As for Warren, he went out and spent two hours and a quarter at lunch in the comfortable conviction that it was all a part of the terrific rush and bustle of New York that business had to be done at the table. He talked business for fifteen minutes with Torrey, who was organizing an export syndicate and wanted to include the Warren Electric Washing Machine in his line for South America. But they settled matters before they had finished their melons, and after that the business they discussed 'included the respective merits of cleeks and brassies, the prospects of success for Johnny Evers and Ty Cobb, the Blue Laws, the probabilities for Secretary of State, the new David Belasco production, and a number of other equally urgent matters.

"I can't stand the pace much longer!" said Warren, as he lighted his second cigar. "Got a letter from a man in my old home town this morning. Fool ever to leave it. But my heart's there-it's still beating in Maytown, Nebraska! I'm going out there next month. Think I'll look around and see if I can pick up a bit of land and build a house out there."

"Only way to live," Torrey agreed. "I'm from Illinois myself. Always meaning to run out-never seem to get time, though."

"I know it!" Warren said vehemently. "We let this octopus of a town grab hold of us-and it hates to let go."

"Still, it's pretty comfortable. And I've made money here."

"Money!" Warren dismissed the root of all evil with a magnificent gesture. "Any fool can make Why-chap I heard from this money-anywhere. morning's probably better off right now than I am. Doesn't make as much-doesn't have to spend as much. And he's got something to show. Look at me! I tell you, Torrey-just as soon as I can I'm going to pull up stakes and go home. keep busy out there. I can't let go here yet a while-I have to consider my stockholders and the men who backed me in the beginning first. But I'm going back to Maytown, where my heart is right now!"

Torrey was impressed. "You're right," he said. "Wish I could do it myself. Got my family to consider, though. Not married, are you, Warren?"

"Never had time!" said Warren, remembering a new grievance against New York. "Time for it too. I'm forty-five years old, Torrey-middle-aged, by Heaven! And I'm nothing but a machine."

About three o'clock they both decided that they must hurry back to their offices. Warren found half a dozen people waiting for him; he spent ten minutes explaining to one man that he was much too busy to discuss the matter involved then-and discussion of it would have taken rather less than ten minutes, as his caller vainly sought to point out before he had to depart, with the promise of an appointment in the next week.

JUST the same he had done a

oned, when he rushed from the office at half past five. He was tired; there was no doubt of that. He was much more tired than he used to be, in the great days, twenty years earlier, when he had been fighting for a foothold in New York. Then, fresh from college, he had worked nine hours a day in an office, for twelve dollars a week, and spent

I can

his nights in perfecting that tiny bit of mechanism that made the Warren washer different from all

others.

Later still, putting his invention and his brains in the scale against the money reluctantly furnished by three men who didn't quite believe either in him or his invention, he had smashed through to the beginning of his great success. He had made the first machines almost with his own hands; later he had rewritten the early advertising. Flushed by

his enthusiasm for his own creation, he had sold it himself. In those days the plant had been a tumbledown factory in Long Island City; the principal offices of the company a couple of rooms in a dingy building near Fourteenth Street.

Now the plant covered three acres on the New Jersey meadows; the offices occupied most of one floor of a Fifth Avenue skyscraper. He still controlled every department of the business, but he did it through brief conferences with skilled department heads, who didn't really need his help, except in emergencies. During the war he had turned in and done wonders-curiously enough, although he had worked ten and twelve hours a day, he hadn't complained, then of the strain. He had accomplished miracles in adapting the plant to war work; in getting raw materials that, seemingly, didn't exist. And since the armistice he had worked new miracles in swinging back, ahead of all competitors, to peace production and in avoiding labor troubles.

But, as he had told Torrey, he was tired of it all. He wanted to join his heart in Maytown. "They can polish my shoes till you can see your face in them!" he used to declare, when he was especially vehement. "But the old black mud of Maytown,. Nebraska, is so sticky they can't ever rub it off!"

THAT

HAT letter from Charley Ledbetter made him think a good deal of Maytown that evening while he was dressing-with the aid of Yamada, that invaluable Japanese. It was too bad he had had to decide to postpone sending that check-but Miss Starr had been right. Things piled up. And, of course, he had just tied up a good deal of ready money in new investments.

He was dining with the Redmonds that nightand going to the theatre afterward, so that dinner was rather early. It was rather a new thing for him; he hadn't been accepting invitations of that

ble in these rooms-he had had them for five years, ever since the year when the washer had really succeeded in a big way. Yamada looked after him well too; he liked the quiet, unobtrusive way in which the little chap served him. And he knew so much.

