island merry go round, he bent over and absent mindedly began fastening the laces. He shook himself as though in a cold draught. He bit off part of a fingernail. Mulligan, he said, addressing a man packing a kit on the opposite side of the room. Did I hear ye was set down already? The divil Take em, said Mulligan between his teeth. And all because somebody tampered with a manhole on me post when I was at the other end of the beat.

[Bluff]

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[Narrator]

Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. What's the Force coming to these days? I ask. It'll cost me tin days. Pay at least, mind you. Officer 004, somewhat dazed, passed out at the corner of Nassau and Maiden Lane. He found a crowd collected about the very manhole his friend of the night before had selected with so much care as the spot on which to lie down. A pot of wiping solder, looking blue and cool, was thoughtfully bubbling over a gasoline torch, and the manhole, now open, was filled with men in jeans. Plumbers, thought our officer, like bees in a bee trap. Officer 004, mouth open like a sucker drinking in air at the top of a weedy pool of water, listened to the man on post explain the lay of the land. Then he put his hands in his trousers pockets in defiance of the rules and regulations, and started east. At Dutch street he picked out the manufacturing jeweller's building, and on the second floor, after considerable embarrassment, he found Deputy Burns. Officer 004 was not exactly a word artist. More especially, he was not a word artist when on the carpet under the eye of this particular superior, who had a distressing way of looking at him. Herkimer, 1907 model, repeated the deputy. Very good. Report to Farley at headquarters. I'll see you there. Now there are a hundred thousand automobiles in the city and vicinity of New York. The horse power, make, and ownership of each is a matter of record. All that is required is infinite patience or a superfluity of clerks among whom to divide impatience. The Herkimer of The vintage of 1907 was a limited edition that was called in shortly after being put out. A few still crept wearily about the city, as though tired of life and its attending ills. At three o' clock that afternoon, an automobile drew up to the entrance of headquarters, then in Mulberry Street. It was a Herkimer model 1907. Two detectives, undoubtedly detectives, from the closely shaved and shiny appearance, helped out a man of middle age, somewhat gray, pasty, and frightened. He was chewing on a cigar that sported a red and blue band. As he got down, a messenger boy on a bicycle rushed up, dropping his wheel with a clatter and seizing the prisoner, there was no doubt he was such by the sleeve. He thrust an envelope into his hand. Mr. Merwin, gasped the boy. I have been chasing you all the way down. Had he not been so badly upset, Mr. Merwin might have been astonished as he was, he stared stupidly from the envelope to the messenger boy and thence to the cloud of reporters that detectives were beating back. He was hurried to the office of the deputy commissioner. Burns wheeled in his chair. Merwin. Aye, aye. Ejaculated the usually collected deputy. What the deuce are you doing in this mess? From the expression on Merwin's face, he himself was still struggling for an explanation why two detectives had gently but firmly insisted on his driving them to headquarters just because he happened to own a herkimer. Burns turned to the others with a nod of dismissal. Then he turned on Merwin. He could not bring himself to believe that this notorious crank, this nuisance who had made himself the bane of police administrations for the last 10 years, could have a guilty knowledge of the catastrophe of the morning. Yet he shut his teeth down hard, glared at the trembling yet defiant figure before him, and cried out fiercely. Well, out with it.

[Bluff]

Quick.

[Narrator]

There was something in the attack of Burns that turned the average man inside out. The effect on Merwin the crank was peculiar. Merwin suddenly straightened up. He crushed the envelope he held and waved his hands on high. His eyes blazed. I have proved it. He cried triumphantly. The whole town is laughing at you. Burglar protection. Bah. 1, 2, 3. I slice your cables. Yes. A child could have done it. I have exploded your system. Ha ha. Burns sprang at him. With the roar of an animal, he seized the man in his grasp and hurled him against a wall. You and your damned patents that have made you a pest for 10 years. He cried. Don't start that on me. Come down to earth. Who told you to do it? Who walked through Ludwig Telfin's strong room and took his pick of what he found there while you were chopping the cables with your infernal shears? Spit it out. Who was it?

[Bluff]

Quick.

[Narrator]

The infuriated deputy dropped the man and backed away from him. Telphon Strong room took his pick. Why, man? It was to be a joke, a jest. I am. I am a genius. I needed only this to prove my system. Telphon, did you say? He? He, He, He. Yes, he. Who was he? The inventor who for years had striven, by every means known to insane persistence, to foist his worthless electrical protective system on the city. Gradually collected his senses. Burns got the story of the dupe piecemeal, it seemed that Merwin had encountered an engaging young dandy on a recent weekend visit to Atlantic City. This person had seemed particularly interested in, though politely skeptical of Merwin's pet theories as to the weakness of the protective system in vogue in the large cities. So skeptical indeed was he that their somewhat heated argument had ended in a wager, a stake of $1,000 that Merwin, by the simple means he had described, could not, at a given hour, on a given night, render the treasure vaults of the city of New York hors de combat. They had settled the hour then and there. The electrician was smiling like a child when he ended them. I have showed them up. I have showed them up. He cried, his insane pride getting the better of him again. With one stroke, I have proved to this great city that its fancied security is as thin as. No more of that. We've something more serious on just now than rival systems. You cut the cables, you admit? I did. I certainly did. That's my set of Bloom shears on your desk now. This young man was a genius. There was no other way to show you. My brother took me down to Nassau street and we waited until the cops changed posts. Lord, I know the plan of their manes like I know the humps in my own bed. Simple. Why? As the showing up of the egregious asinine in his excitement, he tore apart the envelope he was crushing in his hands. Two halves of a thousand dollar bill dropped out.

[Bluff]

The wager. The wager.

[Narrator]

He saw it. He's paid it. Cried Merwin. The thief. Cried Burns. On a slip of paper with a bill, was the line typewritten. My compliments. You have convinced me. Seeking the engaging young man who had made the estimable, though fanatical electrician his easy dupe in the matter of looting the Ludwig Telfin Strong Room, Burns paid a visit to the address indicated in the enclosure. Needless to say, however, neither the name nor the description the electrician furnished was recognized by the respectable landlady who answered the bell.

[Bluff]

Now.

[Narrator]

So ended the incident of the Night of the Thousand Thieves, the feat taking its place among the many unsolved mysteries. There were clues, it is true, but they were too insolently obvious on the face to lead anywhere. The misguided inventor passed the remainder of his days in confinement, childishly happy at having achieved his life's ambition. It is interesting to note in passing that that of the rare gems so carefully selected from the Telphan Strong Room that morning, only one was ever traced. The story has never been verified. It is a myth. At the head of Navigation on the Sanguine river rests a little chapel built by fishermen. On the cliffs above stands the figure of a virgin, the thanks offering of those saved from the sea. The lost Bentore crucifix is said to hang in the chapel. It is mentioned merely as a coincidence that the exquisite Godall, a famous cosmopolite, the Infallible Godall, whose true character was never known until the publication of the memoirs of this Master rogue, was once rescued from drowning at this spot. End of the Night of a Thousand Thieves. Chapter 4 of Adventures of the Infallible Godall by Frederick Irving Anderson. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Counterpoint 1 Aside from the fact that one Mr. Jackson of Cleveland had further fattened his batting average by lifting a ball over the ridge pole of the the Polo Grounds Club House, a stupendous feat in the dog days. There was nothing in the morning papers to excuse the waste of ink and paper incident to the running off of an edition. Everybody was out of town and as usual news had followed the crowd. The serialized comics and other faithful all the year round performers were still active in their respective columns. A Variety actress was having herself arrested in Asbury for wearing a one piece bathing suit, an entire jersey jury was being hung by its 12th member who did not believe in capital punishment, and the crafty Japanese were realistically credited with sewing the gates of the Gatun Locks with rhyolite, cordite, maximite, etc. So that at the psychological moment, and as a diplomatic declaration of war, a samurai in the disguise of a barber could press a button and leave the major portion of our fleet of super dreadnoughts stranded up to its knees in the mud of the lake. Godall, the infallible Go doll languidly pushed aside his breakfast things and ran through his morning papers. He was pleased to note that only the most enterprising of the morning papers contained the item divulging the secret of the Gatun Locks being built of fulminating compounds instead of concrete as was popularly supposed, the contemporaries remaining silent on this delicate subject, Godall tossed the paper to an adjoining table where breakfasting late like himself, sat his friend of many capitals, Adichie Yakosaqua or Yakasakwa Adichie as you will. I see you are up to your old tricks again, Adichie, said Godall genially. The little Japanese looked uncertainly from the paper to Godall and back again Several times he could not quite make out when occidentals addressed him whether or not they were in earnest. Most of them treated him as a joke. Adichie was not a joke. He was traveling round the world slowly. So slowly indeed that when he reached home again, he would be very wise and very old. In Germany he made wooden toys. In France he was a banker. In England he sold silks, and in America he wrote for the press. At home, Yasakawa Adichie was something we do not comprehend. Here he was trying his best to be an American. If we would only let him, which we would not. Ha ha, said Adachi, still somewhat uncertain. Godall, whom he had known in Berlin, Paris and London, had never treated him as a monkey. But Godall always had this habit of eyeing him sharply, which was fully as disconcerting. Adachi had a tinkling little voice. Of all his features, only his square, shiny teeth expressed the mirth that this exclamation implied. He looked at Godall several times to ascertain if that person wished to enter into a conversation. But Godall was again immersed in a newspaper, this time an early extra of an afternoon edition which the waiter had just brought him. So Adichie resumed his task, which was the making of embroidery designs on a piece of paper. Paper. The writing of his fathers, a system of shorthand much older than the family tree of Ben Pitman himself. Arici could handle a typewriter with any reporter, but he could think best in his own pothooks. Now he was transcribing music from the do re mi FA sol of accepted usage into fantastic ideographs. Godall, who watched the curious little globe trotter and the tiny mirror made by the planes of his eyeglass bosses, was candidly interested as he was in everything Adichie did. Suddenly, however, Godall's wandering attention was recalled to his afternoon extra. He brought himself back to the immediate cause of his being in town. This torrid weather Stock Exchange news was on the front page at the opening of the session. At 10 o' clock that morning, the bears had raided little steel, knocking the stilts from under that restless disturber of Wall street traffic, just at a moment when a board of directors thought they had everything tacked down tight and had gone to sea. This was good news indeed. Not because it was little Steele that was again playing all three rings of the circus, but because there was transpiring a movement in stocks of sufficient importance to break into the front page of the newspapers. Godall had been waiting patiently for Wall Street News to break into the first page. For months now, in 5 minutes he was in his own runabout, a high powered car that breathed as easily as an engine coasting downhill. He stepped down into Cedar Street 10 minutes later and turned the key in his magneto switch so that he might find the car when he returned. It was quite probable that he would be in a hurry when he returned. Next, he tossed his silk cap with his gauntlets into the dust tight compartment behind and donned a shiny silk hat. The silk hat was his badge for this occasion. He turned the corner swinging along with a free gait which he had acquired in his earlier youth only after arduous toil with a fencing master of repute. The curb market sprawling over the asphalt in front of the stock exchange was bubbling like drops of water on a hot griddle. Everyone seemed in a hurry or else trying to out talk someone else. The only exceptions to the turmoil were the decrepit nags attached to obsolete hansoms roped into line in the middle of the street feet and the occasional coming and going of well fed persons clad in silk hats and frock coats who exuded an air of prosperity and respectability. Both the exceptions, the horses munching at their nosebags and the silk hat brigade were of interest to Godall the horses because of the vegetating life they pursued. These creatures came to Wall street every day and stood there as long as the exchanges were open. None of them was ever known to carry a passenger since the days of automobiles. The bucolic idea of a stockbroker invariably associates him with a hansom cab, and probably these cabs were retained to preserve local color. Some of the nags stood with crossed legs like make believe horses one sees in summer vaudeville. Some of them hitched one bony hip high in the air. Others slept through the turmoil, their noses sweeping the ground. All the cabbies looked as if Phil May had drawn them years and years ago. It was the human animal in Godall that caused him to prize these cab horses as one of the sights of the town. It was his thieving propensities, his adventuring genius that caused him to be interested in the silk hat brigade.

