# The Popular Magazine/Volume 26/Number 5/Further Chronicles of Norroy, Diplomatic Agent

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from The Popular Magazine, 1912 Nov 15, pp. 53-72. This tale, along with the sequels published in The Popular Magazine seemed to have been reworked into Slaves of the Lamp. Being the Adventures of Yorke Norroy in His Quest of the Four Jade Plates
The Further Chronicles of Norroy, Diplomatic Agent
By George Bronson-Howard Author of “Snobs,” “Yorke Norroy, Diplomatic Agent,” Etc.
(A Novelette)

### PROLOGUE.

Yardly Strong, captain in his imperial Chinese majesty's cavalry, unstrapped his cartridge belt, swung his holsters to the table, and sank into his chair, sighing wearily. It had been an arduous day of service, and not one to his liking. Catching rats in a trap hardly appealed to him as a manly sport, and his service of the day approximated that. He knew, of course, that the end in view was very wise. The empire had determined to stamp out the opium curse, and no doubt her drastic method was the best if effectual service was to be done; but he was sick of the slaughter of defenseless men.
He had dismissed his servants to their beds, and was alone in the great yamen that had formerly been occupied by Hung-Tshi-Ling, one of the masters of the Chik-Ling opium factory. Hung had been beheaded that day, his wives and children sold into slavery. The place had been effectually denuded of most of its costly furnishings by the mob that poured in whenever the soldiers had made an arrest. A few tattered hangings, a broken dragon lamp, an American bed, some pottery of the Ming dynasty, a Japanese landscape or two; save for these and the few articles of his kit ranged about on small, inlaid tables, there was little else in the state bedroom that had served for Hung's slumbers.
Strong jacked off his boots, stripped away his golden-colored tunic, and blew out the candles. It had been several days since he had slept comfortably in pajamas; one never knew just what form the rioting would take, and it was well to be prepared. Outside, in the public square, his soldiers drowsed on their arms, the sentinels at stated intervals droning out some gutturals that stood for: “All's well.”
“Seven Precious Dragons,” to give the town its literally translated name, was the seat of the opium monopoly. From India, Persia, Turkey, from all the provinces of the great Manchu empire itself, from all places, in fact, where poppy fields were a source of revenue, such gum opium as was intended for the use of the smoker was shipped to Seven Precious Dragons where stood the two great factories that possessed the secret of preparing the poppy for the pipe. It was a secret process, one that had been discovered hardly a hundred years ago by the first Hung-Tshi-Ling, a great chemist—probably the greatest of his time. In the youth of the first Hung, opium had been rolled into pellets and eaten, and the deleterious effects upon the system had been so great as to compel Hung himself—who was addicted to the habit—to cease the use of the drug. It was then that he made it the subject of analytical research; it was he who had discovered the remarkable effect heat had upon it. In the process that he invented, most of the nineteen alkaloids that make up the ordinary gum opium were banished; and, by the invention of the complicated opium pipe, the more obvious physical ill effects were somewhat abated.
Had it not been for Hung-Tshi-Ling, the First, there would have been no opium menace to-day. The secret of preparing Shandoo, as the smoking opium was called, rested entirely with him and his descendants. The two factories in Seven Precious Dragons, a little hill town in Shantung Province, were owned and controlled by the descendants of his two sons.
Both factories had gone up in smoke this very day; and every descendant of Hung-Tshi-Ling had bowed his head under the sword of the executioner. It had been Yardly Strong's task to round up the opium makers. Acting on the advice of the government spies, he had arrested not only all of the Hungs, but the mere employees of the factories as well. He relinquished his charges at Execution Gate, where twenty men, wielding great, sharp swords, had beheaded them in batches.
He turned over on Hung's bed, pressing his hands to his eyes, trying to keep out the bloody sight. He was a soldier; a man accustomed to death; but wholesale butchery was a little out of his line. He tried to see the wisdom of his superiors in office; the bland viceroy, a cultivated gentleman, a graduate of an English university; the affable prince, a Harvard and St. Cyr man; the mustachioed Manchu general, one of the White Banner, who had attended the Ecole St. Louis, and had a year at West Point. All had deprecated the necessity, but not one had denied it was a necessity.
“When we have burned the factories and executed all the workers, the smoking of opium will be dead,” Prince Shen, leader of the reform party and president of the Anti-opium League had said. “No one except the descendants of Hung know how to prepare the Shandoo. Chemists have worked on it since, here and all over the world, but no one has discovered the secret. Hung-Tshi-Ling, the First, was a genius. Had he not been a user of the drug himself, he might have been of great benefit to the world. As it was, he was its greatest curse. 'The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children,' says your own Book of Faith. Think; for every man we must execute in Seven Precious Dragons, there are a thousand victims of the first Hung's deadly discovery. It is fate, Captain Strong.”
