Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 May 1901 — THE IVORY QUEEN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE IVORY QUEEN

A Detective Story Of a Chicago SnbnrtL The Murder at The Grange and How Its Mystery Wsc Solved hy DarrenL the Americaa Lecoq.

BY NORMAN HURST.

[CONTINUED.] "Well, don’t you think, Mr. Gosnell, it would be much wiser to wait until young Mr. Marsden is accused before you make quite so much use of his name in connection with the murder?” "I fawncy that perhaps you’re right. But what’s the law anyway?” "I’m sure I don’t know,” Darrent responded sharply as they made for the bank on the Norcombe side. "All right; steady does it. Don’t get warm, young man,” Mr. Gosnell observed as he unfastened his skates. “Still, I fawncy a Scotland Yard man would know the law backward.” "Very probably so, Mr. Gosnell,” replied Darrent. "He would know it, as you say, backward.” * “Are you strolling my way, old chap?” "I think not, and yet, on second thought, I think I will.” "Right. Will you have a drink?” "No, thanks.” "Sure?” "No, thanks.” “I fawncy you’re right. Poison yourself is no figure of speech if you drink the stuff they sell in Norcombe.” Herbert Darrent walked with his strange acquaintance through the village, anxious to gain what news he could, if any, of the relatives cf the late Josiah Marsden, and before they parted at the door of the Palace hotel he had learned that Marsden’s remaining cousins were Andrew Marsden, a farmer, living a few miles west of Norcombe, and Arthur Ridgeway, the manager of a theater in Barnstaple. Silas Gosnell was a man that Darrent felt he would very much like to study, but time would not permit. He could only label him as a harmless idiot and then forget him, although he did ask himself once or twice during the day, as the thought recurred to him, why Gosnell’s insanity had taken such a peculiar turn.

After bidding goodby to his companion Darrent Walked down to the police station, but there was no reply to his telegram, and it was not until noon next day that he received a lengthy dispatch from Chicago in answer to his own. Thanks to his promptitude of action, the authorities had experienced little difficulty in tracing Astray Marsden. He had gone by the first train from Barnstaple to Chicago, as Darrent had expected he would, had taken a cab at the station and was driven to the Royal hotel, where he was now staying under his own name. “Hum I” muttered Darrent as he read the message. “Got a good alibi, I suppose. ” He glanced at his watch. He could drive over and catch the afternoon train from Barnstaple, get to Chicago, see young Marsden and be back again the next night, and while at Barnstaple he might be able to have a few words with one of the other cousins, Arthur Ridgeway. A couple of hours later Darrent was strolling down High street, Barnstaple, looking for the Gaiety theater, which, after a lengthy search, he discovered in a not very lively quarter of the town and from a variegated placard on the wall gleaned the information that Mr. Arthur Ridgeway was the actor-man-ager. Another highly colored poster representing a gentleman in a deep blue frock coat and pink trousers, with an unaccountably amiable smile upon his features, being dropped into an enormous caldron of some steaming liquid by another and less amiable gentleman, who, in pleasing contrast to his unfortunate victim, was attired in a pink frock coat and blue trousers, announced to all and sundry that there would be played that evening and for the rest of the week the stirring melodrama, entitled "The Factory Man’s Revenge,” in which were introduced a real steam hammer weighing a hundred tons and a real caldron of real molten metal, "the most thrilling scene,” the poster asserted, ‘‘ever seen on any stage,” which Darrert was quite ready to be’ieve. Making his way down a grimy court, at the entrance of which a lamp in a

wire cage oore tne legena ”»tage Door, ' Darrent found a veritable picture gallery of posters representing the villain, always in the same pink coat and the same blue trousers, putting the gentleman whose taste in clothes was exactly vice versa through a variety of original and excruciating tortures, at which the bland gentleman continued to beam and smile, evidently with an inborn knowledge that his turn was coming in the last act. At last Darrent reached the stage door of the Gaiety theater and, sending in his card, asked to see Mr. Ridgeway and while waiting whiled away the time by studying a pictorial representation of the great scene of the last act, which explained the much put upon gentleman’s extreme forbearance in the previous scenes. Darrent’s admiration of the triumph of virtue over villainy was interrupted by the return of the stage door keeper. Mr. Ridgeway would see him, he was informed, and, following his guide along a tortuous labyrinth of stairs ao 1 passages, he at last found, himself upo the stage of the Gaiety theater, where the flaring “T” piece only served to render the gloom of auditorium visible. A good tempered looking man nodded to him as he appeared and, begging to be excused for a moment, continued the task upon which he was engaged of holding the hundred ton hammer erect while a man went over it with a paintbrush.