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Visit spinquest.com for more details. These latter were the uptown bargain hunters who never came to Wall street unless financial news on the first page informs them that the street operators were either over anxious to sell or overanxious to buy. They were not gamblers in stocks, they were investors. They merely took advantage of the periodic myopia from which Wall street suffers, and they were content with a modest hundred per centum on the dollar. In the course of a twelvemonth, Godall entered the mahogany offices, entitled in large gold letters sturgis Wheelock Co. Stocks and bonds, and returning the nod of an acquaintance here and there he dropped into a remote chair, dividing his attention between the quotation board and the mob clustering like flies about the chattering ticker. Wall street tipple was not to his liking. He was not here to play, even though the cards lay on the table face up. Nevertheless, he was pleased to note that little Steele was still falling relentlessly and that its sister shares were following it down somewhat like a flock of kingbirds at the tail of a swooping hawk. A second extra edition had just exploded in the street. The riot in stocks occupied the front page. Money kings were rushing to the city by special train. Magnates at sea were clamorously demanding monopoly of the air for the space of the precious minute. A red ink fudge last minute news chiseled into the stereotypes just as the presses are ready to start recorded new low levels of prices of standard industrials and railroads. Someone was being thrown overboard. Who it might be did not interest Godall, who glanced up from a swift perusal of the paper and murmured, this should bring him in. The hour was striking noon when Wellington Mapes entered the board room. He too was buttoned in a frock coat and wore a silk hat in defiance of the sticky humidity. To look at him now, with his wrinkled visage and tottering gait, one would not suspect that in his prime, not a dozen years gone, governments of the world considered it well worth the cost to tell off shrewd agents to report his smallest doings. It was said in those days that he had an organization extending into every corner of the earth, and that he carried a full line of presidents, cabinets, and royal airs, ready to be seated or dispatched at a day's notice. That was before age had drawn his fangs. That was before he hid himself from his closest intimates in a seclusion none could penetrate. Though he still maintained an official residence, his Real home was as unguessed as the riddle of the Sphinx. Only on feast days in Wall street did he emerge to play with funds that came from the four winds. This was the man that Godall awaited, this man who had so far outlived his time that most men had forgotten him. Godall would run the old fox to his lair today. That he had promised himself. Mapes was a striking figure, still at 80 odd, tall and gaunt, with the beak of an eagle and shaggy brows. One eye was glass, supplanting an orb that had been gouged out by a Malay crease. In his funereal attire he looked as soft and flabby as a superannuated deacon. But for all his years, he was still a man of thews. His hands were enormous. The thumb of his right hand was a full half inch longer than its fellow and no thicker than a cigar. It was encircled with a cicatrix as regular as a made ring. Years ago a Mongolian bandit with an exalted idea of justice in the authority had suspended the 200 pounds of bone and sinew of Wellington Mapes by the end of that thumb. Mapes soon concluded his business. Like a gambler playing an immutable system, he had his tallies chalked and ready for the occasion. He wrote his check with the first two fingers of the right hand. His useless thumb, trailing along behind his eyes, burned an inquiring path among the faces clustering about the ticker. Only two or three of these men were sufficiently alive to externals to note the old fox and nudge each other as he passed. The old man tottered to the door and helped himself down the flight of marble steps leading to the pavement by means of the substantial brass railing. Godall watched him covertly through the broad window screened with a fine copper mesh like watered silk. On the last step, Mapes paused and looked up and down the street. Then a miracle occurred. The old man summoned a hansom. Either, thought Godall, paradoxically, he sought to attract attention or to avoid it. Possibly again, paradoxically, he sought to accomplish the one by means of the other. The cabby at the head of the slovenly line rubbed his eyes and his nose, and it required the services of a friendly messenger boy to interpret the old man. Shaking and menacing cane, the driver yanked the chain that upset the third leg of his hansom. He chirruped to his horse, and the beast came to life. With a start and a shudder. The cab drew up at the curb. The old man permitted the porter in waiting to assist him to his seat and the cab drove off without spoken directions. They would be delivered en route, no doubt. Godall rapidly put in a small order at the desk, and he blotted his cheque with the selfsame blotter, which bore the reversed facsimile of the palsied signature of Wellington Map. He turned it over. The inscription ran 44,300. Then it was lost in a maze of confusing numerals. It was some 45 minutes later that the head of the somnolent line of cab horses drew up at a corner in lower 7th Avenue that might have been the backdrop of a 10, 20 and 30 cent melodrama. The house was an old rookery of wood tumbling into decay. A tailor sign decorated one dusty window, and round the corner a device rusty with age, related to the passerby that in the heyday of its prosperity the rookery had housed a carpenter named Jones. At the apex of the building the house formed a triangle. Fenced in by an intersecting street and avenue, was a gaudy barber pole ceaselessly churning an endless screw of red and white to advertise the industry within. In front of the barber shop, trespassing on the pavement, stood an old ailanthus tree in the act of shedding the shreds of its effulgent blossoms. Under the tree were playing a group of dirty children. Against the tree were lounging a young man who might be a plumber to judge by the kit of tools that lay at his feet and streaks of plumbago that decorated his face, behind this soiled mask looked out the keenest eyes in all New York work, those of the exquisite Godall. Godall had made a quick change from his faultless walking attire to anticipate for the second time in three months the coming of Wellington Mapes to this down at heels neighborhood. On the previous occasion, when Wall Street News broke into a first page column and lured Wellington Mapes from his retreat long enough to invest in marked down goods in Broad Street. He had made his way then in a taxicab to this sequestered barber shop with Godall running a warm scent. But the man, the master thief, had followed away half an hour later, proved in the end to have two good eyes in his head and a perfect thumb on his right hand, though in all other respects he was Wellington Mapes to the life. Apparently on that occasion the Old World adventurer had cause to employ a double. Mapes now alighted feebly and walked across the sidewalk to the door which opened for him from within. It was only a brief wait. Everything occurred as it had occurred in the former instance. The door opened again and a white coated barber assisted the old man who emerged to the waiting hansom. Again it was Wellington Mapes to the life. Except, as the apparently drowsing plumber noted under his lashes. Both eyes were busy covertly examining the street in all directions, and one glimpse he got of the right hand told Godall that all its members were intact. Godall smiled discreetly to himself. It was so simple, if one only used his wits. The cab started off. As it rounded the corner a second cab, another cab of the Wall street vintage, appeared quite accidentally from Greenwich Avenue, turning north onto 7th Avenue in the wake of the 1st, and shortly an automobile that had been standing at the curb opposite began to churn and rolled off leisurely up the avenue. Godall was not the only one interested in the movements of Wellington Mapes on this day. It was a full half hour later that a tottering figure, muffled to the eyes, emerged from the barber shop, and as if by magic, a taxicab rolled up to the curb and was off with the old man as quick as a flash. I am with you this time, my fine friend, said Godall to himself, and when the second taxicab was halted at 23rd street by the cross town tide of traffic, and an exceedingly dirty plumber with a high powered runabout of splendid appointments was next in line. 2 the house was old, yet it retained in its grim signs of age every touch of its pristine magnificence. It occupied a park of probably three acres overlooking the river, a bluff overhung and concealed the tracks of a railroad running beside the placid Hudson. Hemming in the place on three sides were the towering lights of encroaching apartment houses on the river front for blocks. The entire slope was a net of paved streets flanked by magnificent structures of terra cotta and brick. Only this sequestered square, its lawn overgrown, its shrubbery running riot, and its fences falling to decay, suggested the glories of old Washington Heights in revolutionary days before the city had traveled north over the ridge. On the other side of the hill were the 13 trees Alexander Hamilton himself planted as symbols of the units of the young nation. 10 minutes walk to the north, overlooking the Harlem river from the Heights, was the historic mansion where first the British, then the colonial officers had gathered about the mahogany and planned their scheme of battle. The house stood four square in its little park. It was of three stories surmounted by a mansard roof. A veranda clung to its river face one end sagging under the rotting timbers laid more than a century ago. Godall had chosen a rear window on the first floor after a painstaking reconnaissance of the situation. His blood tingled. It was rarely that he indulged in an adventure of breaking and entering and then only for high stakes, as now. But tonight there was an added zest in the affair. Mapes had been a roaring lion in his day, and to tamper with him and his possessions at his zenith would have been to invite certain destruction. All this had changed now with the coming of age, and when Godall had set forth airily on this adventure, he had not anticipated entering a web. Yet two vehicles do not dog a fictitious person without reason. And Godall, as he worked, could not help wondering if he alone had been successful. Successful in picking up the right trail. The mere fact that the crafty old man had on at least two occasions taken such pains to cover his tracks after an open appearance in Wall street gave rise to a thousand speculations. It was simple enough for a man of Godall's talents. The French window gave easily and noiselessly. Godall found himself in a broad room that seemed long unused. Through an open door he caught the sound of tinkling silver. Mapes was at dinner. If Godall's information was correct, the old man was attended by but one servant. That servant would now be engaged in caring for his master's wants at table, and the light footed thief moved forward in the gloom and lifted a dusty tapestry leading to the adjoining library. A low light was burning there and the window curtains were drawn tight. It had the familiar pleasant smell of tenancy. In one corner was a closed desk. Adjoining it was a small safe let into the wall. In the center, under a hanging gas lamp, was a table piled with books and odds and ends. A tray with a decanter of liquor and a half emptied glass stood invitingly in the centre. Several loose sheets of paper lay on the table, one held down by a pen, still wet. It was as he had learned. The man with a soul seared by avarice, extending over an active life of more than 50 years, had developed one queer trait of character in his declining days. This was his infatuation for music. Mapes had picked up and reduced to occidental scoring the weird chants of some eastern tribes he had encountered in his wanderings. There had been no principality too mean for this famous meddler to pry into its secrets. And out of his adventurous past all he now retained was the memory of those mystic chants whose significance stretched back thousands of years. It was said that the old man toiled unceasingly, setting these airs down on paper. Apparently he had been bent over his task within a few hours for a sheet of music. Scores, each inscribed in a trembling hand with fragments of impossible themes, lay on the blotter. Godall picked up one of them and ran over the air in his head. But he was not here through interest in exotic melody. He sought something else. Yet he was willing to take advantage of what seemed an old man's abstraction in a hobby, if by its means he could accomplish his own ends. The sound of a heavy chair scraping over a harsh floor brought Godall to a sense of the immediate present. Softly he slipped behind a velvet hanging and waited. It would be a long wait, but the task was worthy of the pains. Wellington Mapes entered the servant, following at his heels and turning on the lights. The room was so heavily curtained that even the brilliant stare of the chandelier could not be seen from the outside. The servant withdrew immediately, and as he passed through the door, the old man took a key from his pocket and closed and locked it. He would be alone. Godall's flesh tingled again. The success of his venture largely depended on the next act of Wellington Mapes. Godall's task would not permit him to work under the protection of sleep. He must drug the old man's senses deeper than such surface somnolence as a constitution of 80 vigorous years can call upon for solace. Mapes seated himself in his easy chair at the table and for several moments gazed abstractedly ahead of him him. Finally he roused himself and methodically lifted a brass salver from the desk and placed it carefully on the floor beside his chair. He next took up a bunch of keys that lay beside him, rested his left arm on the arm of the chair so that the keys hung over the brass salver, and let his head fall back. It was true, then. Wellington Mapes still indulged this unique habit in his old age. In his early days, Wellington Mapes had reduced the science of sleep to elementals, to lose himself in sleep until the muscles of his fingers relaxed and let fall the keys in the resounding salver. Ensuring an instant awakening was all the rest he required to refresh himself for hours of toil. He had learned the trick from a famous physician, and thenceforth had practised it as sedulously as the great specialist himself. The old man's breathing became more and more regular. Godall crossed the room with padded steps, watching the keys with fascinated eyes. Suddenly the fingers relaxed and the keys fell but the resounding crash of their contact with the resonant brass did not follow. They fell softly into the waiting hand of the intruder. Godall straightened up with a smile and regarded the keys in his palm. The old man was his prisoner for the moment at least, as securely as if bound by chains. Godall knelt softly beside the recumbent form and gently touched the loose flesh of the throat with a thumb and forefinger. With a touch as soft as running water, he exerted pressure on the throbbing carotid arteries. Consciousness would not return to that numbed brain until the blood was again permitted to resume its course. It was a trick Godall had acquired in Java, where it is frequently used. To this device of the ancient Javanese, he added another of the moderns. He took from a pocket with his free hand a band of soft rubber, and as carelessly as if he operated on a patient under ether, he proceeded to stretch this over the gray head resting on the cushions. He brought it down to the neck, tightened it, adjusted two soft molds of rubber in the place of his pressing fingertips, and stood away, regarding the finishing task with satisfaction. Now he might go about his business. First there was the desk. It was a chance, a small chance, but he must be thorough. The lock came with a click, and he stood up and watched and listened. He gave thanks that Wellington Mapes spent his evenings behind locked doors, free from the eyes even of trusted servants. Inside the desk was a litter of letters and memoranda, mostly pertaining to business, business carried on by the means of the cash that came from the four winds. Friends, Godall did not seek money. A letter attracted his eye. He picked it up and carried it over to the light. His quick sense of detail told him that the flap had been steamed and carefully resealed. By whom? Not by Wellington Mapes, surely, because the letter was torn open raggedly at the top. He examined a second and a third. All bore the same evidence that someone was tampering with the mail of this burned out creature of many lives. Godall, his curiosity aroused, drew forth an enclosure. It was a torn scrap of paper, some insignificant memoranda relating to a chart of stocks. Gamblers chart stocks in much the way as the weather bureau charts. The weatheroccupied one side. Surely there was nothing in that to repay a prying person the trouble of intercepting a man's mail. Godall, a magician in ciphers, studied the words and the formation of the letters. But he brought his mind away from the task. Satisfied that the inscription contained no hidden message, he examined the other side of the paper at the top, it bore the embossed name of Wellington Mapes. It was a sheet of paper the old man had used in his endless scoring of his weird music. There were a dozen bars of wobbly musical notes, which, as Godall mentally ran through them, revealed a jumble of sounds without lilt or rhythm. A second enclosure he found to have been written on a similar sheet, although the whole sheet was intact and without musical inscription. So with a third and a fourth, some contained fragments of strange chants similar to those lying on the table beside the heavily breathing Wellington Mapes. Each of the communications was signed with the initial R. The thrifty correspondent, whoever he might be, seemed to have made use of Wellington Mapes waste paper. Thrusting several letters into his pockets for examination at his leisure, Godall put the rest aside and resumed his search. The safe bore an intricate lock, but the fingers of the rogue, schooled to recognize the silent impact of the hidden tumblers, readily conquered the combination. There was something fantastic in the boldness with which he worked with the sleeping man at his side. From time to time he stopped to listen, but otherwise gave no sign that the situation was perilous. In the safe was a litter of odds and ends, money, papers, and a drawer of foreign coins. Another of rudely carved ornaments and decorations in gold, silver and hard stones, each of them probably with its tale of blood and disaster. Godall gave them hardly a glance. He explored every nook and crevice of the room, to no avail.

