PART THREE—THE SMOKE BANDIT

When I announced my intention of writing up the smoke-bandit case, Mme. Storey scoffed at me. "Why, everybody seventeen years old and more," she said, "that is, everybody who was old enough to read the papers six years ago, knows all about it."

"So much the better," said I; "people like to read what they know about. Moreover, there was so much misrepresentation and concealment in the published accounts that I can tell them a few things they don't know. Take your part in the final clearing up of the case; for perfectly unnecessary reasons of delicacy you refused to let that be divulged. I think it ought to be known."

She shrugged, and let me have my way.

I

The premises of the National Forrest Bank were built during that period of magnificence when the great banks still arrogated the choicest sites in town to their own use, without feeling the necessity of building a sky-scraper overhead to help pay the interest. The little building making a hole in the solid ranks of the sky-scrapers is extremely effective. Here is a case where smallness is impressive. A little building only in a comparative sense, for, inside, the noble dome dwarfs the bank's customers to the proportions of insects. All around under the dome run the celebrated murals of Herbert B. Weatherbee, one of the sights of New York.

On a Friday at eleven o'clock in the morning, when the bank was at its most crowded—for that is the hour when many of the large firms draw their payrolls,—suddenly, without warning, without any sound of an explosion, great clouds of yellow smoke billowed up from the bank's floor, and instantly filled the whole place with an impenetrable acrid fog. In silence, and with a terrifying swiftness, the fumes puffed up, wiping everything out with a single gesture as it were.

The phenomenon was received in an appalled silence. Then the crowd rushed blindly in the direction of the doors. There was a whole row of doors, but the panic-stricken customers jammed there, and frantic cries of fright and pain arose. In a minute or two the smoke had dissipated itself under the spaces of the dome sufficiently for objects to become visible again, but the panic did not subside until every man had fought his way out of the building. Those who had been knocked down crawled out on all fours. By a miracle nobody was seriously injured. The astonished clerks of the bank for the most part never left their places.

The crowd rushing out of the bank met a bigger crowd running from every direction in the streets to see what was the matter. In five minutes so dense a mob had collected that the Broadway traffic was held up, and it took the reserves from two precincts to start it going again. Before any one inside the building could take hold of the situation, a fresh crowd overran the banking-room, and police had to be introduced through the basement to clear it. Utter confusion prevailed. It was not until a quarter of an hour after the affair that a message from the house of H. Tannenbaum and Co., the big clothing manufacturers, informed the bank's officials that the firm's messenger had been robbed of the week's pay-roll as he left the paying teller's window. Then the reason of the affair became clear.

Such was the story that I read in the afternoon papers. No one who was not in New York at the time can comprehend the shock of dismay it caused. We read with equanimity of the robbery of country banks, or even of the branches of city banks in outlying districts; that seems to be part of the natural order of things. But the National Forrest Bank!—whose long history is interwoven with that of the city itself; an institution only a little less sacred than the United States Treasury; such a thing had never been heard of before! It was evidently a single-handed crime, and that a lone individual had dared to commit such an outrage within the very temple of security almost passed the bounds of credibility. The whole financial world was shaken.

One could not but feel sorry for the police. All the panic-stricken bankers and business men in town put it up to them naturally, and what could they do? The rush of the crowd back into the banking-room had obliterated whatever evidence might have been left there. They had to appear to be doing something, of course, and all sorts of theories were successively inflated and exploded. From edition to edition of the papers the police promised results, but reading between the lines it was only too clear that they were all at sea. The robber had vanished in his own smoke. In the press the story shrank from a full page to two columns, then to one, from sheer lack of new material. But before it got crowded off the front page altogether, one week later at almost precisely the same hour, another smoke bomb was dropped in the Manhattan National on Wall Street, which, as everyone knows, is the largest bank of them all. The first affair being fresh in everybody's mind, an even wilder panic resulted, of which the bandit took full advantage. His procedure was different this time. The smoke was released at a moment when one of the paying tellers' wickets was thrown up to permit the teller to pass out some package of bills to a customer. The customer was not robbed, but, as the teller fell against the back of his cage, an arm reached in through the open wicket, and gathered up bundle after bundle of bills from his desk. The haul was thirty-two thousand dollars. On the first occasion the robber only got seven thousand.

Well, we thought the first robbery had exhausted the possibilities of sensation, but the second far exceeded it. A single robbery might be regarded as an accident, but two were certainly the result of a deeply planned campaign. Everybody felt that, since no method had been devised of meeting this danger, there was no reason why it should not go on indefinitely, whenever the bandit chose to strike. Every moneyed man in town wondered if he'd be next. A sickening feeling of helplessness filled the authorities.

But the police had something to go on now. One of the detectives placed in the bank that morning had marked the very spot where the billowing fumes were released, and was armed with a description of the man who had stood nearest that spot. He had not been seen to throw or drop anything, and it was supposed that he had released the bomb through his pants-leg. A man of medium size, very well built, the detective reported, but with a face hollowed and greyed as from long illness. A thick grey moustache with ragged ends; a fringe of straggling black hair showing under his hat; dressed in worn but neatly brushed clothes. The detective had taken him for the respectable book-keeper of some business house. When the smoke puffed up the detective had sprung forward to seize him, but had only embraced the smoke.

On the floor where the bomb had been dropped, they found some fragments of colored glass as thin as paper. These were evidently parts of a glass ball, such as are used to decorate Christmas trees. The shops were full of them at the time. The neck of the ball was found intact. It had been stopped with sealing-wax. From traces of powder adhering to the glass, the chemists were able to reconstruct the contents of the bomb. The formula was kept secret, for fear somebody else might try on the same scheme.

After the second robbery the big banks adopted the most elaborate arrangements to protect themselves and their customers. The usual method was to rope off the interior of the banking-house so that the customers were obliged to pass through in single file, watched and protected every foot of the way by armed guards. Only one customer at a time was allowed to approach a paying teller's window, everybody else being held back at a safe distance until he got his money. When he got his money he was escorted to the door by a guard. All this entailed a considerable delay in the transaction of business, and was very expensive, to boot. But it was expected that the smoke bandit would be hard put to beat it.

After the second robbery, the regular police not having produced any results, the Banking Association engaged our old acquaintance Walter A. Barron to act independently in running down the thief. He was given absolute carte blanche in the matter of operatives and expenses. Barron, you remember, was an ex-assistant district attorney who had set up his own detective bureau when the city administration changed. He was something more than a mere acquaintance of Mme. Storey, as my account of the Ashcomb Poor case revealed. To put it bluntly, he was a suitor to my mistress, with a bull-headed pertinacity that no amount of discouragement had been able to affect. He often came to our office. We did not see him for some days after he had been appointed to the case, and we had no means of following his activities, for at first he refused to talk for publication, thus showing better sense than I had credited him with.

It was realised around town that Friday was an unlucky day to send to the bank for your pay-roll cash, and business firms quickly got in the habit of choosing any day but Friday. Six days after the Manhattan National robbery, that is to say, Thursday, the blow fell again. This time the bandit picked the big Cosmopolitan Trust on lower Broadway, and all the roped lines, armed guards, etc., troubled him not a whit. A sort of groan of rage went up from financial Manhattan. Some extremists demanded that martial law be established, without any clear notion of what good that would do.

The Cosmopolitan owns a forty-storey office building over its banking premises. The banking-office opens on the same corridor that serves the elevators, and during business hours there is always a throng passing in and out. The thief did not enter the banking-room, but must have loitered in the corridor until he saw a pair of messengers come out of the bank with a heavy satchel. Then he dropped his bomb or bombs in the corridor, and, under cover of the impenetrable fumes, snatched the satchel, and made off with it.

This happened only about ten paces from the doors to the street. The despoiled messengers were outside almost as soon as the robber. They saw their satchel making off down Broadway, and set up an immense hue and cry. In five seconds I suppose there were two hundred men in pursuit of the thief. A real old man they said, who ran with a limp. But he showed an astonishing spryness. Nevertheless, he would certainly have been caught, had it not been for his bombs. They saw him draw his hand from his pocket and immediately thereafter the familiar thick billows of smoke rolled up, filling the canyon between the skyscrapers from wall to wall. A roar of balked rage went up from the crowd.

The bolder spirits ran right through the smoke, but found nothing on the other side. The thief had evidently darted into one of the office buildings on the left-hand side of the way. All these buildings had rear entrances on New Street. He made a clean get-away. His loot was not quite so big this time. Eleven thousand, if I remember aright.

The following week it was the turn of the Textile National, another of the first-line banks. His reward was only a beggarly five thousand.

These robberies in New York were the sensation of the entire country, but out-of-town papers reported them with a difference. They had no call to feel the strain of anxiety, the helpless anger that every responsible person in the metropolis shared. Indeed, since, as Voltaire or some other Frenchman has pointed out, there is something not exactly displeasing to us in the misfortunes of our friends, there was a good deal of quiet fun poked at the helplessness of the New York authorities. All this was abruptly changed when, three days after the Textile National affair, a smoke bomb was dropped in the Quaker National Bank, Philadelphia, and the bandit got away with sixteen thousand dollars.

A wave of panic swept over the entire country. If Philadelphia, why not all the great cities, one after another? Moreover, since the composition of the bombs was said to be very simple, why should not a score of smoke bandits arise? No way had been found of meeting the menace, though the whole banking business bade fair to be disrupted by the magnitude of the precautions that were taken. The smaller banks simply couldn't stand the gaff in armed guards. But if they did not hire them, they lost what business they had. The price of armed guards doubled and quadrupled overnight, and the hard-boiled gentry reaped a harvest.

There was a universal demand for the federal authorities to take action. I suppose the Department of Justice agents got busy, but, as they played no part in what followed, I need not refer to them.

II

So far, Mme. Storey and I knew no more about the smoke-bandit case than any other newspaper readers. Busy as we were with other matters, we often discussed it. One could not avoid it. It filled the minds of everybody in our part of the world. On one occasion Mme. Storey said frankly:

"A hard nut to crack, my Bella. I'm glad it's not between our white teeth."

One morning while I was taking dictation from her, I heard the buzzer that announced the entrance of somebody into my room outside. It was Barron, a big, red-faced man with an aggressive, cave-man manner. A man of coarse fibre, but with a crude strength of mind, and determined; egregiously vain in the masculine style. Most people cringed a little before him, but he didn't get it in our office. Maybe that was the attraction it had for him. I was no longer impressed by his manner, because I had learned that so far as Mme. Storey was concerned, it concealed a bad inferiority complex.

I was surprised to see him, busy as he must have been; but the reason for his call soon became apparent. As chief of the search for the smoke bandit he had become the man of the hour; his slightest word was good for a box on the front page of all the newspapers. Up to this time he had had the wit to say very little, consequently he had become a man of mystery, as well. It was natural that he should wish to show himself off in this hour of glory before the woman who had always mocked at him.

I followed him into Mme. Storey's room, since it was understood between my mistress and me that I was always to be present when he called. She used me as a buffer against his crude and tempestuous love-making. He scowled at me ferociously when he saw my purpose, but said nothing, since he had long ago discovered that it was useless to object to my presence. Sometimes it had happened that his feelings had carried him away to such an extent he even avowed his passion before me. He did not love me for having been a witness to his discomfiture.

"Well, Walter!" Mme. Storey cried with delicate irony; "we are honoured that the great man could find time to come to see us!"

"Oh, my lines are all out," he said carelessly; "at the moment I have nothing to do but await events."

Mme. Storey's little black ape Giannino had conceived a violent aversion to Barron, which he was apt to express in a very disconcerting manner. I was obliged to carry him into the middle room, and put him in his house. There is no love lost between Giannino and me, but we were at one on this subject. "I sympathise with you, you little black devil," I whispered in his ear.

When I came back Mme. Storey was helping herself to a cigarette. She pushed the big silver box in Barron's direction. He refused impatiently. A silence fell between them, a silence that was a sort of duel. Mme. Storey had no intention of helping him out, and he, on his part, was determined to make her betray some curiosity about his work. Foolish man! I felt like saying, you have about as much chance of mastering her as you have of—but I couldn't think of any adequate figure.

He looked about him with a scowl. The long, tall room was as cool and beautiful and simple as an antique Italian villa. Whereas everybody else is going mad over early American furnishings, Mme. Storey, with a sure instinct, clings to the Italian Renaissance. She is herself a figure out of the Renaissance. Barron resented the rare and precious things with which she surrounded herself; he resented everything about her. That was the inferiority complex working. I had always felt sorry for him in a way, but what can a woman do with a man like that? He simply would not take his answer.

At the moment he was better controlled than usual. But he had to speak first. "Well, Rose, a lot has happened since I saw you."

"You appeared to be well pleased with it," she said.

He shrugged massively. "That's your regular line."

"Well, say then, that you are upheld by a secret feeling of confidence."

"Maybe," he said sententiously.

"You have caught your man?"

"I will catch him."

"Within twenty-four hours?" she asked wickedly. This had been the daily promise of the baffled police.

"Oh, I don't have to perform in the newspapers," said Barron, undisturbed. "It may be twenty-four days, but I'll land him in the end."

There was something quite impressive in the man's heavy assurance. Not to Mme. Storey, though. Her charming face was all lighted up with mockery.

"How interesting! You are working on a theory, then?"

"I am. Would you like to hear what it is?"

"Oh, perhaps it wouldn't be right for you to talk about it."

"I wouldn't object to discussing it with you but..." You can imagine the look he gave me.

