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Mechanical

Engineering

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"Yes, with pleasure. But please tell me"-Phil Abingdon looked up at him pleadingly-"do you think somethingsomething dreadful has happened to Mr. Harley?"

"Don't alarm yourself unduly," said Wessex. "I hope before the day is over to be in touch with him."

As a matter of fact, he had no such hope. It was a lie intended to console the girl, to whom the news of Harley's disappearance seemed to have come as a terrible blow. More and more Wessex found himself to be groping in the dark. And when, in response to the ringing of the bell, Benson came in and repeated what had taken place on the previous day, the detective's state of mystification grew even more profound. As a matter of routine rather than with any hope of learning anything useful, he interviewed Mrs. Howett; but the statement of the voluble old lady gave no clue which Wessex could perceive to possess the slightest value.

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Both witnesses having been dismissed, he turned again to Phil Abingdon, who had been sitting watching him with a pathetic light of hope in her eyes throughout his examination of the butler and Mrs. Howett.

said brightly. "I am off to South Lam"The next step is clear enough," he beth Road. The woman Jones is the link we are looking for."

"But the link with what, Mr. Wessex?" asked Phil Abingdon. "What is it all about?-what does it all mean?"

"The link with Mr. Paul Harley," replied Wessex. He moved toward the door.

"But won't you tell me something more before you go?" said the girl beseechingly. "I-I-feel responsible if anything has happened to Mr. Harley. Please be frank with me. Are you afraid he is-in danger?"

"Well, miss," replied the detective haltingly, "he rang up his secretary, Mr. Innes, last night-we don't know where from-and admitted that he was in a rather tight corner. I don't believe for a moment that he is in actual danger, but he probably has"-again he hesitated-"good reasons of his own for remaining absent at present."

Phil Abingdon looked at him doubtingly. "I am almost afraid to ask you," she said in a low voice, "but-if you hear anything, will you ring me up?" "I promise to do so."

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Fire-Tongue

Continued from page 16

"Only a month or so, but she is crazy

about him." "And when he came last night she went away with him?"

"Yes. She was all ready to go before the other gentleman called. He must have told her something which made her think it was all off, and she was crazy with joy when Sidney turned up. She had all her things packed, and off she went."

Experience had taught Detective Inspector Wessex to recognize the truth when he met it, and he did not doubt the statement of the woman with the baby. "Can you give me any idea where this man Sidney came from?" he asked.

"I am afraid I can't," replied the listless voice. "He was in the service of some gentleman in the country; that's all I know about him."

"Did Polly leave no address to which letters were to be forwarded?"

"No; she said she would write." "One other point," said Wessex, and "What do you he looked hard into the woman's face: know about FireTongue?"

He was answered by a stare of blank stupidity.

"You heard me?"

"Yes, I heard you, but I don't know what you are talking about."

Quick decisions are required from every member of the Criminal Investigation Department, and Detective Inspector Wessex came to one now.

"That will do for the present," he said, turned, and ran down the steps to the waiting cab. . . .

D

stopped. Hoskins withdrew and closed the door.

At that, while Nicol Brinn watched her with completely transfigured features, the woman allowed the cloak to slip from her shoulders, and, raising her head, extended both her hands, uttering a subdued cry of greeting that was almost a sob. She was dark, with the darkness of the East, but beautiful with a beauty that was tragic. Her eyes were glorious wells of sadness, seeming to mirror a soul that had known a hundred ages. Withal she had the figure of a girl, slender and supple, possessing the poetic grace and poetry of movement born only in the Orient.

USK was falling that evening. Gayly lighted cars offering glimpses of women in elaborate toilets and of their black-coated and white-shirted cavaliers thronged Piccadilly, bound for theatre or restaurant. The workaday shutters were pulled down, and the night life of London had commenced. The West End was in possession of an army of pleasure seekers, but Nicol Brinn was not among their ranks. Wearing his tightly buttoned dinner jacket, he stood, hands clasped behind him, staring out of the window as Detective Inspector Wessex had found him at Only one who him

Clooking cab than that in which the very well could have detected the fact

had come, Detective Inspector Wessex proceeded to 236 South Lambeth Road. He had knocked several times before the door was opened by the woman to whom the girl Jones had called on the occasion of Harley's visit. "I am a police officer," said the detective inspector, "and I have called to see a woman named Jones, formerly in the employ of Sir Charles Abingdon." "Polly's gone," was the toneless reply. "Gone? Gone where?"

"She went away last night to a job in the country."

"What time last night?"

"I can't remember the time. Just after a gentleman had called here to see her."

"Some one from the police?"