"Car waiting," Yamada said quietly, when the time came, and he went down, and drove up and across to Park Avenue. He expected to enjoy himself; was sorry he'd always been too busy to go in for this sort of thing before. Redmond was one of the men who had backed him in the beginning; Mrs. Redmond had always been fond of him. Most of the women were strangers; at most he had just met them casually. The men he knew better.

He played golf with Stewart at Sleepy Hollow nearly every week. Sugden was an old opponent over a bridge table at the University Club; Calthorpe took him aside to tell him that his turn was very near, and that the shrinking of the waiting list would bring him into the Central Club within a month or two, he thought.

Helen Forster was late. He looked about for her nervously. He was indignant with himself for being so nervous. He wasn't a boy, after all. Perhaps it had been boyish to send her those flowers-he wished he'd asked Miss Starr about that. Well, it was in Miss Starr's hands for the future; there'd be no more mistakes, if he'd made one already. Perhaps she wasn't coming; everyone else seemed to have come. She might be ill. . . .

Then she came, a little flushed, breathing a little quickly, delightful in her confusion as she hurried to Mrs. Redmond. For a moment he was more nervous than ever; then her loveliness conquered him, as it always did. She was a tall girl; very slim and straight; delicately molded. Humor was in the lines about her mouth; her eyes looked as if they must always smile a little. But Warren, you

know, knew those things concerning her already; what sent his heart leaping suddenly, made his eyes dance with delight, was the sight of the butterfly orchids she wore the frail, rare flowers he had sent her. She couldn't mind! It must have been all right, or she wouldn't have worn them!

He was humble about greeting her; he waited his turn. Indeed, he was still halfway across the room from her when she saw him. Her eyes greeted him first; but then she waved to him, gave him just the faint ghost of a wave, but still it was unmistakably for him. He went to her, nervous again. She gave him her hand.

"How nice you were to send me these!" she said, and glanced down at her flowers. "Did you know I adored them?"

"They-they made me think of you," he said, convinced that he was saying something entirely new and original. "Oh-I'm to take you "

"I'm glad," she said. Anyone would have seen, you know, that she liked him. Really liked him; wanted to know him; all that.

THE

HEY got along famously at dinner. They finished nearly half the things they started to say to one another. And at the theatre they both hated the play, and confided in one another, very secretly, so that Mrs. Redmond's But feelings wouldn't be hurt. toward the end of the evening he was growing nervous again. He wanted to see her-really see her, alone. He wanted to do what would have been absurdly simple in Maytown, but seemed grotesquely difficult in New York-ask her if he might "eall."

sort until lately. But so was Helen Forster rather a new thing. He'd met her a month before; since then, by the exercise of a good deal of skill, he had seen her five times. To-night he was to see her again. And he had asked Mrs. Redmond to put him next to her.

He was ready early, as it turned out, and he went into his big living room to smoke a cigarette. From the windows he could look over the dark mass of the park, stretching northward. He was comforta

"Come and see me," she said, very simply, as he was saying good night to her. "I like the way you abuse New York, Mr. Warren. I don't believe you mean a word of it, though. I suppose you're too busy to drop in about five o'clock to-morrow for a cup of tea?"

He contented himself with saying that he wasn't too busy. His eyes were (Continued on page 26)

Allentown dolls up its lamp-posts with flowers in summer and in winter decks them with evergreens until they look like a procession of Christmas trees

an emotional complex as some jovial fellow of the journey raises the shade and exclaims for everybody to hear: "Vy! Dis is Beslehem!"

Not the men only are Pennsylvania Dutch. Between Allentown and New York City, one morning of the past summer, I observed three ladies from the Valley, each with a daughter, discussing their prospective shopping. All three wore gowns of black simplicity that must have cost three Pennsylvania Dutch husbands three acute pangs.

The daughters were models of politeness and good taste. If a man wanted a wife, now, and could get properly introduced, and could qualify as a provider, and did not mind a good manager for a partner

They chatted at length, the three young-looking mothers, then turned to reading, each in her own section of the sleeping car: the first, "Foster on Bridge"; the second, the "At

13

lantic Monthly"; the third, the "Lutheran Observer."

The Lehigh is a little river 120 miles long. Over the last twenty miles it flows generally northeastward. In that stretch the geology of Pennsylvania, wrought into dividends by the Pennsylvania Dutch, has developed the sister cities of Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton.

