Newspapers / The Roanoke Beacon and … / April 4, 1913, edition 1 / Page 3
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i 4 ODPYR16HT JSP is SYNOPSIS. Harding Kent calls on Louise Farrish to propose marriage and flnd3 the house In great excitement over the attempted sui cide ,of her sister Katharine. Kent starts an investigation and finds that Hugh Crandall. suitor for Katharine, who had been forbidden the house by General Far rlsh., had talked with Katharine over the telephone Just before she shot herself. A torn piece of yellow paper is found, at sight of which General Farrlsh is stricken with paralysis. Kent discovers that Crandall has left town hurriedly. Andrew Elser, an aged banker, commits suicide about the same time as Katharine attempted her life. A yellow envtpe is found in Elser's room. Post Office In spector Davis, Kent's friend, takes up the 'case. Kent is convinced that Cran- 'dall-Ms at the bottom of the mystery. Katharine's strange outcry puzzles "the detectives. Kent and Davis search Cran dall'is room and find an address. Lock Boi 17, Ardway, N. J. Kent goes to Ard way to Investigate and becomes suspi cion of a "Henry Cook." A woman conrtnlts suicide at the Ardway Hotel. A yellow letter also figures in this case. Kent calls Louise on the long distance telephone and finds that she had just been called by Crandall from the same booth. "Cook" disappears. The Ardway post master is missing. Inspector Davis ar rives at Ardway and , takes up inves tigation. He discovers that the dead woman is Sarah Sacket of Bridgeport. Txulse telephones Kent imploring him to drop' the investigation. Kent returns to New Tork to get an explanation from Louise. He finds the body of a woman in Central Park and more yellow letters. He sees Crandall, whom he recognizes as "Cook," enter the Farrlsh home. Louise again Implores Kent to drop the investi gation and refuses to give any explana tion. Later Kent sees Crandall and Louise In an automobile. Kent returns to Ard way. Davis announces that he has planned to arrest the missing postmaster and also the master criminal. While seek ing the criminals. Kent comes across - Louise and Crandall. Pursued by Davis the postmaster Jumps off a precipice and is killed. Aleck Young, the master crim inal, is found in a hut in a morphine stupor. Louise tells Kent that she and Crandall had come to get papers from Toung which gave him a strange hold over General Farrlsh. CHAPTER XIH. (Continued.) As if in corroboration of my words, the three of them, Crandall, Davis and the constable, returned just at this moment. . ' "Come, Miss Farrish." said Crandall, "I think it time I was starting home with you, if you feel able to travel. I have run the car up Just outside the cottage. I think we can safely leave the completion of our mission to the inspector and Mr. Kent." i "I wish Mr. Kent was coming back with us," Baid Louise in a sweetly plaintive tone that made me long to gratify her wish. .x "I need him here," said the in spector almost roughly. "And that comes first for all of us," she said bravelv. ' I watched the automobile out of sight and then y turned back into the cottage, where I found the constable stretched on the floor, already fa6t asleep. Davis, sitting on the floor be fore some smoldering logs that had been placed in a rudely-constructed , m t t .. n Nevertheless, I Seated Myself on the Floor Beside Him. open fireplace, seemed wrapped In thought and did not even look up when I, entered. Nevertheless, I seated myself on the floor beside him and, placing my hand on his shoulder, I said once more: "And now I want to know all about It." "Shut up," he said, savagely shaking off my hand. "Can't you see I want to think?" Rebuffed and amazed by his rude ness, I sprang to my feet, only to get a new surprise as, in tones as courte ous as his others had been rude, he said: "If Iwere you, Harding, I'd fol low the constable's example and try to get some sleep. You and I have a hard day ahead of ns tomorrow." Seeing that he was in no mood to be questioned, I smothered back the many things I wanted to ask him and stretched myself on the floor, not to sleep, but to ponder. As I reviewed the amazing events of today, of yester day, of the day before, it seemed as if ages and ages grim, mystifying, terrifying ages had passed since that hour when I, left my office light-hearted to call on Louise Farrlsh. , And the morning the inspector had eald was to bring a hard day for both of us. What new terror could tomorrow fcold? - Mm JVffliam Johnston. a Illustrations by YLdames CHAPTER XIV. The Inspector Explains. Thump, thump, thump! I had not thought slumber possible for me, and yet I must have slept. My bewildered senses, dzed by a sudden recall to, activity, took subconscious cognizance of a regular, persistent pounding and eventually succeeded in stirring me to attention. I' suddenly sat up and looked about me. I found myself in the deserted cottage, the drug slave still motionless on his couch and the logs still smoldering in the fireplace. That thumping I quickly saw where It came from. Davis was standing over the sleeping form of Dodds, the con stable, engaged in the work of awak ening him by the park policeman's method kicking him on the soles of his shoes.' The process was successful. The constable snorted, drew up his legs, rubbed his eyes and sprang to his feet. "It will be daylight in half an hour," I heard Davis tell him. "I want you to go and get the buckboard and drive ffround to where Rouser's body lies. Bring me any papers you find in