"Scandalous waste!"

"Of course. wicked."

I often think it is rather

Laughing again, he endeavored to seize her thin wrist.

Suddenly she raised a hand on which the tiers of rings flashed their jeweled eyes. "Look out!" Her face dropped its gayety; all the conventional caution, fear, and timidity sprang into her eyes. Her lips drooped and hardened. "Some one is there," she whispered. "There at the doorway."

"Don't do that!" he exclaimed, but his warning came too late. She had felt along the wall, found the electric switch and the room had been plunged into thick black darkness.

"What an error!" he whispered in her ear. "You are indeed more innocent than I thought any refined woman with rouged lips could be. Some one has now discovered us in something worse than wickedness. We are caught in adolescent confession of guilt."

"Keep silent!" she replied angrily. "You are a fool to argue now."

The long hall beyond the doorway was carpeted with heavy-piled and padded covering, but there could be no question that the feet of an intruder, who was making an attempt to conceal the approach, had come over its surface and were moving now on the threshold.

In the stillness the two within the room could hear not only their own thumping hearts but the breathing and rustle of another person's presence. They stood silent, staring, trying to penetrate the sooty depths of the darkness and confident that the intruder also desired to bore a line of vision through the murk of that perfumeladen room.

"It is Emma Gammell!" whispered Vanessa, her warm breath directed into the young sculptor's ear. "She has been watching us."

He shook his head from side to side to indicate his disbelief; his movement toward Mrs. Yates came in contact with the bandeau of diamonds which she had worn in her hair. The piece of jewelry, the clasp of which had already been loosened, slipped from its place and fell to the floor with a clatter quite shocking to the ears in the midst of that stillness.

Immediately there sprang across the darkness in front of them a red arrow, a spitting streak of fire. It knifed through the black velvet of the room like a red-hot stiletto thrown toward them. Their eyes saw and recorded the flash before their ears were stunned by the report of the pistol shot.

There was a pause before Vanessa's

WE

WHEN the shot was fired Nara had come to the doorway at the other end of the corridor. She had just pulled back the curtain, looking curiously into the tunnel of blackness. Behind her somewhere she supposed that Emma Gammell was waiting for her to interrupt the tête-à-tête of Mrs. Yates and Adam Pine. Nara knew quite well the reason for the secretary's emotion; she knew that Emma probably had seen her beloved youth in the spell of Vanessa and that her lonely heart probably had gone icy within her. Emma had been like a mother who has seen her child being turned slowly into a toad by some sorcerer.

The sound of the pistol and the scream of a woman and the slamming of a door, somewhat muffled by the corridor and the hangings, greeted Nara with a shock to her senses, and for a moment it was difficult for her to realize that into the midst of the usual flow of life there could be projected the sharp sounds of tragedy and that into

this environment of luxury and magnificence violence could thrust its vulgar fingers. It was sensational and banal. She resented the intrusion even before she felt a wave of fear.

A fraction of a second later she could feel the weakness in her knees combined with the tautness of muscles, with which instinctive physical fright, unrealized at first by the conscious mind, creeps into one's body. She could smell the pungent gases released from a revolver chamber come drifting along the passageway. Her ears strained for the sound of living beings down that tunnel of darkness. For a moment she was too astounded to retreat and remained motionless, wondering what had happened of tragedy in that apartment,, and whether she was facing the presence of death beyond that screen of the dark.

At this moment she saw that a line of light suddenly leaped across the crack above the threshold at the far end where the door had closed. She heard faintly the sound of Pine's voice and a second later the command of Vanessa: "Don't open the door!" Only then did she assume that neither of them had been struck down.

The crack of light threw some slight radiance on to the floor and down the corridor. It was enough for Nara to see that somewhere on that long strip of carpet was a crouching, moving figure.

She felt the impulse to run, but growing stronger than this was a sense of duty not to abandon the scene of danger. Therefore she turned quickly and motioned to Emma, who stood down the larger hallway, still clutching the wall and gazing with terror-stricken eyes at Nara.

"You heard," said the young Russian. "But there are voices! They are alive! Some one is in this passageway. Go quickly! Get help. Get Dr. Claveloux. I left him at the bottom of those stairs."

"I will call the servants!"

Nara looked back again into the passageway before she answered, without turning: "No! No! Just Dr. Claveloux. Do not create a scene. Do as I say." Emma fled.

Nheavy curtain. A pale and grimy

hand pushed this drapery aside. A bent and weak figure appeared as if coming out of a bin of dusty darkness. "So it is you?" she said.