"I don't know. She seemed to be very frightened."

"Were you present when he interviewed her?"

"No."

"After he had gone, what did Polly do?"

"Sat and cried for about half an hour, then Sidney came for her." "Sidney?"

"Her boy-the latest one."
"Describe Sidney."

"A dark fellow, foreign."
"French-German?"

"No. A sort of Indian, like." "Indian?" snapped Wessex. "What do you mean by Indian?"

"Very dark," replied the woman without emotion, swinging a baby she held to and fro in a methodical way which the detective found highly irritating.

"You mean a native of India?" "Yes, I should think so. I never noticed him much. Polly has so many." "How long has she known this man?"

that anxiety was written upon that Siouxlike face. His gaze seemed to be directed, not so much upon the fading prospect of the park, as downward, upon the moving multitude in the street below. Came a subdued knocking at the door.

"Naida!" breathed Nicol Brinn huskily. "Naîda!"

His high voice had softened, had grown tremulous. He extended his hands with a groping movement. The woman laughed shudderingly.

"In," said Nicol Brinn. Hoskins, the neat manservant, entered. "A lady to see you, sir." Nicol Brinn turned in a flash. For one fleeting instant the dynamic force beneath the placid surface exhibited itself in every line of his gaunt face. He was transfigured; he was a man of monstrous energy, of tremendous enthusiasm. Then the enthusiasm vanished. He was a creature of stone again; the familiar and taciturn Nicol Brinn, known and puzzled over in the club lands of the world. "Name?" "She gave none." "English?"

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HE

ER cloak lying forgotten upon the carpet, she advanced toward him. She wore a robe that was distinctly Oriental without being in the slightest degree barbaric. Her skin was strangely fair, and jewels sparkled upon her fingers. She conjured up dreams of the perfumed luxury of the East, and was a figure to fire the imagination. But Nicol Brinn seemed incapable of movement; his body was inert, but his eyes were on fire. Into the woman's face had come anxiety that was purely feminine.

Hoskins having retired, and having silently closed the door, Nicol Brinn did an extraordinary thing, a thing which none of his friends in London, Paris, or New York would ever have supposed him capable of doing. He raised his eyes aloft; he raised his clenched hands. "Please God she has come," he whispered. "Dare I believe it? Dare I believe it?"

"Oh, my big American sweetheart," she whispered, and, approaching him with a sort of timidity, laid her little hands upon his arm: "Do you still think I am beautiful?" "Beautiful!"

No man could have recognized the voice of Nicol Brinn. Suddenly his arms were about her like bands of iron, and with a long, wondering sigh she lay back looking up into his face, while he gazed hungrily into her eyes. His lips had almost met hers when softly, almost inaudibly, she sighed: "Nicol!"

She pronounced the name queerly, giving to i the value of ee, and almost dropping the last letter entirely.

Their lips met, and for a moment they clung together, this woman of the East and man of the West, in utter transgression of that law which England's poet has laid down. It was a reunion speaking of a love so deep as to be sacred.

Lifting the woman in his arms lightly as a baby, he carried her to the settee between the two high windows and placed her there amid Oriental cushions, where she looked like an Eastern queen. He knelt at her feet and, holding both her hands, looked into her face with that wondering expression in which there was something incredulous and something sorrowful; a look of great and selfless tenderness. The face of Naîda was lighted up, and her big eyes filled with tears. Disengaging one of her jeweled hands, she ruffled Nicol Brinn's hair.

"My Nicol," she said tenderly. "Have I changed so much?"

Her accent was quaint and fascinating, but her voice was very musical. To the man who knelt at her feet it was the sweetest music in the world. "Naida. "Naîda," he whispered. Even yet I dare not believe that you are here."

"You knew I would come?" "How was I to know that you would see my message?"

She opened her closed left hand and smoothed out a scrap of torn paper which she held there. It was from the "Agony" column of that day's "Times":

1

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N. November 23, 1913. N. B.-See Telephone Directory.

"I told you long, long ago that I would come if ever you wanted me." "Long, long ago," echoed Nicol Brinn. The door was opened again, and "To me it has seemed a century; toHoskins, standing just inside, an- night it seems a day." nounced: "The lady to see you, sir."

He watched her with a deep and tireHe stepped aside and bowed as a tall, less content. Presently her eyes fell. slender woman entered the room. She "Sit here beside me," she said. "I have wore a long wrap trimmed with fur, not long to be here. Put your arm round the collar turned up about her face. Three steps forward she took and

me. I have something to tell you." He seated himself beside her on the

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Impulsively Naida threw her arms around his neck, coiling herself up lithely and characteristically beside him.