his pockets. Leave his , money and his watch and keys, bo as not to arouse any suspicion of robbery. As soon as you have done that I want you to drive back and pick up the body be fore anyone else finds it. Drive with it to Millervale and leave it there. Don't talk too much. Tell everybody that you found the body at the foot of the precipice and Impress on them that it must have been an accident In the dark. As soon as you can conveni ently get away, come back here. Make sure, though, that nobody follows you." As soon as the constable had gone, Davis lit a cigarette, turned up his coat collar and ' took a seat on a rough bench Just outside the door. "Come on out here, Harding, and watch the sun rise," he called to me. I rose hastily from where I had been sitting gazing stupidly about me and Joined him on the bench. "There was something you wanted to ask me, wasn't there?" he said pleasantly. There were so many things I want ed to ask him I hardly knew where to begin, but the first thing I blurted out was: "Is Hugh Crandall guilty?" "He Is guilty only of being in lore with Katharine Farrish against her fa ther's wishes," he replied. "But surely," I said doggedly, "he has some connection with the crime of the yellow letters. ' He knew Young. He knew where to find him. There are many things about his ac tions that to my mind call for expla nation." "Did you notice his eyes?" asked Davis. It was still too dark for me to see the Inspector's face, but I felt sure that he was laughing at me. He made me feel that way all too often. "I didn't," I answered rather cross ly, "but what's that got to do with it?" "I'm afraid, Kent, as I have said be fore, you will never make a good de tective. You are entirely too unob servant of Important details. Do you recall my asking early in our investi gation whether or -not Crandall had blue eyes?" "Yes." I grudgingly admitted, "I re call it." "As soon as I discovered that Cran dall had blue eyes that eliminated him as the probable criminal." "I don't see your logic." "I've told- you before," saids Davis, after a pause long enough to permit him to light - another cigarette, "that there are classes of crime and types of criminals, each strongly marked after its own sort. I saw right at the start that this crime was of the hid den sort, of the kind that includes con spiracy, blackmail, , secret plotting the kind that requires a skilful sneak. You never In your life found a blue eyed sneak. There are lots of blue eyed desperadoes and burglars. Most of the notorious bad men of the west were blue-eyed, but you don't find a man with blue eyes shooting or stab bing a man in the back or kidnapping a child or writing blackmailing let ters." While I was not at all convinced by his argument, I felt that it would be useless for me to dispute it, for I would be Invading comparatively un known territory, whereas he undoubt edly had dozens of cases at his finger tips ready to illustrate his theory. I decided to change the subject. T recall, too," I said, "that you asked if Crandall was lefc-handed. So far as I saw, he is not. What of that? Is that another proof of Crandall's in nocence?" "No," said Davis, "that didn't prove Crandall's inoocenoe. It proved Rou ser's guilt. In fact, it was the left handed clue that put mo on the right track and eventually led me to this very cottage." "For Heaven's sake," said I impa tiently, "don't talk In riddles. Go on and explain it." "You're not to blame," he continued calmly, "for not having seen the left handed clue. You lack the education. Only a person who had seen hundreds and hundreds of envelopes and had studied them closely would have ob served it. You remember that a po liceman brought me part of a yellow envelope that had been found In old Andrew Elser's room. On it was a stamp and part of the postmark. The first thing that I noticed was that the stamp was put on crooked. , This might mean much or nothing. A left handed person stamping a letter in variably gets the stamp on crooked. It ordinarily is put in the upper right hand corner of the envelope. A right handed person stamping a letter has the two edges of the envelope as a guide. Try putting on a stamp with' your left hand and you will see that your hand comes in such a position that the edges of the envelope are hidden and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the stamp is out of plumb." "I still fail to' see," I said stubborn ly, "why you did not suspect Cran dall. There were many things that seemed to point to him his telephon ing to Katharine Just before she shot herself, his sudden disappearance, the finding of the morphine syringe in his rooms, the Ardway address in his note book, coupled with the fact that Gen eral Farrish had forbidden him the house. I do not see how you could help suspecting him." "I'll admit that on the surface these things all did look damaging, but against this was the one important fact that he was too well-balanced too sane, if I might put it that way. I quickly learned that he was a repu table business man, that he was one of the governors In two clubs, and you yourself informed me that Katharine Farrish had thought highly of him. No well-balanced man commits crimes of this sort." "Do you mean to tell me," I cried angrily, "that all criminals are in sane?" "Yes," said Davis thoughtfully, "I mean exactly that. The time will come when our courts will not be puni tive but curative. Men are criminals because they can not help ItJf The great well-balanced majority of people see that In the observance of the