Indianapolis Times, Volume 39, Number 278, Indianapolis, Marion County, 17 March 1928 — Page 14

PAGE 14

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CHAPTER LIV. SPOTSWOODE opened the book, and began reading in a voice whose very fervor held us all silent: “ 'I brought aoout my own downfall. No one, oe he high or low, need be ruined by any other hand than his own. Readily as I confess this, there are many who will, at this time at least, receive the confession skeptically. And although I thus mercilessly accuse myself, bear in mind that I do so without offering any excuse. “ ‘Terrible as is the punishment inflicted upon me by the world, more terrible is the ruin I have brought upon myself. ... In the dawn of manhood I recognized my position. ... I enjoyed an honored name, an eminent social position. “ ‘Then came the turning point. I had become tired of dwelling on the heights—and descended by my own will into the depths. ... I satisfied my desires wherever it suited me, and passed on. I forgot that every act, even the most insignificant act cf daily life, in somo degree, makes or unmakes the character; and every occurrence which transpires in me seclusion of the chamber will some day be proclaimed from tne housetops. “‘I lost control of myself. I was no longer at the helm, and knew it net. I had become a slave to pleasure. . . . One thing only is left to me—complete humility.’ ” “You understand now', Mr. Markham?” Markham did not speak for several moments. “Do you care to tell me about fSkeei?” he at length asked. ‘That swine!” Spotswoode, sneered his disgust “I cculd murder such creatures every day and regard myself as a benefactor of soe’etv. . . . “Yes, I strangled him, and I would have done it before, only the opportunity did not offer. . . . “It was Skeel who was hiding in the closet when I returned to the apartment after the thea.ter, and he must have seen me kill the . woman. I “Had I known he was behind that j looked clcset door, I would have j broken it down and wiped him out j t::sn. “3ut hew w r as I to know? I. seemed ftatural that the closet might have been kept locked—l didn’t give it a second thought. . . . “And the next night he telephoned me to the club here. "He had first called my heme on Tong Island, and learned that I vas staying here. I had never seen him before—didn’t know of his exigence. “But, it seems, he had equipped himself with a knowledge of my identity—probably some of the money I gave to the woman went to him. What a muck-heap I had fafien into! “When he phoned, he mentioned the phonograph, and I knew he had found cut something. “I met him in the Waldorf lobby, md he told me the truth; there was no doubting his word. When he saw I was convinced, he demanded so enormous a sum that I was staggered.” Spotswoode lit a cigaret with steady fingers. “Mr. Markham, I am no longer a rich man. The truth is, I am on tiie verge of bankruptcy. “The business my father left me has been in a receiver’s hands for nearly a year. The Long Island estate cn which I live belongs to my wife. “Pew people know these things, but unfortunately they are true. It would have been utterly impossible fer me to raise the amount Skeel c’ even had I been inclined to play the coward. “I did, however, give him a small sum to keep him quiet for a few days, premising him all he asked as sson as I could convert some of my holdings. “I hoped in the interim to get possession of the record and thus spike his guns. “But in that I failed; and so, when he threatened to tell you everything, I agreed to bring the money to his home late last Saturday night. “I kept the appointment, with the full intention of killing him. I was careful about entering, but he had helped me by explaining when and hew I could get ha without being seen. “Once there, I wasted no time. The first moment he was off his guard 'I seized him—and gloried in the act “ rr hen, locking the door and taking the key, I walked out of the house quite openly, and returned here to the club—That’s all, I think.” Vance was watching him musingly. “So when you raised my bet last night,” he said, “the amount represented a highly important item in your exchequer.” Spotswoode smiled faintly. “It represented practically every cent I had in the world.” “Astonishin’! . . . And would you mind if I asked you why you selected the label of Beethoven’s “Andante” for your record?” "Another miscalculation,” the man said wearily. "It occurred to me that if any one should, by any chance, open the phonograph before I could return and destroy the record, he wouldn’t be as likely to want to hear the classics as he would a more popular selection.” “And one who detests popular music had to find it! I fear, Mr. Spotswoode, that an unkind fate cat in at your game.” “Yes ... If I were religiously inclined, I might talk poppycock about retribution and divine punishment.” "I’d like to ask you about the

