Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 55, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 March 1916 — Page 2

The THOUSANDTH WOMAN

Author of “Ghe AMATEUR CRAGSMAN. RAFFLES. Etc. niusTRATioNS t o.

SYNOPSIS. Cazalet. on the steamer Kaiser Frits, homeward bound from Australia, cries out In his sleep that Henry Craven, who ten years before had ruined his father and himself, is dead and finds that Hilton Toye. who shares the stateroom with him. knows Craven and also Blanche Macnalr. a former neighbor and playmate. When the daily papers come aboard at Southampton Toye reads that Craven has been murdered and calls Cazalet's dream second sight. He thinks of doing a little amateur detective work on the case himself. In the train to town they discuss the murder, which was committed at Cazalet's old home. Toye hears from Cazalet that Scruton. who had been Casalet’s friend and the scapegoat for Craven’s dishonesty, has been released from prison. Cazalet goes down the river and meets Blanche. Toye also comes to see her and tells Cazalet that Scruton has been arrested, but as he doesn’t believe the old clerk Is guilty beta going to ferret out the murderer. Cazalet and Blanche go to Cazalet’s old home.

CHAPTER V4—-Continued. “Every inch of it!” he said bitterly. “But so I ought, if anybody does." “But these rhododendrons weren’t here in your time. They’re the one improvement. Don't you remember how the path ran around to the other end of the yard ? This gate fnto it wasn’t made.” “No more it was.” said -Cazalet, as they came up to the new gate on the right It was open, and looking through they could see where the old gateway had been bricked. The rhododendrons topped the yard wall at that point masking it from the lawn, and making on the whole an improvement of which anybody but a former son of the house might have taken more account. He said he could see no other change. But for the fact that these windows were wide open, the whole place seemed as deserted as Littleford; but just past the windows, and flush with them, was the tradesmen’s door, and the two trespassers were barely abreast of it when this door , opened and disgorged a man. _____ The man was at first sight a most Incongruous figure for the back premises of any house, especially in the country. He was tall, rather stout, very powerfully bulUjind rather handsome in his way y yer not for one moment was this personage in the picture, in the sense In which Hilton Toye had stepped into the Littleford picture. “May I ask what you’re doing here?” he demanded bluntly of the male intruder. “No harm, I hope,’’ replied Cazalet, smiling, much to his companion's relief. She had done him an injustice, however, in dreading an explosion when they were both obviously in the wrong, and she greatly admired the tone he took so readily. "I know we’ve no business here whatever; but

“May I Ask What You’re Doing Here?" He Bluntly Asked.

It happens to be my old home, and I only landed from Australia last night. I’m on the river for the first time, and simply had to have a look around.” The other big man had looked far from propitiated by the earlier of these remarks, but the closing sentences had worked a change. "Are you young Mr. Cazalet?” he cried. "i am, or rather I was,” laughed Cazalet, still on his mettle. „y oU . ve read" all about the case then, I don’t mind betting!” exclaimed the other with a Jerk of his topper toward the house behind him. last night and this morning, and such arrears as I’ve been able to lay my hands on,” said Cazalet. "But, as I trails last night, and I came round all the way in her. There was nothing in the English papers when we touched at Genoa.” "I see, I see.” The man was still looking him up and down. "Well, Mr. Cazalet, my name’s Drinkwater, and I’m from Scotland Yard. I happen to be in charge x>f the case " "I guessed as much,” said Cazalet, ahd this surprised Blanche more than -anything else trims him. Yet nothing about him any longer like the Sweep of other days, oadf any previ oos part of that very afternoon. And <l,l, also easy to understand on