He was the same man who had been interrogated by Dr. Claveloux and identified by Nara when Emlen had mentioned him. He was the workingman who had supplanted his brother in the livery and service of a waiter.

"Don't get in my way. I'll kill you all," he threatened with a snarl. "I'm not able to hurt you," Nara said in a firm voice. "Why did you do this?"

"I didn't do it. I missed her. They put the lights out and I missed her," he muttered. "Lemme go."

He raised the weapon toward her. Nara folded her arms. She was trembling, but her eyes, deep and innocent, looked into his quietly. She said in a voice of confident authority: "You will not kill me. I understand you."

He looked furtively up and down. "What do you want of me?" he asked with a dazed expression.

"Give me that revolver," she said, holding out her arm.

She touched his wrists. He looked down quickly at her hands and then up again, staring at her in wonder.

"I'm sick," he said, and, relaxing his grip upon the weapon, released it for her to take. "They can do what they want with me."

His voice had broken; his narrow chest heaved; his face suddenly drooped into an expression of dismay.

"You fool," said Nara. "Why have you done this?"

He answered in a dull, expressionless voice, rasping and mechanical: "I don't care. I don't care nothing. God told me to kill her."

"Why?"

He rubbed his eyes like an awakening

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"ON

N reachin' my dottage," says Lardner, "I ain't makeing no complaints to the management and I am willin' to accomodate with a few rules which has enabled me to reach the age of 35 annums and which if stuck to faithful will bring you the same results."

In the May number of The American Magazine, Lardner gives you the grist of those years in one of the funniest articles ever written. You'll laugh as you read the "rules" Lardner lays down for you-laugh hard. But while you're chuckling at his whimsical "illiteracy," you'll unconsciously absorb the deeper significance of Lardner's story-his common-sense prescription for

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But it isn't always the easiest thing for Miss Miller to drive away other people's blues. She's known trial, disappointment, and yes, tragedy, herself-and still on the near side of twenty-two. There's a wonderful message in the story she's told Mary B. Mullett for the May issue of The American Magazine -the message she delivers in the big song hit of "Sally"-"Look for the Silver Lining."

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sleeper. "She-and her kind!" he
mumbled. "They have too much.
It ain't fair. There had to be a
lesson taught. I seen how the
story would look in the papers to-
morrow. I guess it would make them
rich ones stop and think about spend-
ing so much when folks is dying and
working and sick! When they read
about her-they'd know, eh? And I
ain't nothing. I haven't got nothing
to live for. I got a girl dying down
there in the dirt. She's done for. And
I'm tired out working days and what
I can pick up working nights, too, on
the outside. What do I care? I did it
for poor devils everywhere! I'm the
instrument of God!"

"You're a fool," said Nara softly. "You're a coward. You'd get yourself in trouble and bring more pain to your wife and your little daughter. Do you know what the police will do to you?"

"My God!" he said suddenly after a moment. "It will kill 'em! It will kill my wife and child!"

There was indescribable agony in his voice and in the dark eyes staring out

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N

conventional phrases of tragedy as if he were quoting from the lines of cheap drama and sensational books, but he used them with all the sincerity and depth of feeling one could express in the human tongue.

"The woman you shot at isn't to blame," she said hastily to the man. "You would do the same thing she is doing if you'd had her life and if you were made of the same stuff she is made of."

He did not hear her at all except the word "blame."

"I ain't to blame!" he muttered. "So help me! I was crazy with hate of them people. I've been driven crazy every way. I had to take a job as a strike breaker. They called me a scab. I got beat up last month. That's why I carried this gun. They're all alike, no matter whether they got money or not. They haven't no hearts."

"Have you?" asked Nara. "How much did you think of this woman you tried to kill? How much did you think of your wife?"

"I couldn't see nothing except I was picked out to make them rich people come to their senses. Let 'em punish

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cynical disbelief and only changing their expression to one, of awe as he gazed into Nara's eyes. Then, with a gasp, he shuffled away to the balustrade, where he had left his serving tray on a seat. He picked it up awkwardly and hastened toward the back stairs.

Continued from page 23,

N

A expression of horror had filled the

secretary's countenance; her eyes had grown wider. She appeared more colorless than before; around her lips she showed the emotion of fear.

Pine walked quickly toward her. He uttered an incoherent exclamation of remorse and of sympathy. He extended his hands toward her as if to plead and to comfort in one gesture.

"Don't go near her, Adam," Mrs. Yates commanded. "Wait till you know more. I think this is the crisis of my relationship with Miss Gammell."