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jewelry,” said Markham. “It’s not sportsmanlike to do it, and I wouldn’t suggest it, except that you’ve already confessed voluntarily to the main points at issue.” “I shall take no offense at any question you desire to ask, sir,” Spotswoode answered. “After I had recovered my letters from the document-box, I turned the l-ooms upside down to give the impression of a burglary—being careful to use gloves, of course. And I took the

NOSODYs CaIM.IL * AUSTIN PENNY PRINCE// *

THIS HAS HAPPENED SALLY FORD, Hi, with a genius tor acting, is selfishly kept at the orphanage. which has been her home since *he was 4, in spite of efforts to adopt her, because her sympathy and understanding with small children make her a valuable helper to the matron. However, when CLEM CARSON asks that Sally be “farmed or.t” to him for the ummer. the mat-on tells the girl she must go. Sally dislikes the farmer, but 'one years of obedience to authority vea.l her lips against protesting when he matron says she must go and she leaves ta pack her few clothes for the trip. Sally encounters little MISS POND, sentimental, sympathetic office helper. When Sally begs her to tell her something of her mother. Miss Pond promises to come to the locker room and tell her what she knows. NOW GO ON WITH THE STORY CHAPTER 111 BECAUSE she was leaving the orphanage for a temporary new home on the Carson farm, Sally was permitted to take her regular Saturday night bath that afternoon. In spite of her terror of the future, the girl who had never known any home but a State orphan asylum felt a thrill of adventure as she splashed in a painted tin tub, gloriously alone, unhurried by clamorous girls waiting just outside the little cubicle. The cold water—there was no hot water for bathing from April first to October first—made her skin glow and tingle. As she dried herself on a ragged wisp ol grayishwhite Turkish toweling, Sally surveyed her slim, white oody with shy ' pride. Shorn of the orphanage uni- j form she might have been any | pretty young girl budding into j womanhood, so slim and rounded and pinky-white she was. "I guess I’m kinda pretty,” Sally whispered to herself, as she thrust her face close to the small, wavery mirror that could not quite succeed in destroying her virginal loveliness. “Sweet sixteen and—never been kissed,” she smiled to herself, then bent forward and gravely lead her pink, deliciously curved lips against the mirrored ones. Then, in a panic lest she be too late to see kind Miss Pond, she jerked on the rest of her clothing. “Dear Sally, how sweet you look!” | Miss Pond clasped her hands In admiration as Sally slipped, breathless, into the locker-room that contained the clothes of all the girls of her dormitory. “Did you bring the card that tells all about me— and my mother?” Sally brushed the compliment aside and demanded in an eager whisper. “No, dearie, I was afraid Mrs. Stone might want it to make an entry about Mr. Carson’s taking you for the summer, but I copied the date.. You go ahead with your packing while I tell you what I found out,” Miss Pond answered nervously, but her pale gray eyes were sparkling with pleasure in her mild little escapade. Sally unlocked her own particu- I lar locker with the key that always 1 hung on a string about her neck, but almost immediately she whirled upon Miss Pond, her eyes imploring. “It won’t take me a minute to pack. Miss Pond. Please go right on and tell me!” “Well, Sally, I’m afraid there isn’t much to tell.” Miss Pond smoothed a folded bit of paper apologetical. “The record says you were brought here May 9, 1912, just 12 years ago, by a woman who said you were her daughter. She gave your birthday as June 2, 1908, and her name as Mrs. Nora Ford, a widow, aged 28—” “Oh, she’s young!” Sally breathed ecstatically. Then her face clouded, as her nimble brain did a quick sum in mental arithmetic. “But she’d be 40 now, wouldn’t she? Forty seems awfully old —” “Forty is comparatively young, Sally!” Miss Pond, who was looking regretfully back upon 40 herself, said rather tartly. “But let me hurry on. She gave poverty and illness as her reasons for asking the State to take care of you. She said your father was dead.” “Oh, poor mother!” A shadow flitted across Sallyjs delicate face; quick tears for the dead father and the ill, poverty-stricken mother filmed her blue eyes. “The State accepted you provisionally, and shortly afterward sent an investigator to check up on her story,” Miss Pond went on. “The investigator found that the woman, Mrs. Ford, had left the city—it was Stanton, 30 miles from here—and that no one knew where she had gone. From that day to this we have had no word from the woman who brought you here She was a mystery in Stanton, and has remained a mystery until now. I’m sorry, Sally, that I can’t tell you more.” “Oh!” Sally’s sharp cry was charged with such pain and disappointment that Miss Pond took one of the little clenched fists between her own thin hands, not noticing that the slip of paper fluttered to the floor. "She didn’t write to know how I was, didn’t care whether I lived or died! I wish I hadn’t asked! I thought maybe there was somebody, someonfi who loved me—” “ Remember she was sick and poor, Sally. Maybe she Went to a hospital suddenly ana—and died. But there was no report in any papers of the State of her death,” Miss Pond added conscientiously. “You mustn’t grieve, Sally. Your’e nearly grown now. You’ll be leaving us when you are 18, unless you want to stay on as an assistant matron or as a teacher—” "Oh, no, no!” Sally cried. “I—I’ll pack now. Miss Pond. And thank you a million times for telling me, even if it did hurt.” In her distress Miss Pond trotted out of the locker-room without a thought for the bit of paper on