By ERNEST W. HORNUNG

reflection; for if he meant to stand by the hapless Scruton, guilty or not guilty, he could not perhaps begin better than by getting on jjood terms with the police. But his ready tact, and in that case cunning, were certainly a revelation to one who had known him marvelously as boy and youth. “I mustn’t ask questions,” he continued, “but I see you’re still searching for things, Mr. Drinkwater.” "Still minding our own job.” said Mr. Drinkwater genially. They had sauntered on with him to the corner of the house, and seen a bowler bat bobbing in the shrubbery down the drive. Cazalet laughed like a man. “Well, I needn’t tell you I know every inch of the old place,” he said; “that is, barring alterations,” as Blanche caught his eye. “But I expect this search is narrowed, rather?" «“Rather,” said Mr. Drinkwater, standing still in the drive. He had also taken out a presentation gold half-hunter, suitably Inscribed in mem pry of one of his more bloodless victories. But Cazalet could always be obtuse, and now he refused to look an inch lower than the detectiveinspector’s bright brown eyes. “There’s just one place that’s occurred to me, Mr. Drinkwater, that perhaps may not have occurred to you.” “Where’s that, Mr. Cazalet?” “In the room where—the room itself.” Mr. Drinkwater’s long stare ended in an Indulgent smile. “You can show me if you like," said he indifferently. “But I suppose you know we’ve got the man?"

CHAPTER VII. After Michael Angelo. *T was thinking of his cap,” said Cazalet, but only as they returned to the tradesmen’s door, and jiist as Blanche put in her word, “What about me?” "7 ' Mr, Drinkwater eyed the trim white figure standing in the sun. “The more the merrier! 1 ’ his grim humor had it. “I dare say you’ll be able to teach us a thing or two as well, miss.” She could not help nudging Cazalet In recognition of this shaft. But Cazalet did not look round; he had now set foot in his old home. It was all strangely still and Inactive, as though domestic animation had been suspended indefinitely. Yet the open kitchen door revealed a female form in mufti; a sullen face looked out of the pantry as they passed; and through the old green door (only now it was a red one) they found another bowler hat bent over a pink paper at the foot of the stairs. There was a glitter of eyes under the bowler’s brim as Mr. Drinkwater conducted his friends into the library. The library was a square room of respectable size, but very close and dim with the one French window closed and curtained. Mr. Drinkwater shut the door as well, and switched on all the electric lamps. The electric light had been put in by the Cravens; all the other fixtures in the room were as Cazalet remembered them. But the former son of the house gave himself no time to waste in sentimental comparisons. He tapped a pair of mahogany doors, like those of a wardrobe let into the wall. "Have you looked in here?” demanded Cazalet.

"What’s the use of looking in a cigar cupboard ?” Drinkwatef made mild inquiry. “Cigar cupboard!” echoed Cazalet in disgust. “Did he really only use it for his cigars?” * “A cigar cupboard,” repeated Drinkwater, "and locked up at the time it happened. What was it, if I may ask. in Mr. Cazalet’s time?” “I remember!” came suddenly from Blanche; but Cazalet only said, “Oh, well, if you know it was locked there’s an end of it.” Drink water went to the door and summoned his subordinate. “Just fetch that chap from the pantry, Tom,” said he; but the sullen sufferer from police fuie"tookTfTs"tlme,lnHsplte of them, and was sharply rated when he appeared. “I thought you told me this was a cigar cupboard?” continued Drinkwater, in the browbeating tone of his first words to Cazalet outside - “So ft is,” said the man. "Then where’s the key?” "How should I know? I never kept It! ”cried the butler, c rowing over

his oppressor for a change. "He would keep it on his own bunch; find his watch, and all the other things that were missing from his pockets when your men went through ’em, and you may find his keys, too!" Drinkwater gave his man a double signal; the door slammed on a petty triumph forthe servants’ hall, but now beth invaders remained within. “Try your hand on it, Tom;” said the superior officer. “I’m a free-lance here.” he explained somewhat superfluously to* the others, as Tom applied himself to the lock in one mahogany door. "Man’s been drinking, I should

THE EVENTN’G REPUBLICAN* RENSSELAER. IND.