"Glad to see you. Sit down, sir,” he shouted as Darrent appeared. ‘‘Not in a hurry for a minute ? Thanks. Awfully busy. Give you ten minutes in ten minutes. Suit you ? Right; they’re yours. Now, give me your opinion, stranger,” he rattled on. "Does that steam hammer look like the real thing, or dees it net? Hal You’re laughing. Never mind. You haven’t got the right light on it. Come tonight and see it, and you’d swear it was the genuine article. One hundred tons. Daylight does not suit apy of us. Now, look at me. What do I 100k —40, eh ? See me tonight. I’m the hero, 25, and lovely as the rising sun. Look at the heroine. Ah! She’s a pretty girl anyway, isn’t she? But she’ll look a goddess, a perfect goddess of 21, tonight. As it is she’s” — “Now, Arthur, den’t tell any stories,” a very pretty girl standing by the manager exclaimed, putting her hand over his mouth. “He’s always talking nonsense,” she continued, in an expiratory way, to Herbert Darrent. “My wif*>, sir, ” Ridgeway continued, releasing tne hundred ton hammer, which descended with a dead wooden thud, and, putting his arm round the girl, “one of the best, one of the very best, and the prettiest little heroine cn the stage. ’ ’ Darrent shook hands with the lady and paid her an easy little compliment that raised her color and caused her husband to beam upon them both. “Look at that, sir—look at it I” he exclaimed delightedly. “There’s a lovely little innocent blush for you I And yet you’ll find people who say a woman

forgets how to blush directly she goes on the stage. Hang it, sir, they ought to be horsewhipped, and I’d like to have the doing of it! Now, excuse me just one minute more—must go through a little scene—and then I’m yours. By the way, ’ ’ he continued anxiously, “you don’t want to go on the stage, do you ? Don’t say you do; shouldn’t like to refuse you. I like the look of you, but I’m full—full.” Darrent shook his head laughingly, and the manager, much relieved, bustled across the stage and rushed into rehearsal of the little scene, “A good hearted fellow,” was the way Herbert: Darrent summed up the second relation of Josiah Marsden and fell into h reverie about the first relation he had met and why nature had ever found 1 it worth her while to create such a colossaTldiot. Or—the idea always came to mm—was the man as big a fool as he pretended to be or something more cf a rogue ? His ruminations were interrupted and he was brought back to the world again by finding Mr. Ridgeway standing before him, wildly brushing his hand through his hair and looking the very picture of farcical despair. “Behold her, behold her I” the manager excitedly shouted, waving his hand toward his wife. “What does she look like?” Darrent thought to himself that she looked like what she was, a very bright young girl, out ne was not even given time to express his opinion. “Does she look broken hearted and starving? Not a bit, not a bit like it. I've gone through thia scene doeaua of

times, and she won’t look miserable. I don't believe she can, bless her heart I” “Go on, go on. Enter James Hardy He’s the villain of the piece, ’’ he explained to Darrent. “Squire Hardy, in love with the village maiden; good old crusted melodrama. But won’t it go? Won’t the public hoot him? Ahl” and the energetic manager rushed across the stage again. “It won’t do, I tell you. You say ‘You’re in my power I’ as if you were asking the time the next train started for Chicago. Put some life into it. Now, then, my dear, shrink from him. I know he’s not a bad fellow actually, but that’s not his character in the play. That’s better. No; wait a minute. ‘You’re in my power’ —yes, that’s all right. Shrink and then do a little shriek. Now go back. ‘lf I could see him once more, I could die content.’ That’s right. Enter Hardy; cue, ‘in my power’—good. Shriek: ‘I am lost! Who will save me ?’ Ah, very good! I enter; struggle. Yes, that’s all right. Now, do it like that tonight.” The little scene was evidently settled to Mr. Ridgeway’s satisfaction, and he walked over to Herbert Darrent. ‘ ‘Now, sir, I am yours to command.” , The detective, ever a quick judge of character, had long since arrived at the conclusion that the best way to deal with Mr. Ridgeway was to come to the point at once, and, having taken a seat in that gentleman’s room and accepted a glass of wine that was generously pressed upon him, he placed his hand in his pocket and, taking out the spring knife, laid it upon the table. ffeoMn coNmnJXDj

“Ah! Have you ever seen that knife before?”