"Mrs. Yates!" Emma burst forth in protest. "What have I done? Do you realize what it would mean to me to have you break with me now-after all these years? Where would I turn?"

Nara could see that the secretary had spoken from a habit of mind. For the moment causes were nothing to Emma; for the moment she voiced only the shock to life that a discharge from Mrs. Yates's service would bring. Almost at once, however, Miss Gammell recovered herself and stood white and silent and aghast at another thought. I

Ever since the

"I do not belong in your house, Mrs. Yates," she said. "I couldn't stay here. It would be quite unjust to both of us. I shall leave at once. day Mr. Pine asked us to meet in his studio I have had cause to know your kindness. But now all I desire is to go away-alone."

"This is beyond belief!" Vanessa said angrily. "I see no reason-" "It is a one," Nara. a life of my own."

walked down the narrow corridor leading to the banker's former retreat. She could think of nothing except the terrible mania of resentment which had filled that poor soul of a derelict to whom a single feather from one of Vanessa's fans plucked out and thrown at his feet would have meant at least a week's relief from the eternal habit of toil and suffering.

Nara opened the door into the room which once had been the private retreat of Yates. In the revel of color of this room of curios two figures moved backward in alarm. One was the young sculptor, the other Vanessa Yates.

"You are here?" Nara inquired in a voice of surprise which might have been sincere had it not had in it a note of

sarcasm.

"Who was it? Have they caught

some one?" asked Adam Pine.

Nara gazed at the two. The Italian was limp and wore an expression of dismay and humiliation. Vanessa Yates's lips were twisted into an unpleasant quirk of challenge. Her coils of red hair had been disarranged and

be a murderess!" Mrs. Yates exclaimed. She turned toward Pine. Her distended jeweled fingers trembled with emotion, her voice shook, her eyes stared as one who has hysteria stares as she said: "Ask her! Ask her if she did not try to do it in a mania of jealousy-just because you and I were here alone." She paused and added: "We were here innocently enough!"

"Do what?" Nara inquired in alarm. "Kill him-or me. What difference?" "But you do not realize what you are saying, Mrs. Yates," said Nara. "This is a terrible charge. It is impossible!" "Be silent, Miss Alexieff," Vanessa ccmmanded in a vicious tone. "You see she has nothing to say. Oh, it is all too plain. I know her motive."

The sculptor took Emma's cold hand. He said: "Of course I do not believe this," but he withdrew the meaning of these words by adding: "Oh, I was not worth it, Emma!"

Vanessa was now hysterical with

of taking full charge of the marketing end of the business, which includes the direction of the sales force and directing the advertising."

Still another insists:

"He is mentally alert and has proved that he has sales ability of the highest order.

"He must be able to assume authority and responsibility with modesty, and know how to work with and as one of a thoroughly efficient organization.

"Salary to be discussed later; but we do not want a man who hasn't proved to the satisfaction of others that he is worth $5,000 a year.'

And so they run. One wants "a master salesman on paper," while still another specifies "only a big man-broadgauged and four-square-with wide, practical experience in large sales organizations can fill our requirements."

Now I do not doubt that most of these advertisements are perfectly honest. I think the majority of the men who describe their qualities do so accurately, and I think that all of those who advertise for perfect men naively believe that if you set out the qualifications of a job, it will be possible to find a man who could fill the job. Because of these several beliefs we have a considerable number of large, fat shirt fronts filling high executive positions about which they know nothing, and perhaps a hundred thousand men who have in them all the makings of stars, filling unnamed and all but unknown positions from which they may or may not eventually emerge into the light.

TH

Take a Look in the Mirror

HE biggest of all the elements of business is the human. Between a company that fails and a company that makes a marvelous success there is very little difference in personnel excepting as you get near to the top. The rank and file of the unsuccessful company can be exchanged for the rank and file of the successful, and affairs after a while will go on about as well. It is the critical something in the leaders that makes all the difference.

The executives of a company can and frequently do "confer" when things are not going well, and, after a deal of discussion on why things are not going well, arrive at a decision something like this:

"Our sales department is not up to the mark. We must have a sales manager who can produce results. We want a man who can fire all of our people with enthusiasm, who can jump in here and make this place hop."

They will arrive at that decision provided salesmen are not in the majority among the executives. If, however, the salesmen are in the majority they will find that the trouble is with the manufacturing end of the company. The conference, in short, will find that the trouble is with whatever section of the business is not well represented at the meeting. You will never find the crowd of them lining up before a big mirror and, gazing into it, saying: "There is the trouble."