say. He’d better be careful, because I don’t take to him, drunk er sober. Tm not surprised st his master not trusting him. It’s just possible that the place was open—he might have been getting out his cigars before dinner—but I can't say I think there’s much in it, Mr. Cazalet.” It was open again—broken open—before many minutes; and certainly there was not much in it, to be seen, except cigars. Boxes of these were stacked on what might have been meant for a shallow desk (the whole place wgs shallow as the. wardrobe that the doors suggested, but lighted high up at one end by a little barred window of its own) and according to Cazalet a desk' it had really been. His poor father ought never to have been a business man; he ought to have been a poet. Cazalet said this now as simply as he had said it to Hilton Toye on board the Kaiser Frijz. Only he went rather further /or the benefit of the gentlemen from Scotland Yard, who took not the faintest interest in the late Mr. Cazalet, beyond poking their noses into his diminutive sanctum and duly turning them up at what they saw. “He used to complain that be was never left in peace on Saturdays and Sundays, which of course were his

“You Ought to Have Been a Burglar. Sir,” Said Mr. Drinkwater.

only quiet times for writing,” said the son, elaborating his tale with filial piety. "So once when I’d been trying to die of scarlet fever, and my mother brought me back from Hastings after she’d had me there some time, the old governor told us he’d got a place where he could disappear from the district at a moment’s notice and yet be back in another moment if we rang the gong. I fancy he’d got to tell her where it was, pretty quick; but I only found out for myself by accident. Years afterward he told me he’d got the idea from Jean Ingelow’s place in Italy somewhere." “It’s in Florence,” said Blanche, laughing. "I’ve been there and seen it, and it’s the exact same thing. But you mean Michael Angelo, Sweep!” “Oh, do I?” he said serenely. “Well, I shall never forget how I found out its existence.’’

“No more shall I. You told me all about it at the time, as a terrific secret, and I may tell you that I’ve kept it from that day to this!" “You would,” he said simply. “But think of having the nerve to pull up the governor’s floor! It only shows what a boy will do. I wonder if tha boTe’s“thefe “still!" ‘ ~ ~~ Now all the time the planetary detective had been watching his satellite engaged in an attempt to render the®- damage done to the mahogany doors a little less conspicuous, Nei-L ther appeared to be taking any further interest in the cigar cupboard, or paying the slightest attention to Cazalet’s reminiscences. But Mr. DrinkWater happened to have heard every word, and in the last sentence there was one that caused him to prick up his expert ears instinctively. “What’s that about a hole?” said he, turning round. “I was reminding Miss Macnair how the place first came to be —” “Yes, yes. But what about some hole in the floor?”

“I made one myself with one of those knives that contain all sorts of of things, including a saw. It was one Saturday afternoon in the summer holidays. I came in here from the garden as my father went out by that door into the hall, leaving one of these mahogany doors open by mistake. It was the chance of my life; in I slipped to have a look. He came back for something, saw the very door you’ve broken standing ajar, and shut it without looking in. So there I was in a nice old trap! I simply daren’t call out and give myself away. There was a bit of loose oilcloth on the floor —”

“There is still.” said the satellite, pausing in his task. “I moved the oilcloth, in the end*, hawked up one end of the board (luckily they weren ’t groove and tongue), sawed through the next one to it, had it up, too, and got through into the foundations, leaving everything much as I had found it. The place is so small that the oilcloth was obliged to fall in place if it fell anywhere. But I had plenty of time, because my people had gone in to dinner.” “You ought to have been a burglar, sir,” said Mr. Drinkwater ironically. “So you covered up a sin with a crime, like half the gentlemen who go through my hands for the first and last time f l'But how did you get out of the foundations?" (TO B® CONTINUKDJ

Men of the Fifty-seventh battalion of infantry, the next contingent to be sent from Canada to the battlefields of Europe, are here seen drilling In snow trenches on the heights of Abraham at Quebec.

WHEN HIKES BROKE

Dramatic Description of the Dis* aster in Holland. It Will Take a Generation to Retrieve the Loss Caused When the Sea Broke Through—Some of the Pathetic Incidents. Rotterdam.—“l am standing up to my waist in water. The whole island is flooded, and the houses are giving way.” At that moment the telephone cable between the island of Marken in the Zuyder Zee and the mainland snapped and the outside world heard no more of the plucky operator's description of what was happening in that quaintly picturesque spot, which has suffered more than any other from the storm which shattered the historic Dutch sea dikes and flooded miles of country north of Amsterdam. At least sixteen people lost their lives in the floods, cattle were swept away, the wrecks of the picturesque old fishing craft were piled up on each other in the harbor, and the remaining inhabitants peer out from their attic windews upon an immeasurable waste of angry gray water. When the fierce northwest gale drove the i’ea down into the Zuyder Zee the water came like a tidal wave, casting into the sea the walls of the mainland, and mounted the dikes of Marken on all sides. No boat could have got people off in time and, leaving cattle to their fate, men and women climbed to the attics of their dwellings or perched on piles, fearing the worst, but hoping that the skillful work of their forefathers would hold against its ancient enemy.