"I

"My big sweetheart," she whispered crooningly. "Don't say it-don't say it." "I have said it. It is true." Turning, fiercely he seized her. won't let you go!" he cried, and there was a strange light in his eyes. "Before I was helpless, now I am not. This time you have come to me, and you shall stay."

She shrank away from him terrified, wild-eyed: "Oh, you forget, you forget!" "For seven years I have tried to forget. I have been mad, but to-night I am sane."

"I trusted you, I trusted you!" she moaned.

NICOL

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I

ICOL BRINN clenched his teeth grimly for a moment, and then, holding her averted face very close to his own, he began to speak in a low, monotonous voice. "For seven years,' he said, "I have tried to die, because without you I did not care to live. have gone into the bad lands of the world and into the worst spots of those bad lands. Night and day your eyes have watched me, and I have wakened from dreams of your kisses and gone out to court murder. I have earned the reputation of being something more than human, but I am not. I had everything that life could give me, except you. Now I have got you, and I am going to keep you."

Naîda began to weep silently. The low, even voice of Nicol Brinn ceased. He could feel her quivering in his grasp; and as she sobbed, slowly, slowly the fierce light faded from his eyes. "Naida, my Naîda, forgive me," he whispered.

She raised her face, looking up to him pathetically. "I came to you, I came to you," she moaned. "I promised long ago that I would come. What use is it, all this? You know, you know! Kill me if you like. How often have I asked you to kill me. It would be sweet to die in your arms. But what use to talk so? You are in great danger or you would not have asked me to come. If you don't know it, I tell you-you are in great danger."

Nicol Brinn released her, stood up and began slowly to pace about the room. He deliberately averted his gaze from the settee. "Something has happened," he began, "which has changed everything. Because you are here I know that-some one else is here."

He was answered by a shuddering sigh, but he did not glance in the direction of the settee.

"In India I respected what you told me. Because you were strong, I loved you the more. Here in England I can no longer respect the accomplice of assassins."

"Assassins? What, is this something

new?"

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"No oath holds good in the face of murder."

"Is that why you bring me here? Is that what your message means?"

"My message means that because of -the thing you know about-I am suspected of the murder."

"You? You?"

"Yes, I, I! Good God! when I realize what your presence here means, I wish more than ever that I had succeeded in finding death.”

"Please don't say it," came a soft, pleading voice. "What can I do? What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to release me from that vow made seven years ago."

Naîda uttered a stifled cry. "How is it possible? You understand that it is not possible."

Nicol Brinn seized her by the shoulders. "Is it possible for me to remain silent while men are murdered here in a civilized country?"

"Oh," moaned Ñaîda, "what can I do, what can I do?"

"Give me permission to speak and stay here. Leave the rest to me.'

"You know I cannot stay, my Nicol," she replied sadly.

"But," he said with deliberate slowness, "I won't let you go."

"You must let me go. Already I have been here too long."

He threw his arms around her and crushed her against him fiercely. "Never again," he said. "Never again." "Listen! Oh, listen!"

She pressed her little hands against his shoulders.

"I shall listen to nothing."

"But you must-you must! I want to make you understand something. This morning I see your note in the papers. Every day, every day for seven whole long years, wherever I have been, I have looked. In the papers of India. Sometimes in the papers of France, of England."

"I never even dreamed that you left India," said Nicol Brinn hoarsely. "It was through the 'Times of India' that I said I would communicate with you." "Once we never left India. Now we do sometimes. But listen. I prepared to come when-he--"

Nicol Brinn's clasp of Naîda tightened cruelly.

"Oh, you hurt me!" she moaned. "Please let me speak. He gave me your name and told me to bring you!" "What! What!"

Nicol Brinn dropped his arms and stood, as a man amazed, watching her.

"Last night there was a meeting outside London."

"You don't want me to believe there are English members?"

"Yes. There are. Many. But let me go on. Somehow-somehow-I don't understand he finds you all---" "My God!"

"And you are not present last night! Now, do you understand? So he sends me to tell you that a car will be waiting at nine o'clock to-night outside the Cavalry Club. The driver will be a Hindu. You know what to say. my Nicol, my Nicol, go for my sake! You know it all! You are clever. You can pretend. You can explain you had no call. If you refuse-"

Oh,

Nicol Brinn nodded grimly. "I understand! But, good God! how has he found out? How has he found out?" "I don't know!" moaned Naîda. "Oh," I am frightened—sc frightened!"

from those Indian hills was a pose DISCREET rap sounded upon the

bility I had never considered. When it was suddenly brought home to me that you, you, might be here in London, I almost went mad. But the thing that made me realize it was a horrible thing, black, dastardly thing. See here."

