CHAPTER I.
THE MAN WHO WAS LOST.
“Man overboard!”
Nick Carter—known to the captain and crew of the tramp steamer
Cherokee as Sykes, the bos’n—heard this shout, taken up by man
after man, as he lay stretched out on the foc’s’le head, in the early
morning, just as the ship nosed her way into San Juan harbor, on the
northern coast of Porto Rico.
The thrilling warning that somebody has fallen into the sea, which
always sends a shock through both crew and passengers whenever heard,
does not permit any ordinary person to remain quietly dozing.
The famous detective was one of the first to rush over to the side of
the ship when the alarm had been given.
Close by him were his two assistants, Chick and Patsy Garvan, who, in
the rôles of common sailors, had come down to Porto Rico to help him
get back the fortune in jewels which had been stolen from Stephen Reed,
the well-known New York millionaire.
“Who is it, chief?” asked Patsy, forcing his way to the front.
“I haven’t heard.”
“One of the crew, I suppose?” hazarded Chick.
“No doubt. There is only one passenger on board now, Paul Clayton. It
isn’t he, for there he is, behind you.”
Meanwhile, under orders from Captain Bill Lawton himself, two life
rings, each with some thirty fathoms of line attached, had been hurled
over in the direction of where the drowning man might be expected to be.
It was too dark to make out plainly anything in the water, but a sharp
lookout was kept for an hour, until the vessel reached her anchorage
and the “mud hooks” were let go.
“Well, we couldn’t do any better,” grunted Captain Lawton, through his
shaggy mustache, as he and his big, two-fisted first mate, Van Cross,
stood together on the bridge. “We might have a roll call of the crew. I
don’t know who it was went over. I reckon it wasn’t anybody who might
have become President of the United States, nor nothing like that.”
The saturnine skipper gave vent to a husky “Haw-haw!” at his own joke,
and Van Cross joined in with an equally raucous guffaw.
Nick Carter was the only person on board the Cherokee who
thought of a certain possibility which would attach more importance to
the falling off the vessel of the man than its commander had supposed.
“Patsy!” whispered Nick. “Go to Mr. Clayton’s cabin and see if that
suit case of his, containing the Reed jewelry, is safe.”
“I can’t see it unless Clayton is there,” objected Patsy.
“Naturally. But he is there. I saw him go down just now. You may tell
him I sent you to inquire.”
“Who shall I say? Sykes?”
“Of course. I have no other name on the Cherokee.”
As Patsy Garvan disappeared to obey his chief, although without
understanding what it all meant, Nick Carter beckoned to Chick, and the
two went down a forward hatch.
“What’s the idea, chief?” asked Chick.
“I want to see that the prisoners are secure, Chick. It has always been
difficult to keep John Garrison Rayne behind the bars—except when he
is inside the stone walls of a State’s prison—and I have not much
faith in the place they have him in on the Cherokee.”
“The same about his man French, I suppose?”
“French is an insignificant scoundrel,” returned Nick. “He is entirely
under Rayne’s influence. I dare say he regrets that he ever was
persuaded to come on this ship—to act as assistant engineer and to do
what he could toward robbing Clayton of the Reed jewelry.”
“The whole case strikes me as curious,” observed Chick. “To begin
with, the robbery of Stephen Reed was traced directly to Paul Clayton,
the passenger they call Miles.”
“I know, Chick. But I don’t want that talked about.”
“Nobody’s talking about it,” rejoined Chick. “Except to you. Of course,
I think enough of Clayton—and his sweetheart, Lethia Ford—to be glad
you are letting him go. But that isn’t all. If there should be any
hitch about the delivery of the loot to Stephen Reed, it might put you
in a bad position.”
Chick spoke with a gravity and directness that no one else would have
ventured on with Nick Carter. But as the principal assistant of the
great detective he had gained the right to advise with his chief, and
the latter valued his counsel.
“There will not be any hitch,” answered Nick positively. “Paul Clayton
has kept a constant eye on his suit case ever since we got it away from
Rayne the other day.”
“Rayne nearly had it, in the engine room, that time,” remarked Chick,
with a shrug.
“I cannot admit that,” was the detective’s quick negative. “He had
stolen the suit case, jewelry and all, from Clayton’s stateroom, it is
true. Also, he had stowed it away in the engine room. But, unless he
got it off the ship, of what use could it ever have been to him?”
Chick shook his head dubiously.
“He’s as cunning as any old-time Indian, and you can’t tell what he
might have done. No wonder they call him the Apache.”
“He is called the Apache partly because he is so ruthless when pursuing
any object,” said Nick. “Remember that. I don’t believe I ever knew
another white man with quite so cruel a disposition. He neither asks
nor gives quarter. I give him credit for being a fighter. Only, like
the Indian warrior of thirty or forty years ago, he is not satisfied
with merely overcoming his foe. He wants to torture and kill him, too.
But, come on, Chick! We’ll take a look at the door of his glory hole,
anyhow. I don’t suppose it was Rayne who jumped or fell overboard just
now. But I want to make sure.”
Chick was a few paces ahead of his chief as they turned a corner in a
narrow passage, lighted by an oil lantern swinging from the ceiling,
and it was Chick who exploded in a shout of astonishment and dismay.
“Chief! He’s gone!”
“Who?”
“Rayne!”
Nick Carter required only one glance at the open door of the confined
space used as a prison cell on the Cherokee to understand that
the man who had gone overboard was really John Garrison Rayne, the
international crook, known as the Apache.
There were three cells in a row. When not employed as prisons they were
used as storerooms for rope, spare canvas, and similar material. Now
one was full of such stuff, the second was locked, and the third stood
open.
“Well, it doesn’t so much matter,” remarked Nick Carter, when satisfied
that Rayne had got away. “Of course he dived off the ship and swam to
shore. He may hang about San Juan. But most likely he will get away as
soon as there is a ship sailing that suits him. We have the comfort of
knowing that he failed to steal the Reed jewelry, and that is the main
point, after all. Come on, Chick! We’ll go on deck.”
Hardly had they got there when they heard Captain Lawton raging
profanely up and down.
“Six hundred dollars!” howled the skipper. “In good American money!
Took it out of my locker, and had to break a lock that was strong
enough for a jail door! But I’ll get the thief somehow. Mr. Cross!”
Van Cross, who had been enjoying a quiet cigar, looked down from the
bridge, and, in a surly tone, asked what was wanted.
“Line up the whole crew and find out first who it was that went
overboard,” growled Captain Lawton.
“I can tell you that,” put in Nick Carter, in his character of Sykes,
the boatswain.
“Whoever he is, he got six hundred dollars out of my cabin!” roared the
skipper. “I’ll skin him alive when I get my hands on him. Who is he?”
“The passenger you shut up for’ard for trying to steal the property of
the passenger you call Mr. Miles,” replied Nick. “He has got out of the
brig, and he is not on the ship.”
“What?” bellowed the wrathful skipper. “Do you mean to tell me that
lubber has broken out? Who is he, anyhow? He says he is a business man,
and he looks like it. Do you know anything about him?”
“I think I do,” replied the detective. “I believe he is an ex-convict
named John Garrison Rayne.”
“John Garrison Rayne?” shouted Lawton. “I’ve heard of that fellow. He
operates all over this continent.”
“And on others, too,” put in Chick.
“Come down to my cabin with me, Sykes, and help me go through my sea
chest again. Bring your two men with you. Come on, Cross! I’ll rummage
it from top to the very bottom.”
That is exactly what they did do. The locker belonging to Captain
Lawton was an old-fashioned affair, such as seamen were more accustomed
to use fifty years ago than in these days.
They had everything out and in again before the skipper was convinced
that his money really was gone.
“Cross!” he bellowed.
The mate stepped to his side, looking at him questioningly.
“I’m going ashore!” announced Captain Lawton.
“When?”
“Now!” thundered the commander. “I’m going to find that lubber who
dived overboard with my money. And, when I get him, I’ll turn him
inside out. Then I’ll——”
“I wouldn’t,” advised Van Cross. “You have to look after the ship now
we are in port.”