And so the secret of Shandoo was dead; dead out there in Execution Yard, where heads lay like bowling balls carelessly thrown. Dead, yes; dead as the hearts of the wives and the little children gone into the slave dealers' yamens, to be bargained for because of their beauty, their strength, or their cleverness. The house of Hung-Tshi-Ling, the house that had furnished great chemists, brilliant scholars, noted soldiers—one of the great Red Girdle families—was done; sold into slavery.
Yardly Strong was young, and he had suffered unjustly in his own country. It was but natural that his sympathies should be extended to the losing side. Of opium he knew little—as little as does the average man. As far as he could apprehend, the danger was not to the person, but to the state; it made people lazy, killed their ambition. But suppose they wanted to be lazy; suppose they were content without ambition? Was that any business of the state's?
He groaned as he thought of the bright-eyed, fair-skinned young Chinese, one of the last batch he had escorted to Execution Gate; a Harvard man, dressed in Bond Street clothes, and wearing a fraternity pin pinned to his waistcoat. He had been one of the Hungs; a submanager in the canning department, he told Strong; saw to it that the cans of opium were air-tight. He had chatted with his captor all the way to the gate.
“I specialized in pneumatics,” he had said. “It was no easy thing sealing those cans; opium swells and falls with every change of temperature; sometimes it's liable to burst the cans, then again it sinks down until it only seems half full. Lots of air bubbles in it.”
He had written the name of a girl in Boston on a card, and given it to Strong.
“You write her, and tell her how I—how I ended up,” he finished, with a wistful little laugh. “Dare say we deserve it; I'm not much on ethics myself. She's a Christian girl; got me to go to church with her. She didn't realize we had Confucius a long time ago, and that Buddhism came before Christianity, and has all its cardinal principles. I humored her. She was a nice girl.”
As he passed into Execution Yard he had shot out his cuffs over his gloves, hummed a little tune from a Gayety success, and waved airily to Strong.
“So long, captain,” he had said.
If only he hadn't talked English, worn those clothes, and spoken about that girl. It brought the thing too near home. Strong had seen many executions; he could visualize this one so well. The long rows of silent, stolid Chinese folk, sitting on their haunches, with their hands tied behind their backs; the executioner stepping, almost blithely, along the line; each victim bending his neck; the flamelike descent of the sword in the afternoon sun, with its sharp, white-hot hiss; and then a trunkless head, that blinked in glass-eye fashion at a world in which it took no interest.
In the streets outside, the sound of steady marching, the clink of metal, the droning, guttural cries of the exiles as they marched from their homes, their birthplace, was mingled with the heavy clatter of the Peking carts on the rough road, the wailing of infants, the dragging of heavy articles from the houses. The imperial mandate had gone forth; by sunrise the town of Seven Precious Dragons must be evacuated by its inhabitants; not a single man, woman, or child, save the soldiers, was to be within its walls; for, before the red streamers of dawn turned the sky pink as a warning of their approach, there would be redder streamers to greet them, and challenge their sanguinary hue. At five o'clock Seven Precious Dragons was to be set on fire, and the soldiers were to encamp outside until it burned to the ground.
Four hundred thousand tons of opium had already been located in the warehouses of the factories; the factories themselves, with all their complicated machinery and any papers bearing on the making of Shandoo were burned already. How much more opium, machinery, papers—recipes and such—the town might contain the officials did not know. Certainly none got past the blue-uniformed customs officials at the three gates of the town, who ransacked all household goods passing out, before marking the passports of the exiles satisfactorily.
They went, stolid, patient folk, for the most part quietly, leaving their property, their little shops, all that they held dear in the way of association, to begin life over again somehow, or perhaps to die of hunger, cold, disease in their exodus. Yardly Strong was glad it was a small town; there was only a matter of two thousand people—maybe less. He tried to tell himself it was best for them in the end, for the townspeople had existed only by reason of the opium manufacture, and, with the factories gone, trade conditions would be hopeless. But he was not an adept at comforting sophistries.
He tossed in the bed, finding little comfort, and very small prospect of sleep; the fact that he must be awake at four o'clock to assist in the destruction of the town kept him unquiet; a prey to remorse and regret. It was useless for him to tell himself that he had nothing to do with the order; that his duty as a soldier was to obey.
Finally, he stiffened his muscles, determining that he would force sleep, held himself quiet, inert. It was a good counterfeit of sleep; everything was still except his brain,
He heard something move; something scratching like a rat on the outside of the wall near the head of his bed. It scratched cautiously, waited, scratched again. He heard something snap, as though a catch had been released. Just the slightest glimmer of light notified his closed eyes that there was illumination about, with which he had nothing to do. Felt-padded feet shuffled across the mattinged floor. The illumination became stronger. Strong could feel heat near his face, and hear rapid, frightened breathing. A trigger clicked.
He lay quite still, snoring regularly. There was a sigh of relief, the light moved away, the breathing became less labored. He waited a while, finally one eyelid quivered, unlocked itself from the other, and let a glint of the light in on a distended pupil.