You must be on the watch to tell when your automobile leaves Allentown and enters Bethlehem. From the western limit of Allentown, past Bethlehem, to the eastern limit of Easton is not so far as from Evanston to Hyde Park, in the middle of Chicago.

Yet each of these cities has its distinctive municipal life, its stiff-necked disregard of the others in its plans, its independent health organization, its competitive scheme for developing rural trade, its own university. The Pennsylvania Dutch are the Pennsylvania Dutch, for a fact.

Allentown is much the largest of the three cities. Its present population is 73;502, that of Bethlehem something over 50,000, and that of Easton not quite 34,000. Allentown could reach the 90,000 mark if it had houses. I think it has earned its eminence above the other two cities of the section.

Though Easton has a more commanding site and has made use of the leadership of Lafayette College, its stores are not so extensive and its trade is not so strong. Bethlehem has an incalculable advantage in the great steel works that bear its name, but wastes the power of such a gearing in friction between town and corporation.

N a century and a half Allentown has become the second silk manufactory of the nation, one of the largest producers of furniture, and an important center for the making of machinery, castings, tools, cement, knitted goods, and other wares. Its commercial and industrial developments are nicely balanced. Here is evidence enough of thrift, organizing ability, and commercial alertness.

Perhaps a hundred families have been made very rich in this progress. Some 10,000 families have been comfortably housed in dwellings in rows. The poor are better off than if they lived in Philadelphia. The city is as healthful as other Pennsylvania settlements of like size.

Muhlenberg, a Lutheran (Continued on page 23)

14

F

V.-The Purple Spots

OR more than an hour Harley sat alone, smoking, neglectful of the routine duties which should have claimed his attention. His face was set and grim, and his expression one of total abstraction. In spirit he stood again in that superheated room at the Savoy. Sometimes, as he mused, he would smoke with unconscious vigor, surrounding himself with veritable fog banks. An imaginary breath of hyacinths would have reached him, to conjure up vividly the hateful, perfumed environment of Ormuz Khan.

He was savagely aware of a great mental disorderliness. He recognized that his brain remained a mere whirlpool from which Phyllis Abingdon, the deceased Sir Charles, Nicol Brinn, and another, alternately arose to claim supremacy. He clenched his teeth upon the mouthpiece of his pipe.

But after some time, although rebelliously, his thoughts began to marshal themselves in a certain definite formation. And outstanding, alone, removed from the ordinary, almost from the real, was the bizarre personality of Ormuz Khan.

The data concerning the Oriental visitor, as supplied by Inspector Wessex, had led him to expect quite a different type of character. Inured as Paul Harley was to surprises, his first sentiment as he had set eyes upon the man had been one of sheer amazement.

"Something of a dandy," inadequately described. the repellent sensuousness of this veritable potentate, who could contrive to invest a sitting room in a modern hotel with the atmosphere of a secret Eastern household. To consider Ormuz Khan in connection with matters of international finance was wildly incongruous, while the manicurist incident

Fire-Tongue

By Sax Rohmer

Illustrated by J. C. Coll

indicated an inherent cruelty only possible in one of Oriental race.

In a mood of complete mental detachment, Paul Harley found himself looking again into those black, inscrutable eyes and trying to analyze the elusive quality of their regard. They were unlike any eyes that he had met with. It were folly to count their possessor a negligible quantity. Nevertheless, it was difficult, because of the fellow's scented effeminacy, to believe that women could find him attractive. But Harley, wise in worldly lore, perceived that the mystery surrounding Ormuz Khan must make a strong appeal to a certain type of female mind. He was forced to admit that some women, indeed many, would be as clay in the hands of the man who possessed those long-lashed, magnetic eyes.

He thought of the pretty manicurist. Mortification he had read in her white face, and pain; but no anger. Yes-Ormuz Khan was dangerous. In what respect was he dangerous?

"Phil Abingdon!" Harley. whispered, and, in the act of breathing the name, laughed harshly at his own folly.

In the name of reason, he mused, what could she find to interest her in a man of Ormuz Khan's

type? He was prepared to learn that there was a mystic side to her personality-a phase in her character which would be responsive to the outré and romantic. But he was loath to admit that she could have any place in her affections for the scented devotee of hyacinths.

Thus, as always, his musings brought him back to the same point. He suppressed a groan and, standing up, began to pace the room. To and fro he walked, before the gleaming Burmese cabinet, and presently his expression underwent a subtle change. His pipe had long since gone out, but he had failed to observe the fact. His eyes had grown unusually bright-and suddenly he stepped to the table and, stooping, made a note upon the little writing block.