“You can do that,” interrupted Lawton savagely. “A captain can trust
his first mate to do some things, can’t he?”
“Sure!” assented Van Cross. “But I don’t believe you’d ever find that
man if you did go after him. Now, here’s this Sykes, who has just said
he knows the man. Why don’t you let him go?”
“How do I know he’d ever come back?”
“He hasn’t got his wages, has he?” grinned Cross. “Don’t give him
anything to spend, and he’s bound to come back. Besides, he’s got it in
for that tall, gray-haired lubber himself. I know that from some words
he let drop when he didn’t know I was near.”
Nick Carter overheard this confab, notwithstanding that it was
conducted in hoarse whispers, and it coincided with his inclinations
exactly.
He wanted to get ashore, for he was nervous over the way Rayne had left
the ship.
He knew it was not like the Apache to give up a purpose he had nearly
carried to fruition without fighting it to the end, and he believed
something more would be heard of him before they were out of San Juan.
It would suit Nick exactly to go ashore, and, as he did not know just
when he would be back, he resolved that he would take at least one of
his assistants with him.
He was glad when he found that the master of the Cherokee was
willing that he should go.
“Will you go into the town and see if you can get any trace of that
lubber who jumped overboard, Sykes?” asked Captain Lawton, turning to
him with as propitiatory an expression as his rocky face would permit.
“Just loaf around in saloons and places where you’d be likely to pick
up news.”
“And if I find the man?” asked Nick.
“Bring him aboard, and I’ll deal with him,” was the significant answer.
“Once you find him, that will be enough.”
“How many men can I have with me?” asked Nick.
“How many do you want?”
“Two. Give me my two old shipmates. We’ve worked together before, and
I’d rather have them than anybody else.”
The captain gave a growling consent, and Nick Carter went forward to
get his two assistants.
“The suit case is all right,” announced Patsy. “I talked to Clayton,
and he said he would not let it out of his hands until he had taken it
to a bank in San Juan.”
“The wise course!” approved Nick. “We are going ashore—you and
Chick—with me.”
“Bully! To get Rayne?” asked Patsy.
“If we can.”
“Well, you bet we can,” was the confident response, accompanied by a
chuckle of delight at the prospect of some real action.
CHAPTER IX.
BLUFFING IT THROUGH.
Rayne stood looking steadily into the still face of the acting governor
for a few moments, as if studying the features.
“Not a difficult face to make, I think,” he muttered.
He stepped lightly across the room to make sure that the door was
secure. Inspecting the deadlatch sharply, he decided that it would hold
the door against any possible interruption.
“When I get ready to go, I shall have to leave that unfastened,” he
muttered. “But I dare say I can make it secure enough on the outside to
suit my purpose. So long as I make my get-away, I need not care what
they do here afterward.”
He took off his gray wig, and stuffed it into a pocket, in company with
the mustache and beard.
“If I hadn’t had so much experience in making up, I should be a little
nervous over this thing,” he murmured. “As it is, I dare say I can make
myself into a Portersham that will pass muster.”
From one of his pockets he drew a small leather case, which contained
sticks of grease paint in tin foil, with other articles that he might
require in making up his face.
First of all, he had to take the Garnford red out of his cheeks. Then
he carefully imitated the complexion of the acting governor, being
particular to put on two small moles that he observed on the cheek and
chin respectively of the unconscious man.
In the course of ten minutes he had almost completely reproduced the
features of Jabez Portersham on his own countenance.
Line by line he brought out the contour of the young man’s face, with
every light wrinkle, every depression, every rounded part, and every
turn of expression that was part of the original, no matter how elusive
and slight it might be.
The first thing he did was to put on a wig of light hair, so near
the hue of Portersham’s that it might almost have been made from the
original. It had a touch of gray at the temples, which was so exactly
like that on the sides of the acting governor’s head that it might have
deceived his most intimate acquaintance.
“Good!” chuckled Rayne softly. “I’m glad I managed to have a good
squint at him on the street to-day. I reckon I’m getting it about as
close as any one could hope to do it.”
Actors, in making up, always put the wig on first, building up the face
afterward, and Rayne did the work in the approved professional way.
When everything seemed to be done, Rayne took a small mirror from
his pocket and examined himself critically under the strong, shaded
electric light. Then he walked over to a large mirror on the mantel and
took a general view.
He was entirely satisfied with himself in the large mirror, as well as
in the small one.
The nature of the Apache was so strange, and he had so much vanity in
his composition, stern as he was, that just then he thought much more
of the skill he had displayed in the art of make-up than of the fortune
in gems he was fighting so hard to retain, in the very teeth of the
detective who always had overcome him heretofore, Nick Carter.
“I reckon I’m going to show my friend Carter that his luck has changed,
so far as I am concerned,” he muttered. “If those men of his hadn’t
turned up at that café last night, I’d have put him in such a condition
that he would not have troubled me for a while, anyhow. I’m sorry my
knife missed him.”
There was a demoniacal snarl on the scoundrel’s lips. He was truly
sorry that he had not been able to commit a foul murder when he aimed
that stroke at the detective. As for compunction, that was a sentiment
that never troubled him.
“Well, my face is all right! Now for the clothes.”
His tone was businesslike. He might have been engaged in an entirely
legitimate task, so far as that was concerned.
“I’ll have to hurry,” he went on. “There is always the off chance of
somebody trying to get into this room. Even if I didn’t open the
door—which I certainly would not do—that very fact might stir up
suspicion. One never knows.”
He bent over the supine figure of Jabez Portersham, huddled in the
chair, and, deftly as a well-trained valet, took off the acting
governor’s outer garments, leaving him in his underclothing.
Deliberately, but without any waste of time, he put the suit of clothes
on himself, finishing off with the collar and necktie, and wearing the
watch and fob that was part of Portersham’s ordinary costume.
“By Jove!” he chuckled, as he surveyed himself in the large mirror.
“I am Jabez Portersham to the life. I don’t think I’ve overlooked
anything. Oh, yes! Here’s something.”
On the little finger of the unconscious man’s left hand was a large
diamond solitaire ring.
Rayne slipped it off and put it on his own little finger. It was loose
for him, but he decided that it would stay on, and that no one would
notice its being a little large.
“These details are important, sometimes,” he muttered. “Everybody who
knows this chap must have observed the ring. Besides, it is worth about
a thousand dollars, I should think. I should be a fool not to take it
with me.”
Now came the next move, which he had had in mind from the first, and
for which he had come fully prepared.
He took from his pockets a coil of thin wire and a small pad of cloth
like that with which he had administered the chloroform.
The pad he put in Portersham’s mouth, fastening it with a twist of the
wire around his head. Then he secured the arms and legs with the wire,
making sure that the acting governor would not be able to get free,
even if he should come to his senses.
“So far, good!” was his savage comment. “I shall have to put him where
he won’t be seen too quickly if any one comes in.”
It was easy for the athletic Apache to lift the young man from the
chair and stow him under the large library table.
“I’ll pile up these magazines and papers in front of him. Then he will
be masked in. I hope he’ll be comfortable under there, too.”
He grinned at this brutal jest, and heaped a few more papers under the
table, hiding his victim completely.
“With the wires on him, and the dose of dope he has in his system, he
will be safe enough for a while,” he reflected. “Now I come to the real
risk of the job. I’m glad I’m not deficient in nerve.”
He looked around him, felt in all the pockets of the clothing he had
taken off to make sure he had everything out—including the bags of
jewelry—patted his chest to assure himself that the flat bag was in
its place under his shirt, and pushed his discarded garments under the
table with the senseless Portersham.
“Now for it!” he breathed softly.
He opened the door without any noise and stepped into the hallway. His
heart beat a little faster than usual, but he never faltered in what
he had set himself to do. Neither did he show in his demeanor what a
strain there was upon even his steely nerves.
Briggs was sitting inside a small room off the hall that was his
particular domain. The door was open, so that the butler could see
everybody who might pass up and down.