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Spinquest is a free to play social casino avoid where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Finally, with infinite caution, he ran his delicate fingers through the clothing of his unconscious victim. But Mapes wore no belt. It might be around his neck, then. Yes, a pouch hung on a thong under the shirt bosom. With hands that trembled ever so little, Godall untied the string that bound the neck of the pouch. His fingers were alive as they searched the recesses. It was here. He drew forth a roughly shaped circlet of zircon. It was large enough for a man's first finger. The characters, microscopic in size, engraved on its surface, were of a language 2000 years dead. Godall took from his own pocket a stone of similar size and shape. To the touch, the two were identical. Yet even his skill had not been equal to the task of counterfeiting the inscription of the original. He placed the substitute in the pouch and replaced the pouch in the bosom of the unconscious man. The chances were, he thought, that Mapes would not discover the fraud for months, possibly never. Yet the substitute was dross, and the original, which Godall slipped into the back of a capacious watch case, was a passepartout, a talisman, a charm, a division of kingship, the mere possession of which, in its long forgotten day, would have enabled its bearer to pass unquestioned through the sacred places of an ancient empire. Today it was a curio, a mere nothing. Yet to the mind of the man now treasuring it, it was worth the risks of a night not yet ended. Mapes had confiscated the strange object from the effects of a heathen prince whom he had found occasion to make away with in the course of his business. It would be just as well considered its new owner if the heirs or assigns of that same prince did not find the magic stone in one's keeping. It was worth possessing at the expense of a great deal of pains for one who was collecting for the sake of art itself. Some day, thought Godall, the British Museum must own it, to treasure it away among its unseen gems and symbols. Only Godall and the British Museum were institutions to value its true worth, and this Wellington Mapes, who carried it in a pouch on his body. Waking and sleeping, Godall settled the old man's head comfortably against the cushions, arranging his clothing and posture with great care. So far, all was well. It now remained only to escape and at the same time to unlock the fettered senses of his victim. I am presenting you with 30 minutes of eternal time in exchange for your bauble, he said, nodding familiarly at the sleeping form. At your age, one must treasure time beyond rubies. Smiling blithely, he stepped to the tall clock opposite and turned back the hands a half hour. Likewise, he adjusted the hands of the watch of his victim. Standing beside him, Godall measured the distance to the curtain behind which he had taken refuge. On entering here, it would take quick work, the type of skill he rejoiced in. With his fingers pressing the arteries whose resumed flow would bring consciousness to the numb brain, he removed the rubber band. With one movement, he tossed the keys into the waiting salver and leaped to his curtain. The sleeper sat up with a start of one suddenly roused from force of habit. His fingers sought the keys and the salver. For a short space he sat idle, summoning his lagging senses. Then he drew his chair to the table and resumed his eternal occupation. 3 It was midnight when Godall found the coast clear and left the house behind him. He hugged the ragged picket fence, shadowed by its wild tumble of overgrown shrubs. A person in his attire, with a face well decorated with lead grease, would be given short shrift if found prowling about such a place at this hour of night. He waited patiently at the gate for a full half hour, and then suddenly he straightened up and started down the neglected avenue. At the corner a man stepped out from the shadow of a tree, stood stock still in front of him, and laughed. Well, my fine jail bird, said the man genially, but with a distressingly businesslike air. Godall peered into the leering features. Even he, alert for every eventuality, was ill prepared for the surprise the sight of this man's face gave him. Quick as a flash, however, he had flattened one eyebrow and drawn up one corner of his mouth, a trick that transformed his features. His quick wits worked fast. The night's adventures had developed a sudden and amazing illumination. Scott. He exclaimed with a sneer of contempt. You miserable incompetent. I thought we had lost you and your pack of amateurs in lower 7th Avenue this afternoon. Marvin Scott was known to the master rogue as a young dandy who did his best to ape Godall the exquisite in the clubs he frequented. Of good family, Scott had been advanced in the diplomatic service for several years, till his taste for wild escapades had led to his dismissal. So at least the story ran. The unexpected mention of his own name, coming with sneering sarcasm from this soiled person in jeans, carried Scott off his feet. But he quickly recovered himself, seizing Godall by the shoulders, a fatal move. For the next instant his wrists were in the grip of wire like fingers. He struggled toward the light. Who the devil are you? He cried, battling furiously. I don't know you. You will, said Godall vehemently. He had taken a long shot, and even now that he felt sure of his ground, he was entirely aware that the infallible Go Doll was lost if this man recognized him on such a venture. That the House of Wellington Mapes was being watched could mean but one thing. The old fox was at his old games again. He had long held a suspicion that Marvin Scott's long journeys hither and yon about the earth were not wholly unofficial. This thing was as clear as day the gentleman adventurer could be here in but one capacity as a secret agent of the State Department. You have made a pretty mess of this business. Cried Godall. He released his hold, but he thrust out his chin so savagely that the other, nonplussed at the sudden turn affairs had taken, shrank before him. Do you think I have nothing better to do than to devote my time to your failures? Tell me who among you had the wit to trace Mapes here after he doubled on you. Tell me that. Take your hand off your gun, godall commanded, pursuing his advantage for the other, perplexed in spite of his chagrin at the way this stranger had ridden him down, made a move toward a pocket. The stranger's tone was one of authority in his trade, no man knows his brother. Follow me, said Godall over his shoulder as he started off. And remember, he said as he waited for the other to overtake him, I am Brown. If you call me anything else in the next half hour, I will see to it you are started to Shanghai on foot. In the COVID of the darkness. As they proceeded, Godall indulged in a smile. So young Malvern Scott, in the role of a diplomatic agent, had been assigned to match his wits against the wily old Mapes. The situation that had promised to be exceedingly embarrassing was turning out entirely to Godall's liking. His man, who it was plain to see accepted him now in his character of a disgrunted superior, was following along as tamely as if he had been accustomed all his life to take orders from a plumber. They mounted the steep hill to Broadway and then crossed to Amsterdam Avenue. Godall picked out an all night saloon and entered the side door. The back room was deserted, and he and his companion were soon sitting down and regarding each other with very different emotions. I suppose, said Godall wearily, that if I had let you have your way, you would have further distinguished yourself by picking me up and turning me over to the police. Is a common housebreaker, eh? The other man said nothing. He was trying to remember where he had seen this face before, if it had not been for the smear of plumbago as black as lampblack running parallel to the nose, the desk might have been easier. Godall shook his head, a queer smile playing about his lips. The damnable part of it, he went on in a tone of utter disgust, is that now that I have finished up another one of your failures, you will get the credit for it, just as you have done in the past. Godall took an envelope out of his pocket, one of the three pilfered from the littered desk of Wellington Mapes. As a piece of fine art, he said, now enjoying the situation to its utmost. I call your attention to this, my man. Did you by any chance think that you were playing with a baby when you undertook to scrutinize the mail of Wellington Mapes? A child of five could have done a better job of steaming than that. Scott's eyes bulged at the sight of the letter, which, it was true, had already passed through his hands. All his defences were now down. He sat silently watching the dirty and offensively authoritarian person of whom he had had the bad luck to run afoul as that individual gave his undivided attention to the enclosure of this envelope. The adventure of the night was, after all, a mere bagatelle to Godall. Something infinitely more interesting was on Anne now he read and re read the words of the letter. They suggested nothing but margins and rights dividends and Supreme Court decisions affecting big business. He turned the paper over, and a second time a dazzling illumination stole over his senses. He had begun to discover that two and two make four. There was a decrepit piano in the room. Godall stepped over to it and, holding the paper with its straggling bars of music, he fingered the notes over. I suppose that means Nothing to you, Mr. Marvin Scott, he said. Scott shook his head, but a dull red began to burn in his cheeks. A dozen of these letters had passed through his hands, but not until this moment had he thought of attaching any significance to the crazy scores written on the back. No, I suppose not, said the plumber person abstractedly. Let me have your pen. It was then 12:30. At 1:30 Godall handed Scott a sheet on which he had written the answer to the riddle. It was a cipher, after all. The crafty old Mapes had buried it in the music score. It is a bit clumsy, said Yodall, but at least it has the advantage of not requiring a written key, and it can be varied at will. The key ran as A AA B equals AB C equals AC D equals AD E equals AE F equals ba G BB H equals BC I BD J BE K equals ca l CB M equals CC N equals CD O equals CE P equals DA Q equals DB R equals DC S equals DD t de u ea v EB w EC X equals ed y EE the dazed young man took the paper from Godall's hand. His face was flushed with an intermingling of enthusiasm and chagrin. When he looked up, Godall, the soul of indulgence was beaming on him. Reduce your score to letterscdef G, A, B, C, he said. The F and the G are blinds, you see, he said. So are the sharps and flats. When you come to a chord, disregard all but the dominant note. I see I must teach you elementals. Scott took the letter and set to work feverishly. Soon it was done. By gad. Wonderful. He cried, and he read the translation. Flamenco and Naos complete Perico not later than the 15th. Flamenco, naos, and Perico. Godall rummaged his brain. Those, if he remembered rightly, were the three islands of the Pacific side of the Panama Canal, which the government was fortifying with such secrecy. It beats all. Cried the youth. Outside of Goethals on the House and Senate Committee on Military affairs and possibly the War College, there is not another man alive supposed to know those plans. And yet old Mapes, practically dead and buried 10 years ago so far as his ability to meddle is concerned, has walked right into the middle of things with his damnable organization and snitched the plans right out from under our noses. I presume said Godall, whose mind, working back through a series of pictures, had suddenly found a new inspiration. I presume, seeing you have distinguished yourself so signally on this end of the combination, that you have not the remotest idea who is working the other end. The enthusiasm of the other was suddenly squelched. He blurted out his complete failure. Do you happen to know a smooth little Jap named Adichie? Yasaqua? Asked Godall. He is taking 100 years to circumnavigate the globe. Very well, said Scott in surprise, the mildest little creature that ever Yes, I knowvery mild indeed, retorted Goodall sharply. Remember, this is your affair. I am not to be known in it, not even to the chief. Recollect that, or off goes your head at the collarbone. Scott, he said, leaning forward, Yassaquai is interested in music, deeply interested in music. He transcribes it into pot hooks of his own. Don't attempt to decipher his pothooks. That would be asking too much of you. You but raid his rooms after 11 in the morning and you will find just what the government of Japan thinks of flamenco. Laos. And Perico. And Scott, he added, looking very dignified and solemn, make it a point not to know me when we meet the next time. I congratulate you on the successful termination of your assignment. I have the honor of wishing you a very good morning. End of Counterpoint. Chapter 5 of Adventures of the Infallible Go Doll by Frederick Irving Anderson. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. The Fifth Tube one It will be observed, noted the Pharmacopoeia, that the size of the drops of different liquids bears no relation to their density. Sulfuric acid is stated by Durand to yield 90 drops to the fluid drachm, while water yields but 45 and oil of anise according to Professor Proctor, 85. It follows then, that the weight of the drop varies with most liquids, but few experiments on this subject have been recorded, the oldest being contained in Moore's pharmacopoeia universalis of 1845. More accessible to the American and English student are the results of Bernoulli and so on. Godall the Infallible Godall did not have the printed page before him, but he had visualized it in one glance only a few hours before, and the imprint was still fresh on his memory. Reduced to elementals, a drop of liquid varies in size from 1 3rd to 1 1/2 minims. Godall split the difference and called a drop and a minim synonymous for his purpose. Later, if he were so minded, he might arrive at precise results by means of atomic weights. He began a lightning mental calculation as he sat idly stirring his beer of Pilsen with a tiny thermometer, which the proprietor of this Hanover Square resort served. With each stein of beer it should be 52 degrees Fahrenheit. My friend, said the master of the house, who in passing saw that Godall was seemingly intent on the thermometer. Godall was not intent at all on the tiny thread of mercury rather he was studying the drops of golden brown liquid rolling off the pointed end of the glass instrument. However, it was as much as one's life was worth to dispute the proper temperature of beer at this eating place. And Godall smiled. Childish acquiescence and express explained that he was awaiting with impatience the rise of half a degree of temperature before he indulged his thirst. It should be just such a colour, he mused, possibly a little more inclined to orange and a little syrupy. When, stone cold and with his head thrown back and his eyes shut, he completed his calculation. There should be 61,440 such drops to the Gallant at 10 cents a drop. Tut, tut. He exclaimed to himself, conscious of feeling exceedingly foolish. It was so simple, so insolently obvious, like all great inventions and discoveries once they have been uncovered. This was one of the three tasks he had dreamed of, each worthy to be the adventure of a lifetime, three Tasks he had dreamed of as a poet dreams of a sonnet that shall some day flow from his pen with liquid cadence, as an author dreams of his masterpiece, the Untold Story. As an artist dreams of a picture with an atmosphere beyond the limits of known pigments. One was the Julius Tower, where at the bottom of a well lay 30 millions in coined golden eagles, hoarded by an emperor more medival than modern against the time when he must resume the siege of Paris. The second was the fabled chain of the Incas, 100 fathoms of yellow gold beaten into links. It lies purple with age in the depths of a bottomless lake 10,000ft in the clouds of the Peruvian Andes. And the third, it was this nectar of the gods, more potent, more precious than the rarest of collected vintages. The Julius Tower and the fabled chain were remote, the one guarded by an alien army, the other guarded by superstition. But this nectar lay within a stone's throw of where Godall sat now, studying with the fascination of a great discovery the tiny drops of liquid falling from the tip of the glass thermometer, each drop shaping itself into a perfect sphere under stress of the same immutable laws that govern the suns. Ah. Cried a voice of truculence behind him, and his precious mug of beer was unceremoniously snatched away from the hand of Godall by Herr Schmaltz. In his abstraction, the master rogue had violated a rule of the house. The temperature of the brew had climbed to 60. Godall, with an amused smile, watched the testy old host adjust the temperature of a fresh mug to a nicety, and when the mug was returned to him, he drank deep at the other's insistent commands. Every man to his own religion, thought Godall. His is 52 degrees Fahrenheit. Mine is gold. Godall, swinging his cane with a merry lilt, picked his way up the crooked street under the elevated to Wall Street. To the east, the street was lined with grimy warehouses. To the west, it was lined with marble. To the west was the heart of gold. Godall turned west, every window concealed a nest of aristocratic pirates plotting and scheming for more gold. In the street, the hoi polloi were running errands for them, enviously cognizant of the shiny silk hats and limousines of their employers. Gold bought everything the heart could desire. Gold attracted everything, with invisible lines of force radiating on all sides. An express wagon was backed up to the curb. Curious pedestrians were peering over each other's shoulders, attracted and held spellbound by no more rarer sight than a pyramid of rough pine boxes, each as big as a shoebox, piled on the pavement. The boxes contained gold ingots of gold.