He turned and crossed to where the woman was crouching, watching him with wide-open, fearful eyes. He took both her hands and looked grimly into er face. "For seven years I have walked around with a silent tongue and a broken heart. All that is finshed. I am going to speak."

"Ah, no, no!"

She was on her feet, her face a mask of tragedy.

"You swore to me, you swore to me!"

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Nicol Brinn crossed and stood, hands clasped behind him, before the mantelpiece. "In," he said.

Hoskins entered. "Detective Sergeant Stokes wishes to see you at once, sir."

Brinn drew a watch from his waistcoat pocket. Attached to it was a fob from which depended a little Chinese Buddha. He consulted the timepiece and returned it to his pocket.

"Eight-twenty-five," he muttered, and
glanced across to where Naîda, wide-
eyed, watched him. "Admit Detective
Sergeant Stokes at eight-twenty-six,
and then lock the door."
"Very good, sir."

Hoskins retired imperturbably.
(To be continued)

Published in

Oliver Twist-ed

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WHA

HAT! Back for more? When one bowl has been enough all along! Who of us has not expressed something of this same indignation-now that our public servants the electric light companies are "asking for more," and asking it from us.

Their argument is, in effect, that for some time past one bowl has not been enough, that the gruel itself has been getting thinner and thinner, that they have been called on for more work and therefore need more substantial fare if we want them to do a good job.

Now just what are the facts?

Electricity is one of the few essentials which have shown little increase in price during the years when everything else went up. But it kept costing more to make it and deliver it to your home or office.

Small wonder then that service has suffered, and people who need electric light and power cannot get it. Then obviously to raise the rates would be the most sensible course for all concerned-for the electric light people and in the long run for the public too.

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How Alive Are You?

To help you answer this question Dr. Frank Crane sought out the livest man he knows-Ernest Thompson Seton, visited him in his house that stands in the midst of a New England forest, and talked the matter over with him. The result-a number of practical tests which will enable you to answer for yourself this vital question: How alive are you? The tests, with illustrated directions for making them, comprise but one of the many helpful and inspiring articles in the February issue of The American Magazine.

Will You Be Shaken Up?
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Employers are revising their opinions of those who work for them. They are going to demand better service for what goes into the pay envelope. The good worker is going to have his innings-in other words, there is going to be a whale of a shake-down. But there'll be a shake-up too. Which will happen to you?

In The American Magazine for February, Keene Sumner reports an interview with a man, known all over the country, who says: "If I were an employee of any description, high or low, I'd pull my belt up a few holes and get busy. I'd fight now as I never did before, and stand a chance of being shaken up instead of down." Here's an article that will enable you to size up the present employment situation and study yourself in relation to it.

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Broadway Becomes Main Street

Continued from page 17

lies in vending life's commonest necessities. Money has talked real-estate dealers into invading the supposedly frivolous neighborhood of Forty-second Street and Broadway with drab utilitarian office skyscrapers. It has talked the producers of legitimate drama out of the choice Broadway frontages and driven them into the side streets.

In the process, the dry laws conniving, it has also driven a number of old haunts of the spendthrift diner into undergoing startling changes. In a street once famous for its "gilded" restaurants you find to-day a swarm of middleclass eating places of moderate tariffs, flanked by dairy lunches, pastry shops, rôtisseries, cafeterias, and "automats," the latter marking the last word in protest against the tyranny of head waiters, for they serve their food from slotmachine post-office boxes. Places of this type prosper because they have proved themselves more profitable than gilt and greed; and their number is nothing short of amazing. William Allen White once described Broadway as "the eatingest place in the world." He should see it now, when eating places spring up half a dozen to the block, and daily recruit the stands being vacated by J. Barleycorn.

Stroll farther along what once was the Great White Way and note how its greatness and distinction continue to disappear. Every day the Yellow Streak, which once was truly half Parisian, grows more like Main Street in the old home town. The Claridge Bar is now a tea room and confectionery shop; another of the old stands of Rector's, after being rented for a while by a free exhibition of California sterilized eggs, now is in the hands of

a merchant of nifty ready-made clothing. Orange-drink stands, movie theatres, vaudeville, more movies, a dance hall, a skating rink, movies again.

And then the outposts of the invasion of sober luxury from the north-the first of the motor-car salesrooms and the shops that handle automobile accessories. From the neighborhood of Fiftieth Street to Seventy-second the White Way ceases to be an all-the-year-round Coney Island, and becomes definitely Automobile Row.