His orders were to make sure no one loafed about the palace unless he
had business there.
As a public building, many strangers were in the palace during the
day. But in the late afternoon and evening, when official business was
suspended for the day, only those living in the house, or authorized
visitors, could be permitted to remain.
Briggs jumped to his feet and stood in the hall, waiting for orders, as
he saw the supposed acting governor coming along from his room.
Rayne was obliged to grip himself as he came face to face with Briggs.
This butler was more than a mere servant. He was expected to take on
himself the duties of a detective, and, naturally, he was disposed to
be suspicious.
The Apache took the bull by the horns.
“Is my secretary in?” he asked sharply—and his imitation of the tones
of Jabez Portersham was marvelous.
“Yes, sir,” answered Briggs. “Mr. Morlein is in his office. Shall I
send him to you?”
Rayne smiled inwardly. He had not known the name of the private
secretary, but he had learned it now, and without difficulty. The game
was playing into his hands.
The butler walked a little way down the hallway—it was on the second
floor of the building—and was about to knock on a door.
“Never mind!” interrupted Rayne. “I’ll go in and see him. You need not
knock.”
The Apache had found out where Morlein’s room was. This, also, was a
piece of information that had not been in his possession before. He did
not know the way of the palace. In fact, this was the first time he
ever had been within its walls.
Again getting a firm grip on his nerves, Rayne opened the door of the
secretary’s room and walked in with the authoritative manner of a chief
visiting a subordinate.
Henry Morlein was a tail, athletic young fellow, whose greeting
indicated that he was on very friendly terms with his chief.
His feet were on the edge of his desk, and though he took them down
when the supposed acting governor entered, he did it languidly, as if
it were not an unusual thing for him to be caught in this careless
attitude.
“Hello, chief!” he drawled, as he removed a cigar from his mouth. “I
thought you’d gone to the theater. They’re doing opera, I’m told—and
rather well, at that.”
“I was going, but I changed my mind.”
Rayne said this carelessly, but he trembled lest his imitation of Jabez
Portersham’s tones should fail to deceive this wide-awake young man.
He reflected that Henry Morlein was accustomed to the sound of the
acting governor’s voice every day, and should be able to detect an
imitation where many others might fail.
But Morlein did not appear to observe anything unusual in the accent
and inflection, and Rayne went on calmly:
“It’s just as well that I didn’t go. Did you know that Senator Micah
Garnford was in to see me a little while ago?”
“Senator Garnford?” ejaculated Morlein, in surprise. “Why, I thought
he was in Washington. Seems to me I was reading in the paper that he
made a great speech on the tariff the day before yesterday.”
“That was last week,” declared Rayne. “He’s in San Juan now. Do you
know the senator personally, Morlein?”
“Never saw him in my life,” was the prompt reply. “I never even saw his
picture. Rather a fine man, I’ve been told.”
“I think so. But that isn’t the point. I’ve got to go to Washington
right away—on official business.”
Henry Morlein threw the end of his cigar into a cuspidor and looked up
in astonishment.
“Geewhillikins! That’s sudden, isn’t it?”
“Government business is often sudden, Morlein,” replied Rayne gravely.
“I wish you would telephone the wharf where the steamer Spangled
Star lies, and tell the agent to hold a deck stateroom for Mr.
Portersham, will you?”
“She is to sail at ten o’clock,” remarked Morlein. “It’s half past nine
now. There won’t be much time.”
“Of course not. That’s why I want you to phone without delay. Tell them
I will try to be there at ten o’clock. If I am a little late, they are
to hold the ship for me.”
“All right, sir,” replied Morlein, as he turned to the telephone on his
desk.
Rayne took a seat and lighted one of the cigars that he took from
Portersham’s cigar case, which he had found in his pocket.
The Apache wanted a smoke. Even if he had not, most likely he would
have taken out the case. It would be one of the little proofs of his
identity which might impress Henry Morlein in case he were suspicious.
The venturesome scoundrel listened to one end of the telephonic
conversation between his private secretary and the steamship agent at
the wharf.
He gathered, from Morlein’s replies, that the agent was objecting to
holding the Spangled Star for any one, even the acting governor
of Porto Rico. But Morlein shut him off sharply on that, telling him
that those were Mr. Portersham’s orders, and they had to be obeyed.
John Garrison Rayne grinned slightly behind his cigar. He was thinking
how different everything would be if either Morlein or the steamship
agent were to find out who this supposed Jabez Portersham really was.
“All right, sir,” observed Morlein, at last, as he hung up the
receiver. “They are reserving stateroom B for you on the upper deck.
There is a suite of two rooms and bath. I hope you will have a pleasant
trip. The steamer goes right through to New York. That will be your
quickest route to Washington.”
“I know that,” answered Rayne. “It will suit me, all right. I may have
to stay over in New York for an hour or two.”
“What about your baggage? Do you want me to give orders about it?”
“No,” was Rayne’s reply. “I’ve no time to bother about that. I can
borrow anything I need from some of the officers on the ship. Pajamas
are about all I should want till I get to New York. It is easy to buy
things there. Is my automobile ready?”
“I’ll have it at the front door by the time we get there,” answered
Morlein, as he took up the telephone receiver again.
“Very well. You might come down to the ship with me, Morlein.”
“All right!”
An hour later, John Garrison Rayne was sitting in his comfortable suite
on board the modern and well-equipped steamer, Spangled Star, as
it skimmed out of San Juan harbor on its way to the Atlantic.
“Well, it is rather a relief to get away from San Juan,” he muttered,
with a grim smile. “There are people there I don’t much like.”
CHAPTER XIV.
THE MARKED NAMES.
As Grail turned back into his quarters, after seeing Meredith off, that
night of her arrival from Chicago, his face had fallen into lines of
troubled solicitude, and he gave an ominous shake of the head, for it
was idle to deny that the startling news concerning Sasaku had filled
him with the gravest sort of misgivings. Indicating that this was no
ordinary game of hide and seek, such as the gumshoe men of the various
powers are accustomed to play with each other, but a sinister intrigue,
prepared to balk at nothing to gain its ends, it raised a serious
question as to the possible fate which had befallen the colonel.
Hurriedly summoning his “striker,” he sent him out for a copy of the
extra Herald containing an account of the murder; then, when the
paper had arrived, he devoted himself to a careful perusal and analysis
of the details.
There was really but little to be gleaned. The body of the Japanese
had been found on the stairs of a rooming house for laboring men, down
near the river front, and, as Grail noted, not more than a block or two
away from the Dolliver Foundry. Struck evidently from behind, by an
unexpected knife thrust, as he was starting to go out, he had lurched
forward, clutching at the banister, then sagged down lifeless on the
third step from the top, his straw hat rolling on down the flight, and,
by exciting the curiosity of a lodger on the floor below, leading,
later on, to a discovery of the dead man.
Life had not been extinct more than half an hour when he was found,
it was stated, and thus the time of the murder was definitely fixed
at about two o’clock in the afternoon; yet, although a number of the
occupants of the place had been in their rooms at that hour, no one
could be unearthed who had heard any outcry or sound of altercation.
Indeed, there seemed an utter lack of any clew to indicate the motive
or perpetrator of the crime. The door of the house was usually
left open, all kinds of people coming and going at will; so it was
assumed that the murderer must have entered deliberately, gained the
third floor, then laid in wait in the dark hallway until Sasaku, all
unsuspecting, came out. That the assassin did not belong in the house
seemed certain, from the fact that the Japanese was an utter stranger
in the place, having only engaged his room the afternoon before, and
being, so far as could be learned, unacquainted with any of the other
tenants. Besides, all those at home at the time of the affair were able
to account satisfactorily for their movements.
Some significance, at first, was attached to the circumstance that the
door of the room directly across the corridor from Sasaku’s was found
ajar, whereas the man to whom the room belonged, a foundry worker by
the name of Marice Matschka, was known to be very circumspect about
keeping his door locked, and one of the fourth-floor lodgers, who
had come in at noon, asserted that when he passed by the door had
undoubtedly been closed.
