Bunker Bean

'ry part of road, without which road would be tot'ly crippled, you will note these first moggige

ed his brows to a black menace

for 's a

no reporter ever neglected to mention, but Bean thought you might as well chew tobacco and be done with it. Moreover, the cigars were not such as one would have expected to find between the lips of a

alf-hour he had inwardly raged more than usual at Breede for being kept from this information. Bulger always managed to get it on ti

ntly strolled from his own desk to Bean's, where he left a sli

ed dresser, specializing in flamboyant cravats. He would have been Bean's model if Bean had been less a coward. Bulger was nearly all that Bean wished to be. He condescended

lways look up with pleased sagacity, as if he were helping to compose Breede's letters. It may have been simple envy in Breede for his advanced dressing. Bulger had felt no unkindness toward Bean for

was his typewriting that he spoiled one sheet of paper by transcribing two lines of shorthand not meant to be a part of the letter. Only by chance did a certain traffic manager of lines west of Chicago escape reading a briefly worded opinion of the c

the little he had been unable to avoid learning about high railroad finance; fre

and descended to the street-level in company with Bulger. Bean would have preferred to walk down; he suffered the sens

. Bulger proffered cigarettes from a silver

orders,"

ggested Bulg

me somethi

r," now suggested the hospitable Bulger.

-liver," said Bean. "Got to

Uncle Cuthbert. Say, goin' up those stairs where I live I cert'n'ly must 'a' sounded like a well-known clubman gettin' home from an Elks' banquet. Head, next A.M.?-ask me, ask me! Nothing of the kind! D

have termed "a smooth little piece of work." Bean was not this. Of all his terrors women, as objects of purely male attention, were the greatest. He longed for them, he looked upon such as were desirable with what he believed to be an evil eye, but he had learned not to go too close. They talked, they disconcerted him horribly. And if they didn't talk they looked dangerous, as if they knew too mu

and the two stood a moment on Broadway. Breede, the last to

ulger, disrespectfully applying to Breede a term that had more tha

d the two squabs. Young one's only a flapper, but the o

his eyes unaccountably came to rest in the eyes of the young one-the flapper. He saw only the eyes, and he felt that the eyes

ecovering, and speaking in what he

got kidneys in his feet. I made a hit with her, too, on the level, but say! nothin' doing there for old John W. me! I dropped the thing like it was poison ivy. Me

o daughter of Breede's should ever wed him. Bulger was e

e the queen in black,' I says to Max, jes' so she could hear, y' understand. Say, did she gimme the eye. Not at all! Not at all! Old William H. Smoothy, I guess yes. Pretty soon a gink setting beside her

led into the car and found a seat, still trembling from that collision. From across the aisle a pretty girl surveyed him with veiled insolence. He furtively felt of his neutral-tinted cravat and took his hat off to see if there could be a dent in it. The girl, having plumbed h

g from one foot to the other, and seeming to be on the point of having words about it. This was not long to be endured. Bean glanced out in feigned dismay, as if at a desired cross-street he had carelessly passed, sprang toward the door of the car and caromed heavily against a tired working

oy gored his right side with the corners of an unyielding box while a dreamy-eyed man who, as Bulger would have said, had apparently been sopping it up like you see some do, leaned a friendly elbow on his shoulder, dented his new hat and from time to time stepped elabor

It was bad enough when you walked, with people jostling you a

ily pilgrimage and he popped from the crowd on

cravat, readjusted the shoulder lines of the coat appertaining to America's greatest eighteen-dollar suit-"$18.00-No More; No Less!"-and with a fear-quickened hand discove

e policeman might come up and make an ugly row because he had let himself be robbed in a public conveyance

l development as the eighteen dollars had achieved, and walked away. He had always known the watch would go. Now it was gone, no more worry. Good enough! As he walked he rehearsed an explanation

n on a background of pure white. On the body this golden brown was distributed with that apparent carelessness which is Art. Overlaying the sides and back were three patches of it about the size and somewhat the shape of maps of Africa as such are commonly to be observed. In the colouring of the noble brow and absurdly wide jaws a more tender care was evident. There was the same golden

rantic licking of the glass where Bean had provocatively spread a hand. Perceiving this intimacy to be thwarted by some mysterious barrier to be felt but not seen, he backed away, fell forward upon his chest, the too-big paws outspread, and smiled from a vasty pink cavern. Between th

until he had made in the sawdust a bed that suited him. Into this he sank and was instantly asleep, hi

rated the store meaning to hear the impossible price. But an angry-looking old man (so Bean thought) had come noisily from a back room and glowered at him threateningly over big spectacles. So he had hastily priced a convenient jar of goldfish for which he felt no affection whatever, m

with apprehension each day as he neared the place, lest some connoisseur had forestalled him. He quickened to a jealou

the store, very businesslike, and Bean had felt that he might be taking his last look at a loved one. Lawless designs throbbed in his brain-a wild plan to shadow the man to his home-to

al utterance that shrieked over and over, "Oh, what a fool! Oh, what a fool!"-he turned away. What need to say that, with half the opp

ant and might be looked at by simpletons who couldn't keep watches. He bought an evening paper that shrieked with hydro

ust also have served that day for a "Business Men's Lunch, 35 cts.," as advertised on a wall placard. Several business men seemed to have eaten there-careless men, their min

to suppress a strange, perverse thrill of disappointment at this result-that there should be the name of no one he knew in all those lists of the mangled. His food came and he ate, still striving-the game of childhood had become unconscious habit with him now-to make hi

ESS C

nt ... Cl

home

aralleled Euro

he Unaske

eminent scientists to give a brief series of tests in this city

y. Was his present state a reward or a penance? From the time of leaving the office to the last item in that

who answered the

curtains parted at the rear of the room and the Countess Casanova stood before him. It could have been no other; her lustrous, heavy-lidded dark eyes swept him soothingly. Her hair was a marvellously piled storm-cloud above a full, well-rou

ed him before the table at the room's centre and sat confronting him from the other

ingularly pure and homelike American accent. It was the spe

ed his face with th

sely psychic,"

very medium he had ever c

azed dreamily

e heart, for a very powerful hand on the other side is guardin' you night an' day. They tell me your initials is

aused. Bean wa

ite a question on it. Don't lemme see it, mind! When you got it all wrote out,

etly, well below

in my last

, with elbows on the table, pressed it to his brow. If the

ad from which he

r magnetism flow into that question. Excuse me! I left the sla

tains, but reappeared very s

!" She presented him with a double sla

between them, enclosing within its two sections a tiny fragment of slate p

now, how could it be? I leave it to you, friend. I ain't seen your question; you held it a minute an

ouldn't know his question and no human power could write on the inside of that slate w

nds at rest there in plain sight. The medium closed her eyes. Bean waited, his breath quickening. Little nervous crinklings b

ed. The ensuing sil

ooked a little way into his dead and dread past. Apparently upon the very surf

e you was Nap

on formed that here was something to his discredit, something one wouldn't care to have known. He had read as little hist

sure there can't be

with a suspicion that she might doubt his honesty-and then of the astounding answer. Thus enlightened, she protested that there could be no doubt about th

d significantly; "pomps and

ogether what fragments of da

or of

ird bell, perhaps one of those sc

sban' of Mary Antonett, an' they both got arreste

s, after all, was a mere instrument of higher intelligence, an

leave me in a body if I take

ing this very threat or something lik

t students of the occult. The advertisement, it is true, had specifically ment

ole

ed the Countess, "an' if you g

the palpitating one, and blind

sregarded them; disregarded, too, the slight figure that paused a momen

ole