At Fifty-seventh Street, which is rapidly becoming the business continuation of the shops and hotels and clubs of upper Fifth Avenue, the north end of the White Way is threatened further with invasion from its most dangerous rival to national fame-Fifth Avenue.

With invaders at its very center, with sober necessity ebbing upward from the south and sober luxury flowing down from the north, a sober and more or less law-abiding Broadway, a Broadway of the movies, of dairy lunchrooms and the "automat," of office buildings and shoe stores and orange-drink stands, must soon give up its last pretentions to being distinctive. It is no longer different from Main Street back home except in point of length and in the greater number of its glittering yellow and white incandescents. In the process of being Americanized, as a consequence of the evil deeds of Leftie Louie and Kaiser Wilhelm, it has also become standardized. The old glamour is gone, never to return. Yes, "give a thought to Broadway!"-once the Great and Only White Way, now just one of ten thousand White Ways, and no gayer than the least of these!

How They Found Miss Lulu Bett

Continued from page 13

Ninian drops in to pay a visit, and he discovers hidden fires in Lulu which everybody else has overlooked. "You've been a blamed fine-looking woman," he observes, and is somewhat startled when Lulu replies without hesitation: "You must have been a good-looking man once yourself."

Eventually Ninian decides to have a theatre party in town in honor of Lulu, and while the party is assembling he begins in a spirit of banter to go through a mock marriage ceremony with her, oblivious of the fact that his brother, who is present, is a magistrate and that, despite the joking intent, the

ceremony is perfectly legal. This dis

covery fills most of the family with horror, but Ninian says that as far as he is concerned it's just what he wanted, anyway. Lulu leaves the drudgery of Dwight Deacon's home and departs on a honeymoon to Savannah, Ga. A few weeks later she suddenly comes back again and tells her sister and Dwight that she has returned because Ninian has confessed that he was previously married and that for all he knows his first wife may still be alive and legally his.

Dwight insists that Lulu say nothing about this. He prefers that the neighbors should believe that Ninian just grew tired of Lulu. This is the one explanation which she cannot endure. It is destructive of her new-found feeling of confidence in herself as a person. Lulu is no longer her old meek self, and she insists that Dwight write to his brother to question him. He does, and Ninian sends back evidence that the first marriage really occurred. To the rest this seems a tragedy, but to Lulu it is a triumph. She is no longer a woman scorned and deserted.. She has no love for Ninian. She is not heartbroken at losing him, but he has been the person who served to show her that she was desired. This is enough to make her feel that she is still part of life, and at the end of the play we find her boldly leaving the home of Dwight, refusing an offer of marriage from a man she rather likes and, without definite plan

or purpose, venturing forth on her own -a free woman.

The story has distinctly dramatic possibilities, but Zona Gale's method is still rather more like that of the novelist than the playwright. She is so much interested in describing the community in which Lulu lives as well as Lulu herself that she is not quite able to keep some folk out who have no true connection with the story. Yet even in the moments when the main current of the play grows slack there is much amusing and diverting study of character. Grandma Bett, Lulu's mother, is not absolutely vital to the story, but she would be sorely missed. It is Grandma Bett who refuses an invitation to go to the theatre with the remark: "No. I'm fooled enough without fooling myself on purpose." Louise Closser Hale, who has been playing old ladies on the stage ever since she was a slip of a girl gives a remarkably fine performance Grandma Bett.

The play also presents one of th most fascinating children whom th drama has introduced to us in years Generally a child is treated by a drama tist as unbelievably saintly, and th effect is wearing on both actor and au dience. Monona, on the contrary, studiously bad and unlovely in though and word. As a result of this startlin innovation in stage customs the cha acter is a constant delight. Lois Shor who plays the rôle to perfection, is, a matter of fact, twenty years old.

Miss Gale has not written a gre play this time, but there is every ev dence that she is likely to be reckone among the important dramatists America. She is a Middle Western from the little town of Portage in Wi consin, and fortunately her eyes are n constantly fixed on what is going on the theatre. The things she brings in the playhouse will not be suggested something in somebody else's play last year or last month, but in happe ings round about her. If there ever is ing to be such a thing as a great Ame can drama, it might very well be a p about just such a place as Portage.

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THE NATIONAL WEEKLY

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Feb. 5,1921
Vol. 67

a copy 10 in Canada

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"SO MY LUCK BEGAN" by BEN AMES WILLIAMS Maurice Francis Egan-Bernice Brown-A. B. Farquhar-Melville E. Stone-Heywood Broun

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We've never had tire trouble yet."

"We've been pretty lucky, haven't we, Jack?
"That hasn't been luck, dear; it's been judgment. I've always stuck to Kelly-Spring fields."

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