Matschka, however, was able to prove conclusively that he himself had
not been back to the place since leaving for work at six o’clock that
morning, and also stoutly denied having given up his key, or sent any
one else there. He was confident, he said, that he had locked the door
behind him, as usual, that morning, but, of course, might be mistaken,
and in that case it would have been an easy matter for the unlatched
portal to have swung open in the draft.
There was, moreover, no reason to believe that he had known the
Japanese, or could have harbored ill will against him for any cause, so
this line of investigation was very speedily abandoned.
In short, the case was a puzzle, looked at from any angle. Sasaku’s
scanty effects, consisting chiefly of his clothes, a few letters, and a
notebook containing a few names and addresses, offered nothing in the
way of a clew; nor did his history, so far as it could be traced out,
disclose the existence of any enemies. He had been an affable, friendly
sort of a little chap, generally well liked. Finally, it was plain
that robbery was not the cause, since a diamond ring, a gold watch and
chain, and some fifty dollars in his pocket, had been left untouched.
The police, all at sea for an adequate motive, had to fall back on the
fantastic theory that he had been the victim of some sort of Oriental
vendetta at the hands of his own countrymen; and, with great pretense
at secret knowledge, made significant allusions to oath-bound clans and
mysterious brotherhoods.
Grail had just about completed his reading of the newspaper narrative,
digesting carefully not only what appeared, but also what lay between
the lines, when Sergeant Cato entered and saluted him.
The sergeant was dusty and perspiring from what had evidently been an
arduous day, but his beaming expression showed that his efforts had not
been in vain.
“You’ve found out what I wanted, eh?” Grail glanced up eagerly.
“I think I’ve got it all, sir.”
“Good!” The adjutant nodded toward a chair, and extended a cigar. “Sit
down and make yourself comfortable, sergeant, and let’s have the story
as quickly as possible. I would tell you to go and get something to
eat first, but things have been happening since you’ve been away that
make haste imperative.”
“Oh, I’m not hungry, sir,” Cato assured him. “This beats a meal any
old time”—puffing luxuriously at the perfecto—“and, besides, I had a
sandwich over at Sunset Bluffs.”
“Sunset Bluffs, eh? Then you did have time to look up the
motor-boat business for me?”
“Sure, sir. It came in yesterday morning, just as you said, billed to
Otto Schilder, and was taken out on his order late yesterday afternoon
by Mike Flannery, a truckman over there on the other side of the river.”
“And you talked to Flannery, of course?”
“No.” Cato shook his head. “He was out with his wagon. But I did
better, sir. I had a chin with Flannery’s kid, a boy about ten years
old.”
“Ah!”
“Yes, sir. He and I took in a moving-picture show together”—the
sergeant grinned—“and before it was over I guess he had told enough to
earn him the licking of his life, if the old man should ever find it
out. His father, it seems, intended to haul the boat out to the lake
last night, but just as he was getting ready to start out a stranger
came around to engage him for an immediate moving job. A big, dark-eyed
man, the boy said he was, who gave the name of Dabney, and seemed to be
in a great hurry.”
“A big, dark-eyed man, who gave the name of Dabney,” Grail echoed. “Go
on!”
“Well sir, Flannery, seeing a chance to squeeze in some extra money,
took him up, and, leaving the boat there in his stable yard, went off
with his truck and horses, expecting to be back and start for the lake
about one o’clock, Dabney telling him that his job wouldn’t take more
than that long. What with one thing and another, though, he didn’t get
back until the six-o’clock whistles were blowing, and then, according
to the kid, he sure turned the air blue. Somebody had borrowed the
motor boat during his absence, for a joy ride—his yard is only a
stone’s throw from the river—and it was a sight to look at, all
covered with river mud and grease, and dripping wet inside and out. He
was in an awful sweat for fear Schilder would find out about it, and he
worked like a nailer for over two hours, cleaning it up and polishing
the brasswork, before he dared set out with it for the lake. Funny
thing, though,” Cato concluded, “he doesn’t suspect this man Dabney in
the matter at all. He blames a gang of young roughs who live in the
neighborhood.”
Grail smiled. “As you infer, sergeant, it was Dabney, all right,” he
said. “He had need for a swift boat on the river last night, and he
didn’t want the hiring of one to be traced to him. Consequently, he
adopted this rather elaborate ruse to get hold of the one in Flannery’s
care. Dabney, although passing himself off as an Englishman, and
ostensibly conducting a real-estate office, is, I may as well tell you,
the man tipped off to me by Sasaku as a Russian spy, and the leader of
the operations to which Colonel Vedant has fallen victim.”
“Then you think,” Cato inquired quickly, “that the colonel was carried
off in this motor boat?”
“Assuredly,” Grail answered, and briefly explained his theory of
the seizure, and the employment of the electric crane to convey the
prisoner and his captors outside of the inclosure.
“The next thing, of course,” he concluded, “was to get their man away
as quickly and quietly as possible, and, naturally, the river suggested
itself as the most convenient avenue.”
“That sounds plausible enough.” Cato thoughtfully scratched his head.
“But what gets me, captain, is how did they know so much about the
motor boat, and just how to get hold of it? Is this Dabney-ovitch, or
whatever his real name is, a pal of Mr. Schilder’s?”
“No,” the adjutant admitted. “On the other hand, I think he has taken
especial pains to avoid meeting Schilder, or coming under his eye.
But”—he hesitated slightly—“the point you raise offers no difficulty.
Take my word for it, sergeant, there was a way for Dabney to find out
with absolute certainty anything he wanted.”
“And now,” he broke off, rather abruptly, “tell me what you discovered
in regard to the cigarette?”
“Oh, that was easy.” Cato’s brows cleared. “I scored a bull’s-eye the
second place I went into. It’s a little tobacco and stationery shop
down on Third Street, and the old fellow who runs it is one of the
talkative kind. He said he’d laid in a stock of these cigarettes for
four customers of his who get their newspapers there every morning, and
who live at a rooming house just around the corner. Here, I have the
names.” He produced a card on which he had jotted a memorandum. “Miller
Vance——”
“Ah!” Grail interrupted sharply. “The man who operated the crane. I had
a very strong suspicion that he was Russian, for all his alias, and the
American twist he had managed to acquire to his tongue. However, that
is not especially important. Go on, sergeant.”
“I, Pepernik, Louis Minowsky,” read Cato, “and Maurice Matschka.”
“Maurice Matschka!” The officer sprang to his feet. “That is a link
worth looking into,” he muttered. “Come on!” He caught up his hat, and
gave a quick nod of the head toward Cato. “I am going to the city hall.”
Arriving at the municipal building, and proceeding to police
headquarters, he was directed, on inquiry, to a certain Detective
Krause, as having the case of the murdered Japanese in charge.
“What makes all you people out at the fort so interested in this
affair, anyhow?” the detective asked, with a curious glance at Grail.
“Major Appleby and Lieutenant Hemingway was over here before supper,
and I told them all there was to know. The best I can do for you,
captain, is just to go over the same ground.”
“Of course,” Grail assented, with a smile. “Still you know how it is,
Mr. Krause; every one wants to hear a story at firsthand; and, as I
was, perhaps, better acquainted with poor Sasaku than any of the other
officers at the mess, there is just a possibility that I may be able to
throw some light on the tragedy.”
As a matter of fact, the detective required very little urging. He had
come to such an absolute halt in the investigation that he was only too
willing to repeat the story to any one who offered even the faintest
show of providing a solution.
His recital, though, if somewhat more diffuse, was practically the same
as that which Grail had already read in the newspaper. He presented
nothing new in the way of any material details.
“H’m!” The adjutant thoughtfully stroked his chin at the completion of
the narrative. “There would be no objection, I suppose, to letting me
examine the notebook which you say was found on Sasaku?”
