The Man in Lower Ten

er ten, I have been a bit squeamish. Given a case like that, where you can build up a network of clues that absolutely incriminate

ot hark back with shuddering horror to the strange events on the Pullman car O

although he can not spell three consecutive words correc

. "And nobody cares for second-hand thrills. Besides, you want the unva

with the grown-up little sisters of the girls I used to know. I am fond of outdoors, prefer horses to the aforesaid grown-up little sisters,

rous, the one man in a hundred who would be likely to go without a deviation from the normal t

rt me on that sensational and not always respectable journey that ended so surprisingly less than three weeks later in the firm's private office. It had been the

ged off. It was not the first time he had shirked that summer in order to run down to Richmond, and I was surly about it. But this time he had a new excuse. "I wouldn't be able to look after the business if I did go," he said. He has a sort of wi

n the evening with his machine, the Cannonball, to take me to t

. Sew them in your chest protector, or wherever people keep valuables. I neve

my cigarettes and struck a match on t

very worthy woman, so labeled-and libeled-because of a ferocious pair of eyes and

for the evening paper to see if it is going to rain. S

nt to the window. He stood there for some time, staring at t

window and the shutters. Something in his voice made me glan

ed in a perfunctory tone, after

sently. "If the landlord would

notes in your poc

of registration, baptism and vaccination. Whoever

the next house was confoundedly anxious to see where

he papers, putting them in my traveling-bag, well

," he said, as I locked the alligator bag. "Darned

sore from my lost Saturday. "And if you knew the owner of that house as I do you wou

the door and spoke di

ring the evening pa

ubs won, three to nothing." He listened, grinning, as she mo

ers. The window across was merely a deeper black in the darkness. It was closed and dirty. And yet, probably owing to Richey

there with a package of some sort, sandwiches probably. And

an armful of such traveling impedimenta as she deemed essential, while bes

I panted over my shoulder. Then the d

e empty house next door as we passed. It was black,

e of a house," he said thoughtfully. "By Geor

pipes," I scoffed. "House

the other for my cigarette case. "Perhaps," he said;

hard at the picture in the back of your watch, that's all.

en it was only a perfunctory remark. He went through the gate with me, and with five minutes to spare, we lounged and smoked in the train shed. My mind ha

he traveling this summer. I know you're missing a game to-morrow. But don't be a pat

. "Personally, I wouldn't change places

I have to say, Blakeley, is that if you ever fall in

owed, this came rath

reason, and sat bolt upright. I had an uneasy feeling that some one had been looking at me, the same sensation I had experienced earlier in the evening at the window. But I could feel the bag with the notes, between me and the window, and with my arm thrown over it for security, I lapsed again into slumber. Later, when I tried to piece together the fragments of that journey, I remembered that my coa

ture as your unit?" I wrote mentally. "I can not fold together

n the first page was a staring announcement that the forged papers in the Bronson case had been brought to Pittsburg. Underneath, a telegram from Washington stated that Lawrence Blakeley, of Blakeley and McKnight, had left for Pittsburg the night

notice I paid for my breakfast and left. At the cab-stand I chose the least dilapidated hansom I

f, a slim young man in a straw hat separated himsel

there!" he called, b

long, to my relief, leaving the young man far behind. I avoid reporters on prin

g stacks of the mills. The white mist of the river, the grays and blacks of the smoke blended into a half-revealing haze, dotted here and there with fire. It was unlovely, tremendous. Whistler might have painted it with its

at least part of it. He was propped up in bed in his East end home, listening

ns a nose that looks like a flue. Pittsburg without smoke wouldn't be Pittsburg, any more than New York without p

nd without understanding, using initials and abbreviations as they came.

," he said ge

sely before her. Against the dark background her figure stood out slim and young. Perhaps it was the rather grim environment, possibly it was my mood, but although as a general thing

voice. But he was watching me from under his heavy eyebrows, for when the

hat I am an old man," he said. "Tha

surprise, this time genuine. From that we went to what he ate for breakfast and did not eat for luncheon, and then to his res

life was when I knew he was safely dead in bed and not hanged. If the child had looked

ably," I agr

ctacles from beside it. He went over the four notes methodically, examining each carefully an

ficial signature. I am inclined to think-" he was speaking partly to himself-"to think that he has g

were unrecognizable, a mass of charred paper on a copper ashtray. In the interval other and bigger things had happened: the Bronson forgery