In a little patch of light cast by a small lantern, he saw a squatting figure, its back turned to him, an old-fashioned revolver on the floor beside it. One of the boards of the floor was being levered up with a small steel crowbar, but levered gently, and so as to make a minimum of noise. Strong did not endeavor to reason why this intruder was in his room. He was accustomed to acting before thinking in moments of peril. His Luger pistols were under his pillow. He began to work his right hand cautiously toward one of them; but desisted immediately, for the board the stranger was levering had bounced upward with a snap; and the squatting person, instantly afraid, had grasped his weapon, and turned quickly to view the man on the bed.
Satisfied with Strong's quiescence, he turned away, pulling the board out of the way, and reaching down eagerly for something under the flooring. At that moment Strong fired at the lantern. The noise of the shot and the disappearance of the light seemed simultaneous. Strong leaped directly for the spot where the light had been, and his hands encountered human flesh. He threw his left arm athwart the intruder's neck, caught a hand with his free one. Heavy pressure ensued; a bone snapped, there was a scream, a relaxation of the body, and a tumble to the floor.
Strong fired his revolver in air. He had dropped it as he clinched; now his fingers encountered it on the floor. The momentary pink puff showed a slinking person with a dangling arm arising and groping wildly. He hurled himself forward. He did not wish to kill. There had been too much killing to-day, and the person was Chinese.
He had rocked upward, fastening his hand on one of the teak taborets. Here there were matches. He groped, seized the box, lit the candle. The intruder was cowering over by the wall. A part of the wall hung open; evidently a secret passage.
“Go the way you came,” he said in Chinese, pointing the weapon in his hand. “Go. I do not wish to kill you. Go!”
He advanced as he spoke, the flame of the candle seeming to drift over his left shoulder as he held it high. He could not see the face of the other; the uninjured arm had been raised, the kimono sleeve of it hiding the features.
“Go!” said Strong impatiently.
The man paused, moaning a little over his arm; apparently undecided. Then he did a bold thing. He strode forward to meet Strong, and, still shielding his own face, stared into the American's eyes.
“The box—there!” he said, speaking with restraint. “It is my property. I came for it. May I take it?”
Strong hardly heard him. He knew only that he was showing mercy to a burglar, a pillager; a might-have-been murderer; and that the man seemed to be ungrateful. He pushed him back to the wall at the point of his Luger, backed him to the secret passage, from which came a gust of dank air that danced the candle flame about.
“Into that—and no more talk,” he said sternly. “Get into it and go before I shoot. Into it, I say.”
The man threw over a leg; Strong pushed the rest of his body after. He heard a scuffling sound, a heavy fall. Craning his neck over and holding the candle high, he saw that the man had fallen down the steep and narrow steps—a good ten feet. He slammed shut the swinging panel. There was a soldier's bayonet on the table near the bed. He drove it into the panel, with sturdy blows from the butt of his Luger; drove it deep, half its length.
“That settles the secret passage,” he muttered, satisfied. It was some relief to think he had spared. life when he could have taken it.
“I wonder what the fellow wanted?”
He turned to the flooring that had been disturbed. A teakwood box, highly polished, was standing on its beam ends, half out of the aperture, half in it. He forced open the lock by hammering on it with the ever-useful Luger.
There were six jade plates inside; good green jade, worked with Chinese characters. He could read Chinese fairly well; but then, as this signifies he had memorized a large number of words, it also signifies that there were thousands he had not memorized, and the words on the plates—or one should say the characters—were in the latter class. Not that he bothered much over the inscription; the intrinsic value of the plates was sufficient to have warranted a burglarious entry. No doubt one of the servants of the Hung household——
He put them back into the teakwood box, inwardly congratulating himself on the intrusion, Here were six valuable souvenirs. He would ship them to the “little girl” as soon as he reached Shanghai.
Meanwhile, sleep was impossible. He lit all the candles again, picked up a limp-leather book, and tried to read; but the sound of the marching feet, the little cries and sounds of the exodus, drove him instead into a profound train of thought; one that included thoughts of what they were doing in New York just about then; what shows were playing; and how the horseshoe at the opera looked. There was “the little girl,” too; there always is a girl; and his was so lonely a life. He chafed at the poverty that had sent him overseas in search of wealth, only to find himself, at twenty-seven, a captain in his imperial Chinese majesty's forces at thirty-five hundred dollars (silver) per annum. It would be a long time before he could go home wealthy on that.
And how he wanted to go home! He was in the sort of humor that makes men talk about “God's country.” They mean it at the time, and it is not for us to make easy japes concerning it. Yardly Strong had borne with privation, loneliness, and homesickness for two years now; in the Philippine constabulary, the Canton customs—the old imperial maritime, and now this! The day of bloodshed and burning had put the climax on it all. He was tired—dead tired.