“Certainly not, sir.” He stepped away to get it, adding, as he returned
and handed it over: “You won’t find anything there to help you,
captain. We’ve been over it already with a fine-tooth comb, and it
seems nothing but a list of names and people he’d met; some of them in
the city directory, and some not.”
Grail, however, evidently preferred to decide this point for himself;
for slowly and painstakingly he ran over the pages, scrutinizing each
entry carefully before he passed on to the next.
The detective, fidgeting at what he manifestly regarded as wasted
time, presently excused himself, on the plea of wanting to do some
telephoning, and sauntered off, and, with his going, Grail turned
back a couple of pages to point out significantly to Cato the name of
Dabney, with a little, almost indistinguishable mark set opposite it.
No further discovery was elicited until they reached the last page;
then Grail gave a sudden start, as he read, with the same cabalistic
mark against it, the name of Rezonoff.
“Rezonoff!” he muttered, with a frown of grave foreboding. “That can
only be Count Boris Rezonoff, captain in the imperial engineers!”
Cato, gathering from his tone that something was seriously wrong, edged
up closer.
“Is it bad, sir?” he whispered.
Grail vouchsafed no answer, but stood silent a moment, the look of
apprehension growing on his face; then snapped open his watch and
glanced at the time.
“Too early, by far,” he commented, under his breath. “I shall have to
wait at least two hours yet.”
Meanwhile, Cato, glancing over his shoulder, had been reading down the
page of the notebook, and now he gave a quick exclamation.
“There’s another name with that same mark against it,” he breathed
excitedly. “Don’t you see it! Down there at the bottom, underneath your
thumb!”
But Grail, as though recalled to himself, sharply closed the book.
“Oh, that one is of no consequence,” he insisted; yet he knew that it
was, for he had already noted the name with the telltale check opposite.
In Sasaku’s stiff, angular handwriting was set down: “Mrs. Otto
Schilder!”
TO BE CONTINUED.
THE NEWS OF ALL NATIONS. — Story of “Scotty” Hero of Zinc Fields. — Talk is Cheap. — Canada Spends Millions on Ports. — Finds Petrified Snake in Rock. — Failures. — Cossacks Rescue Little Girl. — Girl in Soldier’s Uniform. — Sings as Surgeons Operate. — Death of a Spy. — Oldest Veteran in Southwest Section. — Some Facts You May Not Know. — Taking Precautions. — Kitchner’s Caustic Comment. — Many Wolves in Texas. — Bandit Starr is Second Robin Hood. — Boy Hero Saves Five Lives. — Town of 4,000; No Post Office. — Builds Town Near His Farm. — Boy Flags and Saves a Train. — Boston Has Giant Lobster. — Buy-a-Pig Movement, Latest. — Motor Saw for Felling Trees. — Left Home on Freight; Back in Limousine. — Is Given Fullest Penalty. — This Cow is Strong for Twins. — Lone Hunter’s Tragic End. — Twin Brothers Marry Sisters. — Refuses to Quit on Pension. — Mustn’t “Cuss” by Wireless. — Cat’s Cradle Cost One Hundred Dollars. — Hog Without Food or Water. — Oldest Writing is of War on Locusts. — Death in Electric Wringer. — Pleads for Aged “Boy” Drug Fiend. — Cheer Their Boy Soldiers. — Wet and Dry Vote for Alaska. — Missouri Town Gets a Bomb. — Kills Big She-wolf and All Her Young. — Girl Was Dumb and Now Talks. — Educates Herself to Free Husband. — Horse Stops Fast Express. — Forgets He’s in Prison as He Hears Fifes Play.
Picture a man who has been badly bent at times—aye, even broke unto
the last jitney—one who has tasted the bitter things of life along
with the sweet, one who has seen a fortune swept away in a twinkling,
only to be regained after a long, persistent struggle. Picture a good
loser, who has lost more than most men will ever earn, and who pins
his faith in the mining industry to such an extent that he laughs at
failure and hangs on like a bulldog until he succeeds, and you have a
mind’s-eye view of J. M. Short, the best known operator in the mining
district near Joplin, Mo.—the “Scotty” of the zinc fields.
Thirty-two years ago Short was working for $1.25 a per day at Galena,
Kan., and a few years later moved to Joplin, landing here with the
price of one ham sandwich. He worked for low wages until he had saved
enough to buy a prospect drill, and decided to look for ore on his own
responsibility.
His first few holes were blanks; the cost of sinking them was heavy,
considering Short’s limited finances. For a time it looked as though
he was destined to go back to wages. However, he hung on until almost
his last penny was gone; then luck smiled on him, and he made his
first strike. He had been watching the drill clippings for so long
and finding only barren pieces of rock that he could hardly believe
the truth when at last the sand bucket brought up a quantity of
yellow-looking dirt, rich in zinc ore.
Short sold this “prospect” for $5,000 cash, and immediately invested
the whole amount in what was known as the Bunker Hill Mine, which
netted him $65,000 in eighteen months, part of which—$3,000—he
reinvested in the Sacagawea Zinc Company, from which he profited,
inside of three months, to the tune of $17,000 more. A year later Short
again became “dead broke” on another mining venture, and again went to
work for wages.
Depriving himself of all luxuries and many necessities, he continued
to work for wages until he had saved up $1,800, when he determined
to again “try his hand.” One day, during an extremely dry summer, he
was driving by a piece of land where the Sitting Bull Mine was later
developed. He noticed a man sinking a hole to get water at a point
where a spring had once been. The land was low and boggy and the digger
was taking out shale and soapstone. The formation looked good to Short,
and he at once procured a forty-acre lease from the owner. With $1,800,
his sole capital, Short drilled the ground, discovered a rich run of
ore, and put down a shaft to the 185-foot level. The owner of the land
put up the capital for building a $15,000 mill. Ninety days later Short
had paid for the mill, had $10,000 in the bank to his credit, and had
a vast body of ore blocked out which netted him more than $100,000 in
profits in the next few months.
Almost immediately he secured another lease and opened up what is known
as the Pocahontas Mine, from which he cleared another $100,000. Then
followed in quick succession the Geronimo and the Waneta-Pearl. Short
is now interested in, if not the entire owner of, more than a dozen
valuable properties, so that, with the sudden jump in price of zinc
concentrates from thirty-five to seventy-five dollars per ton, this
Scotty of the zinc mines has but faint idea of what he is really worth.
A retired United States army officer says the European war is “a
horrible slaughter, which should be halted by some neutral power.” The
neutral power that attempted to halt it forcibly would simply increase
the slaughter and add its own blood to the crimson tide.
Canada is making extensive improvements in her seaports. At Halifax
work is under way which will cost $10,000,000, while at St. John,
New Brunswick, $8,000,000 is being spent. Levis, opposite Quebec, is
building the largest dry dock in America. Much work is also being done
at the Pacific coast ports.
While blasting some limestone rocks in the side of Stone Mountain, near
Big Laurel, Va., the workmen found a petrified snake imbedded in the
rocks. The snake was coiled as if making ready to spring at something,
and is believed to have been a copperhead.
Commercial failures in the United States last year were 8,344.
A little incident, told in Danish newspapers which have arrived in
Chicago, shows that the Cossacks are not as cruel as they are sometimes
depicted. Recently while advancing against a detachment of Turks, a
company of Cossacks found a little girl, two years old, who had been
deserted by her parents in their precipitate flight. They brought the
little one to the headquarters of the regiment, where she received
food and was made comfortable in every way.
In the Greek Catholic Church in the village of Bardus the little
foundling was baptized according to the orthodox ritual. The commander
of the regiment and Princess Gelovana, wife of a member of the Duma,
served as godparents of the child. The little girl received the name
of Alexandre Donshaga, after the regiment known as Don Cossacks. The
officers promised to contribute monthly toward the maintenance and
education of this little “daughter of the regiment.”
People in the vicinity of Cooke’s Church, on Queen Street, in Toronto,
at two-thirty in the afternoon were left wondering whether the Germans
had landed in the city in such large numbers that the military
authorities had found it necessary to mobilize a regiment of the fair
sex to aid the soldiers in driving them back.
