Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 February 1916 — the THOUSANDTH WOMAN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

the THOUSANDTH WOMAN

by ERNEST W. HORNUNG

Aaihor of TSheAMATEUR CRACKSMAN, RAFFLES. Etc. _ - IUUSTOATIONS,, by, g. JBBMga

- SYNOPSIS. Cazalet, on the steamer Kaiser Fritz, homeward bound from Australia, cries out In his sleep that Henry Craven, who tea years before had ruined his father eiwi himself, is dead and finds that Hilton Toys, who shares the stateroom with him knows Craven and also Blanche kfacnalr. a former neighbor and playmate.

CHAPTER ll—Continued. It was a sorry sample of his talk. Hilton Toye did not usually mix the ready metaphors that nevertheless had to satisfy an inner, censor, of some austerity, before they were allowed to leave those deliberate lips. Tet now, in his strange excitement, word and tone alike were on the level of the stage American’s. It wag not less than extraordinary. “You don’t mean”— Cazalet seemed to he swallowing—“about Henry Cra▼enr "Yep.” "Yon don’t mean to say he’s —dead ?” “Last Wednesday night!” Toye looked at bis paper. “No. I guess I’m wrong. Seems it happened Wednesday, but he only passed away Sunday morning.” Cazalet still sat staring at him — there was not room for two of them on their feet —but Into his heavy stare there came a gleam of leaden wisdom. “This was Thursday morning,” he said, “so I didn’t dream of it when it happened, after all.” “You dreamed you saw him lying dead, and so he was,” said Toye. “The funeral’s been today. I don’t know, hut that seems to me just about the next nearest thing to seeing the crime perpetrated In a vision.” “Crime!” cried Cazalet “What crime?” “Murder, Bir!” said Hilton Toye. “Willful, brutal, bloody murder! Here’s the paper; better read it for yourself. I’m glad he wasn’t a friend of yours, or mine either, but it's a bad end even for your worst enemy.” The paper fluttered in Cazelet’s clutch as it had done in Toye’s; but that was as natural as his puzzled frown ovfcr the cryptic allusions of a Journal that had dealt fully with the ascertainable facts in previous isSues. Some few emerged between the lines. Henry Craven had received his fatal injuries on the Wednesday of the previous week. The thing had happened in his library, at or about half past •even in the evening; but how a crime, which was apparently a profound mystery, had been timed to within a minute of its commission did not appear among the latest particulars. No arrest had been made. No clue was mentioned, beyond the statement that the police were still searching for a definite instrument with which it was evidently assumed that the deed had been committed. There was In fact a close description of an unusual weapon, a .. special- constable’s very special truncheon. It had hung as a cherished trophy on the library wall, from which It was missing, while the very imprint of a silver shield, mounted on the thick end of the weapon, was stated to, have been discovered on the scalp of the fractured skull. But that was a little hit of special reporting, typical of the enterprising sheet that Toye had procared. The Inquest, merely opened on the Monday, had been adjourned to the day of issue. "We must get hold of an evening paper,” said Cazalet. "Fancy his own famous truncheon! He had It mounted and inscribed himself, so that it shouldn’t be forgotten how he’d fought for law and order at Trafalgar Square! That was tbe man all over!" His v6ice and manner achieved the excessive indifference which the Eng-

Huh type holds due from Itself after any excess of feeling. Toye also was himself again, his alert mind working keenly yet darkly in his acute eyes. “I wonder if it was a murder?” he •peculated. “I bet it wasn’t a deliberate murder.” “What else could it have been?" “Kind of manslaughter. Deliberate murderers don’t trust to chance weapons hanging on their walls.” •... _ • "Yon forget,” said Cazalet, “that he was robbed asVell.” "Do they claim that?” said Hilton Toye. "I guess I skipped some. Where does it say anything aoout hie being robbed?" "Here!" Cazalet had scanned the paper eagerly; his finger drummed upon the place. " The police,’ ”he read out, : in some sort of triumph. “ ‘have now been furnished with a full description of the missing watch and trinkets and the other artless believed to have keen taken front the pockets of the deceased.’ What’s that but robbery V . “You’re dead right," said Toye. "I missed that somehow. Yet who hi thunder tracks a man down to rob murder him in his own home? But -whan you*ro brained a many because you couldn’t keep your hands off him, jroo might deliberately do all the rest to Tpake it seem like the work of **HlUon Toye looked a judge of deliberation as he measured bis irrefutable words. He looked something |pore. Cazalet oould not tear his blue

eyes from the penetrating -pair that met them with a somber twinkle, an enlightened gusto, quite uncomfortably suggestive at such a moment. “You aren’t a detective, by any chance, are you?” cried Cazalet, with clumsy humor.

“No, sir! But I’ve often thought I wouldn’t mind being one,” said Toye, chuckling. "I rather figure I might do something at It. If things don’t go my way in your old country, and they put up a big enough reward, why, here’s a man I knew and a place I know, and I might have a mind te try my-hand:" They went ashore together, and to the same hotel at Southampton for the night. Midnight found the chance pair with their legs under the same heavy Victorian mahogany, devouring cold beef, ham and pickles as phlegmatically as commercial travelers who had never been off the Island In their lives. Yet surely Cazalet was less depressed than he had been before landing; the old English ale In a pewter tankard even elicited a few of those anecdotes and piquant comparisons In which his conversation was at Its best.. It was at its worst on general questions, or on concrete topics not Introduced by himself; and Into this category, perhaps not unnaturally, fell such further particulars of the Thames Valley mystery as were to be found In an evening paper at the inn. They Included a fragmentary report of the adjourned Inquest, and the actual offer of such a reward, by the dead man’s firm, for the apprehension of his murderer, as

made Toye’s eyes glisten in his sagacious head. But Cazalet, though he had skimmed the ~ many-headed column before sitting down to supper, flatly declined to -dtßcuss 'tfis trhgedr mr firstruight ashore. ~

CHAPTER 111. In the Train. Discussion was inevitable on the way up to town next morning. The two strange friends, planted opposite each other in the first-class smoker, traveled inland simultaneously engrossed In a copious report of the previous day’s proceedings at the coroner’s court. The medical evidence was valuable only aB tracing the fatal blow to some Buch weapon as the missing truncheon; the butler’s evidence explained that the dinner-hour was seven thirty; that, not five minutes before, he had seen his master come down-stairs and enter the library, where, at seven fiftyfive, on going to ask if he had heard the gong, he had obtained no answer but found the door locked on the inside; that he had then hastened round by the garden, and In through the French window, to discover the deceased gentleman lying in his blood. The head gardener, who lived in the lodge, had sworn to having seen .A. bare-headed man rush past' his windows , and out of the gates about the same hour, as he knew by the sounding of the gong up at the house; they often heard it at the lodge, in warm weather when the windows were open, and the gardener swore that he himself had heard it on this occasion. The footman appeared to have been less positive as to the time of a telephone Call he bad answered, thought it was between four and five, but remembered the conversation very well. The gentleman bad asked whether Mr, Craven was at home, had been told that he was out motoring, asked when he would be back, told he couldn’t say, but before dinner some time, and what name should be given, whereupon the gentleman had rung off without answering. The footman thought he was a gentleman, from the way he spoke. But appferently the .police had not yel succeeded in tracing the call.

“Is It a difficult thing to do?" asked Cazalet, touching on this last point early in the discussion, which even he showed no wish to avoid this 'morning. He had dropped his paper, to find that Toye had already dropped his, and was gazing at, the flying’English fields

"You Aren't a Detective, by Chance, Are You?” Cried Cazalet.