THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 1929. f The ! RED I LAMP I J ▼ | MARY ROBERTS RINEHART Copyright by Geo. H. Doran Company WNU Service SYNOPSIS ''Events of the story, from June to September, as set forth In the journal of William A. Porter, professor of Eng lish literature: -• JUNE— I The professor’s uncle, Horace Porter, died under somewhat mysteri ous circumstances at his home. Twin Hollows, which is now Professor Por ter’s property. Jane, the professor’s wife, has psychic qualities. She insists Uncle Horace, then dead for a year, was at his class reunion, and a snap shot she takes seems to prove her right. Cameron, a fellow professor of Porter’s and president of the Society for Psychical Research, inclines to the idea of psychic photography. Mrs. Porter shows a pronounced disinclina tion to spend the summer vacation at Twin Hollows. A letter Horace Porter had been writing at the time of his sudden death, reveals he had been in terested in spiritualism and makes mention of some implied “danger.” and of the “enormity of an idea.” A “small red lamp" is also mentioned. Mrs. Porter's reluctance to live at Twin Hol lows cannot be overcome, and, with Edith. Porter’s niece, they take up their residence in the Lodge house of the estate. Warren Halliday. in love with Edith, comes to live in a boat house near the Lodge. A reference Pro fessor Porter had once made to a cer tain cabalistic design returns to plague him. He finds in the village a super stition that there is something mys terious about the red lamp. There are mvsterious happenings, and Mrs. Por ter is sure Uncle Horace’s spirit is hov ering about them. A number of sheep are killed in the vicinity, by some un known person. Irritated at Hayward as I was, and annoyed at myself, I saw him to his car, and asked him the question which has been in the back of my mind ever since I found the letter in the library desk. “By the way,” I said, “you knew my Uncle Horace pretty well. Better than I did, in recent years. Did he have many friends —I mean, locally?” He straightened his tie with a jerk. “He had no intimates at all, so far as I know. 1 knew him as well as anybody. He rather liked Mrs. Liv ingstone, but he had no use for Liv ingstone himself.’* “Well, I’ll change the question. Do you know of any quarrel he had had, shortly before he died?” “That’s easier. He quarreled with a good many people. I imagine you know that as well as I do.” “He never mentioned to you that he had had a definite difference of opin ion with anyone?” Looking back tonight over that con versation. I am inclined to think that he had an answer for that question, and that he almost gave it. But he changed his mind. “I’d like to know why you ask me that,” he raid. “He had never talked to you about calling on the police, in some emer gency?” “Never. 1 see what you’re driving at, Porter,” he added. “I admit, I had some thought of that myself at the time. But the autopsy showed the cause of death all right. He wasn’t murdered.” “The blow on the head had nothing to do with it, then?” He glanced at me quickly. “If it was a blow,” he said, “it didn’t help matters any, of course. But I prefer to think that the head injury was received as he fell.” He hesitat ed. “Don’t you?” “Naturally.” 1 agreed. But there was a significance in that pause of Ins, followed by “don’t you” which ha? stayed with me ever since. It was almost as though, in view of Greenough’s visit to him and my own questions, I had been somehow re sponsible for the poor old hoy’s death, and was seeking reassurance. . . One a. in. 1 am not able to sleep, and so, recipient of all my repres sions, I come to you. I have repeated my little formula over and over, as some people count sheep. “Milton and Drydon and Pope.” “Milton and Dry den ami Pope.” but without result. Yet I have seen whole classrooms suc cumb to the soporific effect of that or s«mie similar phrase in the early hours of a bright morning. I have even been out, in dress ing gown and slippers, and wandered away down the main road, where 1 was surprised by a countryman with a truckload of produce and probably recognized. If any more sheep are killed tonight! What am 1 to think about this red lamp* business? Into every situation it insistently in trudes itself It was burning when old Horace died; I had turned it on 5 in the closed and shuttered den the day 1 received that curious message about the tetter; Jane lights it to de velop the pictures of the house foi Larkin, and NyMe’s sheep are killed What is more. Jane sees a face, eithei nutside the window or behind her in Friend—What are you doing up here at Niagara Falls? MaeSkimp—l’m on my honeymoon! I*riend—Where is your wife? MaeSkimp —Oh, I left her home— she’s been up here before.