The cause of the sensation was a pretty young lady named Clara Philip,
who, by the terms of a wager she had made with a lady friend, had to
walk down Mutual Street from Shuter to Queen Street dressed in full
soldier’s uniform, for a box of chocolates.
The young lady with curly hair peeping out under the service cap,
looked bewitching in the uniform, although it was somewhat too large
for her, and despite the fact that the heavy army boots were dispensed
with for her own dainty pair of “threes.”
“It certainly did feel funny walking down the street with some of the
people turning up their noses at me and others convulsed in laughter,
but I was determined to win the bet, and did,” said Miss Philip, after
her sensational parade.
“Oh, it was funny. On the way along I had the pleasure of saluting
a ‘brother’ soldier, who with much grace returned the salute, and a
little farther along a ‘guardian of the law’ discreetly turned and
walked in the opposite direction. That is the way I became richer by a
large box of chocolates.”
Zouave Besson, a French trooper, while undergoing an operation at the
Grand Palais, in Paris, a hospital for the last three months, lustily
sang the “Marseillaise” from the beginning to the end, weakening
slightly toward the close of the last stanza.
This patriotic demonstration is a contradiction of the proverb that
a good man will swear while he is under the influence of chloroform.
After the operation Besson’s nurse told him of his patriotism in
singing the national anthem.
He replied: “When I was just going on I realized that I was singing the
‘Marseillaise,’ and brought all my will power to bear to sing it to the
end.” He recovered nicely.
Death to all spies is the military rule. One of the most dramatic of
the many minor tragedies of the war was seen at Lassigny recently,
when a captive in a black gown, to all appearances a nun, was suddenly
led before a firing squad and shot down at the officer’s command. The
startled onlookers learned that the squad’s victim was a daring young
lieutenant in the German army who had got inside the French lines by
donning a nun’s attire. So good was his disguise that he had gone for a
considerable distance and probably had obtained much information that
would have proved valuable had he escaped.
Had the spy been a woman, the penalty would have been the same. Such is
the law of war. Many women spies have been caught and executed.
Probably the oldest, and surely the most noted Confederate veteran now
living in the Southwest is Doctor Thomas E. Berry, of Oklahoma City,
Okla., a typical “Kentucky colonel,” who is now eighty-three years old.
He walks as straight as a young Indian, has never used intoxicating
beverages or tobacco and has never suffered from fever or other
sickness, and during his long and eventful career he has been soldier,
globe trotter, author, duelist, physician, and surgeon.
In the Civil War he served with the Confederate generals, Morgan and
Forest, was captured twelve times by the Yankees, and escaped that many
times from their prisons. He received twenty-two bullet wounds and
several saber cuts during the four years of fighting, and since the
close of the war has fought six duels in foreign lands.
Doctor Berry served under Joe Shelby in Mexico and helped to organize
the French army in Algeria. He rendered valuable service to King
Menelik in Abyssinia and sojourned for a while in Constantinople,
where, like many others, he swam across the Bosporus. He received
several decorations from foreign rulers, but never wears them in this
“land of the free.”
In a recent chat with a friend Doctor Berry said:
“My father and grandfather admonished me to never forgive or forget
an insult; never offer the left cheek after having been slapped on my
right cheek. They also requested me to always keep the Berry escutcheon
untarnished; never be a craven nor a coward.”
The doctor comes from a wealthy family that owned large areas of land
near Perryville, Ky., but the Civil War made them comparatively poor.
The doctor wrote a book entitled “Four Years With Generals Forest and
Morgan.” He is now writing a book about his foreign military service.
He has also made several valuable discoveries in materia medica and
surgery while practicing medicine forty years. Some of them are very
original and should not be allowed to perish with the doctor’s death.
Doctor Berry, though one of the best physicians and surgeons, quit
practicing four years ago. He is an inveterate reader and has read
2,000 books. He also enjoys newspapers and magazines. It is needless to
say that the doctor’s personal appearance and courteous manners denote
him to be a gentleman and scholar. He belongs to no religious sect, but
is what he terms a “practical Christian.” He will no doubt be as brave
when Death calls him as he always has been during his long life. The
doctor is optimistic, however, and says he will probably live to be a
centenarian.
The highest speed ever attained by man on the face of the earth is one
mile in 25.2 seconds, equivalent to 142.85 miles an hour, according to
the Railway Age Gazette. It was in an automobile run by Teddy
Tetzlaff on the level salt beds at Salduro, Utah, 112 miles west of
Salt Lake City. The best speed ever made on rails was with an electric
car between Berlin and Zossen, Germany, 130.5 miles an hour.
Birds, in the construction of their nests, almost without exception
avoid bright-colored materials, which might possibly lead to the
discovery of their place of abode by an enemy.
Apple wood, used almost exclusively for saw handles, also furnishes the
material for many so-called brierwood pipes.
On a peace footing the Portuguese army consists of 32,000 men. When
fully mobilized, the army should have 105,000 first-line troops and
145,000 of the second to put into the field.
In Germany, one man in 213 goes to college; in Scotland, one in 520; in
the United States, one in 2,000, and in England, one in 5,000.
Damage to American crops by insects yearly amounts to $580,000,000.
There are fewer suicides among miners than among any other class of
workmen.
A booby is not merely a human dunce, but is a Bahama bird, which is
so spiritless that when attacked by other birds it fails to fight and
gives up the fish it has caught without resistance.
Drawings of human beings and animals in ancient caves in France are
regarded as proof that man was right-handed as far back as in the stone
age.
A rosy-cheeked youngster, dressed in his best clothes, entered the
village post office and carefully laid a huge slice of iced cake on the
counter.
“With my sister’s, the bride’s, compliments, and will you please eat as
much as you can,” he said.
The postmistress smiled delightedly.
“How very kind of the bride to remember me!” she cried. “Did she know
of my weakness for wedding cake?”
“She did,” answered the youngster coldly, “and she thought she’d
send over a bite of it this afternoon just to take the edge off your
appetite before she posted any boxes off to her friends.”
A story is going the rounds about what Lord Kitchener, the British war
secretary, said the other day after he had inspected some defense works
on the east coast of England. It is short and sweet.
The war minister motored from point to point, walked over the ground,
but never said a word all afternoon until the moment he was leaving for
London. Then he opened his grim mouth.
“Those trenches of yours,” he said, “wouldn’t keep out the Salvation
Army.”
The people of Texas destroyed 98,600 wolves and wild cats—including
fifty-three panthers and twenty-two leopards—between September 1,
1912, and March, 1914, according to the State comptroller. But there
are many thousands more of these wild beasts still alive, a serious
menace to the rapidly growing industry of sheep and Angora-goat raising.
Is Henry Starr, of Lawton, Okla., the bandit chief, another Robin Hood?
Does he, while engaged in robbing banks, keep in mind the hardships
of the poor, as did the picturesque highwayman and poacher of early
England? If only a part of the stories told of Starr are true, he might
be called the “Robin Hood of Oklahoma,” although just now he is in
Lincoln County Jail at Chandler, suffering from a broken leg, and with
a long prison term pretty thoroughly mapped out for him. But here is
what some of his admirers say he did:
“These things are of no value to me, but I’d hate it if the farmers
had them to pay,” and with that remark Henry Starr, the bandit leader
who, with his band of desperadoes, robbed two banks at Stroud and was
shot down and captured by eighteen-year-old Paul Curry, once threw a
heavy bundle of mortgages and notes, with a stone tied to them, into
California Creek in Northern Oklahoma, and they were never recovered.
Starr and his men had taken the bank’s papers when they rifled the bank
at Caney, Kan., several years ago, and he said he took them just so the
farmers would not have them to pay.
This incident in Starr’s bandit career was told by a long-time resident
of the Cherokee country. He has known Starr for a number of years, has
played poker with him frequently, and he insists that Starr is really
one of the kindliest of men. After the Kansas robbery the Starr gang
rode into northern Oklahoma and hid for some time, and it was at this
time that the mortgages and notes were destroyed. The total value of
the papers was perhaps never known, but a man who saw them declares the
bundle was a foot thick.