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is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. If the guards who stood on each side of the sweating porters carrying the boxes inside had not looked so capable, it was more than likely that many individuals in the crowd would have remembered that they had been born thieves thousands of years ago and fought madly for the possession of this yellow stuff. It should obey the laws of gravity and be subject to the stress of vacuum, mused Godall, still delighted with the obvious idea he had discovered over his beer in Hanover Square. I think, he wandered on ruminatively, I think I shall reduce it to its absolute atomic and beat it into a frieze for the walls of my study. 61,000 drops to the gallon. It should make a frieze at least 4 inches wide. And why not? He thought abruptly, as though some sprite in him had snickered at the grotesque idea. It was in this way that the dead and buried races of the Andes prized the yellow metal, not as a vulgar medium of trade and exchange, but as a symbol of kingship, a thing to be possessed only by a king. They decorated the walls of their royal palaces with bands of beaten gold. It must have been very satisfactory, thought Godall, pursuing his whimsical idea. At least, he added as an afterthought for the kings. He paused at the curb, and his ascetic eye sought not the boxes of gold that lay on the pavement, but the exquisite lines of the little structure of which the barred door stood open to receive the treasure. The building was no bigger than a penthouse on the roof of any of the surrounding skyscrapers, yet with its pure lines and its stones mellowed with the wash of time, it was a polished gem in a raw setting. It stands, as anyone may see, like a little Quaker lady, drawing her shawl timidly about her to shut out the noise and clamour of the world crowding in on all sides. On one side rises a blank wall 20 or more stories in height. On the other the cold grey pile of the sub treasury stands guard and stolid and sullen as the Great Pyramid itself. The windows were barred so that even a bird might not enter. The door was steel studded. The very stones seemed to cluster together as if to hide their seams from prying eyes. The cornices were ample for a flood and the tiles of the roof were as capacious as saucers. Before the days when electrolytic chemistry came to the aid of the crude agencies of earth, air, fire and water, the very smoke that emerged from the blackened chimneys was well worth gathering to be melted down in a crucible to yield its button of gold. The whole represented the idea of a strong house of a past age. It was the assay office of the United States that Godall regarded if, thought Godall delightedly as his eye caressed the picture, if it were painted on china, I am afraid, friend Godall, you would not sleep until the plate was secure in your possession. The hour of one was suddenly stridently ushered in by a crash of steam, riveting hammers like the rattle of machine guns, little apes of men high in the air back of the little building were driving home the last of the rankings roof girders of a tiny chimney like skyscraper, which in several months time was to absorb the functions with ultra modern methods so long and so honourably exercised by the beautiful little house in the street, the old Assay office. Godall passed on and shortly was in his lodgings. There was mellow contentment here, something he prized above all things, and he sighed to think that he would not know this comfort again for weeks. That same day, as an expert electrician named Dalog, with a pronounced Danish accent, he presented his union card and obtained employment at 60 cents an hour. Things worth doing were worth doing well in his philosophy, and though he hated soiled fingers and callous hands and walking delegates, he must regard the verities. 2 the spick and span New Assay office of the United States is sometimes described as the house without a front door. Indeed, it has no front door, but it has two back doors and gets along very well at that. In reality it occupies two back yards, balancing itself nicely on the party line between a parcel of land fronting on Wall street and another on Pine. The Wall street entrance is effected through the dingy halls of the now tenantless assay office of the olden time. On the Pine street side a tall iron paling suggests to the passerby that something more precious than bricks and mortar is contained within. There is a wicket gate of ornamental iron in the fence, wide enough to admit two men abreast or to allow the passage of the hand trucks laden with boxes of gold and silver bullion. A long wooden ramp, uncovered a temporary structure, connects the street with a window in the second story of the new building, which for the time is serving the purpose of a door. Some day the precious parcel of land standing between the gaunt face of the new building and the street will be occupied by a pretentious facade, and then the magnificent plant that turns out pure gold day and night at the rate of some $40 million a year will be lost to view entirely. Now to the street passenger, it suggests nothing of its function, suggests less, in fact to the imagination than the pine boxes laden with bullion, whose appearance daily is always calculated to draw a breathless audience. The walls are sheer, without architectural embellishment of any kind. It is, in fact, nothing more than the rear of a skyscraper some day to be given a face. It was 4 o' clock in the afternoon of a June day. The upper windows of the assay office stood open, and through the apertures there emerged a fine sustained hum like the note of some far away violin. It told the passerby that the motor generators of the electrolytic plant within were churning at their eternal task of separating gold from dross. A party of four men were in the act of leaving the place on the pine street side. One was the superintendent of the plant and another the master refiner, the two men responsible for the wealth within. Two men whose books were balanced each year on a set of scales that will weigh a long ton or a lead pencil mark with equal nicety. A third man of the party was a Canadian government official who had come down from Ottawa to inspect this latest monument to the science of electrolytic chemistry. He was not interested in the assay office as a strong house. It had long ago passed into tradition that the mint of the United States with its accessories is inviolable. And to ask whether this latest plant of its kind in the world were burglar proof would be to laugh. The fourth member of the party was the chief of a division of the United States Secret service, who in passing through the city had run down to find out whether guinea gold owed its particular color to a unique atomic structure or to the presence of a trace of silver. On the answer hung the fate of two rascals he had laid by the heels. No, you haven't the idea yet, the master refiner was saying. To the Canadian official, we superimpose a low frequency alternating current on the direct current for the purpose of shaking out the bubbles of gas that otherwise would prove very troublesome. That is all due to a small percentage of silver, the superintendent was explaining to the secret agent, and the latter was gnawing his mustache in chagrin, for the answer meant that he had barked a coon up the wrong tree. At this point an incident occurred, seemingly trivial in itself, the significance of which, however, struck the four with the force of a thunderbolt A few hours later on that momentous evening. It had to do with the secret agent's enforced moderation in the matter of tobacco. His physician had ordered him to cut his nicotine allowance down to three cigars a day, and now, in the first throes of his abstention, he was as cross as a bear with a sore toe. The whiff of an Irishman's Cutty pipe smote his nostrils as the little party passed through the gate. Now there is something about the exotic fragrance of a well seasoned Cutty pipe that induces in those who happen to be in its immediate neighborhood an almost supernormal desire for a puff of the weed. Whether it was the intensive quality of the tobacco itself, the ripeness of the clay cutty pipe, or the fact that the Cutty pipe is subjected to a forced draught by reason of the extreme abbreviation of its stem, whichever of these elementary causes it might have been, the psychological effect was the same. The secret agent stared vacantly about him. A mudrat, so the brown Jean scavengers, whose business it is to scoop mud out of the catch basins are known, was igniting a fresh charge of tobacco in the lee of his Mudra mud cart, a watertight affair of sheet steel. The tempted one drew a cigar from his pocket and regarded it with a scowl. It's the vile pipe that scavenger is hitting up as though it were a blast furnace, explained the secret agent guiltily as he bit off the end of his cigar. This is my after dinner pill. Here goes. He searched his pockets for a match, forgetting that he had adopted the practice of traveling matchless to make life easier. He appealed to his three companions, but they could not scare up a match among them.

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Ejaculated the secret agent incredulously. Do you mean to say there are three able bodied men in one bunch who turn up their noses at tobacco? I have heard, he went on with infinite sarcasm, of isolated instances of individuals like our friend Dr. Pease, for example. But three men in one spot. I am amazed it was true nonetheless. Would you honor me with a light? Said the secret agent, stepping over to the Mud Rat and touching him on the shoulder, interrupting that worthy in the act of dumping a scoopful of subterranean mud into the capacious bottom of his cart.

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Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. You seem to be the only man in my class around here, he added facetiously. We have a vice or two in common, my friends, he said airily, indicating the three beside him are pale angels. The Mudrat surveyed the four with an air of vague curiosity. He went through the pockets of his jeans, but his hands came away empty. So, with a freemasonry of smokers, he offered the other the live coal in his cutty pipe for a light, which the agent accepted gracefully. A most remarkable mudrat, commented the secret agent. Did you notice that he wore rubber gloves? I shouldn't be surprised to learn that he patronized a manicure on holidays. As a matter of fact, this particular mud rat did not confine his patronage of manicures to holidays. He had the finest set of fingers in greater New York. Also, noted the professional thief chaser. Mechanically his horse, which is a little curbed on the nigh side, has the number 246 burned in its hooves. Yours must be a very interesting life, commented the bland Canadian, who had never before had the good fortune to dally with a real secret agent. It has its drawbacks at times, said the other, smiling over his cigar. A man gets into this stupid habit of noting details until at the end of the day his head is so muddled with facts for cataloguing that he can't sleep. An hour passed, and still Pine street, in front of the back window that is used as a door, gave no hint of the history then in the making to mark this day in the annals of crime. At the stroke of five, the tall buildings vomited forth their hives of workers. The Wall street district empties itself swiftly at this period of the year, when there are still several hours of daylight for sports afield before dinner for the army of clerks. Fifteen minutes later only a thin stream remained of the flood that had overflowed the sidewalk. A pushcart man catering to messenger boys and the open air brokers of the curb was resting on his cart taking stock of his day's business. The mudrat who worked at his unsavory calling with the aid of rubber gloves was still industriously burrowing in the depths of the manhole. A white suited street sweeper, a son of sunny Italy with his naturalization papers in his pocket, was pursuing his task to the tune of the Miserere with an insistent accenting of the grace note at the antepenult. A policeman or two swung along the curb. A truck with wheels as big as a merry go round drawn by 10 spans of horses bearing a 60 ton girder for the new Equitable building round the corner rolled past the scene like a juggernaut. One, even one with the sharp eyes of a secret agent, might have photographed the scene at this moment and still overlooked the obvious clue to the situation. The drama was in full swing. It was nearing the hour of six when the curtain came down on the big act, marked, as is usual, by the gentle tinkling of a bell on the seventh floor of the assay office. A man was seen to stop his task suddenly at the sound of the bell and to look at the switchboard standing in the west side of the room. He crossed the room, hurriedly disappearing. He reappeared at the window, staring blankly and rubbing his eyes. Two miles away, one minute later, a liveried page, silver salver in hand, passed through the corridors and parlors of the Holland house, droning wearily. Mr. Hamilton. Mr. Hamilton, they are paging you, said the open eared secret agent to the young master refiner. Here, boy. Telephone, sir. Number 16. And he led the master refiner to the indicated booth. Yes, this is Hamilton. Who is this? Jackson, you say? It doesn't sound like your voice. What's that? Say that again. Come close to the phone, man. I can't make out what you're trying. Empty, you say? The young scientist looked blankly at the narrow walls of the booth that held him. Then with a peremptory tone in his who is this? Where are you? What is this tomfoolery anyway? He pressed the receiver to his ear, his heart thumping. Empty. The tank is empty. You are crazy, man. Evidently the voice at the other end of the wire had become incoherent. Jackson. Cried Hamilton sharply. You are lying. You are seeing things. Can you understand me? He waited for the answer, which did not come, only a suppressed gasp through the telephone Jackson. He cried. Listen to me. Turn round and walk to the tank, then come back and tell me what you see, boy. He shouted through the half opened door of the booth. A dozen pages rushed for the door. Tell Mr. Whitaker to come see me at once. He is the man with a red mustache who is sitting on the ottoman in the smoking room. When Whitaker, the secret agent, thrust his head in the door, he was met by Hamilton bounding out. Hamilton's face told the agent that something big was afoot and as the other dashed out, he followed. Hamilton picked up Banks, the superintendent, on the way out. They left the Canadian gasping and alone. The nice little dinner for four that had been planned for the evening was off. The three officials were half a dozen blocks downtown in a taxicab before the Canadian guest of honor woke up to the fact that, as the white faced refiner had stated bluntly, something was afoot that was not his affair. The street scene that met the eyes of the three as they tumbled out of their cab in Pine street and ran up the long ramp leading to the door was much the same as when they had passed out a short time before. The same actors and different persons. That was all. It was not until three days later that the story leaked out and crowds surrounded the block, gazing at the gaunt assay office as they were wont in lesser numbers to gaze at the rough pine boxes laden with gold. While the dump cart driver and the driver of a steel truck were disputing the right of way at the Nassau street corner, a little group of dumbfounded men stood about a huge porcelain tank on the seventh floor of the building. From their awed silence the tank might have been a coffin. The tank was empty. 40 gallons of gold held suspended in an acid solution of the consistency of good beer at just the right temperature. Temperature had evaporated into thin air. 40 gallons, 61,000 drops to the gallon at 10 cents a drop of it. Now there remained only a few dirty pools settling in the unevenness of the lining. Hanging suspended like washing on the line were two parallel rows of golden shingles. On one line they were covered with canvas black with a scum of dross. On the other the precious metal, still wet and steaming, had formed itself into beautiful branching crystals. But the nectar, the nectar of the gods, through which the dense electric current worked in their eternal process of purifying, selecting, rejecting the nectar of the gods was gone. 3. The three officials looked at each other foolishly, each in his own way, according to his lights and his training, was doing his utmost to grasp the Idea that presented itself with a force of a sledge hammer blow. According to the testimony of the switchboard between the hours of 4 and 6 o' clock on this June afternoon in the year of grace 1913, 40 gallons of piping hot gold plating solution valued at 10 cents the drop, $6,000 the gallon, a quarter of a million dollars. The bulk had been surreptitiously removed by a thief, undoubtedly a thief. So much was obvious from the inviolable precincts of the New York Assay Office adjunct to the United States Mint. Jackson, the assistant refiner on night duty, warned of the interrupted electric current by the bell on the switchboard, was the first to give the alarm. At first blush it would seem that a ton of hay wrapped up in one package would be far easier loot. As to bulk, bulk counting two grains of gold to a drop of liquor, the very weight of the stuff would have been over 10,000 troy ounces, over 800 pounds. And its bulk, counting 7 gallons to the cubic foot, would have been nearly 6 cubic feet, the size of a very respectable block of granite. Yet 800 pounds, 6 cubic feet of the stuff, a quarter of a million dollars had unquestionably departed without leaving a trace of its path. As has been said, the Assay office possesses two perfectly serviceable means of exit and ingress. Back doors, it is true, but still doors. The structure possesses possibly 50 windows. Whitaker raised a window and peered out. The walls were as sheer as the polished sides of an upright piano. That the intruder might have entered by a window was a childish suggestion quickly dismissed. The doors were at all times of day and night guarded by intricate mechanical contrivances of which no one man knew all his secrets. In addition, there were the human guards with their army, six shooters of the peculiarly businesslike aspect that tempts one to refer to them as guns. The three officials all tried to say something after a time, but the thing was beyond words, so soon after the impact. The secret agent trained for such occasions was the first to collect his wits. He began examining the rifled tank. He had not gone far before he began to swear softly to himself. The tank was composed of porcelain and a steel retainer. He pointed to the two rods that ran parallel lengthwise of the empty receptacle. These two rods were covered with a saddle of yellow metal throughout their extent. Suspended from the rods were hooks and roughly cut out of the same sheet of metal suspended from the hooks on one rod were some 50 canvas sacks, each the size of a man's sock. They contained crude bullion from which the plating solution extracted its pure gold.