Mme. Storey appeared to lose interest in the subject. Half turning in her chair, she glanced out of the window at the nurse-maids and the lively children in Gramercy Park. "What a lovely mild day!" she drawled. "It's a sin to be working."

She had him! He had come to talk to her about his case, and talk he had to. He gritted his teeth a little. "My theory is that we have a madman to deal with," he said.

"Never!" said Mme. Storey, glancing at the lighted end of her cigarette.

"Everything he has done proves it by his cunning," Barron said obstinately.

"I've heard of the superior cunning of madmen," said Mme. Storey coolly. "It may be so, but I've never seen it demonstrated myself. In this case I should say that every act of the smoke bandit proclaimed a brain that was working very well indeed."

"Time will tell," said Barron sententiously.

"Surely, time will tell!" said Mme. Storey with a laugh.

The conversation came to a stand again. Mme. Storey glanced suggestively at the pile of letters that was waiting to be answered.

"Come out to lunch with me," Barron blurted out with the sullen air of a child demanding a favour that he knows beforehand will be refused.

Mme. Storey shook her head. "Too busy. I must eat in, today."

"When can I see you?"

"I'm not making any engagements just now."

He drew his breath painfully between his teeth, and there was another silence.

"When I got out of the district attorney's office," he presently began, "you advised me against setting up my detective bureau."

"What of it?" she asked.

"You thought I wasn't smart enough."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that!" she said teasingly.

"I'm in a position to show you now. This is the biggest case I've ever had—the biggest case anybody ever had. It will establish me at the head of the profession."

"If you catch your man," put in Mme. Storey softly.

"Oh, I will catch him," he said confidently. "Make no mistake about that!"

At this moment the buzzer sounded again, and I had to leave the room. Barron followed me out with a triumphant glance. I left the door open, according to instructions.

It proved to be a messenger with a big bundle of documents that were required in a certain case. I had to check them up against a list before receipting for them. While I was engaged in this mechanical operation, I couldn't help but hear what was said in the next room. Mme. Storey took no care to lower her voice, and Barron had no dulcet tones in his.

Barron said: "You'll have to hand it to me, Rose, when I win this case."

"I shall be the first to congratulate you," she said lightly.

"I wasn't referrin' to your congratulations," he said doggedly. "When I've won, I'll come and claim you!"

"I don't exactly follow your reasoning," said Mme. Storey mildly.

"Oh, you know what I mean, all right! I'll come for you!"

"But how about my sentiments in the matter?"

"All talk," said Barron roughly. "There's nothing in it. You can put it all over me with your talk. But I'm a man and you're a woman..."

"Well, I never questioned that," said Mme. Storey dryly.

"...And the great truths of nature are not changed by clever talk! A man is the natural master, and in her soul a woman knows it."

"Oh dear!" said Mme. Storey a little wearily. "Where did you pick up that idea, Walter? It's the way prep schoolboys discuss women, isn't it? At the age of sixteen. And schoolgirls adore it. At least they used to. I've an idea that even schoolgirls require to be shown, nowadays...What you want is a woman with a schoolgirl mind, Walter. There are millions of them to choose from. Such a woman would look on you as a god. What perversity is it in your nature that forces you to expose your most sacred feelings to a mocking devil like me? I'm a disillusioned woman, Walter, and I have a lot of work to do."

I heard his chair move, and I hoped he was taking the hint. "That's just a clever woman's talk," he said loftily. "I don't pay any attention to it. A man's a man, and a woman's a woman! With all your cleverness you can't change that."

"I don't want to," she murmured.

"I'm never going to grovel before you again," he said. (This suggested that he was near grovelling then, poor wretch!) "It was a mistake. I say no more. When I have established myself I shall come and claim my due."

"You shall have it," she said promptly.

"Have what?" he asked, somewhat taken aback.

"Your due." In my mind's eye I could see the enigmatic smile that accompanied this.

He came out of her room looking very dubious. This quickly changed to a ferocious scowl as he became aware of my glance. The closing of the outer door was not exactly a slam, but he meant it to express his unconquerable will. I sniggered to myself. I haven't the art, but I do love to see another woman put a bumptious male where he belongs. The idea that this coarse-grained creature should presume to aspire to my peerless mistress seemed perfectly preposterous to me.

"Lord, Bella! how helpless men are!" she said to me when I went in to her. "So much emotion and so little sense! It's pathetic when a masterful man is denied his desire."

"The old problem of the irresistible force and the immovable object," I suggested.

"Yes, if there were such a thing. But there is not, remember. Something has to give."

III

The activities of the smoke bandit continued unchecked. From Philadelphia he jumped to Chicago, where, a week later, he visited the Inland Seas National, one of the premier banks of the West. It was the Inland Seas which, some years ago, built that famous elevated concrete fort in the middle of its banking-room. The walls were pierced with loopholes behind which armed guards were supposed to be stationed during bank hours. I suspect that the fort had been built for its moral effect, or for the purposes of publicity—or both; but if the armed guards were at their loop-holes, they were helpless, of course, against this bandit's novel weapon.

On this occasion he changed his tactics again. Avoiding the paying teller's window, he went to the receiving teller, where, just as messengers from the Union Station were about to hand in a great satchel of cash, he dropped his bomb, and annexed the satchel. He made a clean get-away; no one had so much as a glimpse of him. Being Monday, the satchel contained two days' receipts, or nearly fifty thousand dollars. This was the largest haul he had yet made. The affair stimulated the police and the banks of Chicago to unheard-of measures of protection. But as a matter of fact, the bandit took the first train out of town, and never returned there. He was like a butterfly which sipped honey where it listed.

The worst features of the situation was the frightful waste it entailed. Throughout the country the banks, I suppose, spent in futile measures of self-protection a hundred times the amount of what the bandit took from them.

Five days later he turned up in Milwaukee, where he relieved a customer of the Grain Exchange Trust of some eleven thousand dollars. This bank had installed an anti-smoke device, the invention of a local chemist. The idea was to neutralise the formula of the smoke bombs. Push-buttons in the tellers' cages were to release, in various parts of the banking premises, jets of this chemical substance, whatever it was, that would instantly clear the air. At least, that was the theory. They never had a chance to try it out, for the bandit did not pull off his stunt in the banking-house. Either he knew of the device (he had an uncanny foreknowledge of the measures that were prepared against him) or else he was simply intimidated by the array of guards outside and inside the bank. He followed the messengers of the Creagan Packing Company back to their own offices in the outskirts, and as they ascended a narrow stairway he tossed a bomb before them, and as they reeled back he got their money-bag. Plunging after him down the stairs, the messengers sprawled over a stick that he had placed for the purpose. The momentary delay was all that he required for his get-away.

This was January 22. On the twenty-sixth his return to New York was revealed by an extraordinary accident. At ten-forty in the morning the crowded platforms of the Brooklyn Bridge subway station were suddenly enveloped in dense clouds of smoke. An ugly panic resulted. Many were pushed off the platforms, and a hideous loss of life was averted only by the quickness of a towerman in stopping all trains. When the confusion subsided it was found that no one had been mortally injured—no one had been robbed either. The inference was that somebody had accidentally knocked against the smoke bandit, setting off one or more bombs in his pockets. The fumes, as I said before, while extremely unpleasant, were not poisonous.

Odd as it may seem, no additional description of the bandit was obtained on this occasion. Even those who were closest to the source of the smoke were unable to state from exactly whose pocket it had issued. But I have noticed myself that people in a subway crowd never look at each other.

The hour was significant: ten-forty. It was pointed out that all the robberies in New York had taken place almost precisely at eleven. Everybody speculated as to which bank he had been about to visit when his ammunition was set off. This dramatic signal of his return to New York set all the bank clerks trembling afresh. These poor fellows were sadly demoralised; the mere striking of a match in a bank was enough to cause the weaker brethren to swoon. In particular, half the paying tellers in town were on the verge of nervous prostration.

The leading banks purchased many columns of space in the newspapers to announce that they had taken advantage of the three weeks' immunity so to perfect their measures that it was impossible for the smoke bandit ever again to operate in New York City. In effect they dared him to try. But public confidence was far from being restored by the advertisements. Practically every firm in town was paying its employees by cheque. Employees in turn insisted on paying their little bills by cheque, and an acute shortage of currency resulted. The clearing house was snowed under, and a flood of bad cheques appeared. The small storekeepers were the principal sufferers. The situation was really serious.

The Industrial Trust Company, always one of the most enterprising banks in town, had notified its customers privately that it was prepared to deliver whatever currency they required at its own risk. On the strength of it they had obtained hundreds of new accounts. Their plan (which came out later) had the merit of simplicity. They hired the back premises of one of their customers, a sporting-goods dealer on Nassau Street, and installed several trusted clerks there. Currency was delivered at the sporting-goods store in wooden boxes marked ammunition. The customers fetched or mailed their cheques to the bank, which telephoned the amounts required to the sporting-goods store. The money was tied up in plain manila packages tied with string, and carried around in one of the sporting-goods dealer's delivery cars. Three men accompanied it: one to drive, one to carry in the packages, one always concealed within the body of the car.

The plan worked so well, the Industrial Trust was preparing to establish other sub rosa branches about town, when the smoke bandit suddenly called their bluff. This was on February 4, another Friday! The bank messenger, disguised in a faded uniform as a delivery man, was passing through the corridor of the Manhattan Surety Building with two of the manila packages that were to be delivered there. A bomb was dropped, and the usual weird scene followed. This messenger was a plucky youngster who hung on to his packages, and let out a roar for assistance before the smoke choked him. A blow on the head from some blunt instrument stretched him, and the bandit made off with the packages. Their contents totalled about twenty thousand.

A very painful impression was created by this affair. The secret had been so well guarded it was felt that one of the clerks of the Industrial Trust must be in league with the bandit. It was even suggested that he had his agents in every big bank in town. A fresh panic swept over the community, and business was still further disorganised. It was whispered about that the big cash stores were in serious difficulties as a result of the shortage of currency. Heavens! what would happen if the department stores closed their doors, everybody asked. The thousands of buyers from out of town put off their usual visits; the attendance at the theatres fell away; nobody had any money in his pockets. The worst thing of all was averted only because the people were afraid to go to the banks to draw their money. There were no runs.

IV

Three days after the Industrial Trust affair, Mme. Storey received a mysterious call on the telephone. A gentleman with an agreeable voice, who declined to give his name, asked my mistress if she would do him the honour of lunching with him at the Arts Club that day in order to discuss a professional matter. As evidence of his good faith he suggested she bring her attorney or any other person in whom she had confidence. Now the Arts Club is next door but one to our office. Mme. Storey is a member, and she frequently lunches there. In her large style she told the unknown caller that she was lunching at the Arts Club anyway; that she would bring her secretary; that he might address her; and that, if she liked his looks she would accept his invitation.

"Not that I feel in need of protection in the Arts Club," she added to me with a delightful grin, "but if there is any free lunch going, you may as well be in on it, Bella."

In the main hall of the club an extremely elegant young fellow accosted us. Mme. Storey responded somewhat dryly, for his was not the voice which had spoken over the telephone; moreover he was dearly not an important person, but merely ornamental.

He explained that he was private secretary to Mr. Silas B. Fulton, President of the Manhattan National Bank; also President of the New York Banking Association. Mr. Fulton had with him Mr. Henry Balstock, one of the vice-presidents of the Industrial Trust and secretary of the Association. They wished to talk with Mme. Storey upon a matter the nature of which she could no doubt guess. They regarded secrecy as highly essential. Both gentlemen were so well known, Madame Storey also, that for them to be seen publicly lunching together would certainly start a story. They had therefore ventured to engage a private room for lunch; and if Madame Storey would so far oblige them, etc., etc.

My mistress smiled a little at the elaborate explanation, and the suggestion that she might be afraid to venture into a private room—at the ultra-respectable Arts Club! She graciously signified her acceptance, and the young man led us upstairs.

We found two middle-aged gentlemen waiting for us in a small room. Mr. Fulton was a stout, rosy, benevolent gentleman—that is to say, he would have looked benevolent twenty years ago, when such was the fashion for prosperous bankers; now he was trying to hide it. Mr. Balstock was a tiny man, immaculately turned out. He had a powerful glance that made up for his lack of inches, and a crisp style of utterance. Although not nearly so well known in the world of affairs, he was clearly the leading spirit and he did most of the talking.

Unlike other prominent bankers of whom I have heard, these two seemed not to be accustomed to entertaining a pretty woman at lunch. Or it may be that it was the presence of the other that made each one uneasy. At any rate both cleared their throats a good deal and stalled. It was up to Mme. Storey and the secretary to keep the conversational ball rolling. The five of us sat down to a delicious and expensive luncheon. That helped a good deal.

Mr. Balstock finally said: "Madame Storey, there is no need to enter into the details of the dangerous situation in which we find ourselves. You read the newspapers. We wish to obtain your help in running down this fiend who is ruining us all."

"It is hardly my line," objected Mme. Storey. "I am a psychologist. This is no problem of that sort to be solved. This thief reveals his psychology in his operations. It is simply a case of find your man. Work for a detective."

"Well, aren't you...?" Mr. Fulton began.

The astute Mr. Balstock silenced him with a glance. "I don't see the force of your argument," he went on smoothly. "We already have the best detective talent obtainable. We wish to bring skilled psychology to their aid."

"I assume that you refer to Mr. Barron," said Mme. Storey rather bluntly. "I should not care to supplant him."