It was following this same robbery, too, that Starr made one of his
most spectacular get-aways. He and two men rode into an isolated
community during the night and concealed themselves in a big stone
barn, which was on the edge of a small valley with hills not far
distant and almost surrounding it. Starr and his men slept until late
in the day and then played pitch and shot craps for the small change
they had obtained at the bank. They would shoot for a handful of the
small silver, dimes and quarters, without any attempt being made to
ascertain the amount.
The whereabouts of Starr and his two companions became known to the
county sheriff, who, with a posse of twenty or thirty men, went to the
barn with the intention of capturing the trio. The members of the posse
were stationed on the hills surrounding the barn, and they thought it
would be impossible for the outlaws to escape. When Starr was notified
of the presence of the officers, he went into the barnyard and motioned
to the sheriff, whom he knew, to confer with him. When the sheriff rode
into the yard, Starr shook hands with him as though he was glad to meet
an old friend, and then said:
“I am going to leave here at five o’clock; there are three of us. If
you do not want your men hurt, you had better get them out of the way,
for when we start we are going through your lines. Tell your men that
for me.”
The sheriff returned to his men, called them together, and told them
what Starr had said; within five minutes there was not a man other than
the sheriff left within rifle distance of Henry Starr. That evening at
five, as he had announced, Starr and his men rode quietly, and without
being molested, away from the barn and toward the Osage Hills.
That Starr’s wife was the original of a photograph, “The Cherokee
Milkmaid,” which was published worldwide several years ago, is the
statement of Representative Walter R. Eaton, of Muskogee and Oilton.
Eaton was engaged at that time in promoting the town site of Porum,
and was going through the country in that vicinity with a photographer
getting pictures to advertise that section.
Late one evening Eaton and the photographer drove by the home of Mrs.
Starr, Henry’s mother, at a time when a very pretty young woman was
milking a cow in the barnyard. The entire scene was one that would make
a beautiful picture, and the two men finally persuaded the young woman
to pose for several pictures.
“We got one fine picture,” said Eaton, “which we labeled ‘The Cherokee
Milkmaid.’ It attracted instant attention because of its artistic
merits and was published widely throughout the United States in both
newspapers and magazines. It was about a year afterward that this
young woman married Henry Starr.” Eaton says the young woman was a
school-teacher at the time and was boarding at the Starr home.
The heroism of Aaron S. Ashbrook, twelve years old, saved the lives
of his mother, his grandmother, two sisters, and his uncle, George
Ashbrook, when they were trapped in the second story of their burning
home in Cynthiana, Ky.
Escape was cut off by means of the stairway, and the little fellow
leaped from the second-story window, and, running to a barn, secured
a ladder, which he placed to the window, and the inmates of the house
escaped without injury, with the exception of Mrs. Mary Gray, the
aged mother of Mrs. Ashbrook, who fell from the ladder and was badly
injured. The house was totally destroyed.
Although boasting of a population of almost 4,000, and with mail
business sufficient, it is said, to justify free delivery, Oilton,
Okla., the recent metropolis of the Cushing oil field, has no post
office. Residents have chipped in and employed men to sort the mail,
while some concerns have employed their own carriers.
Two months ago Oilton was an alfalfa field. To-day it is one of the
fastest-growing towns in the country. It is the southern terminus of
the recently completed Oil Belt Terminal Railroad.
It is a great sight when the mail comes in. If it is not raining, the
mail is sorted out in piles on the ground. Usually the entire populace
stands around watching the assorting of the mail.
The post office department has been requested to designate a post
office at Oilton.
Because he raised 150,000 bushels of wheat in 1914 and needed a place
to market it without a haul of ten miles, Ben Foster, a large land
owner, of Colby, Kan., built a town of his own. He constructed an
elevator, a coal and lumber yard, and some houses to go with it. The
town was named Breton.
An attempt to wreck an east-bound Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad passenger
train, near Eastbrook, W. Va., was frustrated by a boy, who flagged the
train in time to prevent it from running into an obstruction placed on
the track. A pile of ties had been placed on the track at the end of a
curve. Railroad police are investigating.
The great-great-grandfather of all lobsters—according to Mike
O’Donnell, who is an authority on such matters—has arrived in Boston,
Mass. It is on exhibition in a stall in the Quincy Market.
The lobster, which in its natural state weighed thirty-three pounds
and one ounce, measures forty-two inches from the tip of its tail to
the end of its giant claws, the body alone measuring twenty-three and
one-half inches. Since arriving here the lobster has been boiled, the
meat removed, and the shell painted so that it now looks much the same
as it did when it left the waters of Newfoundland.
This giant lobster, the biggest one ever seen here, according to some
authorities, and one of the biggest on record, was caught off Grand
Manan by a fisherman named John Moses.
Isn’t it about time to buy a pig? This is no joke. One of the causes of
the high cost of living is in the fact that society is growing faster
than the farmers. There is no more profitable animal than a pig. He
improves the dressing and gives the gardener a valuable asset to begin
the season with. He stands in the doorway to keep the wolf away through
the winter. And the social part of it is no small item. The pig is the
most social of animals, especially when he is hungry, and a good pig
has a continuous appetite. It is no disgrace for any one to raise a
pig—not even a school-teacher. Buy a pig and get your name on the roll
of honor.
In attempting to develop an electrically operated device for bucking
and felling trees, a lumber company in Marshfield, Ore., constructed
a portable motor-driven chain saw, which will cut through a two-foot
log in less than a minute, declares the Electrical World. The
cutting element consists of a motor-driven saw-toothed chain traveling
around the peripheries of two pulleys, one at each end of the frame.
The motor is connected direct to one of the pulleys and is supplied
with electricity through a flexible cord. The apparatus weighs only
eighty pounds complete.
To celebrate the anniversary of forty years ago, when he jumped a
freight at the old Delanco, N. J., station and beat his way in a
side-door palace car to a near-by metropolis in search of a chance to
make good, which he thought his home had denied him, a former Delanco
boy came back a day or two ago in a limousine to call on old friends
and renew the friendships of school-days.
The boy was John Cahill, who is now chief counsel of the American Bell
Telephone Company, with offices in New York, London, and Paris.
Judge Maxwell sentenced Merton C. Pierce, of Canton, Pa., to three
months in jail and a fine of $500 and costs of prosecution, for
furnishing liquor to a person of known intemperate habits. Pierce
pleaded guilty to supplying liquor to a man who could not buy for
himself.
“Oh, that the law was more severe in such cases,” said Judge Maxwell.
“I have the utmost contempt for a man who will buy liquor for a man who
is forbidden to buy it himself, and would like to send you to jail for
a longer period, but the law does not allow. However, I will give you
the fullest penalty, and that will keep you behind the bars for at
least six months,” said the judge, in passing sentence.
Another Canton man has been arrested on the same charge, but will fight
the case.
James Billingsley, a farmer residing near Axtell, Kan., has a Red
Polled cow that has made a record in raising calves. The animal, though
only eight years old, has given birth to eight calves, four of which
were born within a period of thirteen months. A year ago she gave birth
to twins, and recently she gave birth to a set of twins.
The cow is a fine milker, and all of her calves have brought prices as
high as fifty dollars a head.
“Have been torn up by a brown bear. No chance to get out. Good-by.”
Mortally wounded, and with his right arm incapacitated, King Thurman,
a lone hunter and trapper on Chickaloon Flats, Alaska, crawled to his
cabin, printed the above note with his left hand, and then shot himself
with his rifle.
This was the story that was read by the hunters who found Thurman’s
body in his cabin two weeks ago and reported the tragedy to the
authorities at Seward, Alaska.
Ashland, Pa., had a novel wedding, when Lewis and James Baglin, twin
brothers, were married to Ruth and Ada Maurer, sisters, by Reverend M.