woman's jewelry for the same reason. “Parenthetically, I had paid for most of it. I offered it as a sop to Skeel, but he was afraid to accept it; and finally I decided to rid myself of it. “I wrapped it in one of the club newspapers and threw it in a wastebin near the Flatiron Building.” “You wrapped it in the morning Herald,” put in Heath. “Did you know that Pop Cleaver reads nothing but the Herald?”

which she had scribbled the memorandum of Sally’s pitifully meager life history. But Sally had not forgotten it. She snatches it from the floor and pinned it tc her “body waist,” a vague resolution forming in her troubled heart. ■When five o’clock came Sally Ford was waiting in the office for Clem Carson, her downcast eyes fixed steadily upon the small brown paper parcel in her lap, color staining her neck and cheeks and brew, for Mrs. Stone, stiffly, awkwardly but conscientiously, was doing her institutional best to arm the State’* charge for her first foray into the outside world. “And so, Sally, I want you to remember to—to keep your body pure and your mind clean,” Mrs. Stone summed up, her strong, heavy face almost as red as Sally’s own. “Your’e too young to go out with young men, but you’ll be meeting the hired hands on the farm. You—you mustn’t let them take liberties of any kind with you. We try to give you girls in the home a sound religious and moral training, and if —if you are lead astray it will be due to the evils in your own 'nature and not to lack of proper Christian training. You understand me, Sally?” she added severly. “Yes, Mrs. Stone,” Sally answered in a smothered voice. Sally's hunted eyes glanced wildly about for a chance of escape and lighted upon the turning knob of the door. In a moment Clem Carson was edging in, his brown-leather face slightly flushed, a tell-tale odor of whisky and cloves on his breath. “Little lady all ready to go?” he inquired with a suspiciously jovial laugh, which made Sally crouch lower in her chair. “Looking pretty as a picture, too! With two pretty girls in my house this summer, reckon I’ll have to stand guard with a shotgun to keep the boys away.” Word had gone round that Sally Ford was leaving the home for the summer, and as Clem Carson and his new unpaid hired girl walked together down the long cement walk to where his car was parked at the curb, nearly 300 little girls, packed like a herd of sheep in the wirefenced playground adjoining the front lawn, sang out goed-bys and good wishes. “Good-by, Sal-lee! Hope you have a good time!” “Good-by, Sal-lee! Write me a letter, Sal-lee!” “Good-by, goodby!” Sally, waving her Sunday handkerchief, craned her neck for a last sight of those blue-and-white-ging-hamed little girls, the only playmates and friends she had in the world. There were tears in her eyes, and, queerly, for she thought she hated the home, a stab of homesickness shooting through her heart. How safe they were, there in the playground pen! How simple and sheltered life was in the home, after all! Suddenly she knew, somehow, that, it was the last time she would ever see it, c the children. Without a thought for the Ironclad “Keep off the grass” rule, Sally turned and ran, fleetly, her little

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“Sergeant!” Vance’s voice was a cutting reprimand. “Certainly Mr. Spotswoode was not aware of that fact—else he would not have selected the Herald.” Spotswoode smiled at Heath with pitying contempt. Then, with an appreciative glance at Vance, he turned back to Markham. “An hour or so after I had disposed of the jewels I was assailed by the fear that the package might be found and the paper traced.