When the notes of a bugle roused him out of his reverie to communicate the fact that he was to get his men under arms to make way for the conflagration, his orderly entered. To him he gave the box with the jade plates, promising him an extra yen or two for its care.
Later, from the near-by hills, he watched the black, thick smoke rise in a cloud over Seven Precious Dragons, and out of it come the leaping tongues of the fire monster; he saw them mount high and higher; saw buildings crumble; felt the ground shake under him as the dynamite exploded in the proper places; and finally saw it all reduced to a long, low-lying red furnace with a thin trail of smoke creeping over it. To his nostrils was wafted the pungent odor of the burned opium.
“Well, that's the end of the pen-yen habit,” said Holmes, his sunburned lieutenant. “A few million drug users will have to discover some new way of banishing their sorrows now.”
“Nonsense!” said an artillery officer, who had been standing near by, field glasses in hand. “There's apt to be one person escape with the secret of making Shandoo, and then all this butchery and arson will have been useless.”
“Looks like we made a pretty good job of it,” said Strong curtly.
“But if one person with the secret did escape, eh?” queried Holmes. “Good Lord; how I'd like to be that fellow! He'd be the richest man in the world in a year's time—that is, if he'd be connected with the right people.”
Over the edge of the fire line, a rim of shell pink showed in the eastern sky.
“Lets hope nobody did,” was Strong's sober response. “Let's hope that dawn stands for something.”
I.—THE FIRST ROUND

### CHAPTER I.
#### The Murder Of Yardly Strong.

Yorke Norroy stood, a strange, brooding figure, by the window—strange in that those who knew him only as an elegant insouciant should have found him brooding. Important disclosures which would have brought a nation to gasping often left him quite calm, betraying little concern, except, perhaps, for a flick of dust on his impeccable boots, slight disarrangement in the set of his collar. But the tale the secretary of state had told in the present instance left too many unexplored fields to the imagination for personal appearance to be considered, even by so arrant a dandy as the secretary of the Washington Cotillion Club, to which office Mr. Norroy had recently been elected, after much persuasion had been exerted by its members to allow them to make him a candidate. Those same members were not apt to see ever a Yorke Norroy who took anything seriously enough to brood over it.
Imperatively important as the cabinet minister knew this thunderclap of an affair to be, he realized that it was even more calamitously far-reaching by Norroy's attitude. Norroy's belief in himself had been so well justified in the past that his habit was to make no moment of tasks assigned him. The rescue of state prisoners from fortress prisons so grimly guarded as Kron and St. Basil, the extrication of a prince and of a newly elected South American president from seemingly impossible positions, the alterations of boundary lines on the map of the world, the acquisition of new territory for the United States, and so on—these had been received in no such ominous silence as this by Yorke Norroy. The instructions given in this very room by one of these men to the other, had they been overheard, at times would have meant as many separate armings of nations. Yet in this instance was involved nothing except what would occur within a space of eagle-ruled territory between the Atlantic and the Pacific.
The secretary of state ventured to break the silence by saying something to this effect. But he said it in a tone that lacked conviction.
“True,” agreed Norroy. “It is merely my own war. War between Yorke Norroy and one hundred thousand million or more little demons, each armed with a deadly dart. War against dollars, Mr. Secretary, in a country where dollars do anything. And dollars have started with murder—cold-blooded, calculated, mercenary murder. Do you know why I go into this with a somewhat heavy heart, Mr. Secretary? Because, if I am to succeed, I can see blood on my hands. I fight to win. There is no question of superior brains where a wholesale murder is concerned. It seems I must murder, too. And, worst of all, I must be ready to murder only subordinates. The fat principal sits rubbing his scented hands, protected by the vast machinery of law that we ourselves uphold. I have schemed and plotted with you and with my own agents to help keep the dollars and the lives of such men in safety, thinking it was for our country. But I give you my word—a thing as unbreakable as an india-rubber ball—that if necessity compels the sacrifice of a single subordinate, I'll not stop until I've done for Philip Hurrish, too.”
“Yorke!” protested the secretary of state. “Yorke!”
“Harry,” returned the secret agent, “it is the only condition on which I agree to get those plates.”
“To get them—that is enough; that's the country's danger—the danger to every American of this and the next generation. The enemy on the outside—we've learned how to fight him. But let this secret enemy continue to exist, and—don't let's talk of it, Yorke. It's the real race suicide our mutual friend mistakenly ascribes to another sign of the times. It's——”
“Mr. Secretary,” interrupted Norroy, becoming official in his manner again, and smiling, “I have just spent nearly ten minutes defining what it is to myself. Now, let's get to facts. Facts are sane things; theories anarchic. First, Anderson's report:
“Yardly Strong, captain, imperial Chinese army, murdered in his lodgings on the Street of the Maimed Linnet. His belongings ransacked. Some jewelry of slight value taken, no doubt, as a blind. Archie Bell; agent of Philip Hurrish (see my report nineteenth instant) still in evidence. Believe all suspects held to be guiltless, although doubtless one or more will be executed by local authorities to 'save their faces.' Murder undoubtedly committed through instrumentality of Bell. No trace of plates found. I attended magisterial examination of scene of murder.