"Oh, there's no question of that, no question of that," said Mr. Balstock hurriedly. "Our confidence in Mr. Barron remains unshaken. He is doing all that mortal man can do. But the responsibility is ours. We must leave no stone unturned. It has occurred to us that a woman's point of view might start something new. There's probably a woman concerned in it somewhere. We'd like you to undertake a parallel and independent investigation according to your own ideas."

Mme. Storey still shook her head.

"I need hardly say," Mr. Balstock insinuated, "that in a matter of such importance you could name your own figure."

Mme. Storey wagged her hand humorously. "It doesn't appeal to me," she said, sipping her ice with evident enjoyment.

"But should we not put aside our personal preferences in a situation of such urgency?" Mr. Balstock persisted. "A matter of national urgency, I may say. Perhaps you do not fully comprehend the seriousness of the situation. I will make it clear to you. This country lives by business. The banks are the foundation of all business. When confidence in the banks is disturbed, the whole vast structure of credit trembles. A little more of this, and it may well come tumbling down about our ears. In other words, a financial panic. Picture to yourself what that means, my dear madam: a falling market, tight money, passed dividends, and all the evils that follow in their train. I tell you this fiend is aiming a blow at the very heart of your country. I am offering you an opportunity to be its saviour!"

Mme. Storey smiled slightly at the little man's board-room eloquence. She said, in her drawling way: "Somehow it's difficult to get one's feelings harrowed up over a threatened assault on the money-bags."

Mr. Balstock stared at her in a shocked way.

"But the poor, madam," put in the handsome young secretary; "think of what hard times mean to them."

"I am afraid you are not giving us the real reasons for your reluctance," said Mr. Balstock a little severely.

"Perhaps not," said Mme. Storey carelessly. "Mr. Barron is an old friend and I do not wish to put myself in a position where I would seem to be competing with him."

"Oh, if that's it," cried Mr. Balstock, much relieved, "let me hasten to put your mind at ease. Mr. Barron would have no objection whatever to your coming into the case. He told me so himself."

"Indeed!" said Mme. Storey, not a little surprised. "And might I tell him if I was engaged?"

"By all means, my dear lady! And give him any help that you are able. Or accept his help."

"And would I be supposed to put myself under his direction?" asked Mme. Storey dryly.

"Not at all! I said an independent investigation. My idea was that there would be a greater chance of results from two entirely separate lines of approach."

Mme. Storey deliberated with herself, turning a cigarette between her fingers. The three men hung anxiously on her decision. Finally she said: "Very well, I accept."

"Good!" cried Mr. Balstock. All three gentlemen were jubilant. The elder two insisted on shaking her by the hand; the young one gazed at her adoringly with his fine eyes.

"What a pity we can't have champagne here!" said Mr. Fulton.

The conversation became general, and quite merry.

"By the way," Mr. Balstock said later, "would it best serve your plans to announce that you have entered the case, or to keep the fact secret?"

"For the present, let it be kept a secret," said Mme. Storey.

"I thoroughly agree," said Mr. Balstock. "Now, how can we be of assistance to you?"

"I must get my thoughts in order first," said Mme. Storey. "At the moment only one question occurs to me. In the case of the stolen notes of high denominations, I assume that the numbers of these notes have been advertised through the usual channels."

"Assuredly, madam."

"And have none of them ever turned up in circulation?"

"Not one, madam."

When we got up to go, the young man arrogated to himself the privilege of holding Mme. Storey's coat for her. His eyes were still speaking volumes. There was a moment when the two other men were consulting about the cheque. Mme. Storey smiled encouragingly at the youth and murmured:

"Do come to see me some time."

"When may I?" he whispered eagerly.

"Let me see...I shall be dropping in to tea at the Plaza tomorrow at five. You might join me."

"How good of you!"

V

Upon getting back to the office, Mme. Storey's first move was to telephone Barron to drop in when he could. He came on wings. I was present at their interview. He had himself under firm control, but he was not cured of his passion, as one could see from his intent and sombre glances upon my mistress's face. He literally could not drag his eyes away from her. He expressed neither surprise nor anxiety upon learning that she was in the case, but it was impossible to tell really how he was taking it.

"I stipulated that I was to tell you," said Mme. Storey.

"That was square of you," he said.

"We must come to some sort of an understanding," she said. "Are you willing to have me work with you?"

"By all means," he said quickly.

"How far?" she asked, a little dryly.

His face was perfectly unsmiling. "I'll lay before you what general information I have turned up," he said. "No need your wasting the time to go after it all over again. Beyond that, it's only fair to tell you that I have my own theory and certain evidence that tends to support it. That I'll keep to myself."

"Certainly!" said Mme. Storey good-naturedly. "Go ahead with what you can."

"To begin with, we have been furnished with four alleged descriptions of the bandit," Barron began, consulting a note-book. "First, Dave Anderson, a detective employed by the Manhattan National, calls him a man of medium size, well-built, but with his face hollowed and greyed..."

"That's been published," Mme. Storey interrupted. "Proceed."

"John Wood, messenger for Kilmer and Brook, bankers,—this was the man who was robbed in the corridor of the Cosmopolitan Trust building; Wood describes him as a real old man; clean-shaven; white-haired; walked with a limp."

"What size man?"

"Average size. Real old."

"Still, when he was chased he got away with remarkable spryness."

"That's right...There are a dozen or more of those who chased him down Broadway who corroborate Wood."

"What's the third description?" asked Mme. Storey.

"W. J. Banks of the Creagan Packing Co., Milwaukee, says the thief was a young man of twenty-five or thereabouts; athletic figure and fresh-coloured complexion; very smartly dressed. Pulled a black handkerchief over the lower part of his face as he sprang up the stairs...You see the different accounts jibe."

"Oh, I don't know," said Mme. Storey. "It may be assumed that the bandit is a master of disguise. One gets something from the composite of all three: a man of average size, extremely well-built, muscular and active."

Barron shrugged. "As for me, I've discarded all three descriptions," he said. "My experience is that when men are excited they imagine anything."

"Quite true," remarked Mme. Storey.

"Now the fourth is a bona-fide description," said Barron, "and I go by that."

"How can you be sure this one is bona fide?"

"Because I saw the man myself."

"Ha!" exclaimed Mme. Storey. "Here is something new! Go on."

"It is not generally known," said Barron, "but I was in the Textile National the morning of the robbery there. I kept it to myself because I thought it would injure my prestige if the public knew how close I had been to the smoke bandit without getting my hands on him.

"How I happened to be in that particular bank instead of another," he went on, "I can't tell you. A sort of hunch, I suppose. Unluckily I didn't profit by it...Well, I was in the bank, looking over the customers, when my attention was attracted by a man waiting in line who had a sort of queer look. A man about thirty-three years old..."

"Take this down, Bella," put in Mme. Storey.

"...With a sallow face and a shock of dead-black hair that needed cutting. Hung over the edge of his collar. He had a thin face: long nose, hollow cheeks; and he was thin in the body too; real thin. His overcoat was hanging open, and his pants-legs flopped when he walked, as if there wasn't anything inside them. Wouldn't weigh more than 115. Wore an old soft hat of black velure, and a dingy grey overcoat. Other times he may have disguised himself, but that was the natural man. It was his eyes that struck me hardest. Brown eyes with pupils that expanded and contracted while you looked at him. When he caught me looking at him, they turned crafty and secret."

"How was it you didn't get him?" Mme. Storey asked.

"Just a bit of ill-luck. I only had a general suspicion of him, you understand, and I was watching him close. But a messenger came to me from Hoadley of the Manufacturers Trust saying that he'd had a message his bank was going to get it that day. I hurried over there, and three minutes after I left the Textile National a bomb was dropped there, and the bandit got away with five thousand."

"Was the message you got, genuine?" asked Mme. Storey.

"From Hoadley, yes. But there was nothing in it, of course. If I'd listened to my hunch I'd have stayed where I was."

"But how do you know the bomb was actually dropped by the black-haired man?"

"Oh, I have confirmation of that. From the fellow who stood next to him in the line. Name, Joseph Keating; address, 33 Pineapple Street, Brooklyn. Keating marked the man in front of him because he kept turning his head over his shoulders; without any prompting from me he described him just as I gave it to you. A black velure hat is a little uncommon. Keating swears that the smoke first issued from a spot at this man's feet. Keating says he grabbed at him, but he slipped through his fingers like grease."

Mme. Storey nodded. "Anything more?" she asked.

"Little bits pieced together. The satchel snatched from H. Tannenbaum and Co. was afterwards found on a bench in Crotona Park, as you may remember. That's in the Bronx."

"I remember."

"Whereas the satchel belonging to Kilmer and Brook was found in East River Park."

"Strange he should have left them lying about so openly," remarked Mme. Storey.

"Well, I don't know. A satchel is dangerously incriminating. I suppose he had to drop it where he could. Wouldn't dare carry it home with him. It was the satchel that gave him away to Kilmer and Brook's messenger on Broadway. After that, you notice, he always dropped the satchel at the scene of the robbery, and made away with the contents. How did he carry it? Either in special pockets or in a paper bag. Certainly, the day I saw him in the Textile National he had nothing in his hands. He couldn't have, you see, because he needed both hands to snatch with."

"But what's the significance of the two Parks?" asked Mme. Storey.

"I'm coming to that. That time he was jostled in the subway, remember; it was the East side subway, Brooklyn Bridge station."

"What does that prove?"

"It doesn't prove anything. But it suggested to me that the East side subway was his beat. Each of the places I have mentioned is adjacent to that line. Working on that, I finally found the girl who sold him the glass balls he made his bombs out of. She works in the five and ten cent store on East 125th. Name, Bessie Rogers. She described him to the life; even the black velure hat. She had marked him particularly because, though he looked out of luck, he bought a whole gross of the glass balls. She couldn't remember the exact date. A few days before the biggest holiday rush began. The first robbery took place December 17."

"Anything more?"

"One other link. The same man has been seen to take trains at the 125th Street station. All the through trains to the West stop there, as you may know."

"Well," said Mme. Storey, "the evidence so far suggests that the man is mad..."

"Well, cracked, anyway," said Barron; "a crank."

"...And since there are five and ten cent stores all over the town, and since he would naturally drop into the one nearest him, the inference is he lives somewhere in the vicinity of East 125th Street."

Barron nodded.

"The probability is, that he lives alone, eh? In a furnished room or cheap hotel. Because if he had a family, they, knowing he was queer, would keep a close watch on him. And he couldn't have any confederates, because no sane man would dare use a crazy man as a tool. It would be too dangerous."

"That was what I figured," said Barron.

Mme. Storey rose. "Well, we start square," she said. "And may the best man win!"

VI

During the days that followed I sometimes blamed Mme. Storey in my mind for the apparent lukewarmness of her interest in the smoke-bandit case. To be sure she sent out several operatives to follow up the lines Barron had laid out (I may say here that none of them turned up anything of first-rate importance) but she herself did nothing so far as I could see. She had other cases on hand at the time, but it seemed to me that this one was of such supreme importance everything else ought to have given way to it.

Well, she was not as inactive as she appeared to be. It was simply that she did not choose to confide in me as yet. I have often noticed that she keeps her speculations absolutely to herself until they begin to resolve themselves into facts. So far she was only groping. Three visits that she paid one afternoon had an important bearing on the outcome of the case. The first was to the Public Library; the second to Police Headquarters; and the third to the head office of the telephone company.

One day, nobody else being available at the moment, I was sent up to East 125th Street to investigate a report that a man answering to the description of the one we wanted, was a regular frequenter of the Harlem Y.M.C.A. It took me half a day to run him down, and then it was only to find that he was a perfectly respectable clerk in the Harlem River freight yards. Moreover, he differed in several particulars from the description furnished by Barron.

Thus I had my trouble for my pains. However, in the course of my peregrinations about Harlem, I made the somewhat thrilling discovery that I myself was being followed and watched. My tracker was a blond young man in a belted overcoat buttoned close under his chin, who would have been perfectly inconspicuous had it not been for his steady, watchful gaze. I considered that my discovery was important. It suggested that instead of having a more or less insane individual to deal with as we supposed, we were up against a complete organization. I so reported to Mme. Storey.

She only smiled. "Crider reported that when he was on this case he was trailed," she said. "Sanders and Canby the same."

I said: "Doesn't that prove what I say?"

She blew a cloud of smoke. "I supposed they were just Barron's men. He has a free hand from the Banking Association, remember. He can hire a thousand operatives if he wants."

"But why should he follow us?"

"To make sure that we don't steal a march on him, my Bella!"

I felt somewhat flattened.

"The obvious retort," Mme. Storey went on, musing over her cigarette, "would be to trail Barron...But whom could we put on it? If we do it at all, we must do it better than he. And of course he'll be looking for it."

"Crider?" I suggested, naming our best man.

"Barron is too well acquainted with him."

I was unable to think of any one else.

"I have it!" said Mme. Storey. "We'll take a chance on Sampson, that young Englishman who applied for a job the other day. He's a keen and experienced man, and he has cultivated an innocent, wondering air that would deceive the great Lecoq!"

Sampson was duly assigned to the task.

Subsequently I read his reports. They were rather amusing. From them it appeared that Barron, notwithstanding the unpredictable nature of his business, was a model of regularity in his habits. He was a physical culture enthusiast, and he lived at the Amsterdam Athletic Club on Central Park, where he could indulge his tastes to the full. Every day he swam; he boxed; he performed in the gymnasium; he played handball—all presumably in the interests of keeping his growing weight within bounds.