E rang the bell communicating with the outer office. Innes came in. "Innes," he said rapidly, "is there anything of really first-rate importance with which I should deal personally?" "Well," replied the secretary, glancing at some papers which he carried, "there is nothing that could not wait until to-morrow at a pinch."

"The pinch has come," said Harley. "I am going to interview the two most important witnesses in the Abingdon case."

"To whom do you refer, Mr. Harley?"

Innes stared rather blankly, as he made the inquiry.

"I have no time to explain," continued Harley. "But I have suddenly realized the importance of a seemingly trivial incident which I witnessed. It is these trivial incidents, Innes, which so often contain .the hidden clue."

"What! you really think you have a clue at last?"

cleared his throat. "Perhaps, sir,"

he

parable.

Unless he were the victim of an unpleasant hallucination, they had their peers in London. As he alighted from a cab before the house of the late Sir Charles, Benson opened the door. "We have just finished, sir," he said, as Harley ran up the steps. "But Mrs. Howett would like to see you, sir."

"Very good, Benson," replied Harley, handing his hat and cane to the butler. "I will see her in the dining room, please."

Benson, throwing open the door, Paul Harley walked into the room which so often figured in his vain imaginings. The table was laid for dinner, in accordance with his directions. The chair which he remembered to have occupied was in place and that in which Sir Charles had died was set at the head of the table.

Brows contracted, Harley stood just inside the room, looking slowly about him. And, as he stood so, an interrogatory cough drew his gaze to the

15

before your arrival. Just after your arrival I found Jones, the parlormaid-a most incompetent, impudent girl-altering the position of the serviettes. At least, such was my impression."

"Of the serviettes?" murmured Harley. "She denied it," continued the housekeeper, speaking with great animation; "but she could give no explanation. It was the last straw. She took too many liberties altogether."

As Harley remained silent, the old lady ran on animatedly, but Harley was no longer listening. "This is not the same table linen?" he asked suddenly.

"Why, no, sir," replied Benson. linen will be at the laundry."

"Last week's

"It has not gone yet," interrupted Mrs. Howett. "I was making up the list when you brought me Mr. Harley's message."

Howett, a pathetic little figure in black.

"Ah, Mrs. Howett," said Harley kindly, "please try to forgive me for this unpleasant farce with its painful memories. But I have a good reason. I think you know this. Now, as I am naturally anxious to have everything clear before Miss Abingdon returns, will you be good enough to tell me if the table is at present set exactly as on the night that Sir Charles and I came in to dinner?"

to bring the actual linen used at table on that occasion, Mrs. Howett?" he said. "My request must appear singular, I know, but I assure you it is no idle one."

Benson looked positively stupid, but Mrs. Howett, who had conceived a sort of reverence for Paul Harley, hurried away excitedly.

"Finally, Benson," said Harley, "what else did you bring into the room after Sir Charles and I

he came out of "The Chancery Agency" and proceeded in the direction of the Strand. Under cover of the wire-gauze curtain which veiled the window he had carefully inspected the scene before emerging. But although his eyes were keen and his sixth sense whispered "Danger-danger!" he had failed to detect anything amiss.

This constant conflict between intuition and tangible evidence was beginning to tell upon him. Either his sixth sense had begun to play tricks or he was the object of the most perfectly organized and efficient system of surveillance with which he had ever come in contact. Once, in the past, he had found himself pitted against the secret police of Moscow, and hitherto he had counted their methods incom

had entered?" "Soup, sir. Here is the tureen, on the sideboard, and all the soup plates of the service in use that night. Of course, sir, I can't say which were the actual plates used."

Paul Harley inspected the plates, a set of fine old Derby ware, and gazed meditatively at the silver ladie "Did the maid, Jones, handie any of these?" he asked.

"No, sir" emphatically. "She was preparing to bring the trout from the kitchen."

"But I saw her in the room."

"She had brought in the fish plates, a sauce boat, and two toast racks, sir. She put them here, on the sideboard. But they were never brought to the table."

"H'm. Has Jones left?"

"Yes, sir. She was under notice. But after her rudeness, Mrs. Howett packed her off right away. She left the very next day after poor Sir Charles died."

"Where has she gone?"

"To a married sister, I believe, until she finds a new job. Mrs. Howett has the address."

At this moment Mrs. Howett entered,

The serviette which

(Continued on page 27)