H. Jones.
Thomas Strong, of Pine Meadow, Conn., who has been a trackman on the
New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad for more than forty years, and
is nearly eighty years old, has refused to be retired on a pension,
saying he wants to die in harness. He says he wouldn’t know what to do
with himself if he quit work.
Radio operators in the United States can’t cuss each other out or use
profanity or indecent language of any kind “in the air.”
A few days ago an operator in the commercial station in Massachusetts
ended up a message with a word that shocked the inspector in the
government station at Boston, where it was picked up. The department of
commerce has sent the offending operator a strong letter of reprimand,
warning him to be careful of his language in the air in the future or
he would lose his license.
Louis Newman, of Bayonne, N. J., owns a cat which is the possessor of a
litter of five kittens which Newman values at twenty dollars a piece,
despite their being decidedly common cats, of the back-fence variety.
Two weeks ago Newman left his safe open and later missed a roll of
bills, containing one hundred dollars. Chief Michael S. Reilly, of the
Bayonne police, and the entire detective force examined the premises
and found them clewless.
Newman solved the mystery himself. In the woodshed at the rear of his
home, at 73 West Twenty-sixth Street, he heard a cat’s voice, and spied
Spondulix, the household pet, in a box with five kittens. Newman picked
one up and at the same time caught sight of something green at the
bottom of the box. He investigated and found four ten-dollar bills, two
twenties, two fives, and some twos.
The mother cat, in seeking for something with which to line her cradle,
had appropriated the money from the safe.
That a hog can live fifty-five days without food or water has been
proven. Burch Dowell, of Cookville, Tenn., one of Putnam County’s
prosperous farmers, states that he has a Duroc hog that lived for
fifty-five days without either food or water, in a deep gully into
which it had fallen and became entangled in the dense undergrowth,
rendering its escape impossible.
The hog was accidentally discovered a few days ago by Dowell, who
extricated it from its helpless predicament. It had lost 175 pounds
in weight, but was still alive, and bids fair to rapidly recover its
former vigor.
A number of ancient Sumerian tablets recording the deeds of the
Babylonians thousands of years ago have just been deciphered by
George A. Barton, at the University of Pennsylvania museum. One of
these tablets, which tells how a farmer rid his field of locusts and
caterpillars, is dated 4,000 B. C., and is the oldest piece of writing
extant, according to an announcement to-night by officials of the
museum. The farmer, Doctor Barton’s translation says, called in a
necromancer, who “broke a jar, cut open a sacrifice, a word of cursing
he repeated, and the locusts and caterpillars fled.” For this service
he received a tall palm tree.
Miss Margaret McConnell, aged thirty, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. David L.
McConnell, of Washington, Pa., a society girl and active in church and
charitable work, met a horrible death while investigating the mechanism
of an electric clothes wringer that had been installed in the home that
morning.
A long scarf the girl had thrown about her head caught in the wringer
and she was strangled before her mother, who was standing close by,
could shut off the current or go to her assistance.
Mrs. McConnell, too late, made frantic efforts to save the life of her
daughter. Unsuccessful, she summoned aid and then collapsed.
Pleading for her sixty-year-old “boy,” who, she says, will die if he is
not permitted to obtain the drugs denied him by the Harrison antidrug
bill, an eighty-one-year-old Colorado woman has written a pitiful
letter to Doctor B. R. Reese, of the Federal internal revenue division
of the treasury department. She addressed her letter to President
Wilson, but Secretary Tumulty sent it to Doctor Reese, whose office is
the clearing house of such correspondence.
Much as the appeal of the old Colorado woman moved the officials, no
exception will be made in that case. There is no intention on the part
of the internal revenue division to issue blanket permits to obtain
drugs for individual cases.
Paris was enlivened early this week by gay crowds of conscripts of the
1916 class parading the streets to the strains of the “Marseillaise”
and other patriotic songs previous to departing to join their regiments
in the center and the south of France.
These nineteen-year-old recruits compare favorably with those of
previous levies, and they showed the better effect of physical training
in preparation for their service in the army.
All appeared to be full of confidence, and they departed without a sign
of reluctance or regret.
The Alaska Senate passed a bill submitting territorial prohibition
to the voters at the November election in 1916. The bill has already
passed the House. If the voters approve prohibition, it will become
effective January 1, 1918.
The glass in almost every alley window in a half block in the business
section of Excelsior Springs, Mo., was broken when what is believed to
have been a stick of dynamite was thrown into the alley. One arrest has
been made.
A number of people narrowly escaped injury.
The explosion is believed to be the outgrowth of ill feeling engendered
at the local-option election here, January 18.
General Putnam, of early-day fame, who crawled into a hole and
dispatched a ferocious “painter” therein, has a rival at Worland, near
Gillette, Wyo., in the person of Henry Schumacher, who recently tracked
a monster she-wolf to her den, and, with six-shooter in hand, crawled
in after her.
He had only proceeded a few feet when the wolf sprang for him, but
Henry was quick with his gun, as usual, placing several bullets in her
head before she could reach him.
Eight pups, about a month old, were found at the end of the den.
Schumacher killed them all, but, small as they were, they put up a
stiff fight, repeatedly biting him before he succeeded in killing them
all. Bounty to the amount of one hundred and fifty-five dollars was
collected on the old wolf and her young.
Miss Helen Dodge, eighteen years old, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. H. G.
Dodge, of Lestershire, N. Y., born deaf and dumb, will deliver an oral
oration at her graduation from the Malone State Institution for the
Deaf and Dumb in June.
Miss Dodge’s case is considered one of the most remarkable in
the history of teaching the deaf and dumb. She was placed in the
institution when only four years old, and has been a student there ever
since.
Her teacher soon discovered that she was unusually intelligent and
began experimenting in an effort to teach her to speak. Her vocal
chords were found to be in normal condition, and before she was seven
years old she had been taught to make sounds which were intelligible.
She now speaks as distinctly and with as much expression as a person
with the normal faculty of hearing, and it is declared that hers is the
first case of the kind in this or any other institution.
Fired with the ambition to become a lawyer, that she may some day
obtain the freedom of her husband, who is serving a life sentence for
the murder of Charles Reuter, a Tulsa, Okla., lawyer, Mrs. Mamie Baker,
dividing her time between household duties and public school, has
advanced from the lowest grammar grades to the high school in less than
two years. Mrs. Baker is a Bohemian, and unfamiliarity with the English
language has been an additional drawback to her.
When she completes high school, it is her aim to enter a law office.
She insists she will be a practising attorney in three years.
Mrs. Baker does not seek to obtain the freedom of her husband that she
may again live with him, but to take the stain of crime from her name.
She has always insisted her husband is innocent of murder.
An engineer on a fast express on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad received
a signal to stop his train near Defiance, Ohio. It was an emergency
signal, so the train was stopped as quickly as possible.
The conductor, amazed at the sudden stop, ran to the engine and reached
it just as the engineer was preparing to go back to the train to
ascertain the trouble. Both were dismayed when told no person had given
the signal.
An investigation of the express car, however, revealed that a horse had
the signal cord in its mouth and was pulling it with all its might.
A fife-and-drum corps visited the State Penitentiary, at Joliet, Ill.,
to give the prisoners a treat.
The 1,500 convicts pushed back their plates when the corps marched down
the aisle of the big dining hall to the stirring tune of “Marching
Through Georgia.”
A grizzled old man seated at one of the benches rose and followed,
keeping step with the players. He was Thomas McNally, a life convict
from Chicago, who for twenty-five years has been “No. 3,692.”
“I am an old soldier—fought in the Civil War,” he mumbled in apology
when the music stopped. “I forgot where I was.”
An appeal for McNally’s pardon is pending. It is supported by the judge
before whom he was tried and twenty lawyers who believe he is innocent.
SONG POEMS WANTED for publication. You may write a big song hit! Experience unnecessary. Publication
guaranteed if acceptable. Send us your verses or melodies today. Write
for free valuable booklet.
Marks-Goldsmith Co. [Dept. 70] Washington, D.C.