—The Path finder. the pantry. From the moment ot its entrance into the house, after eight een years of quiet, the old stories ot haunting are revived, raps are heard, footsteps wander about, and furniture appears to move. Is Greenough right, and am ! ready for the psychopathic ward of some hospital? Is this accumulation of evidence actual, or have 1 imagined it? And yet I am sane enough, ap parently. . . . Yet Mrs. Livingstone was most ex plicit this afternoon. She clearly has no nerves, being complacent with the complacence of fat rapidly gained in middle age, and no imagination. But she sat there, ignoring little Living stone’s attempts to change the sub ject, and soberly warned me against renting the house. Jane’s face was a study. So far I had been able to keep from her much of the local gossip about the house, and all of the talk about the red lamp. But now she heard it all. garnished and embellished, am] caught her eyes fixed on me piteously". “Is late, William?” she asked. "Musi we rent it now?” “It’s all signed, sealed and delivered, my dear,” I said. “But all ie not Tost. Tomorrow morning I shall take my little hatchet and smash that lamp to kingdom come.” Mrs. Livingstone took a slice of cake. “I’m sure you have my permission,” she said, “and as I gave it to your Uncle Horace, I dare say I have a right to say so.” “Perhaps you would like to have It back?” “God forbid!” she said quickly. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Livingstone put in irritably, “let’s talk about something else. Mrs. Porter, will you show me your garden?” I had a feeling that his wife had wanted just this, perhaps had given him some secret signal, for she settled back the moment they had gone and. sv> to speak, opened fire. “I have often wondered,” she said slowly, “whether you have ever con sidered your uncle’s death as —un usual.” “You mean that you do?” “Personally,” she said, looking di rectly at me, “I think he was fright ened to death.” She hesitated. She gave me the impression of venturing on ground which was unpleasant to her. “Either that or—” She aban doned that, and began again, hurried ly. “My husband dislikes the subject,” she said. “But I will tell you why I believe what I do, and you can see what you can make of it. You re member that Mrs. Porter was nol well when you both came out, the da.v he was found dead, and toward eve ning you took her home? Well, Annie Cochran would not stay alone that night, and I stayed with her. It was very—curious.” “Just what do you mean by curi ous?” “That there was somebody In the house that night, or something.” “And you don’t believe it was somebody?” “I don’t know what J believe,” she said, rather breathlessly. “I suppose you will laugh, but I have to tell you just the same.” Stripping her narrative to the skel eton, she had been skeptical before, but that night the house had been strangely uncanny. They had sat in the kitchen with all the lights on, and at two o’clock in the morning she dis tinctly heard somebody walking in the hall overhead, on the second floor Doors seemed to open and shut, and finally, on a crash from somewhere in the dining room, “like a double fist striking the table,” Annie Cochran had bolted outside and stayed there. At dawn she came back, and said she had distinctly seen a hall of light floating in the room over the den, shortly aft er she went out. “And was the red lamp lighted, while all this was going on?” “That’s one of the most curious things about it. It was not. when 1 made a round of that floor early in the evening. But it was going at da \vn.” There is. of course, one thing I can do. I can meet Mr. Bethel when he arrives and lay my cards on the table. It will rake all m.v courage; 1 know how I should feel if 1 had tak en a house, and at the moment of my arrival a wild-eyed owner came to turn me away, on the ground that his bouse is haunted. Or, we will say. subject to inexplicable nocturnal vis its. . . . Shall I take Halliday into my con fideuee? I need a fresh brain on the matter, certainly. Some one who will see tl:at the loe*il connection of the murdered sheep with the red lamp, and so with old Horace’s death, is the absurdity it must be. July 4. A quiet Fourth but in spite of all precautions, more sheep were killed last night, and in fear of my life 1 have been expecting a visit from Greenough this morning. But per haps old Morrison —it looked like the Morrison truck —did not recognize me last night. But to make things more unpleas ant all around the fellow this time did not leave his internal chalk mark ! one can imagine Greenough straight ening from Ids investigation and de ciding that Ids recent talk with me has put me on my guard. Heigh ho! The neighborhood is in a wild state ol alarm. Public opinion appears to 1 be divided between a demon and a dangerous lunatic at large. Otherwise. I have recovered from last night’s hysteria. The cleaning of the house for Mr. Bethel beings today and I have decided to let it go on. If on hearing my story he decides ant to stay no harm will he d"ne: if be re mains, if is in order for him. THE CHATHAM RECORD, PITTSBORO. N. C. Jane said at breakfast! “Are you letting him come, William?” “I shall tell him all I know, my dear. After that it is up to him.” 1 “But is ft ? Suppose something hap pens to him?” “What on earth could happen?” 