After a variety of exercises he arrived at his office at ten every morning, where he presumably gave interviews and received the reports of his operatives (Sampson could not follow him into his office, of course). Promptly at twelve-thirty every day he went to the Shoe and Leather Club to lunch, always alone. Sampson could not watch him inside the club either, but he never remained there more than forty-five minutes; no more than time to get a meal. Thereafter he always walked up to Canal Street and back, presumably for his precious health's sake, returning to his office at two. At four he returned up-town. But short as his office hours were, he found time twice a day to receive the newspaper reporters in a body. It seemed that he held a regular levee like a Secretary of State.

Back at the Amsterdam Athletic Club, he played handball on the roof, and had a swim before dressing for dinner. He was a sociable soul, and fancied himself as an after-dinner speaker. Being so largely in the public eye he was in great demand at banquets and club affairs. These affairs frequently lasted until all hours. If he got out early, he would go to a cabaret with friends of the evening. He was keen about dancing.

During the whole time that Sampson watched him the routine scarcely ever varied.

"The man is a mere idler!" I said to Mme. Storey. "He's laying back on his case. He's enjoying the notoriety it has brought him, and he means to string it out as long as possible."

Mme. Storey laughed. She said: "It's his leisureliness that impresses me, Bella. The bustling men are negligible. It requires real strength of character to achieve leisure nowaday. Leisure is only the outward seeming. Inside his head I dare say he's as busy as a weaving spider."

"Handball; swimming; punching the bag!" I said. "He thinks about nothing but his gross body!"

"He wants to keep young," said Mme. Storey. "I rather like him for that."

To go back a little in my story; notwithstanding Mme. Storey's wish to keep her part in the case a secret, somebody blabbed, and the newspapers had soon got hold of it. They played it up for all it was worth. The bandit having been quiescent for some days, they needed something to inject fresh interest into the story, and they found it in Mme. Storey's name. It was represented that Mme. Storey and Barron, "the two foremost criminologists of the day," were engaged in a desperate struggle for supremacy. The idea of suggesting that Barron was in the same class with my mistress! The gullible public, of course, bit, and got itself all worked up over the outcome of the "race." For the moment the bandit himself became a quite secondary figure, the grand question being whether Mme. Storey or Barron would win out.

Now Mme. Storey never will consent to "perform in the newspapers" as Barron had put it. When she has nothing to give out she refuses to string the reporters along. Consequently day after day they were turned away from our door, whereas they were sure of a welcome at Barron's. The inevitable result was that Barron loomed larger and larger in the day's news, while we were nowhere. He had now cast aside his former unwillingness to talk. His after-dinner experience had trained him in the art of talking without saying anything. He always had an interesting-sounding story to give out, though it might not possess the slightest significance. He revealed an abounding confidence. He promised "results" very soon now. There came a day when he gave out the description of the man we were all looking for. So exact a description of a being so peculiar, with the various details of his habits, etc., created an immense sensation. Now that everybody knew him, it was felt that he could not much longer keep out of the hands of the authorities. A dozen individuals came forward to testify that they had seen the man in such and such a bank at such a time. Barron's stock went up a hundred per cent. Mme. Storey's name was scarcely ever mentioned in the papers, and the newspaper boys seldom troubled to come to our office.

Mme. Storey smiled at all this, and continued on her serene way. But it made me rage. After all, we lived by publicity and our reputation, and Barron was stealing the one and destroying the other. Furthermore, one could see that what he gave out in the papers was not mere hot air. Every word was deliberately calculated. His confidence was real. He had something up his sleeve. I believed that it was Barron who had given it out that Mme. Storey was in the case, so that he could publicly triumph over her. This showed how sure he was of his hand.

Finally I could stand it no longer, and one morning I exploded in Mme. Storey's presence. "It seems to me you have never realised how important this case is to you!" I cried. "If Barron wins it, it will be a fatal blow to your prestige!"

"Prestige! Prestige! What follies are committed in thy name!" she murmured teasingly.

"Don't laugh!" I implored her. "It makes me positively ill to see the way he puts it over you in the newspapers."

"Promises to put it over me," she amended.

"But there's something in it," I insisted. "You can read that between the lines. He's preparing to spring something. He's acting out of revenge, because you have always laughed at him. He thinks he sees a chance to ruin you. Yet you appear scarcely interested. The days pass. Why don't you do something?"

"What would you suggest?" she asked.

Ah! there she had me. I was silenced. Because for me the case was enveloped in a complete fog.

She leaned over and gave me a pat. "Cheer up, my Bella! I am not so idle as you think. Let Barron have his day in print. In the end I hope not to disappoint you."

"Do you mean to say there is actually a chance of our catching the bandit?" I asked eagerly.

"I think there is an excellent chance," said Mme. Storey coolly.

VII

Mme. Storey's confidence infected me. I had never known her to assume more confidence than she really felt. As you have seen from the other cases that I have written up, whenever she was at a stand she frankly owned it. I therefore now had reason to believe that she had a trick up her sleeve, whereas I only guessed that Barron had. After all, I told myself, it was ridiculous to think that Barron could put anything over on a woman like Mme. Storey.

It was about this time that the smoke bandit made his boldest and what proved to be his last coup. I have described some of the precautions taken by the banks; there were others, of course; each bank had its own plan for meeting the danger. The only place where vigilance might be said to have at all relaxed, was in the banks where robberies had already taken place. There was a psychological reaction in this. With so many banks to choose from, it was felt that the bandit (like lightning) would never strike in the same place twice. In that his extraordinary cunning was not sufficiently taken into account.

The Manhattan National, the richest bank of them all, was the victim of a second outrage on its premises. It occupies, as everybody knows, a magnificent building on lower Wall Street. The customer who suffered this time was the great firm of G. Showalter and Co., manufacturers of printing presses, who have an immense plant on Grand Street with a weekly payroll of sixteen thousand dollars.

For many years Showalter's had sent to the Manhattan National every Friday morning for their payroll, and the old, proud firm disdained to change its habits for the sake of any mere bandit. During all the excitement they had come for their money just the same. They had collected six of the hardest boiled specimens obtainable: a couple of ex-noncoms from the regular army, a pugilist, an ex-bartender and so on. This formidable squad was sent in an automobile openly through the streets to the bank every Friday morning, displaying a perfect arsenal of weapons. They presented their satchel at the paying teller's window; had it filled; and marched out, surrounding it. Showalter's got any amount of fine publicity out of it. It constituted a challenge to the smoke bandit that no one ever believed for a moment he would accept.

But he did.

On the Friday three weeks after the sensational Industrial Trust affair, the formidable six presented their satchel as usual and had it filled. The vast banking-room was never crowded now. Most firms paid by check, and those who had to have cash obtained it through one devious means or another. There were ten or twelve men waiting to draw money, and these were roped off in single file, and held back by the bank's guards, the nearest in line some thirty feet from the paying teller's window. Only one of the line of windows was being used.

As Showalter's men received their satchel, the smoke billowed up in the usual startling fashion. It started at a point some distance from the men with the money, but spread so fast it overtook them before they could reach the door. There was no fault to be found with the actions of the six; they did their utmost. They had often rehearsed what they were to do in such a contingency. They stopped short where they were, and dropping the satchel on the floor, formed a circle around it, each man with his gun in his right hand, and his left hand on the shoulder of the man next him. Thus they waited.

On this occasion there was no panic. Not enough of a crowd in the place to start one. One or two of the clerks fainted in their cages, out of sheer excitement, but there was no noise, no running about. The doors to the banking-room were all blocked by guards, and it was felt that the bandit was certainly trapped at last. Those who were in the place afterwards described the ghastly silence that filled it, while all waited for the smoke to clear.

It was longer than usual in clearing. Some swear that a fresh supply of smoke was released, which was likely true; the bandit had a hard nut to crack. When it finally lifted, the discomfited six, linked together in the middle of the floor with their guns out, beheld their satchel some twenty feet outside the circle, lying on its side, open and empty. And, notwithstanding the guards at the doors, the bird had flown.

I need not dwell on the sensation that was caused by this affair. All that had gone before was as nothing to it. Three weeks had elapsed since the previous robbery, and people had been telling themselves that the depredations were over. It was felt that, since the man's description had been published, and so many details about him, that he would never dare show himself again. But he had dared further than ever before. There now seemed to be an element of magic in it that scared the boldest. How in the world had the bandit succeeded in winning that satchel from out of a linked ring of armed men?

"How did he do it? How did he do it?" I asked.

"Well, my guess," said Mme. Storey, "and it's as good as anybody's, is, that since the smoke rises faster than it spreads sideways, it leaves a clear space of a foot or so close to the floor. If I am right, the bandit works in that, on his belly. How simple to hook the satchel out between the men, and empty it while their heads were lost in the smoke!"

"But how did he get out of the place?"

"In much the same way. It is natural for a man blocking a doorway to stand with his legs spread. I believe that the bandit dived out between one of those pairs of legs at the doors."

"But the guards would have known it," I objected.

"One of them would," said Mme. Storey dryly, "but he wouldn't give himself away."

In the same paper that carried news of the robbery Barron gave out an interview in which he maintained his equanimity and his confidence. He still promised the public quick results. This no longer disturbed me. I told myself that, if Barron knew any more than the rest of us, he should have prevented this last outrage.

As I thought over the matter it had occurred to me that there was something fishy about the thin-faced man in the black velure hat, of whom there had been so much talk. It did not seem reasonable that such a poor specimen, sallow and emaciated, should be supposed capable of the smoke bandit's really brilliant feats of daring. I began to wonder if he might not after all be just an invention of Barron's, put forward to persuade the public that the detective was doing something.

The thought clung to me. The testimony of those who had come forward after his description had been published, with accounts of how they had seen him here or there, might be disregarded, I felt. For there are always weak-minded people ready to say anything in order to break into print. There remained the evidence of the salesgirl, Bessie Rogers, and the man, Joseph Keating—but come to think of it, we only had Barron's word for the existence of those two. Nobody else had interviewed them.

When I mentioned my suspicions to Mme. Storey, she smiled at me in her affectionate and teasing way, and said: "'Pon my word, Bella, you are becoming positively acute! Why don't you go over and look up this Keating yourself?"

I did so. I am a little behind my story now, for this was the morning of the Showalter robbery. Pineapple street is on the edge of the fashionable Columbia Heights section. It is a sober street of plain brick-fronted dwellings, old-fashioned and very American. Number thirty-three was a superior boarding-house. When I asked the pleasant-faced landlady if she knew a Mr. Joseph Keating, she nodded, and I thought I had had my journey for nothing. He was not a myth. But when I asked to see him, she said he no longer lived with her.

"He was only here a few weeks," she added. "He's a construction engineer, and he's gone to the Coast on a big job. No, I haven't got his address."

I came away satisfied that "Keating" was merely a plant of Barron's, though I did not suppose that the landlady was a party to it. I so told Mme. Storey.

"I was sure of it," she said coolly. "If you want to, you can go up to the five and ten cent store to ask for Bessie Rogers. But you'll only be told that she was temporarily engaged for the Christmas rush, or something of that sort."

"Then there's no such a person as the thin-faced man in the black velure hat!" I cried.

"Ah, now you're going too fast!" she warned me.

It was then that we read of the Showalter robbery.

That same afternoon Barron dropped in at our office on his way up-town. I don't know what his object was. His talk did not reveal it. Perhaps just a hunger to see my mistress's face. He was as guarded as upon his previous visit, but he couldn't quite conceal the conflict of passions that tormented him. He was mad about Mme. Storey; he was jealous of her, he was determined to injure her if he could, and he clearly anticipated some sort of hateful triumph. All this was suggested in the slow, painful turning of his eyes, and it made me uneasy all over, again.

They discussed the Showalter case in general terms; under the circumstances they could hardly be frank with each other. Later I remember Mme. Storey saying teasingly:

"I have turned up a new clue to the whereabouts of the thin-faced man with the black velure hat. Hope to lay my hands on him in a day or two."

"I wish you luck," said Barron with a slight smile, by which he wished to convey that he knew she was bluffing, and was not in the least disturbed by it.

"You know where he is?" Mme. Storey asked mockingly.

"I have a good idea," said Barron confidently.

"Why don't you produce him, then?"

"I will in good time. My lines are closing about him. He cannot escape me eventually."

"My dear fellow!" said Mme. Storey. "This is merely the jargon of our trade when we're all at sea."

"It may be," he said undisturbed; "but in this case it's the literal truth."

The man's confidence was real, and my breast was heavy with anxiety. Mme. Storey's brow was clear, but you never can tell about her.

To my astonishment she proceeded to treat Barron better on this occasion than I had ever seen her do. Ignoring his surly look, she was entirely friendly and encouraging. So much so that he dropped his guarded air, and almost lost his head. Only my presence restrained him. He cast poisonous looks in my direction, but I sat tight. In the end, however, Mme. Storey carried him on up-town in her car. I could make nothing of it.

At noon on the following day, Mme. Storey issued out of her room, cloaked and hatted for the street. "I'm going to drop in on Barron accidentally," she remarked with a casualness that was simply to tease me. "If he asks me to go out to lunch I'll accept."

I simply stared.

"They say the food is awfully good at the Shoe and Leather Club."

"Do women go there?"

"Yes; I have made inquiries."

She went on. This move was inexplicable to me. I blamed her for her changed attitude toward Barron. Surely she couldn't be going to fall for the man! That was unthinkable. No, it was some long game that she was playing; the corners of her lips betrayed it. But if it was true that Barron had the upper hand of her in this confounded case, it seemed to me that she was compromising her dignity in making up to him. And whichever way the case went, this would certainly be the cause of trouble with him later on.

