Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 July 1901 — THE IVORY QUEEN. [ARTICLE]

THE IVORY QUEEN.

By NORMAN HURST.

[Copyright. 1899, by American Press Association.] [COST'NUED.] “Tr aur father had not been half a dozen miles away from Norcombe during the last ten years. His mind was unhinged. He yearned for that man’s life until, in his dreams, he killed him; that is all. I have told you this first, and now I will deul with my visit to Paris. This was the clew I started upon, this entry in the diary: “ ‘Nov. 25, 1871.—Her father was discovered shot dead in Paris this morning. I dare not tell her. Who will be the next? What is this nameless gang? What is their purpose ? I dare not stop here.' “To me it was obvious that that was the first step in the solution of the mystery and an easy one. The records of the French police put me in inissession of the whole of the facts connected with that murder, but they turned out to be very different from what I had anticipated. A man, Maurice de Lanes, was discovered shot dead, but”—Darrent again paused—“there was no mystery whatever. “Maurice de Lanez caught his cashier red handed in theft and sent for the police, bnt before they had time to arrive the man turned on him, shot him dead and tied. “He was captured next day on the outskirts of the city, tried, condemned and guillotined. He died confessing that his sentence was a just one, for Lanez had been the best of masters. There waa no other record of a murder of a man named De Lanez in that year or any other year. ” “But the mystery ?” “There is no mystery. ” “The assassins?” “There are no assassins and never were.” “The gang?” “There is no gang.” “My brain reds. I cannot understand. What does it mean ?” “Listen. On Oct. 8. 1871—1 am indebted very much to chance for ever having been able to put this peculiar affair together—a party of students were carousing in a top floor room in a house in one of the worst quarters of Paris. They were a devil may care lot, and one or two were wanted by the police, not for anything very serious, mind you—for a drunken brawl, perhaps, or a little overexuberance after a students’ ball. The gambling was at its height when suddenly they heard the sound of a man rushing np stairs. The light was extinguished, and they held their breath and waited. Then the man burst into the apartment—an Englishman. ” “Yes, yes; goon.” “Well. I told yon they were a harebrained crew, an ingenious lot of practical jokers, an irresponsible set of scamps, and one had a brilliant idea to fool the Englishman. He told it to his comrades, and it was, hailed with a suppressed ro.r of merriment. They were to pretend to the stranger that he had broken into a solemn conclave of a secret society. Make him take his chance with them and draw for a Ufa Do you follow the story?” “I begin to understand. Go on.” “Your father was that man, Astray, and his disposition was as yours is now —unahlo to face danger. As you made a mistake and fled from your accuser, he made a mistake and dared to defy them. He accepted their proposal and drew for the life of a woman. They began as a joke; they carried it on to teach him a lesson. ’ ’ “Brave men. ” “If he had refused to carry out the scheme and dared them to take his life, the light would have been turned np, and he would have discovered that the cold barrel against his temple was only a short poker and would have been invited to spend the evening with the lightest hearted lot of scamps in Paris. But he did not defy them; he agreed to their plans. ” “Or pretended to. ” Any man would have done the same. “So they kept up the joke. One or two were well connected, and they introduced him to a good set of people, and a pretty girl was chosen for the victim, a girl so gentle that they knew the blackest hearted, foulest minded brute could nut have raised a finger against her. Then they sent him notes and letters urging him to do the deed. ” “Murdering him by inches.” Astray cried, trembling with suppressed rage. “Goading him to despair. A good joke I They must have been a merry crew indeed! Goon. What more?” “There is no more. Presently they tired of their joke. The girl left Paris, so did your father, and the whole affair only became a good after dinner story —how they fooled the Englishman.” “But the tracking through Europe?” “Your futher’s imagination only. It never, existed. This is the erne] noint the pitiless part of that practical joke. Can’t yon imagine the feelings of a man who thought he was being shadowed through Europe; that the day must inevitably come when a sharp thrust would end his life? In every shadow he saw an assassin, in every face a spy The fear was always in his inind that perhaps he would not see that evening’s sun set: thut he had entered upon his last day. Kept from the woman he loved for fear of carrying danger to her, always on the alert, always suspicious, always with the fear of death hanging over him, to a sensitive man there could be only one ending. He lost his reason, lost it hopeless ly on the «lay he heard of your mother ■ death. ” “Of her death?” “Yes, h-r death. She died suddenly and lies buried in a country churchyard in a small Michigan village, thechurch-