Anderson.”
The message was in code; through long acquaintance with which, Norroy read as easily as he did English, French, or German. The name signed to the report was that of an officer of the United States army, who served his government in a dual rôle, for he was also of that far-reaching service over which Norroy presided.
Norroy took up the second message, and read:
“As an American official, have been accorded every courtesy in Yardly Strong's case. Send this message hurriedly; may mean much. Three postal receipts for three registered packages found in Strong's pocketbook; all articles consigned to 'Miss Holly Lea, care Dramatic Mercury, New York City.' One kimono, value sixty-two yen; one set tortoise-shell combs, et cetera, and pongee material, value one hundred and ten yen; one set ornaments, unspecified, value one thousand two hundred yen. Postage on last very heavy. Do not know how long it will be before Archie Bell gains this same information. Weight seems to indicate last package was plates. Small value set on it shows Strong ignorant at time. Sent three months ago.
Anderson.”
“I should have known about this long ago, Mr. Secretary,” said Norroy, wrinkling his forehead.
“Strong didn't take Anderson in his confidence until two weeks ago,” the secretary retorted acidly. “As you know, Anderson wasn't detailed to Shan-Hai-Kuan to look into the matter. If we gave the thing any thought at all, we thought these devastating plates had been destroyed. Strong picked them up by accident, of course. From what Anderson wires, even a Chinese would have hard work transcribing the words carven on them, they're so deeply incrusted with dirt, mold, and Heaven knows what. Strong didn't tell Anderson what he'd done with them; Anderson thought he had them somewhere about his lodgings or locked up in the barracks.”
Norroy nodded impatiently.
“It was only when Hurrish's agent, Bell, made Strong that extraordinary offer that Strong began to suspect what he had in the plates—naturally, Harry. And, Anderson having been his classmate at the Point, and Strong having to get somebody's advice, confidences were exchanged. Anderson—keep your eye on Anderson; he'll be useful to me in the future; great discernment—had sense enough to see the peril to our country if Hurrish managed to get those plates in. How much did you pay Strong for them?”
“One hundred thousand yen,” replied the secretary of state. “And I think it was rather decent of the poor chap to accept it, considering how much more he could have gotten from Hurrish's agent.”
“Bell trebled, I think you said?” asked Norroy. “Pardon me for getting all these details straight, but remember I haven't got the cobwebs of that Turkish affair out of my head yet, and I left a lot of unfinished work to cut down here as soon as you wired you wanted me. Carson Huntley and I sat up all night on the express coming here while I explained the Turkish thing to him. I hope it isn't too big for Carson. However, Bell trebled your price, eh?”
Norroy glanced at his watch every other minute. For he had the Congressional Limited to catch.
“Bell trebled it,” went on Norroy, after the secretary had nodded. “Then Captain Strong paid for his slight attack of spread-eagleism with his life. He boasted to Anderson how he had called Bell and his employer, Hurrish, human bloodsuckers; told Bell that sooner than sell him the plates to work inealculable harm to humanity, he would break them into little bits and burn them. Bell apparently feared this, for while Strong was at Anderson's rooms telling him this, and the rest that shows in Anderson's cablegram of the day before——”
Norroy picked up another cablegram, and read:
“Strong says the only way for him to deliver plates is to journey to United States. Have advanced him thousand for expenses trip. Deposit balance his credit Tenth National, New York. You can trust Strong. Feel highly elated.
“I say,” continued Norroy, “while Strong was closing his bargain with us at Anderson's rooms, Bell adopted the high hand, and had Strong's rooms broken into and searched. Strong returned before the search was completed, and his murder followed.”
Norroy rose as he spoke, glancing uneasily at his watch. The secretary of state had followed his reasoning with admiring nods.
“You've reconstructed the situation precisely, Yorke, I think,” he said. “Now, the only thing I'm afraid of is: Did Strong warn this girl he sent the plates to?”
“Give him credit for more wisdom than that,” answered Norroy, now viewing the dial of the watch as he would a personal enemy. “Afraid she might get to talking to other women—and in the theatrical profession, wireless telegraphy was invented long before Marconi hit it.”
He sprang to the telephone as it rang on the secretary's desk.
“Yes, yes, yes; long distance, yes.”
He put his hand over the receiver.
“Wammell at last,” he said; then quickly into the receiver: “Yes, yes,Wammell! Where's she playing this week? Freefield, New Jersey? Freefield—where's that? Good! I'll motor from Trenton. Get me there—at Trenton, I mean—by telephone. And have a man and a motor waiting for me. Taking the C. L. Lanier watching Hurrish's house still? Right! And Furnival the Hurrish office? Good! Keep 'em there. At Trenton, mind!”