VIII

All she said when she got back was: "The food is good there; the service wonderful."

She presently asked about Crider's movements. I told her he was due in, to report at four.

I was present when Crider made his report, which had to do with some other case. When I had taken it down, Mme. Storey disposed of that matter with a wave of the hand.

"Tomorrow is Sunday, unfortunately," she said "and we can do nothing. On Monday morning we three must set to work in earnest on the smoke-bandit case."

Crider and I pricked up our ears.

"You have a chauffeur's livery, haven't you?" Mme. Storey asked him.

"Yes, madam."

"I want you to hire me a good-looking car for the day; say a Mackinaw limousine or a Bruce-Vulcan. It must look like a first-class private turn-out. We'll start a few minutes before eleven. We're going to Jersey; near a village called Cranford."

"I know it," said Crider; "near Plainfield."

Mme. Storey went on: "I want you to be prepared to break down in front of a house which I'll point out to you, so that Bella and I will have to wait there a bit while you are fetching assistance."

"The simplest thing would be to run out of gas there," said Crider.

"No. They might have a supply on hand at this house," said Mme. Storey. "That would defeat my whole purpose. I want an hour there, or at least half an hour. What else can you suggest?"

"Well, I could make out my engine went dead, in front of the house," said Crider. "Then when I got out and threw up the hood to investigate, I could break the distributor arm, or some other small part of the ignition. I'd have to telephone to a large town such as Elizabeth or Newark for another."

"Very good," said Mme. Storey. "Let us do that."

To me she went on: "Bella, you wear your prettiest afternoon dress and your new coat. Pull a cloche over your head—people remember red hair so...We must be prepared to answer questions easily and offhand. I'll be Mrs. Wilkinson. I have an apartment on Park Avenue. You are my friend Miss Chassard of Cleveland visiting me for the season." (Mme. Storey entered into these details of make-believe with all the zest of a child.) "We're motoring to Trenton, where my friend Mrs. Esterbrook is entertaining us at luncheon to be followed by bridge But is Cranford on the road to Trenton, Crider?"

"Not quite, madam."

"How could we account for the fact that we were passing that way?"

"A prettier road, madam, and no heavy traffic."

"Splendid! We'll go over all this again on the way there."

Monday morning was clear after rain and bitter cold. There was a whole gale from the Northwest, and even in the well-built car, with a rug over us, we could feel it stealing around our ankles.

"So much the better," remarked Mme. Storey. "Out of common humanity they'll have to ask us in to get warm."

"What are we to do when we get in?" I asked.

"Just keep our eyes and ears open, Bella. I don't know what we will find. Nothing perhaps."

We crossed on the Weehawken ferry, and made our way via the Hudson Boulevard to the Plank Road, thence through Newark and on to Elizabeth; not a very interesting route. Beyond Elizabeth we passed through a village or two; then Cranford. A sign on the railway station identified it. According to pre-arrangement we paused opposite the station for a final consultation.

"The house I am looking for is on the road along the river towards Rahway," said Mme. Storey.

"I know the road," said Crider.

"It is described to me as being on the right-hand side of the road about half a mile beyond the Lehigh Valley Railway; a farm-house about fifty years old, painted white, and having a fancy porch. The name of the people is Colter, but we mustn't ask the way, of course. Do not stop directly in front of the gate; run a little way beyond. But keep the car within range of the windows if you can."

Turning to the right, we proceeded. This cross-country road led us into a silvan neighbourhood lying between the lines of populous suburbs that follow the railways. The views of the fields and the winding river were charming, though everything was bare. We presently crossed another railway, and kept a sharp lookout ahead. All the houses seemed to be about fifty years old and all were painted white. However we were saved from any uncertainty by a neat sign alongside the road, which read:

ABRAM COLTER
Poultry Farm
Chickens and Eggs for Sale

Crider played his part admirably. As we passed the house we felt the power fail, and the car rolled to a slow stop. A surprised look on the face of our chauffeur, and much working of the throttle and spark levers. Mme. Storey leaned forward to ask what was the matter. Shake of the head from Crider. Out of the tail of my eye I perceived a woman at one of the windows of the house, watching us with interest.

Crider jumped out and threw up the hood of his engine. After fussing about inside, he returned to the door of the car.

"The distributor is broke, ma'am. We can't move until I can get a new part for it."

Business of indignation from Mme. Storey. "Whatever shall we do! We'll be late for our appointment. Why can't you see to these things before we start out, Thomas. That's your business!" And so on. And so on. Nothing of this could be heard in the house, of course, but the woman was watching the by-play which accompanied it. "Go into that house, and ask if you can telephone for what you want."

Crider disappeared from our range of vision, and we plumped back in our seats like a pair of excessively annoyed ladies.

"Don't betray any curiosity about the place," warned Mme. Storey; "just appear to be soothing me down."

"Suppose there isn't any telephone?" I suggested.

"Oh, but there is! That's the whole point!"

"I saw a woman at one of the windows," I remarked.

"Yes, and she has sharp eyes! I expect she won't be very hospitable, but we'll demand to be taken in as a matter of right."

Crider was gone a good while. He came back to the car door to report.

"I telephoned to Newark for the necessary part. Ordered them to spare no expense, and so on. They promised to have it here within forty minutes."

"Who let you in?" asked Mme. Storey.

"The woman who was at the window. A decent-looking body, but has a cagey eye. She stuck around while I was telephoning."

"Anybody else in the house?"

"Not that I could see."

"Did she ask us in to wait?"

"No, madam."

"Well, we'll wait five minutes, then make her. You be working over your engine."

At the end of five minutes, with business of shivering, Mme. Storey and I alighted from the car, and retraced our steps to the neat gate in the palings. The whole place was much better kept up than any of its neighbours. Everything spic and span with new paint; the lawn free from litter; glimpses of trim poultry houses and runs in the rear. A short distance behind the house ran the little river.

As we went up the short gravel path, Mme. Storey murmured: "Don't look. Both windows of the upper room on the left are shuttered. Why should a bedroom be closed up, at this season? We must have a look into that room, my Bella."

The woman who opened the door to us was in outward appearance a typical farm wife of the better sort. She wore a neat print dress and spotless apron; a woman in her forties, healthy and comely. But the quiet, wary glance of her blue eyes was significant. You immediately felt that she was much more experienced in the world than the usual farm woman. She was not at all put about by Mme. Storey's elegance, but very much mistress of herself.

"May we come in out of the cold?" asked Mme. Storey, with an assumption of the fashionable woman's condescension towards one whom she regards as an inferior.

The woman was polite, but not at all cordial. "Certainly," she said, opening the door wide.

We were admitted into one of those crude, prosperous interiors which are somehow uglier than the direst poverty. All the furnishings were brand-new and in the worst possible taste. There was a narrow central hall and stairway, and in the wall on either side had been cut an archway flanked with hideous varnished pillars. The living-room was on the left; dining-room on the right. The archways were for the purpose of permitting free circulation of the heat which puffed up in great waves from a pipeless furnace in the cellar. The place was suffocating. Both the visible rooms had a set and unused look, and one guessed that the real business of the house was carried on in the kitchen.

Mme. Storey and I sat down in two of the "over-stuffed" chairs of the living-room suite, while Mrs. Colter hovered in the archway as if of two minds whether to go back about her work or stop and keep an eye on us. The shuttered room was over our heads. Mme. Storey glanced about her superciliously. She was the empty-headed rich woman, to the life. It clearly irritated the woman of the house, but it was well calculated to keep her from conceiving any suspicions of our real purpose.

"Comfortable place you have here," drawled Mme. Storey.

"We like it," said Mrs. Colter.

The conversation did not flourish. Mme. Storey settled her skirts, looked at her finger-nails, moved her shoulders pettishly, toyed with her wrist-watch: in short, the perfect fool. Mrs. Colter watched her somewhat grimly.

Finally Mme. Storey burst out affectedly: "Isn't it too annoying! We'll be late for our luncheon engagement in Trenton. Poor Mrs. Esterbrook! With bridge to follow, you know! And that man has nothing in the world to do but look after the car, and prevent such accidents from happening. Aren't chauffeurs maddening?"

"I don't know," said Mrs. Colter. "I never had one."

Mme. Storey made out not to notice the bluntness. "You drive yourself?" she asked with a stare.

"It's only a Ford," said Mrs. Colter.

Following the direction of her involuntary glance, I saw the car, a new sedan standing in a shed at the side of the house. I made a mental note of the licence number in case it should be required later.

"Fancy! You're braver than I am," said Mme. Storey.

"Oh, it's nothing in the country," said Mrs. Colter.

"How ever can you endure the country in the winter?"

"It suits me very well. I have too much to do to mope."

"Well, I suppose you have neighbours."

"They don't trouble me much; nor I them," said Mrs. Colter contemptuously. "We're from the city."

"Fancy!" said Mme. Storey. "Don't you pine for it?"

"No," said Mrs. Colter. "We were fed up with four-room flats."

"Fancy, only four rooms! And now you keep chickens. I believe it's very profitable."

Mrs. Colter gave her a wary glance through her lashes. "That's what city people think," she said. "We thought so when we came here. And went broke within a year. It's only since Mr. Colter left the hens to me, and took a job in town that we've been able to make out."

This story was not exactly borne out by the aggressive prosperity of the establishment. It appeared to me that Mrs. Colter dwelt a little too much on the humbleness of their circumstances.

"That your husband?" asked Mme. Storey, indicating an ornately framed crayon portrait hanging over the fire-place.

"As a young man," said Mrs. Colter. "But he's changed very little."

Mrs. Colter observed that the portrait hung a little askew, and went to straighten it. Evidently a notable housewife. When her back was turned to us, Mme. Storey gave me a glance, by which I understood that she wished me to pay particular attention to that face.

When I really looked at it I was startled. You know what crayon portraits are. Smug. But with the best will in the world to achieve smugness, the artist had not been able to hide the terrible distinction of this face. No common man, this. Handsome in a certain way; the thick neck and muscular shoulders suggested a fine physical specimen; but he had the hardest face I have ever beheld. One could conceive of such a man looking on at the death of his brother unmoved. When Mrs. Colter turned around, I glanced at her with a queer, new interest. Good heavens! what was it like to be married to a man without a soul. But she seemed to bear up under it pretty well. She was a hard one herself.

There was another lull in the conversation.

Ever since we had entered the room, something had been making me curiously uneasy. I couldn't tell what it was. Some mysterious intimation to the senses that all was not well in that house. At last, in the silence, it came to me; my hearing is very acute. The merest suggestion of a footfall overhead; the delicate, cat-like fall of a padded foot; wavering, here and there, silent; then back and forth again. It was the aimless effect which was so disturbing. My heart beat painfully.

Mme. Storey, feeling perhaps that my exclusion from the talk was becoming a little marked, addressed her next words to me: "Will you ever be able to forgive me for this, Estelle? You will think that we manage things very badly in the East."

"Not at all, my dear Maud," I answered as carelessly as I was able. "Anybody's car is liable to break down, East or West."

"Miss Chassard is from Cleveland," Mme. Storey said to Mrs. Colter with the mechanical smile that such a woman affects.

"Is that so?" said Mrs. Colter politely, but her cold look at me said plainly that she didn't give a hang for me or my native town either.

Mme. Storey yawned elegantly behind her hand, said: "Oh dear! There's nothing in the world so tiresome as just waiting around!...If you have anything particular to do, Mrs. Colter, don't let us keep you from it."

"Nothing particular at the moment," said Mrs. Colter. She sat down.

The move to get her out of the room, if such it was, had failed.

Every time there was a silence I heard the stealthy tread overhead. What was it? I was hopelessly confused. I had got the notion into my head, from Mme. Storey's peculiar glance, that the hard-faced individual over the fire-place was our man; in other words the smoke bandit. And I could well believe it. But what was he doing creeping about the room overhead like a distracted person? Not that man, surely, so hard, so imperturbable, so contemptuous. And why were the shutters closed? Colter must be a familiar character in the neighbourhood. I couldn't get it at all. One thing I was very sure of: I did not want to look in that room overhead. I clasped my hands in my lap to conceal their trembling.

Mme. Storey, continuing her pantomime of boredom, finally said: "Do you care if I smoke?"

Mrs. Colter, with a snap of her blue eyes that said she did care, said: "Not at all, if you've a mind to."

Mme. Storey, ignoring the look, produced a cigarette case from her little bag. "Have one?" she said, snapping it open.

Mrs. Colter's only reply was a sort of snort.

"Miss Chassard doesn't indulge either," said Mme. Storey blandly. She took a cigarette, and searched further through her bag. "I declare I have come away without any matches," she said.

I knew this was a lie, because she had smoked in the car on the way out.

"Could I trouble you, Mrs. Colter?" she asked with the offensive sweetness affected by the kind of woman she was portraying.

Mrs. Colter bounced up. We understood her to say the matches were in the kitchen.

The instant she was out of sight, Mme. Storey sprang into action, holding out a peremptory hand to me. There was nothing for it but to obey. In the hall alongside the stairs, a curtain hung down as it to conceal coats and hats.

"Look behind that!" Mme. Storey whispered. "Be quick!"

She herself ran half-way up the stairs, making no more noise than a skipping feather; looked, and ran back. In ten seconds we were back in the living-room and in our chairs. I had looked too.