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Spin Quest is a free to play social casino. Visit spinquest.com for more details. On the other rod, suspended from similar hooks, were yellow plates 10 or 12 inches long, varying from 18 to an inch thick, covered with a fine incrustation of yellow crystals clustering together like grains of damp sugar. What is all this stuff? He asked bluntly, turning to his companions who had sprung to his side when he exclaimed, is it gold? The two men nodded assent. It was solid gold. Pure gold. Even to the roughly hewn hooks, the very electrical connections were of gold. What's it worth? Demanded Whitaker. I could tell you in a second. From my books, began the superintendent. Never mind your books. A million? The superintendent shook his head. He could not yet grasp details. Half a million, easily responded. The refinery. Yes, quite that I should say. Whitaker lifted one of the encrusted plates, still wet from the solution in which it had been immersed so short a time before. He swung it on his finger by means of its golden hook. Doesn't it strike you as a bit strange, he said, that a thief with wit enough to make away with £600 of your precious juice should have left behind half a million dollars in raw gold lying loose in the middle of a room? This was a nut that, for the time being, resisted cracking. The secret agent said, humph, and fingered his vest pocket for the interdicted cigar, which was not there. In emergencies, he said absent mindedly, it is justifiable. He turned to banks and added, see that no one leaves this building until I return. The first thing to do it's foolish, but it must be done is to round up all your employees and bring them here. I suppose all of them knocked off for the day with a clean shower, yes. All of the men had passed through the changing room, emerging therefrom after a shower bath, a fresh suit of clothes, and an inspection. Such is the daily routine. Whitaker walked thoughtfully down the ramp to the street and sought out a shop where he might procure fuel for thoughtssigars long, strong and black. Then he felt better as he turned into Pine street from Nassau, he noted a small boy of the free tribe of street urchins holding up one dirty foot and howling with pain. Whitaker's methodical mind noted that the foot was of a singularly blotched appearance, as though from a burnt but he had far weightier things on hand than rescuing small boys in distress. The details of the start of the investigation were soon put through. When he re entered the office, every employee of the institution was rounded up, though it was 10 o' clock before the last startled porter was led protesting through the stern officials and put to the question. The trail was blank. It's a blessed thing we have got you with us, said Banks, who had been biting his fingernails since the opening of the drama. It kind of takes off the curse. He looked at Whitaker, truly thankful that so broad a pair of shoulders was there to take the burden. Humph, said Winnaker, who was studying the toes of his shoes as though they contained the answer to the riddle. It is quite evident, he began, that 800 pounds of gold, especially in a fluid state, did not get up and walk off without help. I think, he said, rising, that before we go farther I will take lessons in electrolytic chemistry. We haven't lost much time on this case, and we can afford to waste a few minutes getting at the fundamentals. They retired to the seventh floor, the floor of the yawning porcelain tank, and in a short time Whittaker was in possession of the facts. It was a simple system when all is said and done, this system of refining gold, which had been worked out by the greatest students of the time, the secret agent was put through the elementals of the process of transmuting gold from the alloy by means of the electric current. Very clever indeed, remarked Whitaker. Also, gentlemen, let me add that it is very clever indeed to lock up gold bars downstairs in safes that cost a fortune and leave a tankful of the stuff standing in the centre of an unprotected room like this. But who could come seven stories up in the air and get away with stuff of such bulk? Querulously interjected Hamilton, the thing is preposterous. The preposterous thing, said Whitaker with his drawl, has occurred apparently under your very noses. And from the looks of things, the fact that the liquor was steaming hot did not interfere with the plans of the thief in the least. What is that collection of pipes? He indicated a nest of black varnished iron pipes running along the outside of the tank. Those are the conduits to carry the electric wires, explained the master refiner no sooner were the words out of his mouth than he exclaimed aloud and leaped into the empty tank, running his fingers with feverish haste over the conduit outlets. By gad, I've got it. He cried, his voice a high falsetto under stress of his excitement. Hand me a picture. Portable light. Quick. With an electric bulb at the end of a portable cord, he inspected every inch of the tank, more especially the outlet boxes of the electric wires. Four tubes were required to carry the electric current. There were five. The fifth was empty of wires so cunningly concealed. It lay behind an elbow joint that only eyes sharpened by the idea born of genius could have detected it. With a cry of triumph, the refiner dashed to the door and down the stone stairs. He was at the panel of the switchboard of the converting room, where the electric current is properly tuned for its task of assaying. There were only four conduits leading from the upper floor. The fifth had lost itself somewhere among the studdings and joints of concrete and steel. The astonished Whitaker, finding his recently acquired knowledge insufficient to follow the leaping mind of Hamilton Hamilton, finally seized that individual and cornered him. What is it? He cried. It's as plain as the nose on a man's face. Cried Hamilton. The fifth tube. Good heavens, man, are you so stupid? The fifth tube could drain that tank of its last drop by siphoning it out. He broke away, cheering. They have taken our gold out of the tank, but they haven't gotten it away from the building yet. Find out where that fifth tube runs to, and there you will find our gold. Through the simple means of a syphon, their 40 gallons of precious liquor could have been removed through an aperture scarcely larger than a pinhole. The dawn was beginning to break. Whitaker's mind, clogged by its abnormal meal of technical details, was beginning to run cleanly again. Stop. Cried Whitaker. I am in charge of this affair. I want you to answer my questions in the first place. He cried, seizing the refiner by the arm and twisting his hand above his head. What is the matter with your hands? Hamilton's hands, where he had been pawing about in the electrolytic tank, were stained brown as though from cautery. They were drawn with pain, though in his excitement up to this moment he had not noticed it. Cyanide of potassium. Where did it come from?

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[Narrator]

Oh, you fool. The tank. The tank. Of course, the process. I went all through it with you. The tank contained chloride of gold dissolved in cyanide of potassium. Does it hurt? Inquired Whitaker with an irritating slowness. Hurt do you think you can take a bath in red hot acid and help me trace that extra tube? How the deuce do you suppose that tube ever got there? Instantly the picture of a small burned foot came before Whitaker an inspiration. He held the struggling Hamilton as in a vise. If you will sit still three minutes, said Wittaker, his eye gleaming and a forbidden cigar cocked fiercely, I will guarantee to lead you to the place where your precious gold isor was. I won't promise which. Or here. Come along with me, he said as an afterthought, and the pair started for the street on the run. Whitaker came to a stop on the corner where he had seen the barefooted boy yelling with pain. What's that? He asked, pointing to a wet spot on the pavement where a liquid had collected in the ruck about a sewer opening. Hamilton dug his hands on the dirt and sprang up with a cry. In the mud were tiny needles of an orange yellow gold. There it is. There's our gold. He cried ecstatically. And then, with a despairing gesture in the sewer. Whitaker was taking advantage of the refiner's desolation to quiz an interested policeman. Yes, it was a fact that a steel dump cart and a steel derrick wagon had brushed hubs at this corner about 6 o', clock, and that the shock had washed as much as a bucketful of mud out of the dump cart. Did the policeman happen to have the names of the drivers? He did, because there had ensued quite a flow of language over the accident, but no arrests. The derrick wagon belonged to the Deignan Company, and the dump cart was one of the wagons of the General Light and Power Company Company. Whitaker broke into an easy laugh. Half an hour later the foreman of the stables of the General Company was on the carpet before the fierce cigar could he produce Dump Cart no. 36, to which Whitaker blew rings. About his head, was attached a horse with a slight curb in its nigh hind leg. The horse, no. 246, was driven by a man who wore rubber gloves. Thus the expert thief catcher. Simple as falling off a log, Whitaker's gesture seemed to say, as he put the question to the stable boss. Then he it all goes to show that the average thief loses in the long run in the battle of wits because he leaves some apparently inconsequential clue on his trail, some tiny clue that is as broad as a state road to a trained intelligence. If, for instance, he said, forgetting for the moment the man standing before him twirling his hat in his hands, if, for instance, that mudrat had not played on my one weakness by blowing the smoke from his infernal cuddy into my face, the chances are he would have given me a long chase. The Mudrat. Exclaimed the two officials in unison. The trained intelligence accepted their implied and wondering admiration of his powers of divination with a nod and turned again to the stable boss.

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[Narrator]

play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Now my man, he said. I want dump cart number 36, the man who was driving it this afternoon, and the horse here at the gate in 15 minutes. I will send one of my men with you if you can tell me where to lay hands on it. Sir, said the stable boss, still rotating his hat, we would be much obliged to you sor dump cart 36 was stolen from the stables this noon and we just set out a general alarm for it through the police when your man nabbed me. At this point in the prosecution of the investigation of the looting of the SA office of its liquid assets, the irresistible force of the trained intelligence in charge met with an immovable post. It never got much farther. The missing wagon was found abandoned in the Newark Meadows, the humane driver having provided the horse liberally with grain and hay before departing. Curiously enough, the interior of the wagon had been coated with some acid proof varnish. In the bottom, crystallized by the cold, was a handful of needles of gold to show that dump cart no. 36 was indeed the receptacle in which the thief had carted off 40 gallons of gold worth 10 cents a drop. It was a simple matter to trace the mysterious pipe from the gold tank through the junction boxes of the electric system to the electrical manhole in the street. Evidences were numerous that this extra conduit had been installed by the far thinking thief at some time during the period when the building was in the process of erection. In the bottom of the manhole were found a few pints of the precious stuff that had been siphoned down through seven floors to the street by the adroit expedient of breaking open a concealed plug. I must confess I am not much of a scientist, said Whitaker A week later. And before we turn the page on this subject, I want to find out one thing. Admitting that our dump cart friend got away with a quarter of a million dollars worth of gold in the form of mud, what value would it be to him? How could he get the gold out of it? An indulgent smile curled Hamilton's lips. The process of extracting gold from mud is one of the simplest in chemistry and mechanics. And the joke is, he went on, screwing up the corners of his mouth, that when that crafty mud rat has manufactured it into bullion again, he will probably have the supreme gall of bringing it here and asking us to buy it. The devil of it is that we shall have to buy it, too. At this remote date, the Assay Office officials are still in doubt whether they have repurchased their stolen treasure. It is worthwhile to say in passing that the surety companies responsible for the men responsible for the treasurer of the Government Assay Office are still engaged in suing each other and the various contractors responsible for fitting and inspecting the interior of the new building. The robbery undoubtedly had been planned and the properties arranged months ahead of time. But aside from the fact that an expert electrician named Dalog, who had been employed on the premises at odd times a man with a pronounced Danish accent turned up hopelessly missing, the case has not progressed. It promises in time to become as celebrated in court annals as the antique litigation of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce. Whitaker seldom confessed his failures, but several months later, over cigars in the library of his friend Godall the Exquisite, he related the story, unabridged of the most remarkable bit of thievery in his experience. It was his secret hope that the acute mind of this celebrated dilettante, who had many times pointed his researches with astounding analyses, might help to the solution. Godall laughed. Let us go below the surface, said Godall. Abolish the lure of gold and the world would be born good again. Your mud rat is the apotheosis of the pickpocket pocket. How much better they managed the whole thing. 10,000 years ago, to the remote races of the Andes, gold was not a vulgar medium of trade and exchange. It was a symbol of kingship, a thing to be possessed only by kings. In my small way, said Godall deprecatingly, with a wave of his fine hands, I've erected a monument to the Incas in this room. My frieze. Have you noticed it? A poor thing. Where I have used grains of gold, they used pounds. But to me it symbolizes the same poetic idea. Will you join me in a fresh cigar? Ah, I beg your pardon. One's physician is a tyrant. End of the Fifth Tube. Chapter 6 Part 1 of Adventures of the Infallible Godall by Frederick Irving Anderson. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. An All Star Cast one One afternoon when he was going home from work, a young woman who appeared before perfectly normal sat down beside young Grimsey in an elevated train and asked him whether he did not think people looked silly sitting still and staring at each other the way they have the habit of doing in public conveyances. The remark struck him as being the most sensible one he had heard during his six months residence on Manhattan island. And just as he settled down for an interesting, though somewhat unconventional chat with this normal person, the guard brought in a policeman and and pointed her out as an escaped lunatic. This hit young Grimsey rather hard because he had spent his six months looking for a friend who was a sociable animal like himself. He worked in a bank where he operated a hand powered adding machine and had a cage all to himself with a door that locked on the outside and walls and ceiling of interlaced brass ribbon, to say nothing of an armored concrete floor. There were cages on either side of him in which were locked young men like himself. But just when he felt intimate enough with his neighbor, with no other excuse than sheer proximity to say good morning, his neighbor would be wafted off to some remote cage and a strange face would glower at his advances through the bars. Once he actually did address the paying teller on his right, and that person instantly moved to the far side of his den, as though there were something in the act to affect the soundness of his surety bond. At his boarding house young Grimsey made ineffectual attempts to engage his fellows in social discourse, but they all answered by merely growling over their food like a dog discussing vested interests with a bone he had cornered. Primitive man probably was interested in nothing so much as his food at meal time, but that archaic instinct is surely no excuse for civilized creatures who make a practice of sitting down together at one table. So he began to cultivate friendships through the public prints of people who had the habit or knack of being talked about. Grimsey read about society and uptown society and doings of the Upper west side, and he actually began to take a vicarious delight in their antics, much as the ragged urchin who plants his nose on the frosty window of a toy shop and lets the water of his mouth and his imagination run riot. He gloried in the hobnobbery of the august Imperial Wilhelm and Mr. Carnegie. He knew which of the Waterburys made the deciding goal in the polo tournament and the color of his pony. He could trace the consanguinity of some of the first families through numerous weddings and divorces, and for three whole days he followed with the greatest concern the choosing of the House of Representatives gift for the White House wedding. He knew that Mr. Garry of the Steel Trust left Aix les bains on the 20th and would sail from Southampton seven days later. That Mrs. Bixby's first husband was estranged and that her son by her second marriage resided in Paris through choice. That Mem sahib was the best mare at the Piping Rock show. That the Culver Stones were importing a new necklace of pearls for their daughter who was to marry Comte de Charvres. That Buck stringer of the Harvard 11 kicked with his left foot that the Winstons were about to re establish themselves socially in Washington after being ostracized in Manhattan through overindulgence in the Divorce Court. People at sea, people on shore, at Lenox, in Durham, at Palm beach, it was all the same to Moberly Grimsey. He flitted over the face of the earth in patent leather society in the narrow confines of his hall room every time he opened the extra of an afternoon paper or stirred gossip with his coffee and rolls, and he spiced the whole with juicy paragraphs from a society weekly which confided to him the backstairs talk in the most shameless fashion. So in time he came to acquire a stock of information that would have been of infinite value to a faithful old family nurse in a three story novel or to an editor of a metropolitan newspaper. It was, after all, merely one step in acclimatizing himself to New York, assisting in the laborious process of the transmogrification of one's soul from the person of a gregarious provincial to that of an insular New Yorker. He acquired numerous bowling acquaintances in print, but none on the street. It is hard breaking the crust when one comes from the country. Do not blame young Grimsey. When he began looking for queer places to eat. That was inevitable, possibly, since he was regarded as a suspected person in the sphere that was his own. He might surprise a smile or a nod among the dwellers on the fringe. He began, of course, among the logwood and red ink of the electric lighted restaurants off Sixth Avenue. But the stuff they gave him to eat and drink made him shiver in the wind when he got outside.