He hung up.
As he stood at the door, a lean, sinewy, bronzed, and capable figure, the secretary's weary eyes lighted; for Norroy, as he now looked, personified the man above the law, who kept laws inviolate by breaking them himself.
“Lord pity Hurrish!” he said, with a smile.
He was speaking of Philip Hurrish, the chief figure in certain malodorous investigations by Congress. Soldiers in the Philippines had held their noses when they opened Hurrish's tinned meats, and, if they ate them at all, smothered them in condiments. Had they become vegetarians, instead, the cholera, dysentery, and fever would not have found them such easy prey. Philip Hurrish, whose factory and wholesale drug supply corporation furnished cocaine, morphine, and a sirupy opium paste to thousands of illicit peddlers and unscrupulous druggists, with labels on them that described them as “cough sirups,” “universal panaceas,” and so forth.
“I only ask,” said Norroy, cutting the air viciously with his wandlike walking stick, “I only ask that he comes my way.”

### CHAPTER II.
#### “Gentleman” or “Sport”?

“Give Me Honest Men for Employees and Partners, and Honest Men for Competitors,” was a motto that hung over the desk of Philip Hurrish. The sentiment sounds most admirable; just the sort of thing for a vestryman to have said; it made Hurrish smile ironically when he read it.
Honest employees, partners, competitors; they would not cheat. He might cheat as much as he liked; even that would not tempt honest men to imitate him.
“Give Me Honesty in Others; It Makes Them Easier to Cheat,” is the real translation of Mr. Hurrish's motto through life.
Being so great a lover of rectitude—in others—it seems strange that Philip Hurrish employed Lycurgus Crawe, whose reputation was as bad as Hurrish's meat; but Hurrish had faced before the difficulty of finding honest partners for a swindle; hence “Curgy Crawe,” as his photographs were captioned under the Bertillon system of police identification before he rose high enough in shady dealing to have his likenesses removed from “The Hall of Fame.”
Even so, Hurrish did not practice being seen with Crawe in public. There were some appearances still to be observed by a vestryman of a fashionable church. Yet Crawe had come direct from a long interview in the private library of Hurrish's house on Madison Avenue, and had been driven to Freefield, New Jersey, in the eighty-ninety foreign car that had won the cup for Hurrish in the fall of that year.
Another car, almost its duplicate, which had been hurried from New York to meet Norroy at Trenton, stood, minus its sparking plug, along the curb in front of the Freefield Opera House; around it a somewhat curious crowd that increased when Crawe left his machine to keep it company. Such monsters as these, with long, thin, cruel-looking hoods and searchlights like the eyes of dinosaurs, stopped seldom in Freefield, a town where uninteresting things were manufactured, to the manufacture of which forty thousand people were necessary.
You see many persons of Crawe's type on Broadway; they are chiefly remarkable for their fear of what waiters, chauffeurs, and hat-room boys think of them; they wish to purchase drinks for everybody at the bars of their second-class clubs; and their answer to any implied merit in anything is: “Does it get the money?”
Crawe took a seat in a stage box of the Freefield Opera House, and yawned ostentatiously through the performance of an act of trapeze performers, tried to make the yawn more ostentatious when a ventriloquist performed for twenty minutes more, and watched with quickened interest after a stage hand had placed cards announcing “Miss Holly Lea” both right and left of the proscenium arch.
Norroy had seen Crawe enter; hence he huddled up so that he might be less conspicuous in his seat at the end of one of the exit aisles. Curgy Crawe leaned forward in the box as the girl came on. Norroy seemed asleep. The girl was dressed as a Pierrette. A man in the wings operated a “baby lime” for her benefit; this, from her song, one gathered represented “The Mischievous Moon.”
Her voice was small and sweet; her gestures had the charming awkwardness of extreme youth; but she displayed the too rare talent of expressive pantomime.
She came for her second song as a boy. She was thin, small-boned, but finely made, with small hands and feet, and now, with the Pierrette cap off, very, very young.
“A child—to be mixed up in a thing like this!” thought Norroy regretfully. He glanced at Crawe, who was watching Miss Lea with absorbed interest.
Crawe's affiliation with Hurrish and his hasty departure from Manhattan had been duly reported to Norroy by the direct long-distance call at Trenton.
“I must get to the girl before Crawe does,” Norroy told himself.
“Archie Bell trebled it!” kept running through his mind. The state department could not afford to bid against Hurrish; the secretary of the treasury would countenance no such expenditures. The amount paid into Strong's account at the Tenth National was the highest the secretary of state could squeeze out of the financial secretary. That was now Holly Lea's. Another cablegram received from Anderson since Norroy left Washington had been telephoned to Wammell, and a report of it included in the Trenton message to Norroy; Strong had left a will—everything to the girl.