yflra or tne village where he hid her from the fear of their enemies. ” “But the abdufftion told in the diary?” “That account was written after her death. She was not abdneted. He sent her away himself. Haunted by the dread of assassination, t#ey lived apart after his visit to Paris, he going to the Michigan village once or twice in six months for a day. I heard this part of the story from one of the clergymen of the village. Your mother fell ill and died suddenly, very suddenly. No one knew where to send for yonr father, and she was buried. “Two days after a telegram came to yonr mother asking her to come to Chicago. No answer could be sent, and so they waited for him. The rector broke the news to him and has since repeated the story to me, told me how yonr father listened without a word, walked to the churchyard, gazed at the grave without a tear and then returned to the honse and fonnd the telegram which he had himself sent the day before. “Then his reason left him. In a paroxysm of madness he charged them all with deceiving him; swore that she had not died, bat had been lnred away, that they were all a party to it and that she had been murdered; swore that ‘a life for a life’ should be the only object of his existence and left the village with madness in his eye, foaming for revenge. That is the whole story. Your mother sleeps in her grave; your father has been murdered, but by no gang of assassins, for none existed.” “No gang of assassins,” Astray cried, rising to his feet, and struggling with rage; “no gang of assassins, when they drove a man to madness for the satisfaction of their own humor I My bitterest curse be on each and every one who had a hand in the torture of my father and blight what yet remains of his life—fbr each and every one who took a part in that night’s devilment shared in the murder 1 They robbed him of his reason and left him an easy prey to the one who took his life. ” ‘‘The murderer is yet to be discovered,” Darrent answered quietly. “We have found nothing from this diary, and we must begin at the beginning again, and time presses.” “What do you mean by time presses? The law dare not hang me in the face of the statements in that diary. I shall be released in a few days, and then together we will seek the murderer and never rest until he is brought to justice. ” “We will hope for the best,” was all that Herbert Darrent could say aa he shook Astray’s hand and left him. CHAPTER X. HERBERT DARRENT PROPOSES A TOAST. Herbert Dairent had left Astray buoyed up with hope. Together they had gone page by page through old Marsden’s diary and together had come to the conclusion that here at last was something like the truth. Astray was exultant in what he called the full establishment of his innocence, bnt Darrent’s enthusiasm was a little less pronounced. He recognized that, while there was undoubtedly much in the diary that was true, there was also much that revealed nothing but the wanderings of an enfeebled intellect and that in any endeavor to get the sentence passed upon Astray Marsden revoked there would be the greatest difficulty to persuade the governor where the truth ended and imagination commenced. If Josiah Marsden dreamed that he had killed his enemy, the man who dogged his footsteps through Europe and had chronicled as a fact in his diary that he had done so, when it coaid be conclusively proved that at the date set down he had not been away from Norcombe, Ills., it was equally possible that the final entry, the one that said that Astray had been and gone, might also be regarded as the outcome of a dream, and Darrent was bound to own this possibility to himself, although he now thoroughly believed in the innocence of the man—that Astray might have returned. He felt that Astray was innocent, and yet, if Astray had not committed the murder, who had? Was it a Btranger, perhaps a tramp, after all ? It would be hard, very hard, to make the cool headed governor believe that a man who had been stabbed had in the tbvoes of death written, I ‘l am dying, murdered by a stranger. ” Why should he? That was the question that perplexed Darrent Why ? To exonerate his son, with whom he had quarreled that night, in case he should be accused. Hum 1 It was possible when one looked at it m that light Perhaps that construction placed on the paper, together with the diary, might have some effect upon the governor. Anyhow he could but try. Hi» efforts had condemned Astray Marsden, and now his duty was to obtain the re-

leone us oiuttj, biiu onen togemer tney would search until they brought the real culprit to justice. In the midst of these reflections, dubious and anxious as to what the ultimate result would be, Darrent was interrupted as he sat by the fire in his own room at the Palace hotel at Norcombe by a rapping at the door. “Come ini” he cried, and Policeman Thompson entered. “Well, Thompson," he exclaimed heartily, for he had taken a fancy to the young policeman, “what can I do for von?” (■O Ki OOJDTIXUKD.J