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Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. One night he stumbled into a Lombardy boarding house in Ninth street, where for the nonce his spark of sociability was rekindled by a Great Dane dog that rested its chin on his table and regarded him with loving eyes so long as the division of the meet was 50 50. Another night he sat in a back room lined with wine casks and counted 20 men, every mother's son of them, fat and sporting waxed moustaches, enter with mysterious offerings which later he discovered to consist of such things as one reads of in a fashionable short story, or on the carte du jour at Delmonico's or Sherry's truffles, pates, succulent squabs, aromatic sauces, open winged artichokes, bottles half empty, the toll of many larders, for they were all chefs about to prepare food for themselves and eat. Somehow he had never before thought of chefs having to eat, but they did now, before his very eyes, after gathering about a red hot range in the corner and putting the old adage of too many cooks to rout by loading the air with the most tantalizing odors. Then they converted the pool table in the centre of the room into a groaning board, and with many gibberings and gesticulations, and sat down with the utmost enjoyment, except when they turned to scowl at him over his cold ham and cabbage. Down in Pearl Street, a Spanish cook treated him to a dish that made him feel like a three alarm fire. In Washington street he stumbled across an Armenian atrocity in which sulphur was the main ingredient. But he would not have minded the food if they had all not looked so sour when he helped himself to an empty chair and drew up to their table. Aside from the big dog in 9th street, not a soul in all his wanderings so much as nudged his elbow in a spirit of companionship. Even that dog had proved fickle. When a roast came to another table on the evening of the 4th of December, young Mr. Grimsey, pursuing his avocation of seeking out queer places to eat, found himself for the first time since he had come to the city six months before he had left his cage at 4 that afternoon, and profiting by the few hours of grace granted him by an early start, he had undertaken to explore that part of the city contiguous to the old Gansevoort market. There were items of interest on every hand to claim his attention and befuddle his sense of direction. For instance, all the merchants, prosperous looking persons above their collars were attired in common garbage garb, a smock of white cotton that fitted them from head to heels like a priest's cassock. On all the streets were superimposed wooden awnings to the very edge of the pavements and from the eaves hung quarters of beef spring lamb, clipped like French poodle dogs, pheasants, turtles and such. A freight car, ghostily propelled by some unseen force around a corner, gently pushed him off its track. A one horse wagon laden with provisions, disguised by gunny sacks, disputed his right of way in an alley and left him in the gutter. And at length he came upon an object of unusual interest in the shape of two white coated men who seemed to be doing their best to teach cratefuls of live poultry not to stick their heads out between the slats when a second crate of live poultry was descending on them from a six foot height. The poultry did not seem to mind it in the least, and it was evidently not a game, because the two strong men were very sober at their task. Except when one of them found a warm egg, which frequently happened, the finder of the warm egg invariably transferred it into his pocket, indicating the score by holding up his fingers. So interested was young Grimsey indeed, at first in the ducking heads of the poultry and then in the egg score that he found a comfortable wall to lean against and lighted a cigarette. It came on towards 6 o', clock, and when he again recalled himself to his surroundings, he was astonished to note that the strings of beef and other provender and which had so gaily festooned the eaves but a brief time before, had mysteriously disappeared, and only blank boarded windows greeted him. Now, in place of the busy shops he bestirred himself and started off. But to his surprise he found himself in the middle of a miniature walled city with columns and bastions and watch towers. Also, as he read the names of the streets, they were strange to him, such as Grace, Low, Grant and Strong. He caught a glimpse of the river through a gate and deciding that it was the Hudson and indicated the west of the compass which he had lost, he turned his back on it and crossed the now almost deserted walled enclosure to a gate at the opposite side. He struck out on a street lined with warehouses and tenements in the general direction of what he believed to be the New York that he knew. As he crossed a little square he was reminded of the object of his exploration of this locality by a sign on a dusty window which read in tarnished and fly bitten letters gritton's Dining room. It had the outer appearance of a cheap coffee house. Through the dusty glass panel of the door he made out two tables guiltless of cloth and decorated with crockery of the armor plate variety to be found in the poorer class of restaurants. It is quite probable that Grimsey would have passed by Gritton's Dining Room had it not been for a picture in the window. It was a crayon portrait encased in a massive gilt frame shrouded in dust. The picture bore the legend Edward Askew Southern 1858. Even then it is quite probable he would not have tarried to question himself as to the veracity of the legend, never having considered it plausible that an eminent comedian of to day might have sprung from a stock immortal enough to be perpetuated in crayon so far back as 58 had it not been for a playbill draped carelessly over one corner of the ornate though somewhat weather beaten frame. Tonight announced the musty yellow poster which was fully three feet long. Tonight will positively witness the first appearance on the boards of an American stage of the celebrated Mr. Wainbridge Maugham, fresh from 100 nights of distinguished approbation at Drury Lane in his celebrated drama entitled the Hidden Fortune or Every hand against her. Mr. Maugham will appear in the world famous delineation of the character of Willoughby Southerly, a gentleman detective, supported by the original cast including Janice Mabon as Esteema, wistful and winning Mr. Jack Gallant as Sir Everley Turncoat, a serpent Mr. Halsey James as Honest John Wexford bound on a parlous errand, Mr. Horace as Isaac's a true friend, Ms. Voorhees as the maid, a vixen, and numerous others, including every attention to the important accessories of atmosphere, scenery and costumes. Tickets within or at the box office American Theatre, Bowery Grimsey softly opened the door and stepped inside it. The place smelled musty as well it might. The two tablesthere were only two were covered with an unsavory veneer of their calling, and against the side wall and four feet deep at the least calculation, were stacked a heap of rusty old frames enclosing wood cuts, crayons and engravings of a type of art and free drawing long since dead. Packed round and about these as Excelsior is packed around fine china for shipment, were wads of venerable handbills. One wad of perhaps 50 bills celebrated the return of Forrest as Jack Cade another announced Mathilda Huron and her great character Camille. From the date 1854 it seemed that La Dame Eucamily had begun weeping some time before the Civil War. Hearne the Humbug was on the eve of its premiere on another bill, and Teddy the Tiller and the Ice Witch or the Frozen Hand were in the midst of a revival. Of historical importance was the dramatization of the celebrated pictures of Wilkes the Straining for Rent under the title of rent day, with Mr. Hayward and Mr. Hamlin in the principal roles. Grimsey, convinced, sat down at a table, first, taking the precaution to polish its surface with an old newspaper that covered a hole in the cane seat of a chair. He waited for several minutes for the appearance of some sign of ownership, or at least of life, and when nothing developed, he seized a spoon from the pressed glass container and rapped it vigorously against the harvey ized side of the sugar bowl, which, however, gave out only a dull thudding noise. Grimsey rose impatiently and opened a door leading to a side entry. This entry was in fact a long tunnel of brick leading to the street over a roughly paved floor at one end and into blank, impenetrable darkness at the other. In the old days, when Greenwich Village was two miles from Manhattan, it was the custom of the carters who occupied this quarter to leave their carts outside at close of day and lead their tired horses to the stables in the back yard through tunnels running between the houses. This fact Grimsey had gleaned out of a book long ago. If the book were voracious, the impenetrable darkness at the far end of the tunnel must lead to a stable, probably now used as a kitchen for Gritton's dining room. He determined to ascertain whether this was indeed the fact, and to this end he stepped into the tunnel and picked his way over the moist, slippery stones. The passage led for perhaps 40ft into the heart of the darkness and abruptly turned at right angles, terminating six feet farther on in a door through the soiled panes of which showed a dull light. Young Grimsey, in his search for something besides food with his meals during the last six months, had acquired the inevitable snooping curiosity of such an adventurer, the fact that a score of young Turks desired to set up an obscure restaurant where they might dine in peace and quiet was no reason to him why he should not walk boldly in and take a vacant chair and force them to talk in whispers if they wished to continue their family confidences under the disturbed. And the fact that this Mr. Britton, whoever he may have been, advertised a dining room on his front windows and forced volunteer customers to locate the source of food for themselves was sufficient excuse for our explorer boldly to open the door before him and step through the aperture. He did so. Grimsey found himself in the middle of a paved yard, lighted only by the pale reflection from the sky of a late winter afternoon, dark on four sides with the exception of a far corner where two windows glowed warmly, the sound of smothered voices and the occasional clinking of tableware issuing from this corner. He turned his steps confidently in that direction, positive at last that he had stumbled on a queer place to eat and hopeful that here he might find some kindred soul to discuss topics of the day, possibly the art of acting over his meal. There was a fanlight in the door at the corner, but it was so obscured by grime that he did not notice it until his hand was on the knob and he was peering through the opening. He paused in the act of turning the knob. Inside, before his eyes was a long room, evidently comprising the entire ground floor of a rear tenement, for on the opposite side of the apartment windows looked out into another courtyard like that in which he stood. There were 20 persons in the room room, mostly men, but as he looked there came a rattle of chairs on the floor by the near wall, at some spot beyond his range of vision, and in another second he saw three women advancing across the open floor to the far corner, where sat the broad squat figure of an old man with a magnificent head on his shoulders. At this moment, however, the women attracted the attention of the peeping Grimsey more than the man. The advancing group consisted of an old woman, very evidently a grande dame from her dress and manner, supported on each side by a young and good looking Irish girl, evidently her maid's. In addition to the support lent by their round, fat arms, the old lady leaned heavily on a stick which she pushed ahead of her with each feeble step. The ferule of the stick was loose, and as it slid along the hard floor it gave out a curious reedy tone. Suddenly and for no reason apparent to the intruder, the progress of the nice old lady was interrupted by the man in the corner. First he held up one hand, then he rapped sharply on the floor with an impatient foot at which the two maids looked at their frail little charge with a touch of tenderness and slowly turned her about face. And again they retreated beyond the angle of vision of the looker on, but only for a second. The rasping note of the cane sliding across the floor was resumed, and the three started once more for the distant table, this time the stubby old man in the corner rising with much graciousness to receive the old lady from the arms of her two youthful guardians, and thanking them with a courteous gesture, he placed the old lady in her chair, sat down himself, and began speaking, accompanying his words with gestures, every shade of which, even to the uncurling of his fine fingers, seemed a bit of art in itself. Grimsey could not distinguish the words, but as he listened, fascinated at the queer sight on which he had stumbled with no qualms of conscience, he thought this voice must be the most beautiful in all the world. An almost metrical cadence with which the speaker accented his phrases, and the timbre, as vibrant and resonant as the G string of a violin, reached the listener, like a far away song one might hear in a dream. As the old lady raised her face to the speaker, and for the first time the light of the lamp fell full on her features, Grimsey started. He knew the face, but the shock of it suddenly flashing on his vision in this strange quarter of the city scattered his wits so that he could not for the life of him place it. He only knew he had seen that face in the newspapers many times, and the incomplete recollection brought with it an impression of something sweet and good. She belonged to his coterie of newspaper friends, and whatever it may have been, he had read of her. It was something nice. Certainly the real face before him now suggested something to be venerated by all who looked on it, old age come to its own beautifully. His curious attention to this scene was roughly wrenched loose by a cackling laugh from a table nearer the door, a table he had not noticed in his interest in the old lady. As he looked at the merry one, he rubbed his eyes. He was poorly prepared for the surprise. It was none other than Mr. Andrew Carnegie. If Grimsey knew Andrew Carnegie, and he was positive he could pick the diminutive ironmaster in a million. And Mr. Carnegie was engaged in the most cordial, though somewhat guarded, conversation with Mr. John D. Rockefeller. If young Grimsey had not been such a close student of current affairs and personalities in the newspapers, he would have pinched himself and crept away at this juncture. But Grimsey did nothing of the kind. In his eagerness, he polished the dusty glass transom with his glove to get a better view of the scene, which now fairly had his hair standing on end, each follicle counting itself root by root.