It is a tribute to the Dutch engineers that every soul on the island was not lost. As it was, only four houses escaped damage. In the mad rush of the waves solid fishing-boats were smashed like tinder; two small vessels were lifted on to the roofs of a group of houses, wrecking the dwellings and drowning the Inmates. In one of them a man, his wife and two children were drowned. In another house which was crushed eight people clambered from beam to beam as the house settled down, and last of all clung for dear life to the rafters, screaming for help that could never come. As their strength failed and they dropped into the swirling waters one by one and were borne away the beam still pointed upwards as a mocking monument to their struggles for life. In another house the three daughters were surprised in their beds, and Marken beds are like huge cupboards, the children sleeping on the floor, the parents on an ample ledge above. Their bodies have just been discovered, the bodies locked in each other’s arms. L ”

When the house of Chaes De Waard was washed off its foundations a woman was last seen screaming from a top window for help. Everyone in that household Is missing. The house was carried over 100 yards, then struck another and wrecked. All land in and around the dead cities of the Zuyder Zee —Edam, Volendam and Monnikendam —is under the sea. The sea dikes broke in several places near Naarden and between Edam and Monnikendam. All night watchers ’■’ere on the dikes, but the suddenness of the burst was disastrous. Church bells boomed their fateful signal. Farmers, women, children, soldiers and police all dashed to the fields to round up the lowing cattle and frightened horses, but in hundreds of cases jthey were too late. # _

Millions of tons of water crashed over and through the breaches. The maze of ditches and canals, ordinarily so still, became as mountain streams in flood. Sheep, pigs, goats aud cows that could not reach the high dikes were washed away. Hundreds that instinctively made an attempt to save themselves were drowned} whilst -theroads were blocked with frightened herds of cattle that needed no urging from equally excited drivers. Few could mark their cattle and many will never regain their own animale. Safety was their only thought. In little breaks in the stream women could be seen pushing perambulators lug for the higher level of Amsterdam. Many farmers first saved their cattle, returning in boats to save their families. Soldiers made U dash for many of the breaches and worked heroically to stem the tide, but were as helpless as

DRILLING MORE FIGHTING MEN I IN CANADA

Canute. The police retrieved cattle in boats. All the churches on the high land were thrown open to receive cattle. Mile after mile is under water; rich farmers are rendered practically penniless and the land will take years to recover Its old fertility. At places where breaches occurred land was washed out till it was lower than the bed of the sea, and until the breaches are repaired there is no hope of taking off the water. Edam, Monnikendam and Vollendam are completely under waler; The lower houses tn the latter place have water up to the attics, whilst in the low-lyi’Jg Buikslootmeer Polder the water is level with the china insulators of the telephone poles. It is the Worst disaster for many years and it will take a generation to retrieve the loss

BLAMES FUR-TOPPED SHOES

Oklahoma City Woman Declares Footwear Invites Flirting— Complains to the Mayor. Oklahoma City.—“ Why don’t you stop this flirting that is going on all the time?” asked a woman of sour visage, who visited the mayor’s office.