Always they find that they need some kind of man or some kind of thing that they do not already have. Always they will decide that some very necessary sort of superman is missing, and they will have a certainty concerning the exact superman that they need in proportion to the degree in which they do not know their own jobs. If they do not know their own jobs at all, they will in what is supposed to be businesslike fashion write what they will probably call the "specifications" for the job and possibly buy perfectly good newspaper and magazine space to spread those specifications broadcast.

Probably they are right in their specifications. Probably they need exactly the sort of man for whom they advertise. The error that they make is in using terrestrial media to carry the advertising. For, although there

must be a lot of these perfect, people on earth, and ready enough to be hired, I have yet to discover one answering an advertisement or even occupying a good position in any one of the larger organizations.

TH

No Supermen for Hire

HERE are no perfect "100 per cent" men. There are no supermen. There are no men who, just being given the word, can "turn vision into actual accomplishment," or who are "recognized by their acquaintances as possessing energy and initiative of the highest order," or who are known to be able, or know themselves that they are able, "to assume authority and responsibility with modesty," or who are "masters" at anything. Very satisfactory individuals, having an unusual number of these desired qualities, and having them in quite an unusual degree, do hold positions with all of our successful companies, but none of them were hired because they were known to possess these qualities. They develop them in actual practice, and in most cases do not know that they have them. And the people around them do not know that they have them.

The reason why those men with real qualifications for rather good places are advertising to get them, and the reason why those employers with really good places to fill are advertising for men to fill them, is that both have elected to try the easiest way. If you told any of them that, you would get a very indignant reply. The man advertising for the job would tell you that he is willing to work his fingers to the bone -and no doubt he is. The employer advertising for the man will tell you that he is working twenty-five out of each twenty-four hours a day-and they are both right. They are doing everything in the world excepting one thing-thinking.

They are a good deal like the man playing golf. His stance was perfect; he addressed the ball confidently; he went back slowly; he swung sweetly and clean through-but the ball did not move.

"I

"That's all right," he grinned. had to remember only six things, and I remembered five of them."

a

The sixth was hitting the ball. It is this little matter of hitting the ball that is overlooked by those who want a ready-made job or ready-made man for a job. And I think you will discover that the test of a man who is going to be successful is his ability to make a good job out of what is around him, and that the test of a highly successful management is to be found in its ability to select capability among the men whom it already has, and to know that the perfect man not only does not exist, but that his development will come more from what the management does than from what the man does.

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A4

Why the Carringtons Bought

a Colt

"ToThere they go.

OM!" she cried.

Telephone the police."

Telephone nothing!" her husband exclaimed. "I can't. They've cut the wire," and he held up the telephone with the severed wire.

"Oh, dear, why can't you make them stop," his wife wailed.

66

Because I haven't got a Colt," retorted Tom, "and when I told you a

men.

Bluffing won't pay. A man cannot expect to have a worth-while place handed to him on a platter-no job is ever given. It always has to be battled for. But equally no man can expect to give a job and get anything

to buy a Colt Automatic Pistol-the best that money can buy for home protection-you said, Now What's the use?' you know."

An open window at the first landing told the story. But the intruders had gone. Mrs. Carrington saw them climbing into a waiting car.

And that was the last of the Carrington silver.

"Telephone nothing." he said. "The wire's cut."

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worth while in return. He cannot expect to hire a man who will teach him what ought to be his business-to do his job for him-to supply what he

A man does not know what he is most capable of doing. He may be able to answer questions that are put to him concerning his ability. - but that is something different from having the real ability which proves itself when put to the test. And the employer cannot discover that ability in a conversation-much less. in a letter.

So I am not much concerned with searching out finished talent-getting stars. The real stars will break in anyway, and in due season. We can do better and more effective scouting if we look for the men who are above the average-who have something that the usual run of men have not. A man may have only one such quality. That is enough. Then there is something to work on.

But the important thing is this: We do not have to go far afield to search for the men who are above the average. We are surrounded by such men. And the employer who cannot see that at least some of the people around him are above the average is sure to be below the average himself.

The wide-awake, above-the-average employer will eventually find the abovethe-average men. In a large company it may take him some time to do so. Then he loses and so does the man. And I have found that it helps whenever good service is rendered, whenever a man does something above the average, to write a note to the head of the company or to the manager and tell him that he has a good man working for him.