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Visit spinquest.com for more details. The two multimillionaires were at dinner. The Iron Master helped himself. Rumble Bottle Grimsey had read only recently words from the lips of Mr. Carnegie himself, to the effect that he and Emperor Wilhelm had one habit in common, that of taking a half glass of liquor with their meals. But Grimsey had no idea that this jolly little ironmaster referred to a glass of this size. It was an eight ounce tumbler. Mr. Carnegie wrapped his legs, which only reached the first rung of his chair about the spindles, and as he quaffed from the goblet without watering the stuff, he manipulated his merry little eyes in the most surprising manner. Evidently the talk had to do with the toupee Mr. Rockefeller wore. Mr. Rockefeller did wear a toupee, and his companion's eyes pointed very plainly to the fact that the wig was somewhat one sided for the moment, disclosing at one corner a bald pate as shiny as a billiard ball. At this moment an untoward accident interrupted the amazing panorama of which Mr. Moberly Grimsey had been so fortunate as to have appear peep on this night of nights he had risen on tiptoe in his excitement he overbalanced himself. The door gave easily, and before he could recover himself he fell headlong into the room. A shriek of many voices punctuated his crash to the floor. Then dead silence, then sudden darkness filled with the scamperings of many feet. Heavy hands laid hold of him so he could not move, and a voice bell like in its intonation, addressed the question to some one near him in the dark. Where is Bannon? Isn't he out in front? And then someone replied in an impersonal tone, no, I sent him down to Murray's an hour ago. That was all. A few words exchanged in the darkness, seemingly apropos of nothing in particular, least of all the squirming form of young Moberly Grimsey which they were holding in their midst. Let me go. Cried the young man, attempting to strike out with his feet, only to find that his feet too were fast. I came here looking for a place toquit that take your thumb. A thumb was doing its best to dislocate his Adam's apple, and a hand over his mouth cut off further remarks from Mr. Moberly Grimsey. He was gently picked up off the floor by four men, one at each quarter. In silence they might have been his pall bearers, so solemnly did they start off with their burden, the hand over his mouth now being supplanted by a handkerchief jammed down his gullet. They turned this way and that. The hollow echoes of their footfalls and the crowding of the men carrying him told him they were threading a tunnel, though evidently not the same magic gate by which he had been permitted to enter on the unsuspecting assemblage. He wondered whither they were taking him. Suddenly the dull sounds of the living city that had always been in his ears became louder, like stage thunder, and a breath of cool air told him he was in a street. A coat was over his head now, so he could not see. He was gently set on the flagging of the curb, and then, in an electric fraction of a second, the coat was gone, the gag was gone, and his pallbearers had vanished. He got to his feet and found himself rubbing his head and surveying a dimly lit avenue that presented no familiar landmarks. The thing had occurred so quickly that now, as he looked round in the dim light and found himself alone, it was quite simple to persuade himself that it was all some lurid fabrication of his brain. He walked to the end of the block and looked at the lamp post. It said Jane Street. On one side some small boy had put a stone through the glass legend on the other side, so the intersecting street remained a mystery. He walked back through the street, trying to fix on the house that had omitted him a few moments before. But all the housesold fashioned brick structures ornamented with iron grilles at doors and windows looked out cheerlessly and impersonally. Suddenly, Moberly Grimsey broke into a run. He must find somebody, because the strangest idea had come into his mind, which, while he fuddled over his whereabouts, seemed to have been working subconsciously at something else. Two blocks farther on, he encountered a young man swinging a cane emerging from a side street. Grimsey did not stand on ceremony. Isn't it a fact? He cried, bringing the young man to a sudden stop by the simple expedient of stopping in front of him. Isn't it a fact that John D. Rockefeller was playing golf at his home in Cleveland, Ohio, this morning, and that he beat the bogey? The young man looked at him for a second before replying. Then he my acquaintance with Mr. Rockefeller is confined to the interesting gossip of his doings as set forth in the newspaper. Newspapers. And he said with a smile, with that authority, I think I can assure you that Mr. Rockefeller indeed was in Cleveland this morning. I recollect an item to that effect in an afternoon edition which I saw but an hour ago. Then how, Began Moberly Grimsey, squaring off and holding up one handful of fingers to count off the points of his argument. How in the Name of the Seven Sins could I have seen him hobnobbing with Mr. Carnegie less than half an hour ago and within 100 yards of this spot? It is rather remarkable, said the other soothingly. Come, are you going in my direction? We will try to figure it out together as we walk along. Grimsey came to his senses. He tried to laugh, to excuse himself with this sudden attack of his on a strangera stranger who seemed very much of a gentleman from the manner in which he had met the situation. Show me how to get out of this hole, if you will, said Grimsey. My mind is giving away. I have just gone through a most amazing experience. In fact, I am not quite sure. I am lost, he said, breaking suddenly in on his disjointed sentences. If you will be kind enough to direct me, I will not further trespass on your good nature. I will do better than that, said the stranger, taking him by the arm. It is but a step to New York. I am going there myself. And indeed it was but a step. Under the guidance of the skilled pilot, the tangles of off shooting streets straightened out, and they set foot in 6th Avenue as unexpectedly to Grimsey as one comes on a hidden pond in the Maine woods. Grimsey turned round and surveyed the entrance to the New York he knew I was looking for an out of the way place to eat, he explained. And then abruptly I thank you. I will not intrude further on your good nature. You must think me loony, but believe me. His guide held up a slender gloved hand and smiled deprecatingly. If you have not yet dined, he said, let us make it a company of two. I have leisure and an appetite. Possibly I can be of service to you. The stranger looked at his companion out of shrewd gray eyes Some restless spirit within was clamoring for adventure, and the occasion seemed to promise something of the sort. Surely he led Grimsey, the latter protesting weakly, to Fifth Avenue, and there, a block to the north, turned into a mullioned doorway of brownstone, where they were instantly greeted by a gorgeous person, evidently a matre d' htel much rigged up for his part. His guide seemed a person of consequence, and Grimsey, impressed, followed on through the heavily carpeted hall to a small room hung with deep curtains and warmed by a glowing fire on a stone hearth. May I be permitted to suggest the filet de soul, Monsieur Godall? Said the matre d' hotel in French as he seated them. Godall. Cried the youth ecstatically. Are you indeed Godall? It was indeed Godall whom chance had thrown in the way of the distressed Grimsey, and the latter, whose one sided friendships were all gathered through the common medium of the press, impulsively seized that arch rogue by the hand in an outburst of enthusiasm. Did not the reading public know this Go doll as one of the institutions of the town? As a matter of fact, the infallible thief in his assumed character of a well found young man about town had proved it impossible to keep his picturesque personality from the eyes of prying news gatherers and cameramen, and he was known outside of the favored circle to which he belonged to Song, as Godall, just Godall, as one knows Mattis or Corot or Napoleon or Fatima. The name Godall was an established entity. So before the clams were gone, little clams the size of a dime, Moberly Grimsey had launched himself spontaneously into a confession glowing with the subtle fire of a well flattered person, a condition of mind that some personages have the faculty of confession deferring on those about them. Godall studied his man as he gave attention to the strange story. Godall was partial to this man, Grimsey's type, closely cropped red hair, freckles, tawny eyes, and a natural manner of wearing clothes, even though those clothes were obviously ready made. The woman, said Godall, the old lady. Tell me more about her. You say you know her. Who was she? Who is the woman? Said Grimsey, bringing together the leading strings of recollection, who furnished the money necessary to buy that island in the Gulf of Mexico for the protection of migrating shore birds. Mrs. Jeremiah Trigg, responded Godall, and the restless fingers of that master craftsman ceased caressing the thin stem of his glass. Ay, ay, Mrs. Jeremiah Trigg. Exclaimed young Grimsey, and he stared at his companion, interpreting the sudden calm that had come over Godall for lack of interest. It was, as a matter of fact, the reverse. Jeremiah Trigg had run out a life of 70 odd years in the character of what Wall street was pleased to call a shark. His main occupation was loans, call loans. But using the genius that evidenced himself to the world only as brittle sensibilities and fingers that stuck to gold, he had steered the ship of several great family fortunes for the younger generations. And the best evidence of his genius lay in the fact that these same fortunes had begun to disintegrate soon after his death. His character to the public, who were never permitted to peep behind the scenes, was that of a miser, hard as nails, with a heart wrung dry of pity. Yet at his death he had consecrated his fortune of some $70 million to simple to charity. Not for himself that his abused name might be acclaimed, but for his widow, the gentle wife whom all the world had revered. The fortune was deeded by the will to no other trust than her kindly sympathies. And immediately on her assuming the responsibilities of the administration of great wealth, she had been hounded by an importunate army of professional charity mongers, implored, besought, threatened in the name of pity, justice, patriotism, and all the other masks of the nefarious crew who ply the profession of leeching on charity. At length, the kind creature who loved nothing so much as a simple home life and an open, unaffected communion with the whole world was forced into a seclusion that could be compared only to that of some prisoner rescued from a howling mob by his keepers, until she was forced to bury herself under a cloud of retainers to fight off the importunities of of the world she would have loved to succor in her own sweet way. And this man pursued Godall frilling. You tell me that? When she started across the floor, he wrapped her back and made her try it again. Yes, describe him. A head like. Like Daniel Webster. Magnificent. Enormous shoulders, long arms. And his hands, the best way I can describe them, as they seemed to float in the air as he gesticulated and a voice like a God, said Godall, suddenly, leaning forward over the table. A voice like a God, eh? God, yes, cried Grimsey. Such a voice as I never. Godall, however, was not listening to him. As the young man rattled on in a maze of hyperbole, Godall had risen to his feet and was pacing the room. I am going to trust you, he said, suddenly, coming to stop in front of moberly Grimsey and putting a hand on his shoulder. I never saw you before in my life. And your interest in the golf score of John D. Rockefeller was not, I should say, a propitious opening for a prolonged friendship. Listen to me. You are a bank clerk, you say, at the Cheltingham Bank. Forget that. Marston the Vice President will give me the loan of you. Grimsey, said Godall, dragging up a chair and sitting down at the corner of the table, the greatest actor the world has ever known is a man who has never been on the stage, and his name is David Hartman. A mind like a diamond, a voice of a God, and the frame of a hideous gorilla. That's Hartman. Embittered, unscrupulous. Think man, a man with the wits of an oaf has the world at his feet in the Metropolitan Opera House tonight because the good God above gave him not only a throat but the physique of a man. The lack of a body of the most commonplace proportion, such as you and I and everybody else possess as an inalienable right, is all that prevents the greatest master of his art in this generation from claiming his own. Tell me, could the lithe hamlet stalk the stage in the guise of a hideous ape? Imagine Lear seizing his straws and crying, ay, every inch a king if he were a spindle legged dwarf. Enough of this. Cried Godall, suddenly rescuing himself from his thoughts. Never mind about your precious cage at the bank. You are mine. There is work to be done. End of an All Star Cast. Chapter 6 Librivox Part 2 of Adventures of the Infallible Godall by Frederick Irving Anderson. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. An All Star cast 2 Old 5th Avenue is gone and gone forever. There is a fringe along the edge of Washington Square and for a few blocks to the north, still stubbornly holding out against the encroachment of trade, to suggest the stately solidarity of the aristocracy of this quarter a generation ago. There is a zone now given over to sweat shops, and from 23rd Street north stretches the Rue de la Paix of this side of the water, advancing its half mile each year with glittering windows. They say it shall not encroach north of the park, but it is already there, clamoring at the barrier. As with the lower end of the avenue, this region of super refined trade to the north still harbors in its midst, stubbornly refusing to move some examples of the fine old brownstone mansions that gave the avenue its old time distinction. Such a one is to be found just above the zone where the crosstown flood at 42nd street disputes the right of way with the north and south streams of vehicles and pedestrians. Strangers to New York know it today probably better than the New Yorkers themselves, for the reason that so called seeing the city automobiles, which make this a regular route daily, are always somewhat boisterous when passing the spot. The megaphone man, as noisy as some fishwife at the town pump retailing choice bits of scandal about the great and near great, raises his trumpet at this point and announces in tones to be heard on the pavement on both sides in the mansion on your left, ladies and gentlemen, you see the old time residence of the late Jeremiah Trigg. The name is quite sufficient. Instantly the rubberneck audience begins to titter and to recount to each other the eccentricities of this famous old put and call shark of Wall Street. These stories for a period of many years flooded the press of the country and the public. Like our friend Moberly Grimsey makes it to friends and accumulates its enemies through the newspapers. In this old house the man who lived for a principal and died happy in the consciousness of having confided the administration of his principal to sure hands, spent 50 years of his life behind these windows hung with rich tapestries. He sat in the evening with his wife, playing with a family cat and a ball of yarn. When he had something nice to suggest to his good wife to do for other people, he was too shy to tell her, and the family cat became the medium of his confidence, his plans being expressed in a loud voice, clearly audible to the good wife who sat by knitting. There was a little rag doll loaded with shot, which sat on the floor and listened with wide open eyes as the cat played unheeding through the unfolding of gorgeous plans to make someone or many, many ones, happy. Without knowing the source of that happy happiness. The doll had a duty in life quite as dignified as that of the cat, its duty being to sit tight against the library floor, so that the door might not swing shut on its hinges and shut off the coziness of the other room. Uncle Jeremiah, so they jocosely called him down town, discussed the hopes and fears and tears of their farmers. The old couple counted many countrymen to whom their bounty was more generous than that of the stubborn soil, much as if they had been sitting before a fire in some rude farmhouse, and the cares of the neighborhood were theirs to alleviate with the simplest of godly alms, instead of a complex machinery that every moment must protect itself from lying greed, here in the evening was always the picture of home, a home that is being banished from the many palaces along the way, a home that was not only sufficient unto its own peace and happiness, but which radiated warm beneficence to many other homes. This evening, the evening following that on which Moberly Grimsey at last found a sociable friend at table, the picture was the same, except that Uncle Jeremiah was gone on his long journey. There was an open fire in the deep grate. Outside was the soft coming of evening and gently falling snow. The old lady sat knitting. The big eyed doll was thinking of the most serious things of life at its post by the door. And the cat, the same cat, languidly studied the ball of yarn, wondering whether, as a matter of fact, it was not getting too old to be frisking this foolish thing about the room. The servants were coming and going on tiptoe over the soft padded carpets, exchanging words in whispers, mysterious whispers, accompanied by smiles to signify that something of moment was afoot. The butler, who had been with the family since they came to town in his present graduate capacity, was directing the manoeuvres from the seclusion of the street hall out of sight of the old lady. He was whispering to the second butler that the second in command was to be in command of this ship, information that had been explained with stolid iteration through many busy days nowdays that were busy, but with their business concealed under smooth machinery. The clock on the mantel struck the hour of four. The old lady roused herself with a sigh and looked up with a smile when two plump Irish girls approached and helped her to her feet and muffled her in wraps of downiest texture. She took her cane and with an arm on each side to support her, she made her way to the door where, as if by the magic of some hidden stage director, four secretaries were in waiting. They were in fact the body guard. They were needed. As the door opened, a little man with a greasy black beard who had been in waiting at the curb dashed up the steps and attempted to push past the advance guard. He held a paper in his hand and he cried as the secretary held him. It is most worthy, madam. I could convince you if I could have but a word with you. Mrs. Trigg receives no strangers on account of her advanced years, explained the secretary politely. Hey everybody.