Mme. Storey's face was all alight. "We're in luck, Bella," she whispered. "The key is in the door."

I could make nothing of that.

"Did you see anything?" she asked.

I nodded, feeling half sick with excitement. "Old black velure hat; dingy grey overcoat," I whispered huskily.

"Ha! that was what I wanted!" she said.

When Mrs. Colter came back with the matches, Mme. Storey was sitting there with her legs crossed, and her cigarette held impatiently in the air. What a woman! Lighting up, she deeply inhaled the smoke and let it float out of her nostrils. Mrs. Colter's face was a study.

Fortunately I was not required to do anything. I was demoralised inside. You see I had made up my mind that the thin-faced man with the black velure hat was nothing but a figment of Barron's imagination; and here was the hat! To be sure, there is more than one old velure hat in the world, but I knew from Mme. Storey's exclamation that this must be the hat. Well if he was the bandit, where did Colter come in? It was supposed to be a single-handed job. All I could do was to watch my mistress and wait for the next act in the drama. Suddenly the fog of my confusion was pierced by a little ray of triumph. Anyway, we had stolen a march on Barron!

The fitful conversation had been resumed. Amidst the empty chatter of a conceited woman, my mistress insinuated some shrewd questions, but Mrs. Colter as shrewdly evaded them. The insolent manner of her visitor kept the woman of the house in a simmer of exasperation, but it was clear that she never suspected us to be other than we seemed. How clever my mistress was! An ordinary person would have set out to conciliate the hard and wary Mrs. Colter, and would thereby certainly have aroused her suspicions.

Finally I saw a service car roll up and come to a stop behind our car. Now for the dénouement, I thought. With a great effort of the will I sought to quiet my shaking nerves.

"At last!" cried Mme. Storey jumping up. "Now you will soon be relieved of us, Mrs. Colter."

The woman murmured something polite, in which her hard eyes had no part.

"How can I ever thank you for your kindness!" cried Mme. Storey with palpable insincerity. "I wish I could repay you in some way...Can I buy some eggs?"

"Certainly, if you want," said Mrs. Colter coldly. "Eggs are high now."

"No matter," said Mme. Storey. "I'm sure the lady we're going to see would adore to have some fresh eggs—that is, if they are fresh."

"We don't keep eggs at this season," said Mrs. Colter with a bored air; "they're worth too much. I'll have to fetch them from the nests. The others have been shipped."

"Oh, goody!" cried Mme. Storey. "Think of having eggs out of the nest, Estelle!"

Mrs. Colter went out through the dining-room. Presently we heard the kitchen door close. Mme. Storey seized my hand, and pulled me towards the stairs. I dragged back in a panic of terror. The man would put up a frantic struggle, I thought, and only us two women! It seemed to me that Mme. Storey had taken leave of her senses.

"Wait...wait for the men!" I stammered.

Mme. Storey laughed a single note—astonishing sound in my overwrought ears! "Oh, we're not going to take him into custody," she said. "Come on!"

I followed her up the stairs blindly. A short turn around the landing, and we were at the door of the room over the living-room. Mme. Storey turned the key and softly opened the door. She kept her hand on the knob. On account of the closed shutters we could not see anything at first. But we heard the gasping breath of the creature inside. Then we saw him, arrested midway in his prowl to and fro. He crouched there, staring at us; his black hair hanging down over his shadowy, distended eyes.

There could be no doubt but that it was the same man who had so often been described; I saw the attenuated frame; the gaunt, sallow face with its long nose; the lank, black hair. He was wearing felt slippers. There was a bedstead in the room, with a mattress upon it, but no bedclothes. There was not a thing else in the room.

One long look, and Mme. Storey closed the door again, and softly turned the key. I was hopelessly confused in my mind.

"But why...but why?" I whispered.

"I want you to be able to testify that you saw him here," she said.

We returned downstairs. A moment or two later the woman came back with the eggs. I was in a daze. I found myself outside the house without any clear notion of how I got there.

As we went down the path I asked incredulously: "Are you going to leave him there?"

"For the present," Mme. Storey answered inattentively.

"But having seen us, he's warned now. They'll spirit him away!"

She merely smiled at me abstractedly. Her mind was far away; busy with some knotty problem.

We met Crider coming to tell us the car was ready. We started. At the first turn to the left we circled back towards New York. All the way back to town Mme. Storey was in a deep study, smoking one cigarette after another, and I dared not question her.

On reaching the office I was relieved to hear her give orders to Crider to have the house near Cranford watched throughout the night.

IX

But it seemed as if the precaution was taken too late; for that very night the blow fell. It is my habit to sleep with a window raised, and towards one o'clock I was awakened by a noise in the street. When I collected my senses sufficiently, I heard a raucous voice bellowing:

"Wuxtra-a-a! Wuxtra-a-a!" An indistinguishable murmur followed, then louder: "Wuxtra-a-a!!...Wuxtra-a-!!"

My heart leaped into my throat. The effect of such a bellowing in that quiet street of sleepers was nerve-shattering. Then I became hotly indignant. To think that such a thing should be permitted in a civilised city! I had not the least doubt that it was a hoax. But I began to reflect that this particular nuisance had been pretty well abated during the last few years. Formerly such false alarms were a regular feature of New York life. There must be something in it this time, I told myself, or the first policeman on his beat would have stopped the racket.

The noise came closer. "Wuxtra-a-a! Wuxtra-a-a!..." Then I distinctly heard the words: "Smoke Bandit!" I sprang out of bed, and, shoving my feet into slippers, threw a robe around me, and started down for the front door.

On the stairs I met several of the other boarders similarly attired, and I allowed one of the men, Mr. Steele, to show himself out on the stoop. He came back waving the paper over his head.

"The smoke bandit's caught!" he cried.

A little cheer went up from the knot of half-dressed people in the hall. I did not join in it, for I suspected the worst.

"Who caught him?" somebody asked.

"Barron!" cried Steele.

Knowing that I had a special interest in the case, Mr. Steele thrust the paper into my hands. I read in letters four inches high across the top:

SMOKE BANDIT CAUGHT

The rest of the paper was merely a reprint of one of the evening editions, with a square cut out of the middle of the page to allow for an insert in black-face type. Only twenty lines.

At 11:15 tonight the smoke bandit was nabbed by Walter A. Barron in the abandoned cemetery of St. Aloysius', South Brooklyn. Over two weeks ago Barron discovered the bandit's loot hidden in the disused receiving-vault of the old cemetery. The secret was kept, and ever since Barron and his men have been watching the spot night and day in expectation of the bandit's return. He came last night to stow away the proceeds of the Showalter robbery. Barron himself was on watch. The famous detective locked the iron gate of the vault on his man, and by pre-arranged signal fired his pistol in the air to summon his men who were waiting near by. When the young bandit realised that it was all up with him, he put a pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger. He was dead when they dragged him out of the vault. Barron gave out that his name was Ralph M. Vallon of Brick Church, N. J. Vallon escaped from a mental sanatorium in West Orange on the night of December 11. He answers to the published description of the wanted man. As a result of one of the cleverest bits of work in criminal history, practically every dollar of the loot has been recovered. Further particulars will be found in the morning edition.

Sick at heart, I went back to my bed, leaving them all in their bath-robes and kimonos, excitedly threshing the matter out. Their pitying glances in my direction made me grind my teeth in bitter chagrin. Mme. Storey was a hundred times cleverer than the bull-headed Barron, and it drove me wild to think that Barron was able to make her look small in the public mind.

There was no further sleep for me. Shortly after daylight I was up again, and down at the corner, buying the morning papers. Divested of the usual repetitions and redundancies, the clearest account ran as follows:

Walter A. Barron is the greatest man in America this morning. He has destroyed the menace under which the whole financial world has been cowering during the past two months. Like a modern St. George, Barron has slain the dragon that threatened us all. The smoke bandit, cornered, lies dead by his own hand. Practically every dollar that he stole has been recovered.

Throughout all the excitement of the past weeks, Barron, a steady, dogged man, has been calmly pursuing his own course. From the first he has consistently been promising the public results, and now he has made his words good. Those who have intimated that he was talking in the air owe him handsome apologies. The events of last night further reveal that none of the other persons who have been busy investigating the affair has ever been within hailing distance of the truth. There is no one on the map today but Barron.

Nearly one hundred years ago a small cemetery was laid out on the banks of Callopus creek, a beautiful winding stream amidst silvan surroundings south of the rapidly growing city of Brooklyn. It was christened St. Aloysius'. The quaint coloured prints of that old time depict a beautiful spot with weeping willow trees hanging over the silvery stream, and a pretty wooden Gothic chapel by the entrance gates.

All that is changed now. The city spread with unlooked-for rapidity, and the cemetery filled up. The pleasant stream became an evil-smelling canal, the fields disappeared under close-ranked factories and tenements. No permits for additional burials in St. Aloysius' have been issued for many years. The chapel burned down, and it was not worth while rebuilding it. Only the dead trunks of the willows remain, and the verdant grass was long ago choked by weeds. The spot bears an evil reputation in the vicinity. The superstitious believe it to be haunted by evil spirits. Such was the scene last night of the final act in the celebrated drama of the smoke bandit.

It now appears that the astute Walter A. Barron has been working all along on the theory that he would discover evidence of the bandit in a cemetery; an old and neglected cemetery, by preference. In and about New York there are many such places. In his patient search from one to another, Barron came at last to St. Aloysius'. There was an old receiving-vault there, dug into the side of the old creek-bank, lined and fronted with brick; closed by a gate of thick iron bars. Barron's falcon eyes informed him that the lock on the door had been tampered with. He had it opened.

J. G. Brannan, one of his operatives, was with him when he entered the place,—this was two weeks ago, but the secret has been carefully kept. A single glance inside revealed to them that they had reached their goal. A number of the glass bombs were strewn about, and the simple apparatus for making them. And this was not all. The musty receiving-vault was another Aladdin's cave. In a far corner was a pile of three suit-cases, each one bursting with greenbacks and yellowbacks of large and small denominations: $149,000 in all; or within a few hundreds of the total amount of the bandit's takings, previous to the Showalter robbery.

The money was removed, and the suit-cases left as found. It was at this juncture that Barron permitted himself to promise the public that the robber would be taken. From that moment there was never an hour that the vault was not under surveillance. It so happened that there was only suitable cover for one man; this was a niche between the cemetery wall and the trunk of a dead willow opposite the vault. The watcher was there, while his mates waited in a flat that had been hired on Fremont Street, a hundred yards distant. There were three men in all, and they stood watch, turn and turn about. On cold nights they relieved each other every hour. Barron himself stood his trick with the others. Two revolver shots was the agreed-upon signal in case the bandit returned to his lair.

Last night it was Mr. Barron's watch from 10:30 to 11:30. At the former hour he took up his station behind the willow trunk. At his back was the six-foot brick wall, and over the wall the sluggish waters of the canal. Between him and the vault ran the old driveway into the cemetery, now much broken and washed. Fremont Street was a hundred yards away at his left. It passes in front of the cemetery, and crosses the canal. All the gates into the cemetery were locked, but as the old wall has crumbled down in several places, it is a simple matter to get in and out. Out in Fremont Street, there were lights and people passing, an occasional trolley car; where Barron watched, it was as dark and silent as the grave itself.

After the boisterous wind of yesterday it had fallen still and cold. Barron had just heard a church clock strike the quarter hour when he saw his man. Distant lights drew a faint reflection on the high ground of the cemetery, but down behind the wall it was as black as your hat. The bandit did not come along the road from the direction of the gates, but crept cautiously down the bank from behind the vault, keeping the structure itself between him and the lighted street.

His movements were perfectly assured, as if he had been there many times before. He carried something white dangling from his hand. He let himself into the vault, and pulled the door to after him, but had no means of locking it from the inside. He dropped a sort of curtain that he had inside. Barron couldn't see this, but guessed it from the sounds that reached his ears. He had seen the curtain hooked up out of sight in the vault.

Barron stole across the road; unhooked the open padlock; and, throwing the staple over the hasp, snapped the padlock on. The man inside uttered no sound, but flung his body wildly against the gate. But Barron had him fast. Instantly there was the sound of a shot from within the vault; whether aimed at him or not, Barron could not tell. He had stepped quickly out of range. He fired his own pistol twice in the air. Not another sound came from within.

Within three minutes Brannan and Ling, Barron's two lieutenants, had joined him. A number of passers-by in Fremont Street heard the shots, but none of them cared to venture into that spook-infested place. The three men yanked the curtain down by putting their hands between the bars, and threw their flashlights into the vault. The fellow was stretched out on the stone floor with a gun in his hand, and the blood running from a hole in his temple.

Barron was provided with a duplicate key to the padlock. When they got the door open they discovered that the man was dead. It was the same gaunt, sallow fellow who has been so often described in the press. But he proves to be much younger than had been supposed. Barron, stern man that he is, was much affected. Only he knew the tragic story that lay behind it all. That story has now been revealed, and no one can feel aught but pity. The man was quite mad.

The white object he carried in with him was a stout paper bag with cord handles. On the side of it was pasted a chromo of two lovers in old-fashioned dress, taking leave of each other. It is the sort of bag that women carry home the day's shopping in. In contained sixteen thousand dollars in bills.

An ambulance was called, to make sure that life was extinct. People swarmed into the cemetery on the heels of the surgeon. Barron locked up the vault, and, leaving a guard there, had the body carried to Griffith's mortuary.