laws the community haB made for itself lies the only hope of a happy, regular life. The unbalanced few, the un healthy product of unfit parents, in their poor misshapen brains are un able to comprehend this. They be- "But How About the Morphine Syringe," I Asked Again. come the rebels against authority, the slaves of alcohol and narcotics, like that poor devil In there. They can not help themselves. It's the fault of their parents, it's the shape of their heads, it's the diseased condition of their nerves. It's our fault for not tak ing the same care in breeding the hu man race that we would in breeding horses or dogs." "Oh, bosh," said I. "I ask you how you account for the hypodermic sy ringe, in Crandall's rooms and I get a sermon." "Lawyer though you are," retorted Davis, "I'm afraid that you are weak in .logic. Having decided that Cran dall had no criminal connection with the case, what then? I set up the theory that his connection was exact ly the same as your own. You were in love wit,h Louise and were deter mined to trace the hidden danger that wa3 threatening her father. He was In love with Katharine and was try ing to do the came thing. In fact, he had several weeks the start of you. Every one of his actions which you regarded as so suspicious and damna tory was perfectly explicable on thl theory.'" Tea," 1 grudgingly admitted as ! hastily reviewed them in my mind, "I suppose they could all be explained In that way." "The question then came to me," continued Davis, "how could Crandall have known of the hidden danger that threatened, General Farrish? It was highly improbable that the gen eral would confide a thing of this sort, either to his daughter or to her fian ce. He must have come on it in some other way. I judged that when he revealed his knowledge to the general, the latter, in fear that bis daughter might learn what he had been trying to keep from her, in rage ordered Crandall from the house. "The only logical way for Crmndall to be restored to favor was for him to clear up the mystery that was men acing the general. As he had been at work on It for some time, I felt sure that in his rooms we would fnd a clue to the address of the persons ""e were seeking. I was confident, too, that af fairs were approaching a crisis. Cran dall apparently had taken Katharine into his confidence. It looked as if some plan they might have made bad failed and that this failure had driven Katharine to despair. With the'locM box in Ardway as a clue, with the eft handed stamp as evidence and with Crandall's movements to watch, I felt certain that we could x quickly solve the whole mystery." "But how about -the morphine sy ringe?" I asked again. "I hardly gave it a second thought. For all I knew, it may have come there by accident, yet Crandall quickly ex plained its presence in the talk that I have just had with him. He kep this' chap, Young, there in his room for two weeks, trying to worm out of him' the secret with which Young had been trying to blackmail the old gen eral. When Young disappeared he left the syringe behind him." "So," I exclaimed in excitement, "the mystery of the yellow letter was a blackmailing plot against General Farrish." "No," said Davis, "I don't think the Farrish case had anything to do wltb the other chain'of suicides, unless U was that both devilish plots originated in the drug-fevered, malevolent brain of the poor fellow in yonder. It It true that General Farrish got yellow letters. Once a week for months and months he has found one in his mall, each more threatening, more menacing than its predecessors. He has for long, long time been living in dally dread that the anonymous writer of these letters might at any moment carry out his threats and expose him to public shame, and disgrace him ia the eyes of his beloved daughters." "But how did you learn all this?" 1 asked. "Young boasted to Crandall about the weekly letters. So sure did b feel that General Farrish would no dare openly to prosecute him that witk fiendish malignity he took delight ia retailing to Crandall the dread-inspir ing phrases he had employed and la dilating on the terror they undoubted ly were causing the general. It i omall wonder that the sight of yoo and Louise examining the sci ajp of on of the yellow letters, coming as it did right on top of Katharine's desperate act, brought on a stroke of paralysis." "Poor old man," I said, "how he must have suffered!" "Far more than we can imagine," said Davis. "I do not think any out but a half-crazed drug Send, either, could have conceived such refinement cf torture as of always using the taxrf peculiar yellow stationery." (TO BE CCWTXKtTSaJ u '''3''& ' T-As.. - If Vr -V S0,,7Z& J" Vii ' f ' ' ' yjp . 1 y'A 'r - -:,Ns. O. Henry "The Poor Boy from the Country" By FLO FIELD ,,...,..,,,,,,,. .,,., 'M just, a poor boy from the country." . The few people who of themselves had value enough to know O. Henry well, perhaps loved him besfwhen, with this whim sical deprecation, he would excuse his own penetrat ing humor or generosities that were Biinpr-OniTntlc. It was his personal password, his humorous apologia, and his saying it always seemed to break one of the alabaster boxes of life's per fume and diffuse a warm essence of good feeling, enough to make the hearer inwardly beam with some new contentment. He did not use it as an affectation or "stunt," such as liter ary men of a cheaper grain go in for; he had none of those traits. Never was there purer individuality than that of Sydney Porter, whom America claimed as the greatest living