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Visit spinquest.com for more details. And as the party passed down the steps, he successfully blocked the charity seeker from his prey. The attendants surrounded the old woman like a cloud. There were other importunate ones at the curb, but so closely did the guard cling that they had no opportunity to voice their harsh claims on the bounty of this poor creature. It was always thus the army studied the habits of this household like a hawk, hovering about the mansion at all hours of the day. Did you get a good view of her? Asked Godall. Yes, said young Grimsey. I saw her perfectly. It is she, I am certain. The pair had sauntered up just in time to witness the disgraceful exhibition that was a daily occurrence. Now. Did you notice her cane? Said Grimsey. Godall had not, he said. The ferule was loose and made a queer noise like the low string on a violin when she pushed it across the pavement. It was the same cane she used the other night. Delightful, said Godall. Now we shall see whether the rest of the drama is played according to the cards. It was an hour later when the two sauntered along the avenue, just as the returning carriage of Mrs. Jeremiah to Trig drew up at a brownstone house. It was the same carriage, but not the same brownstone house as before. The same curtains apparently hung at the windows. The same mellow radiance of the table lamp and the flickering light of the fire played on the tapestries. The same butler waited at the top of the steps, the same cat and doll guarded inside, and the same coterie of guards, men, and maids enclosed the figure of Mrs. Jeremiah Trigg as she crossed the pavement. The house occupied the same position in the block, but it was not the same block. The location was half a mile to the north. It was the new home of Mrs. Jeremiah Trigg. Trade clambering at her doors had so far encroached on the old home that it was thought advisable by the family council of lawyers to move the old lady and to move her room by room without any suspicion on her part that she was being moved moved. Some day, if she did not discover the illusion herself, those servants who loved her as blood kin would tell her of their carefully planned ruse. Tonight she took up her knitting beside the silver framed picture of Uncle Jerry on the table, blissfully unconscious that even the unbalanced door had been doctored to A degree of verisimilitude that would have deceived far sharper eyes than hers. It was at 10 sharp the next morning that the chief clerk of Vice President Marston of the Chillingham bank handed the latter the telephone with the information that someone wished to speak to him from the Trig home. Uncle Jerry had dominated the affairs of this bank during his lifetime, and the widow retained control through her attorneys. This is Martin speaking, said a voice on the wire. Martin was one of the many secretaries who hovered about the old lady. Hello, Charlie, how are you? From this distance, I should say you have a frog in your throat, said the genial banker. That's not worrying me half so much as other people's troubles, said the husky voice with a cough. The old lady wants those bronze medallions that are in the big strong box, and there is nothing to do but to bring the whole box up here to the house. Humph. Well, in your case I should advise calling out the 71st Regiment for a bodyguard, said the jocose banker. Thanks. I'm going to pass the buck to you. The old lady wants you to bring it up yourself.

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[Narrator]

And so it was that the banker found himself half an hour later sitting in a closed automobile with two bank guards and an imposing looking steel box, and bound, not unhappily at that, because the dangers of the City street streets did not daunt him for Uncle Jerry Trigg's house, as he had instructed the driver. As the car came to a stop at the curb, he sprang out and up the steps, waiting at the door opened by the second man for his two guards to bring in their precious burden. Mr. Martin, sir, said the man, asked me to tell you that he was called out to the Sunnyside meeting and would not be able to see you, sir. As Marston handed his hat and coat to the man, he nodded casually to two young men who were passing through the hall to the rear of the floor. The whisking of a white apron about the turn of the stairs indicated the presence of one of the Irish maids. This house smells good. Exclaimed the banker to himself, as though he had stumbled on a new source of happiness on this visit. He looked into the drawing room, but retreated immediately, his finger to his lips, to enjoin silence on the two men who were depositing their burden. The old lady, her knitting fallen to the floor, was asleep in the chair. The cat sat purring before the fire. The rag doll of all the room seemed the only thing alive, and it sat staring accusingly at him with its big eyes as he took in the scene. Something in him welled up and overflowed. It was the memory of just such a scene, long, long ago, when he was a boy, and the recollection came on him with a rush of warmth and tenderness. He tiptoed to a chair and sat down quietly, signaling to his men to place their burden in the doorway and and withdraw as quietly as possible. Now the old lady stirred herself uneasily, sighed, and opened her eyes. For a moment she did not see him, but smiled at the old cat, stretching itself in the extravagant manner of a languorous feline. Before the warm glow of the fire. Everything in the room seemed to rouse itself with her. Her eyes came to a start to the figure of Marston, who rose and came forward. Don't move. He cried, smiling and reaching out his hand to implore her to remain seated. But she rose to her feet and pushed the cane ahead of her. She permitted him to help her to her seat again, and she sat holding his hard hand between her two withered hands and looking out the window. It was a silence he dared not break, though it made him uncomfortable. It was broken at last by the approach of the second man bearing tea. Things, things. At 11 every day Mrs. Jeremiah Trigg had her tea, and her cat was given a bit of cheese to nibble. Mrs. Trigg, in talking about cats, used to say that she ascribed the faithfulness of her cats to their 11 o' clock cheese. Marston had come with his expectations, made up for a brisk chat with the old lady, but it turned out to be rather a trying situation for him. She cried softly throughout the time they sat before the tray, crying softly as old women cry when they spin the thread of memories that are dearest to them. He made one or two ineffectual attempts to say something, but his efforts ended so lamely that he gave it up, and it was with great relief that he heard the approaching footsteps of the servant. Madam Ismadam is in one of her moods, thinking to day. You understand, sir, said the second man in his ear. Marston looked up and the man averted his eyes quickly. Marston nodded his head. He rose and drew off to a corner with the man. I understand, he said. If the world only knew Uncle Jerry as we remember him. The man nodded vigorously and seemed about to cry. Will she sign for this, or will one of the secretaries come? Asked the bank official, indicating the box. I think she will, as they are the bronze medallions she wishes, and she wants to find them herself. I will see, sir. The man stepped to the side of the old lady and whispered to her. She looked up and nodded vigorously, smiling through her tears. Ah, you understand, Thomas, don't you? She said. Ah, I shall be so happy when we are together again. There, there. Why should we torture you young people? And she dragged her eyes back from the fire and with trembling hand wrote her signature. Marston made his adieux as quickly as possible. The man opened the door for him and, seeing two men in conversation with the bank guards who stood at the curb waiting orders, drew back hurriedly. And are they friends of yours, sir? We must be very careful, as so many people are ready to take advantage of the old lady. You don't need to worry about them, said Marston, laughing, for he recognized in the two men Warden, the managing head of the Bankers Protective association for the Metropolitan District and young Moberly Grimsey. The man inside was still peering through the interstices of the ground glass carving of the door as Marston went down the steps. What are you two doing in this neck of the woods? I thought you were on your vacation, Grimsey, with that young devil. Go, doll. This house is pinched, said Warden, starting up the steps with a laugh as he ran his arm through the banker's and turned him back. I have been waiting for you to come out, to have a good look at your face when the ceiling comes down on your head. So saying, he touched the bell, he looked through the glass of the door impudently. Run, you terrier. He chuckled, and he raised his heavy cane and shattered the glass of the door. Tell Captain McCarthy you'd better bring up his men and throw them across on both sides. The whole town will be here in another five minutes, he said, turning and addressing a man in the street who was off at a sharp run. The astonished Marston saw a patrol wagon around the corner emptying itself in a jiffy. People in the street had already begun to gather in front of the house, attracted by the sound of the broken glass and the sudden appearance of the policeman in force. Warden had run his hand inside the door and slipped the lock. Marston, shivering, followed him, with young Grimsey close at his heels. The parlor was empty save for the cat and the rag dollar. The old lady was gone, the steel box was gone, and the second man was nowhere in sight. The banker stared about him. Warden and Grimsey looked at him soberly for a moment, but the strain was too much for them, and they broke into shouts of mirth. The collar gradually returned to his face, and his knees again showed signs of behaving themselves under this kind of attack. If that box was gone and gone beyond recovery. Whatever might be the explanation of this weird situation, Marston concluded that the superintendent of the Bankers Protective association would be laughing on the other side of his mouth. For the love of the holies, don't stand there grinning at me as though I were a lunatic. Tell me, what does it all mean? Cried the amazed banker. Come with us, said Warden, showing no desire for haste or inclination for any other task than relieving the curiosity of his friend. He took Marston by the arm and the three marched upstairs. The bedroom floor above the parlor was empty, bare, floored. So was the third floor and the servants quarters above. So was the basement floor. With the exception of the parlor floor, the house was stripped to the very walls. But Mrs. Trigg, where has she gone? Cried Marston, when he had convinced himself. I don't know, I'm sure, said Warden. Mrs. Trigg hasn't been in this house in 20 hours, to my knowledge. Hasn't been in the house, you idiot. Then whom, pray, have I been taking tea with in this room not 10 minutes ago, Marston, said Warden, you have been entertained for the last quarter of an hour or so by a stock company composed of some of the most distinguished actors and actresses out of jail. Mrs. Trigg was moved out of this house yesterday, and the furniture of this room was shifted to her new home just above 52nd Street street, before she returned from her drive with the connivance of a rascally second butler. The cleverest gang of thieves this side of the River Jordan rigged up the rooms again for your especial entertainment this morning. And I suspect, he said, glancing slyly at young Grimsey, that if it had not been for Grimsey here and his friend Godall, you would now be poorer by the several hundred thousand dollars worth of bonds that steel box contained. Come. He cried with a laugh as he snapped his fingers in Marston's ears, for that person was standing transfixed like one in a trance. I'll take you behind the scenes if you want to see the rest of the show. The three went to the garden in the rear of the house. In one corner, handcuffed, snarling, and defiant, stood the second butler, the key of the combination. In another corner were three women. Two of them girls, made up for the parts of the two Irish maids, and the third, the old woman who had entertained Marston with tea and tears so effectively the girls were in a state of collapse, but the woman, amazing in her make up for the part, even now, when she had lost her Countenance stared boldly at them. In the basement were the two young men who had masqueraded as secretaries. I congratulate you, madam, said Marston, now quite himself again. Your talents are worthy of better things, believe me. Me, you needn't inform her as to her talents, said Warden. That woman is Mary Manerly. We used to think she was the greatest emotional actress that ever lived back in the 70s. Lord, until I found she was in this game, I thought she was dead and buried. The rascals dragged her out of an old folks home for the part. Marston shook his head, bewildered. You ought to see the bunch we just nailed downtown at the restaurant, cried Warden. There was John D. And Andy Carnegie and Cat Tom. When I first laid eyes on a bunch an hour ago, I swear I couldn't tell at first whether I had stumbled into a meeting of the directors of the steel Trust or Mrs. Jarley's Waxworks. Would you be surprised, said Godall, taking the arm of the man in the crowd that surged about the police lines. Would you be surprised if I should ask you to accompany me? The man he addressed was less than 5ft tall, though he had the head and shoulders of a giant. The massive head turned slowly and regarded the speaker. Godall's manner was to all appearances friendly. He was smiling and his tone was casual so that none of the crowd, eager to seize on a morsel of excitement outside, turned to look in his direction. The small man regarded Godall steadily under his gray brows. What a grand old warlock it is, thought Godall. I should not be surprised, said the man in clear, bell like tones. If you will indicate the way, I shall be pleased to follow. Or will you permit me to precede you? Godall turned and shouldered his way out of the crowd, and on the outskirts he was joined by the man with the ludicrous body and the Jovian head. They strode along side by side, clearly, thought Godall. David Hartman considered himself under arrest. The old man had been absent when the police raided the meeting place downtown, and as a member of the crowd had watched the fiasco of his great plan here in front of the mansion that his great brain had furnished and peopled with play actors and properties, he had again escaped them. I am sorry to have spoiled your scene, said Godall as they swung along together. I have been watching you for three years, Hartman. Ha. That was beautiful. When you gave that chorus girl dinner to Senator Newstead in Chicago a year before, the whole country had been convulsed at the circumstantial tale of a gay dinner in the public dining room of the auditorium at which Senator Newstead, candidate for governor on the Republican ticket, was the apparent host. The pious old senator bitterly denounced the calico, but there were plenty of witnesses to swear that it really was he, and he was snowed under at the polls. I could stand for that, and bless you for it, hartman went on. Godall and the Blackburn case and the Hamilton affair. But when you came to tamper with the comfort and happiness of a woman who has paid the penalty of martyrdom simply for being good and doing good, I step in and say no. I didn't know you had shifted to New York until my red headed friend fell in on your rehearsal the other other night. The red headed boy? Yes, said David Hartman to himself, though aloud, and carving his words with that devilish trick of enunciation he alone possessed. Yes, I thought so, my man, he added, indicating Godall, though he did not deign to turn his head in the direction of the young man. I do not believe I care to discuss the matter with you. I am presuming that you have the authority to ask me to accompany you. No, said Godall, with a consciousness of a bitter taste in his mouth. I am taking you to the Grand Central Station to see you aboard any train you may elect to choose. See, we are here now. I have money. It is yours even now. The police of the country are seeking you. Your mates will see squeal. That's absolute. I am ready to aid you in any way I can. Not because of today, but because of. Godall ran his fingers through the air in front of him impatiently. You are not of the police, then, or with authority to detain me? Passersby turned their heads to catch the nuances of that voice, though the words were low. Godall shook his head. No, said the voice. No, said Godall. David Hartman came to a stop and raised his hand. The hand which Moberly Grimsey said seemed to float in the air. He waved it at a policeman who stood on the corner. The policeman came to his side and bent over. You do not know me, my man, he said. I am David Hartman. That means nothing to you? The police seek me. I am wanted for robbery. I might tear my soul to shreds in hopeless flight, but I am marked. See my ridiculous little legs, my friend, he said, turning to Godall and taking him by the hand. I do not know who you may be, but I thank you. If I did not so love this bitter life, I might have the courage to die. But I have not the courage that voice, ringing like a knell, sang in his ears as Godall hurried across town. What would a hundred thousand dollars in gold bonds more or less have meant to the old lady? Any anyway? He cried suddenly to himself as he stopped and called to Hansom. Nothing. Bah. Ebook Adventures of the Infallible Go Doll by Frederick Irving Anderson Recording by Winston.

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