Barron afterwards told the fascinating story of the process of reasoning which finally eventuated in the successful capture. "It was nothing but logic and plain horse sense," he insisted in his bluff style. "I am not one of these story-book detectives who can solve a crime for you from a pinch of ashes or a single hair out of the dead man's head. In the beginning, as you may remember, I was furnished with several conflicting descriptions of the bandit, and I have no hesitation in saying that I made no real progress until I saw him that day in the Textile National, as I have already told.

"It was clear to me from the beginning that the man was, if not completely mad, at least unhinged. No sane thief after making a rich haul ever repeats so quick. That was a sort of insane bravado. He didn't even spend what he stole; we knew that all along, because none of the stolen notes ever appeared in circulation. Every bank in the country was on the lookout for those notes, you may be sure.

"Well, if he was mad, it stood to reason that he was working alone. An insane man never has any accomplices, because two insane men couldn't turn a trick together. And no sane man would trust an insane man out of his sight. It was further clear that he must live alone, since anybody he lived with would certainly get on to the smoke bombs, etc., not to speak of the quantities of loot he had to dispose of. He had a house, a flat, an unfurnished room, I told myself; some sort of place that nobody else had any right to go into.

"Nothing came of that. All the landlords in town were circularized without avail. I was driven back on the hotels. It is easy enough to trace anybody through the first-class hotels, because they keep a pretty close watch on their guests. Nothing doing there. I was forced to believe that my man was a habitué of cheap lodging-houses. There you're up against it, for men drift in and out of such places, and nobody pays any attention to them, so they have their two bits or half a dollar or whatever it may be for a bed. I still think that Vallon slept in cheap lodging-houses from the night of December 11 until last night, but I cannot tell you which ones.

"I had to proceed without that. Now the frequenters of such places never have any baggage to speak of; I knew it would be impossible for the bandit to conceal his smoke bombs and his big bunches of money in a flop house. So I proceeded on the assumption that he had some kind of cache or storehouse away from the place where he slept. Where would a homeless man be able to find a place to hide anything in the city? That was the grand problem which confronted me.

"I had other lines out, of course. One of them was to investigate the escapes during the past year from all the mental institutions, public and private. There are a lot of these in and around New York, and progress was slow. Over in West Orange I finally turned up rich ore. I learned that Ralph M. Vallon had escaped from the Patching Sanatorium on December 11. From the description furnished me, I knew this was my man. It was a long step forward.

"I say 'escaped' from the sanatorium, but in reality he just walked out, as he had every right to do. A very tragic story came to light. Vallon, who was only twenty-four, though he looked so much older, was, until two years ago one of the most promising young men in Brick Church. He was the only child of George Vallon, a railway official of some prominence. He had been to the best schools and to Columbia University, where he was taking a post-graduate course when his father died. Newspaper readers may remember the first Vallon tragedy. Two years ago last November, George Vallon, in a fit of temporary insanity, shot his wife dead and committed suicide.

"This terrible occurrence unhinged the boy's mind—though not all at once. He had been left well provided for, but he had not a relative in the world. He gradually lost his grip. The doctors told me that in the beginning there was nothing the matter with his mind, but only the ever present fear that he might have inherited his father's madness. He brooded on that until he was indeed no longer responsible. Melancholia.

"Finally, of his own free will, he went to the sanatorium and asked to be taken care of. Whenever he fell into that moody state the impulse of self-destruction came upon him, and he begged to be saved from that. A good part of the time, the doctors told me, he was as sane as you or I. But then these fits would come upon him, and he lost hold entirely. Never violent, you understand; at no time was he considered dangerous to anybody but himself. They watched him carefully to see that no weapon came his way. When he was normal, he was allowed a good deal of liberty, but was always accompanied by an attendant when he left the institution. The worst of these cases, they tell me, is that they are progressive. The patient is always losing ground.

"Finally, as I have said, on the night of December 11, he disappeared. The local police were notified, but no determined steps were taken to apprehend him, because he had never been regularly committed, you see. In the eyes of the law he was still sane. The doctors believed he would return.

"When I learned all this, my first task was to undertake a study of Vallon's boyhood and early youth. I turned up three highly significant facts: firstly, as a boy, his favourite game had always been robbers or highwaymen; he was a leader in that sport. Secondly, as a high school youth, chemistry had been his hobby, and he spent many spare hours in the laboratory. Thirdly, after the catastrophe which wrecked his life, his mind seemed to dwell exclusively with the thoughts of death and burial. His favourite haunt was the old cemetery attached to St. Christopher's church in Newark. At all hours he was seen mooning about there, and it was that which first gave rise to the suspicion that his mind was affected. Even after he had committed himself to the sanatorium, he would ask to be taken there, and they sometimes humoured him.

"After his escape, he was no longer seen around St. Christopher's, but it suggested itself to me that I would do well to look for him in similar places. Not the great modern cemeteries, which are more like parks, and have almost a cheerful air; but the disused burial-grounds, often neglected and overgrown. There are more of such places in and around New York than most people are aware of.

"I had a list made and visited them one after another. St. Aloysius', which looks nowadays like a bit of the war zone in France, struck me as a likely place, the moment I laid eyes on it. And the old receiving-vault; what a hiding-place! It had a rusty old padlock on the barred gate, but it struck me it was not quite rusty enough. Still, the original padlock might have rusted off entirely, and another been put on. I examined the hinges particularly, and discovered that they had been oiled. It had been cunningly done; the surplus oil carefully wiped off, and the hinges rubbed with powdered rust. But you know what oil is; there was a thin, dark line along the cracks of the hinges.

"If it was his cache, I didn't want to warn him that it had been visited, so I got a locksmith to open the padlock, and to furnish me with a key to it. I have already described how I entered it with my operative, J. G. Brannan. It is not a large place; say about 8x15; the walls and the arched roof were of brick, and it was floored with flagstones. There was a cold damp chill in the place that struck to the marrow, and an ancient mouldering smell.

"On either side there were niches in the brick wall for coffins to rest on; six on a side in three tiers. These were empty, of course, and the bandit had utilized them for shelves. At the back of the vault on one side we found a number of the finished bombs and materials for making others. In the niche on the other side were the suitcases full of bank-notes. Of all the thousands he had stolen, he had spent but a few hundreds. Certainly he was mad.

"There were several boxes of the glass balls which had not been touched yet. Also a supply of chemicals, etc. I am not going to give out the formula, but I may say that it was a simple one. Two well-known ingredients that could be purchased almost anywhere, and a supply of fuller's earth. The fuller's earth was used to make a sort of cushion between the two active ingredients in the glass ball. The whole contents were tamped down with a bit of absorbent cotton, and the neck of the ball closed with sealing-wax. When the ball was smashed, the two active elements were bound to mingle. Simple and ingenious, you see.

"Removing the money, we left everything else just as we had found it. Thereafter, the place was watched as I have described. More than two weeks passed. During this time there was no robbery. Then came the Showalter affair, and I took a hand in the watching, personally, because I was sure, then, that the bandit would visit his cache to put away his latest takings. I figured he would come in the late evening after the city had quieted clown a bit, but before the streets were empty enough to make him an object of suspicion to the police. As it proved, I was right."

Such was Barron's story. To read it, did not lessen my bitterness any. The mock-modest tone of it! How could my clever mistress have allowed herself to be overreached by this braggart? I asked myself.

At eight o'clock I ventured to call her up. She was accustomed to wake then, and have her early coffee. The telephone was at her bedside.

"Have you read the papers?" I asked.

"No," she said. Her tone conveyed nothing.

"Didn't you get the extra last night?"

"Didn't know there was one."

"Barron has caught the bandit!" I cried, full of my bitterness.

"Really!" she said, in the tone she uses when she is thinking of something else.

It was too exasperating. "In an old cemetery in South Brooklyn. Apparently the same young fellow we saw yesterday afternoon. When he found himself trapped, he killed himself."

"I will be at the office in an hour," she said coldly. "We will get busy at once."

When Mme. Storey uses that tone I know she is strongly moved. By the first law of her nature she is obliged to hide her deeper feelings. I knew it, but, loving her as I did, I never could help resenting it. It makes her seem so inhuman.

Get busy! I said to myself, as I hung up. It seems to me that everything is over, but the shouting.

I did not learn, until I saw Crider, that Mme. Storey had in fact received a report of the whole affair from him before twelve o'clock the night before.

X

Things were busy at the office that morning. Nobody had time to explain the situation to me, but I quickly gathered that the smoke bandit case was not closed, and my spirits began to rise.

Mme. Storey went down to Police Headquarters to interview the Commissioner. I understood that her purpose was to obtain the arrest of the man known as Abram Colter at his work in town. At the same time Crider was dispatched to New Jersey, armed with the authority to order the arrest of Mrs. Colter, and to have her house sealed. I heard Mme. Storey say:

"I do not want the woman particularly, but I must make sure that the evidence in that house is not tampered with."

Crider returned shortly before noon, having accomplished his purpose. Mrs. Colter was greatly astonished, he said, but accompanied the officers quietly. That was a woman nothing could put out of countenance.

Mme. Storey then instructed me to call up Mr. Fulton of the Manhattan National, and ask him if she could see him at once "for the purpose of laying before him some additional evidence in the smoke-bandit case."

Mr. Fulton said, in a rather excited voice: "We're all here at my office now. We're waiting for Mr. Barron. Let her come right down if she wants."

His casual tone towards my mistress angered me. People—even bank presidents, are not accustomed to treat her so cavalierly. However, Mme. Storey appeared not to mind it. She said Crider and I must accompany her, and the three of us set off in a taxi-cab. She carried a book.

To our astonishment we found Wall Street below William choked with an immense crowd. It was with the greatest difficulty that the police were keeping a lane open through the middle. The windows up and down the street were lined with hundreds of additional heads. We had fairly to fight our way under the imposing portico of the Manhattan National. The broad-shouldered Crider opened a way for us. Once, when we were brought to a stand, I asked a boy beside me:

"What's it all about?"

He looked at me pityingly. "Ah-h! Walter A. Barron's going to be here at twelve o'clock."

"Such is fame!" murmured Mme. Storey, with a curious smile.

The board-room of the Manhattan National is on the second floor, overlooking Wall Street. The destinies of a hemisphere are directed here. It is a magnificent chamber; big as the throne-room of a palace. There is a long row of tall windows down one side. There were about fifteen men present; the executive committee of the Banking Association, I understood, including some of the most prominent men in town. A festive air prevailed; all pretence of business had been given up; they were crowding to the windows, commenting on the crowd below.

The large, rosy-gilled Mr. Fulton came to meet us. In repose he was quite impressive, but excitement gave him rather a fatuous air. He tittered. "Did you ever see anything like it? We're expecting Barron at any moment. What a reception he'll get! Well, he's earned it...he's earned it!"

"I have important evidence to lay before you," said Mme. Storey firmly.

Mr. Fulton spread out his hands and hoisted his shoulders. "He's caught; he's dead," he said. "What could be important now?...Can't it wait? we're hardly in the mood for business."

"It cannot wait," said Mme. Storey.

"Well, Barron is the proper one to pass on it," said Mr. Fulton, with his head over his shoulder. "He'll be here directly."

"I'll wait for him," said Mme. Storey composedly.

Mr. Fulton was already trotting back towards the window. The three of us sat down in chairs near the door. Beyond a curious glance or two, very little attention was paid to Mme. Storey. They were cutting up like schoolboys; cracking jokes, and clapping each other on the back. Ridiculous in fat bankers. I sat there simmering with indignation.

Presently we heard, a good way off at first, a great roar sweeping along. "He's coming! He's coming!" they cried at the windows.

The roll of cheering voices swelled up in an overpowering crescendo. It culminated immediately below the windows in earth-shaking roars; wave upon wave of sound, breaking only to re-form again. It was thrilling, as any great natural phenomenon is thrilling. What a tribute to any man not of the blood royal. Whether it were deserved or not—that was another matter.

Two minutes later Barron, flushed and grinning widely, entered the room. He had the grace to look a little bit flustered by the magnitude of his reception. I felt a little better disposed towards him for it. He was followed by two plain-clothes men who were fighting back the crowd that had forced its way into the corridors. They got the door closed, and held it.

The portly bankers rushed for Barron en masse, with outstretched hands. What a scene of handshaking and back-thumping ensued. All were slightly hysterical. I hope they did not mean all they said. The gist of it was, that Barron might have anything in the world he expressed a wish for.

In the midst of it Barron caught sight of Mme. Storey, and his face changed. He came to her, quickly.

"What, Rose, you here?" he said in a tone of hypocritical solicitude. "I'm sorry."

"Why sorry?" she asked composedly.

"Well...this can't be very pleasant for you."

She smiled the same smile that I had seen in the street below. "I have a communication to make to these gentlemen," she said, "I wish you'd get them to listen to me."

"Tell me," he said, condescending and confidential.

"I said, 'to these gentlemen,'" said Mme. Storey. She took a step beyond Barron; all the bankers were staring at us. "Gentlemen," she said, "it was not poor Vallon who robbed your banks, and your customers."

They stared at her with fallen chops—then a babble arose: derisive laughter, scorn, some anger. "Ho! Ho!...Did you hear that!...Ridiculous! She's only trying to get into the spotlight!"

"What, gentlemen!" she cried in a voice strong with scorn. "That poor wretch to keep you all in terror! A hypochondriac, wasted by disease! Consider!"

The babble increased. A voice was heard to cry:

"Well, who did it then?"