figure as graceful as a fawn's, over the thick velvet carpet of the lawn. When she reached the high fence that separated her from the other orphans, she spread her arms, as if she would take them ell into her embrace. ‘Don’t forget me, kids!” she panted, her voice thick with tears. “I—l want to tell you I love you all. and I’m sorry for every mean thing I ever did to any of you and I hope you all get adopted Dy rich papas and mamas and have ice cream every day! Good-by, kids! Goodby!” “Kiss me good-by, Sal-lee!” a little whining voice pleaded. Sally stooped and pressed her lips, through the fence opening, against the babyish mouth of little Eloise Durant, the newest and most forlorn orphan of them all. “Me, too, Sal-lee! Me, too! We won’t have nobody to play-act for us now!” Betsy wailed, pressing her tear-stained face against the wire. A little later, when Sally was seated primly beside Clem Carson, jolting rapidly down the road that led past the orphanage toward the business district of the city, the farmer nudged her in the ribs and chuckled: “You’re quite a kissing-bug. ain't you, Sally? How about a little kiss for your new boss?” (To Be Continued) Life brightens a bit in the next chapter, for Sally meets David. UPHOLDS UTILITY LAW Gubernatorial Candidate Says Trouble With Administration. “Indiana’s utility law is all right, but has been improperly administered,” said Earl Crawford, candidate for the Democratic nomination for Governor, addressing the Jefferson Club here Friday night. “I believe,” Crawford said, “that a little different personnel, more administrative action, less judicial conclusions, and the issuance of competing franchises where the commission's orders are appealed from, will do much to bring the utility question to a basis where gas, light and heat, —and talk, —will be furnished at a rate fair to both the utilities and their patrons.” He denounced the “bunk that high-priced lawyers and expert engineers have injected into valuations for rate making purposes and subtracted therefrom for taxation.”

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“So I bought another Herald and put it on the rack.” He paused. “Is that all?’’ Markham nodded. “That you—that's all; except that, I must now ask you to go with these officers.” “In that case,” said Spotswoode quietly, “there’s a small favor I have to ask of you, Mr. Markham. Now that the blow has fallen, I wish to write a certain note—to my wife. “But I want to be alone when I write it. Surely you understand that desire. “It will take but a fq,w moments. Your men may stand at the door— I can’t very well escape. . . . The victor can afford to be generous to that extent.” Before Markham had time to reply, Vance stepped forward and touched his arm. “I trust,” he interposed, "that you ! won’t deem it necess’ry to refuse Mr. Spotwoodes request.” Markham looked at him hesitantly. “I guess you’ve pretty well earned the right to dictate, Vance,” he acquiesced. Then he ordered Heath and Snitkin to wait outside in the hall, and he and Vance and I went into the adjoining .room. Markham stood, as if on guard, near the door; Dut Vance, with an ironical smile, sauntered to the win. dow and gazea out into Madison Square. “My word. Markham!” he declared. “There's something rather colossal about that chap. Y’know, one can't help admiring him. He's so eminently sane and logical.” Markham made no response. The drone of the city’s mid-afternoon noises, muffled by the closed windows, seemed to intensify the ominous silence of the little bedchamber where we waited. Then came a sharp report from the other room. Markham flung open the door. Heath and Snitkin were already rushing toward Spotswoode’s prostrate body, and were bending over it when Markham entered. Immediately he wheeled about and glared at Vance, who now ap- j peared in the doorway. “He's shot himself!” “Fancy that,” said Vance. “You —you knew he was going to | do that?” Markham spluttered. "It was rather obvious, don't y' know.” Markham's eyes flashed angrily.; "And you deliberately Interceded for him—to give him the opportunity?” “Tut. tut, my dear fellow!” Vance reproached him. “Pray don’t give way to conventional moral in- i dignation. “However unethical—theoretically | —it may be to take another’s life ! to do with as he chooses. Suicide is his inalienable right. “And under the paternal tyranny of our modern democracy, I’m rather inclined to think it’s about the only right he has left, what?” He glanced at his watch and frowned. “D* ye know. I’ve missed my concert, bothering with your beastly affairs,” he complained amiably, giving Markham an engaging smile; “and now you’re actually scolding me. 'Pon my world, old fellow, ! you're deuced ungrateful!” TIIE END.

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