The law gave her that. Norroy's business was to play on her conscience as Anderson had played on Strong's. And he knew if she acceded that he must do what Anderson had not done for Strong—he must protect her from an enemy as ruthless to one sex as to the other.
Holly Lea's third dress was as typical of the “family vaudeville” house as the single long-stemmed rose she carried—a trailing black gown.
Toward the end of Miss Lea's act, Norroy made his way behind the scenes. No one interfered with him. Vaudeville performers have too many licensed parasites for strict rules about strangers “back stage” to be enforced, and Norroy knew this as he knew most little human apparently useless things.
Holly Lea's dressing room was No. 4. It was dingy, damp, gaseous, lighted, and apparently heated, only by a single jet.
“I don't mind smoking at all,” Miss Lea said, as Norroy rose and apologized at her entrance a little later. She had seen men like him, but Yardly Strong had been the nearest approximation she had known personally; and Strong had served too much of his time in out-of-the-way holes and corners to have preserved niceties of grooming.
She waited expectantly for Norroy to explain his intrusion. Norroy studied her a moment before adding anything to his apology.
“Why aren't you on Broadway?” he asked finally.
“I couldn't get anything but chorus work,” she answered, quite simply. She closed the dressing-room door, and sat down with her back to the mirror—a very un-Thespic position—facing him. “Are you in the profession?”
Norroy shook his head.
“I have a friend, though, who's to produce 'The Devonshire Maid' in a month or so. He's been looking for a girl who looks innocent and eighteen, and who also can dance, act, and sing well enough not to counteract the other qualifications. I can get you that part.”
Her eyes grew suddenly wet with tears. She considered Norroy through them.
“Why?” she asked, in a choked voice.
“It's a rather long story, and I have a very short time to tell it in,” answered Norroy, glancing at the door, as though he expected it to succumb to some Joshualike influence. Crawe wouldn't wait long after Holly's turn before coming “back.”
“Did you love Captain Yardly Strong?” Norroy asked crisply, and eyed her. Her manner was undecided.
“That's enough,” said Norroy.
“I suppose I should have loved him. He was very kind to me,” acknowledged the girl. “But love? I've wanted to get on so much. I've only thought about that. I've worked so hard; I've spent everything I made on my voice, on my dancing. I've crossed to Europe second class, just to study, and lived in the dingiest places. I met him in Paris. He insisted on buying me an evening gown, and he showed me all I've ever seen of 'life'—that is, if you call gayety 'life.' And he's sent me presents since. But I never said I loved him, although I did tell him I'd marry him if I wasn't well known on Broadway by the time he came back. But you said——” Her voice choked again. “About 'The Devonshire Maid'? Has that anything to do with Captain Strong?”
“Captain Strong——” Norroy began, wondering how to tell her.
“Something's happened to him?” asked Holly Lea, in a pitying voice. Norroy nodded gravely. She interpreted intuitively. “Not dead?” she gasped. She put her head between her hands, and cried softly. The tears were genuine enough. She was young, life was opening before her, and death was terrible.
“He was murdered,” said Norroy, fearful of the expected knock of Crawe, and galloping hastily on, overriding her startled exclamation. “He sent you six green plates that afterward proved to be valuable to a number of people. It was on that account he was murdered. One of the employees of the man responsible for his death is in the theater now. He may be back here at any moment. He will offer you a great deal of money for the plates. I offer you the engagement in 'The Devonshire Maid' and——”
He mentioned the sum left her by Strong's will, taking care not to indicate it was already hers by law. It would be some time before she knew.
She picked at the articles on her dressing table, dabbing at her tear-swollen eyes in the mirror, repeating Strong's name at intervals with a dry sob.
“Poor Captain Strong!” she said, and burst into tears again.
“My child,” whispered Norroy, “I'm sorry to have to bring you such news and to make you an offer in the same breath. But those six plates—it's your duty to give them to me. I'll destroy them before your eyes. The other man wants to use them to bring profit to himself and mischief to the world in general. As much as I feel for you in Captain Strong's case, I must insist on an answer.”
“I don't want the money,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “But if you, mean it about “The Devonshire Maid,” I'll give you the plates on the night I open in New York.”
She refused to look at him. He surveyed her, pursing his lips, and nodding his head.
“You—don't—want—the—money?” he asked slowly.
She shook her head.
“Only the part?”
She nodded.
“And you're afraid I won't keep my word if you give me the plates beforehand? My dear child, why so low an opinion of human nature in general?”
“It isn't that,” she muttered. “Only—only—well, you'll understand on the opening night, if there ever is an opening night on Broadway for me.”
The knock so long feared by Norroy came at last, and Lycurgus Crawe's unctuous, would-be “refined” tone colored the words that asked for admittance from the other side of the door.
“You accept my terms, then?” asked Norroy. He suspected she was only too glad to do so, but there was no time to go into suspicions now; greater difficulties were in his path than he had foreseen. He must keep this Crawe person chained up in Freefield or near by for a day or so in order to have a fair start in the race.