"That's what I'm here to tell you," said Mme. Storey. "It's a long story. You'd better sit down."

"Sit down, gentlemen, sit down," said Mr. Fulton nervously. "We have retained Mme. Storey. We must at least hear what she has to say."

They dropped into chairs around the long directors' table. Crider and I remained in the background. Mme. Storey stood at Mr. Fulton's right. Unlike most men in a similar situation, she required the support of neither table or chair, but stood alone, a gallant figure. Unwilling admiration glinted sideways out of the eyes of the bankers. Barron also stood, on the other side of the table; his face a hard mask, his eyes fixed on my mistress's face like a preying animal's. He had the whole company with him, and he was not as yet seriously disturbed.

Mme. Storey said: "The man who robbed you, gentlemen, passes under the name of Abram Colter; his real name is Charles or "Finger" Gahagan. Does that suggest anything to you?"

Heads were shaken about the table. She had at least won their attention.

"Well, it is true, his operations were directed against your confrères in the West," said Mme. Storey. "Ten years ago he was famous west of Lake Erie. A bank robber, who was a sufficiently good chemist to manufacture his own explosives. Mark that. I secured his history from the archives of the New York police department, which also furnished me with these photographs." She passed two cards down the table. "He is now forty-seven years old, and looks ten years younger. A man of fine physique, you see. I may add that he is of a tireless activity, and daring to a degree. The first three descriptions of the smoke bandit corresponded roughly to such a man under different disguises. I have secured those disguises, gentlemen. That is your man."

"But the money," said an incredulous voice; "Barron found the money in Brooklyn, and returned it to us; almost every dollar."

"I'm coming to that," said Mme. Storey. "Let me establish Colter or Gahagan first. In the old days he always got away with the loot, and he always evaded the police. For fifteen years he kept them guessing. Then at last, seven years ago, they ran him down, and he was brought to trial for the robbery of the Manufacturers' Trust in Waukesha. They did not lack evidence against him; nevertheless, through the efforts of a clever Chicago lawyer, he escaped through technicalities. He has never been in prison."

Barron had kept his composure; his face was red as ever, but his lips were ashy. "Where is this man?" he demanded.

Mme. Storey glanced at her wrist watch. "In the Tombs," she said dryly. "Since quarter to twelve."

"When Gahagan was acquitted," Mme. Storey went on, "he disappeared from the ken of the police. As a matter of fact he came East; established himself on a poultry farm in New Jersey, where he lived very comfortably on his ill-gotten gains; and, so far as I know, kept within the law."

"Where does Vallon come in?" a voice asked.

"Patience, for a moment," said Mme. Storey. "Three months ago Finger Gahagan was tempted by a friend to engage in a new sort of crime; a dangerous crime that appealed to his daring; a crime that was not a crime, because the loot was afterwards to be returned. Whether it was Gahagan or the friend who suggested the smoke bombs, I can't say. Probably Gahagan; he was the chemist. Neither can I tell you which man picked up the unfortunate Vallon. I know that the plot was already under way when Vallon escaped from the Sanatorium, because it was November 25 when Finger's friend obtained a job for Finger in New York. The job afforded them a means of communication nobody would ever suspect."

When Mme. Storey got to this point the blood began to pound in my ears. I simply could not credit the staggering dénouement that I saw looming ahead.

"Fortunately for me," she went on, "they had sometimes to communicate by telephone also. It was through tracing the telephone calls that I was led to Finger's poultry farm."

Mme. Storey's hearers were frankly confused. "Where does Vallon come in?" the same voice idiotically repeated.

"Where does Vallon come in?" said Mme. Storey, indignation got a little the better of her; "That unhappy youth was kept a prisoner in Finger Gahagan's house up to last night."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I saw him there yesterday at noon. Locked in an upstairs room. My secretary saw him also."

"This must be looked into," said Barron.

"Who was Gahagan's friend?" cried several voices at once.

"The lawyer who got him off when he was tried," said Mme. Storey.

"Who was that?...Do you know his name?"

"Walter Barron."

Absolute silence fell on the room. The discomfited bankers stared at my mistress like puzzled sheep. The only thing to be heard was the murmur of the crowd in the streets. Hundreds had remained there, waiting to see Barron come out again. It lent a ghastly touch of irony to the situation. What a summit for a man to be dashed down from! He had brought it on himself, of course. I stole a look at him. The blow seemed to have robbed him of all sense. His mouth was open, his eyes staring vacantly before him.

He finally got out in a smothered voice: "It's a lie!"

Mme. Storey went on relentlessly: "The job you got for Finger Gahagan was that of waiter at the Shoe and Leather Club where you lunched every day alone—at Finger's table."

"I don't know him," murmured Barron.

Crider had the book Mme. Storey had brought. She held out her hand for it. Exhibiting it to the bankers, she said:

"This handsomely-bound volume is entitled: 'The New York City Government, 19—.' You know the sort of thing, gentlemen; a monument to vanity! Here is a handsome photo-engraving of each city official that year, with his biography facing it. Barron was an assistant district attorney. Here he is. I need not read you the entire biography, but only three lines:

"'Practised law in Chicago, 1907-1912; first attained prominence through his defence of the celebrated Charles or "Finger" Gahagan, accused of bank robbery. Gahagan was acquitted.'"

"But why should Barron put up a job like this?" somebody gasped.

Mme. Storey waved her hand in the direction of the murmuring crowd below. "For that," she said.

It was a sufficient answer.

"But I don't understand," wailed Mr. Fulton. "What about the cemetery vault, and the wretched young fellow who was caught there, who killed himself?"

Mme. Storey was betrayed into a gesture of pain. "Until yesterday," she said in a moved voice, "I thought this was just going to be a sort of gigantic practical joke: you were to get your money back, Barron was to get his publicity, Gahagan had his excitement and was to get whatever reward was going; no great harm to anybody. I thought they meant to produce the poor mad youth as the criminal; that he would be returned to the sanatorium, and the matter done with. I never suspected that his death was contemplated, or I should have acted very differently—...Please listen to one of my operatives." She beckoned to Crider.

Mme. Storey sat down. Crider spoke from behind her. Barron was a ghastly sight; the mere shell of his former self.

"According to Madame Storey's instructions," Crider began, "I was to watch the house of Abram Colter on the outskirts of Cranford, New Jersey, throughout the night. I proceeded there in a car with another operative, timing myself to arrive about six, or shortly after it became dark. I stopped the car a quarter of a mile down the road in front of a house as if it belonged there. I left my partner inside, and proceeded on foot. The arrangement was, if I didn't return in three hours he was to come and relieve me.

"I concealed myself alongside a shed to the north of the house. From this point I commanded both the front and the back doors. Shortly before eight o'clock Colter came out of the back door, carrying a body in his arms, a slender man, no weight at all for Colter. At first I thought it was a stiff. Colter carried him down through the back-yard to the water's edge; it's the Rahway river there, a small stream.

"Colter had a canoe lying on the bank; one of these paddling canoes. He laid the man on the ground, while he put the canoe in the water. I had a chance to creep up and look close in the man's face. He was gagged; also handcuffed. It was Ralph Vallon. Colter laid him in the bottom of the canoe and pulled a canvas over him. He set off down-stream. There was a good bit of water on account of last week's thaw; swift current.

"I didn't have any boat, and it was out of the question to follow along the river shore. The nearest place I could get a boat was the town of Rahway, three miles or so south. Colter was headed that way. I figured if he was only going some short distance, I could pick him up again later, but if he was going to Rahway or beyond, I'd better be waiting there in a boat.

"I ran back to my car, and we beat it for Rahway. I knew I'd have about half an hour's start of him there, the river winds so. Tide-water begins at Rahway. All the boats lie in a sort of pool below the bridge. My partner and I hired a motor-boat with an engineer, and lay in it quiet. Pretty soon the canoe came under the bridge, and passing us, tied up to another motor-boat, further down-stream. There was a man waiting in that boat. They set off down the river, towing the canoe. We unhooked from our moorings, and drifted after, giving them a long start in the river.

"To make a long story short, we followed them out of the mouth of the Rahway river, through the Kill von Kull, around Staten Island. They showed lights, and we took a chance and ran without any. They cut across the upper bay, and turned into the Callopus canal basin. Here they loafed a little while without doing anything. I suppose they were too soon for their appointment.

"We couldn't follow them into the narrow canal without their spotting us, so I got out on a wharf, and followed the other boat as best I could on foot. On the right-hand side of the canal, the buildings came right to the water's edge, but on the left side there was a narrow road, the tow-path, I suppose. Coal-yards, lumber-yards, junk piles alongside. As dark and solitary a spot at night as you could find in all the five boroughs.

"The engine of the motor-boat was no more than just turning over. I could follow her by reason of her being painted white. A third of a mile or so from the basin there was a cemetery on the right-hand side—the side opposite to me. I know now that it is St. Aloysius'. The lights of the city cast a sort of faint glow on the high ground, but where I was it was pitchy. The motor-boat was just a grey streak on the oily canal.

"They came to a stop near the corner of the cemetery, beside a place where the wall had fallen. I was real anxious, because I couldn't see proper, or follow if they left the boat. The Fremont Street bridge was about three hundred yards up-stream, but I was afraid if I ran around that way I'd miss everything. So I just slipped into the water, and swam across—"

"In February!" somebody exclaimed.

"It isn't above seventy feet wide," Crider explained apologetically. "And I knew it was essential to Mme. Storey's plans, for me to get full information. I tied my overcoat at the back of my head to keep it dry as well as I could. I landed below the motor-boat, and making a little detour, skinned over the brick wall, and crept back inside it. A third man had joined the other two while I was swimming. They hadn't much to say to each other. It seemed as if everything was all arranged.

"One said: 'Is he conscious?' Another answered: 'Sure!' Then the first voice said: 'Don't start your engine right away, but scull down quietly until you're well away from here.'

"I was just inside the wall, you understand. A little bit of light was reflected through the break in the wall, enough for me to see a man come through, carefully picking his way over the fallen bricks; a heavy man wearing a Chesterfield overcoat and a soft hat turned down all around. He was carrying Vallon. Inside the wall there was a sort of road. He walked along that and I followed. Quite a ways; two hundred yards, maybe.

"He came to the vault. He went in a little way, but I could still see his back, I couldn't go up close, because of the light reflected from Fremont Street, which was pretty near to the vault. He was there a minute or so. I supposed that he took off the gag, because I heard a sort of groan from Vallon. I can't tell you exactly what happened, because I couldn't see. Barron backed out of the vault and I heard a shot inside. I saw him fire his pistol twice in the air. In no time at all two men came running from the direction of Fremont Street."

"You say it was Barron," asked a voice from the table. "Can you swear to that?"

"Yes, sir," said Crider. "When the two came, all three had their flashlights out, throwing them this way and that. And I saw the face of the big man in the Chesterfield overcoat. It was Barron. He's wearing the same coat now."

Again the silence of stupefaction fell upon us all.

"I want to say, gentlemen," added Crider, "that nothing that was said indicated that the two operatives were privy to his schemes. From the moment of the firing of the shots everything happened just as he said it did."

At the end of Crider's matter-of-fact story, Barron, who had held himself so stiffly throughout, suddenly collapsed. It was a shocking sight. He dropped into a chair, and his head fell forward on the table. A scene of great confusion followed. Mme. Storey and I and Crider got away as quickly as possible, leaving the bankers to deal with Barron. As a matter of fact, he, who had been cheered into the front door by a thousand throats, was taken out of a rear door handcuffed, and rushed to the Tombs.

That's the story. Nobody will ever know for sure if Barron fired the shot that killed young Vallon. Crider's testimony indicated that he did not. Why should he, when he knew that a pistol had only to be shoved into the unfortunate young man's hand for him to kill himself. But, though it was impossible to bring him to trial for murder, I don't think anybody ever felt that Barron was insufficiently punished. What a fall! He got fifteen years. He will never be heard of again, of course.

Finger Gahagan turned state's evidence, and got off with ten years. His story on the stand filled up the gaps in Mme. Storey's hypothesis. The original proposal for a series of fake robberies came from Barron. Finger invented the smoke bombs, and planned the details. Barron kept him supplied with full information respecting the measures taken by the banks. Finger picked up young Vallon by accident, wandering at night in a demented state over the New Jersey roads. He was just what they required. It was as if the devil had put him in the way of that precious pair.

Finger's price was to be whatever was offered as a reward, with a guarantee of twenty-five thousand. As a matter of fact the reward finally amounted to fifty thousand. Barron could well afford to let him have the whole of it, since he expected to be established for life at the head of his profession. All the details were cunningly thought out as you have seen. "Joseph Keating" and "Bessie Rogers" were two operatives of Barron's.

Mme. Storey never cared to talk much about the case, but once she said: "I knew Barron better than he suspected, but even I had not gauged the depths of his insane vanity. A simple man, you could generally tell in advance what he was going to do. As soon as he was engaged on the smoke-bandit case, he began to behave so differently in all ways from his usual self, that it made me thoughtful. Do you remember that I had tea one afternoon with Mr. Fulton's handsome secretary? I learned from him that it was really Barron who had instigated the bankers to employ me on the case, and it was then that the first little suspicion popped into my head; might not the whole thing be a plot of Barron's to establish himself at my expense?

"At first I laughed at my own thought; it seemed so perfectly preposterous. But one little thing after another strengthened my suspicions: Barron's pretended anxiety to help me, the obvious falsity of the evidence he turned over. Finally I went to work definitely on that theory, and it proved to be the correct one."