short story writer with the exception of Rudyard Kipling. It has been said of him that he was "quiet, reserved, modest, fleeing from the limelight." All that he was, but more; the quietness was the immeas urable reticence of a profound, sensi tive consciousness, the modesty was a selfless yet beautifully sane perception of perspectives, and he was too real, too busy observing, gathering and applying- real life to be Interested in artiflcialties he could detect In a mo ment. An English member of nobil ity who recently visited this country, bringing the power next the throne with her, asked in vain to meet O. Henry; he was not to be corralled for lionizing. "I'm Just a poor boy from the coun try!" v That stirred depths In the, few, for they knew that with all the sharpness of his genius, with all his power and consummate Bohemianism, his was a heart as sensitive, as questing as a child's. ' O. Henry knew his world, read its closest secrets so simply that his su preme knowledge of human nature of Itself formed that aspect of reserve which appeared even mysterious to looser minds. He allowed himself little affectations where his feeling for some things was concerned. Music he claimed to detest. "What do you think of it?" Borne one asked him of a lovely, minor-keyed song. "Sounds like a wagon going down hill," was his cheerful reply. "Music," he con tinued, in answer to a protest, "doesn't mean anything. It's the low est of arts. It plays upon the emo tions It doesn't get at the brain. I would give all the operas ever harped for the dull, concrete roar of one block of New York. That's music." , But later he said to a friend, a trifle 'wist fully: "You know I talk a lot about hating it; but I dont." As a matter of fact, his ear for music was perfect ly correct, and his taste fine, even though he did insist that "Experi ence," of Hattie Williams fame, was the prettiest tune ever written. "It's got a trip and a lilt that takes me," he said. But the suggestion of the ftAce doubtless sang to him, too. Detestation of Nature was another of his personally conducted satires, and he carried into dally converse the delicious distaste expressed In his neurasthenic adventures. "The next morning I went out on toe porch and looked at the mountains. There were forty-seven, of them in sight I shud dered."' "How do you like it down here?" I asked him when I called at the "big neighborless cottage surrounded by a hundred mountains,' Mhere he was "resting and taking exercise." "Well," he answered in that low, apologetic southern voice, as Will Ir win calls it, "I've breathed all the air and I've seen all the scenery and Tve' got to 9,575 in counting the trees, and now I'm ready to leave. If the South ern railroad only ran past the door I'd be going this evening. Nothing prevents my leaving except the fact that I am not able to get to the train. If I could only hear the Sixth avenue elevated go past my window every seven seconds, I believe I could sleep at night. Nature In this simple form is not for me." Yet as we walked down the hill to the trolley line he waved his hand toward the umber glint of bronzed weeds. "Nice bit of color," he murmured. Writing with O. Henry was not a labor of love, but of mental necessity. He dreaded the drudgery of transfer ring his Ideas to paper. For weeka he would compose nothing, but when an idea seized him it gave him no rest until the story was completed to his satisfaction. He never revised or re wrote, but when once copy left hia hands it needed no revision. Nearly all of his stories were completed at one sitting. He had long had in mind the writing of a novel but was de terred for many years because of the necessity he felt of finishing a task without interruption. A few months prior to his death he had' overcome this feeling sufficiently to begin work upon his novel, but life was not per mitted him to compleU it So the fame of O. Henry must rest upon hia marvellous short stories. When at home in New York his favorite place was on the benches in Madison Square in the midst of the derelicts of the world. Here he struck up acquaintances with men from all over the world, heard their stories, sympathized with their trou bles and later incorporated them la his stories. Many of his characters still sit dally In pleasant weather on the benches of the little park all un conscious of the fame that Is theirs.' Although he made large sums of money from his stories, he was too free-handed and too Improvident to accumulate wealth. No friend - or needy Btranger ever appealed to him in vain. During the latter years of his life his stories commanded the highest price paid to any American author. Magazines were willing to pay 750, 1,000, any price he chose to ask for a single story. But no need of money and no flattering offer could induce him to write If the spirit did not move him nor could entice him to lower by one Jot or tittle the standard of work that he set for himself. 1 O. Henry's fatal illness was of brief duration. Very early on Sunday morning, June 5, he said to the doc tor: "Put the pillows up higher; I don't want to go Lome In the dark." Then he smiled and was gone. "Boy from the country" but hi country was the world. x I TEN SHORT STOR- IES from the pen of this gifted writer will appear IN THIS PA- f PER. If you enjoy good fiction don't miss $ these stories.
The Roanoke Beacon and Washington County News (Plymouth, N.C.)
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April 4, 1913, edition 1
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