That helps the employer and helps the man. It makes business betterthe more first-class men we have in business, the better for all of us. Give your own people a chance.

banishment and disgrace. The nurse saw in a flash that her jealous desire for revenge had led her to betray the man she loved. Yes-loved, in spite of his villainies. And now he would be disgraced, ruined-perhaps put in prison. The nurse thought for a moment; then,

pretending to agree with Miss Careyslowly turned so that a ray of sunlight fell upon the plate holder; then, drawing the sensitive plate from the holder, let the sun obliterate the evidence."

"Magnificent " Dobbs rose to his feet in his enthusiasm. "I can show that with the same close-up. The image of the needle-near-the-heart, bold and strong-then fading to nothing under the rays of the sun. Wonderful! Go on."

HE veiled lady sobbed. Then, recovering herself quickly, she went on in a dull, lifeless voice: "The rest is like a terrible dream. It seems now that it never could have happened. Miss Carey went to Drood's house and found him in his laboratory. She accused him at once-and showed the plate as evidence.

"Drood collapsed. He offered to write a confession on the spot if Miss Carey would only promise to let him leave the country. Miss Carey was so anxious to free her young man that she promised. Drood had written and signed the confession-when the nurse burst into the room.

"With a scream she told Drood not to betray himself with a confession. She told him that the plate was a blank-a harmless piece of glass. Drood saw his chance. Quick as a flash Miss Carey put her hand out to seize the confession. Drood's strong fingers closed over her wrist. With his free hand he reached back of his shoulder to a row of white shelves. He grasped a bottle. It was marked 'Vitriol.' With a snarl he told Miss Carey what that terrible fluid will do to human flesh. How it will burndisfigure-until the victim dies in terrible agony. The nurse fainted dead

away.

"Miss Carey never flinched. As Drood raised the bottle over his head the young woman facing him reached quickly into her bag and, drawing out a pistol, pointed it-not at Drood: at the terrible bottle of vitriol over his headand pulled the trigger. Drood screamed, fell to the floor in an agony of suffering as the burning fluid poured over his head and body-and Miss Carey rushed from the room with the confession.

"A moment after she had gone the nurse revived from her faint. Picture her horror when she saw the man she had loved and had betrayed lying in his death throes on the floor. Overcome with remorse, she stooped over the body and pressed a last kiss to Drood's cheek. She recoiled with a piercing scream. The acid that had killed Drood burned the nurse's face.

Before she could secure attention she was disfigured for life."

The veiled lady paused. There was no more to tell, nor did it seem that she had strength to tell more. She sat before the sympathetic scenario editor, her body torn with sobs. After a moment Dobbs approached her. He held a check in his hand. "Young woman," he said solemnly, "I don't know who you are or what your name is. But I do know that you have given me a picture that will make this company famous. If you can assure me that this story is true--why, I'll not ask your name. I'll just make this check out 'to bearer.'"

"Heaven knows," said the veiled lady tearfully "Heaven knows I wish with all my heart it were not true. I"she turned her head away in shame-"I am the nurse."

Dobbs was thunderstruck. "I can't believe it!" he cried. Then he gave a gasp and covered his face with his hands.

The veiled lady had taken off her veil and showed to him a face-one time young and beautiful, now a hideous network of livid scars.

Dobbs could not trust himself to look again. Hastily scratching "to bearer" on the prize check already made out for one thousand dollars, he handed it to the woman without a word. He heard the door open. When he thought she was gone he looked up-to see the young woman calmly pulling the scars off her face in long, transparent strips, and the boss standing by her side fingering the check he had just filled in.

The erstwhile veiled lady smiled and held out one of the terrible scars. "Collodion," she announced briefly.

The boss snorted. "The prize check, eh?

To bearer,' eh? Don't you know the lady's name?" He tore the check into small pieces and whirled on Dobbs belligerently. "This lady is Miss Zeena Ashley. She is the girl who has been writing all the big features over at the Miracle for Gloria Mundy. I told her that if she could get you to take a story in this prize fizzle of yours, she could have your job." The boss opened the door invitingly. "And now, you poor simp, if you will kindly vacate that desk, I will make good."

Months later Dobbs buried his chagrin under the now famous black suit and accepted the post of door man at the Plastic. As I said before, if he had had sense enough he might have taken this needle-in-the-heart story and sold it -they never used the thing. With the prize-story element added-making himself the hero and the veiled lady the heroine-putting in a little love interest, it would go over beautifully. Of course he would have to fix it so that the scenario editor married the veiled lady in the end. But why not? Stranger stories than that have been screened. I am willing to bet that Zeena Ashley herself would take the story now. Scenario editors are funny that way.