1 inquired irritably. “He doesn’t need to light that silly; lamp. Anyhow, I’m go:e. One rather looks for the word “love,” so often added to get full value for one’s money. But it is a definite warning for all that. So the Lodge is dangerous, and Jane and 1 advised to go elsewhere. Heaven knows I’d like nothing better. Our love story goes on, and I am as helpless there as in other directions; Edith proffering herself simply and sweetly, in a thousand small coquetries and as many unstudied allurements, and young Halliday gravely adoring her, and holding hack. Today, along with the rest of the summer colony, they made a pilgrim age in the car to the"scenes of the various meadow tragedies, ending up with the stone altar, and 1 suspect matters came very nearly to a head between them, for Edith was very talkative on their return, and Halliday very quiet and a trifle pale. And tonight, sitting on the veranda of the boat-house, while the boy set off Roman candies and sky-rockets over the water, Edith asked me how I thought she could earn some mono* “Earn money?” I said. “What on earth for? I've never known you to think about money before.” “Well, I’m thinking about it now,” she said briefly, and relapsed into si lence, from which she roused in a moment or so to state that money was a pest, and if she were making a world she’d have none in it. I found my position slightly deli cate, but 1 ventured to suggest that no man worth his salt would care to have his wife support him. She ig nored that completely, however, and said she was thinking of writing a book. A book, she said, would bring in a great deal of money, and “nobodj would need to worry about anything.” “And you could get it published. Fa ther William,” she said. “Everybody knows who you are. And you could correct the spelling, couldn’t you? Thst’s the only thing that’s really worrying me.” i And 1 honestly believe the child is trying It. Her light is still going to j night as I can see under her door. ■(Continued Next Week; Old Lady (vsiting prison)—Poor man, I wish I could do something to get you out of here. Prisoner—Well, lady, if you want to change clothes with me when the guard isn’t looking, I could do the i rest. I I '\tterr it costs Z.I \ ) 70 govern us By PROF. M. H. HUNTER Dep’. c/ Economics. Ur.io. cj Minds The Cost of Governmental Protection INETY-EIGHT per cent of federal j A expenditures for protection! This ; was the percentage reached during l T,le ') orld war, hut of course it is not always so great. The federal govern rnent has always assumed the role of providing protection against enemies from without. This is accomplished through the maintenance of the army and navy. The item for protection oc curs in the budgets of both states and cities, although it is relatively un important among state expenditures. In the federal estimates for 1928, more than $700,000,000 are allowed for the War and Navy departments. Not only must the .actual expenditure for the army and navy be considered £8 costs of defense, but such expend itures as those for interest, pensions, and the veterans’ bureau. The sum of these items makes about 85 per cent of the federal budget* * Even in our most peaceful years expenditures for protection have claimed a large share of the total.. In 1870 they were over 80 per cent of the total; in 1890 more than 72 per cent. In 1890, when war was farthest from our thoughts, out of a total per capita expenditure by the fed eral government of $4.75 only $1.79 was for civil purposes. The item of protection is much less in the expenditures of states than in those of cities, being less than 6 per cent of the total in states and about 25 per cent of the total in cities. The large expenditures in cities goes for the maintenance of fire and police departments. The other items, such as food inspection, weight inspection and regulation of markets are of relatively little importance. The pro tective services of the states are ren dered in the regulation of such in stitutions as banks, insurance com panies, public service, corporations and of the sale of such commodities as seeds, trees, and fertilizers. The expenditures of the different states for protection vary greatly in different parts of the United States. In the New England group the per capita expenditure is about 70 cents; in the east south central group about 15 cents. In Nevada the per capita ex penditure is about $1.20 while in Georgia it is but a little more than 10 cents. City expenditures for protection also vary greatly, although it is generally true that the per capita expenditures are larger as the population increases <©. 1928, Western Newspaper Union.* GENERAL MOTORS Seethe ' NEW CHEVROLET SIX -a Six in the price range of the four! You are cordially invited to visit our special display of the new Chevrolet Six —ar- ranged in conjunction with the nationwide Spring Show ing of General Motors cars. Here, in a price class that has hitherto been occupied exclusively by four-cylinder automobiles, you will see displayed a line of beau tiful models that bring you every advantage of six cylinder performance. 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