RACKS THE NERVES

Night on Listening Post Is Eerie Experience. Small Groups of Men Get as Close to Enemy’s Position and Lie, There All Night Just ListeningLondon.—An officer back from the British front describes the listening post as the most trying experience of the war. Every evening little groups of men steal out between the opposing trench lines and squat quietly in a depression all night long, trying to catch in their straining ears some inkling of the enemy’s doings. Not until the night has well fallen do the posts go out. The object is to get as close to the enemy’s lines as possible without being: defeated; and to be able to remain there as long as human beings can, until the first streaks of dawn show in the sky. Once the precise spot is located, the men who will form that particular post that night are carefully tutored in its position by means of the invaluable periscope. They instruct themselves in the various obstacles to be encountered on the way, and commit to memory every tussock and every little obstacle that will afford them cover as they creep out to take up their places after nightfall. It is. not easy work to map out even a hundred feet of country through a periscope. But since dear life depends on the accuracy of the observations made, those concerned are not disposed to leave anything to chance, and every man could find his way

BEAUTY FROM DIXIE

Miss Eleanor Baxter of Knoxville, Tenn., is one of the pretty members of Dixie society who has been drawn to the national capital this winter for the social season. Miss Baxter and her mother have been entertained at several brilliant affairs during their stay.

The mayor said he didn’t know there had been any flirting. "Well, there has and there is," said the woman. "Who is doing It?” inquired the mayor. • "Men and women, boys and girls,” replied the visitor, "and the girls are just as bad as the men. I can show you girls on the streets right now who ought to be arrested.” "In what way do they flirt?” asked the patient mayor. "By looking .sideways. at the men and by wearing fur-topped shoes and dresses half way up to their knees,” said the woman. "You’ve seen them, haven’t you? And you know they’re disgraceful, don’t you?” Mayor Overholser said there was no ordinance regulating women’s attire to that extent. “Then pass an ordinance,” insisted the visitor. “Put a heavy fine on the girls who wear fur-topped shoes and short dresses, or else on the men who look at them.” The mayor sighed wearily. "If you don’t,” the woman continued, "this town will go to the devil. It’s going there now, with Its fur-top shoes and flirting.”

blindfolded when he has completed! his survey. - - And then, with darkness to shield them, they climb very cautiously out into the terrible dead ground, every little article of their equipment that might rattle carefully muffled, for there are listening posts listening for them. They have brought sandwiches or bread and cheese with them, for it is hungry work; but the solace of tobacco is utterly denied them until their tour of duty is ended. The little heroic party picks its gingerly way through its own entanglements, crouching low, flattening itself to the ground, availing itself of every depression, as the star shells flare aloft and the pitiless blue-white light streams down. It may be that it is detected at once, and given twenty-sec-onds of a machine gun’s closest attention, and in consequence ceases to exist as a living thing; but it may also be that it escapes detection, and continues to wend its cunning way towards the chosen shelter.

Once there, it has practically nothing to do but to listen. Any sound might mean anything; the faint noise of a buzzer might indicate an order to attack; the scraping of a knife on tin might mean the preparing of a hand grenade or merely that a hungry soldier is snatching a mouthful of food. ‘ "A night on listening post ~is one of the most eerie experiences a man can have. The most amazing things happen; things that read like fables, but which are true as gospel. It has beeri known more than once for a German sniper to stumble into the post; with the intention of taking up cover there, and waiting throughout the following day to take unerring pot-shots at anything which shows above the parapet. Now the members of the post are not allowed to fire a shot under any circumstances, unless, of course, they get mixed up with any sort of a real attack, in which case they would do the best they could for themselves. And so, since it is their lives or the sniper’s, they deal with the intruder in a summary fashion. Bits of earth crumble down from the embankments near at hand, the sound bringing men’s hearts to their mouths, for it might mean the approach of an enemy. There is no prolonged peace in the dead ground; and, knowing that listening posts are out, both sides make a point of quartering the grounds with, spasmodic fire, that the posts might be made as nervous as possible, and so driven back to their trenches' or else rendered incapable of further satisfactory work that night. Your only satisfaction lies in knowing that you are being watched by your own scouts, who are lying under

cover not Tar away; with instructions to cover you with their fire in case of need. You see, you must tot fire yourself, no matter what the provocation might be, because to do so would be to point out your position —with tragic results to yourselves and to those who come after you. . If you are discovered by an enemy patrol of scouts nosing around in search of game, you can do one thing, or the other —either you can die as you crouch or you can make a fight with the bayonet, and hope that the patrol will hurry up in time, a remote possibility under ( the circumstances. "-. '. 1 ■