“Will you permit me to act for you in the case of the man who's knocking now? The one—I told you—employed by the one responsible for Captain Strong's death?”
He barely breathed the words.
She turned and faced Norroy, meeting his eyes for the first time. She put her hands in his.
“You trust me?” asked Norroy.
She nodded with childlike solemnity.
Norroy breathed relief. He was free to play his game with Crawe. He opened the door, observing Lycurgus in all the vainglory of a dress coat that fitted but did not become him, a large white flower in his buttonhole, and hands like a boxer's in four-ounce gloves. An expensive label decorated his half-smoked cigar—enough in itself to damn him with Norroy.
The secret agent did not permit Crawe to speak first. As Norroy had turned the handle of the door to admit Crawe, he had by one dexterous movement and several grimaces imparted the air of the “sporting man” to his own impeccable appearance; merely tilting his hat a trifle toward his right ear, jerking his necktie up until it seemed a trifle too full for one of his discriminating taste, and twisted his mouth for speech on the same side favored by his hat. The metamorphosis effected by these slight changes left one who would argue seriously about the great gulf dividing the appearance of “gentleman” and “sport” with no brief at all. Crawe saw in Norroy a brother. Norroy's speech confirmed his sight.
“Well, friend?” queried Norroy, patting the tilted hat, and simulating perfect paralysis of the left side of his mouth.
“Seen you before, ain't I?” asked Mr. Crawe, holding out one of the four-ounce white-gloved hands.
“Maybe so. I'm a Frisco boy. Poodle Dog, Techau's, Marchand's, with a drop in over to Bassity's and the other joints nightly—missin' nothin', pal,” Norroy assured him genially and with a flash of the left canine tooth. “Face's familiar, sport, but the name gets me.”
He looked inquiring.
“Hemingway,” said Crawe.
“So it is, ain't it? Miss Lea, 'low me—Mr. Hemingway. Old frien', m' dear Holly. The coming Edna May, Hemingway, old pal. Buried up to now, but not after a five years' contract with yours truly has been signed, same having been done to-night. Broadway for this little lady, and the brighter they shine's none too bright for her. We Frisco boys show you New Yorkers lots about show business. The old eye, here!”
Norroy evidently meant the one he closed knowingly.
“Never misses, pal Hemingway—the old eye! Sees 'the little lady. Says 'Broadway—in a minute. Money talks. Put up or shut up.' Mine just won't behave when you talk to it like that; regular jack in box. Nothing doing in the contract line, pally, if that's your lay coming 'back' to-night. Little lady closes here to-night; I buy off her contract, take her to your little old island in the big buzz box lying outside—get an eyeful-of it? S'posin' you and I, Hemingway, old pal, step outside, and find a place we can get a wet gill or two while the little lady puts on regular clothes? Hey?”
Crawe smiled uneasily but ingratiatingly.
“Lucky dog!” he said, and elbowed Norroy. “Don't grudge me just a minute of business—not the same kind as yours,” he added hastily. “Not theatrical—private.”
“That's what they all say!” chanted Norroy, dispensing with the use of an eye for a second, as before. “But nay, Hem, me brave old pal, it's nix and never do well on that. It's the kibosh, the saxi, and the horse laugh for him. Lead that 'bull' into the alley and tell him to behave himself. He's too frisky for such an old bull; besides, he's inside thy neighbor's wire fence, where the sagebrush and alfalfa is exclusively neighbor's.”
He took Crawe by the arm.
“I know where we can get the finest little gill ever poured out in Freefield,” said Mr. Yorke Norroy, in tones of their kind, but never connected for a moment with such a person as Norroy in the minds of débutantes, chaperons, and fellow clubmen.
“I tell you,” protested Crawe, beginning to lose his temper, “that this is private.”
“And I tell you,” returned Norroy, making the orifice through which he spoke smaller, if possible, “that there's nothing private's going to pass between you and the new star of Jack Rothwell—not this night, nor yet any other nights. So if you've got no taste for Frisco hospitality in the matter of liquid gills, speak up, and give us a tell. What's the i-dea?”
Holly Lea spoke for the first time, addressing Crawe:
“I don't know what your business is”—she had taken her cue quickly—“but this gentleman is right when he tells you I won't see you alone. So if you have anything to say——”
“Very well” submitted Crawe, but with an ill grace. “I'm a collector; heard you had some green jade that's very ancient, very valuable—you see, I'm honest; I don't conceal from you the fact that it is valuable, Miss Lea.”
Crawe basked in his own self-approval.
“I'm honest. I could cheat you if I wanted to. But I wouldn't. Some men might, but I mightn't. Not Ly—not John Hemingway; not old John!”
“Man who speaks so respectful about his honesty ain't generally developed a familiar acquaintance with it—can't call it by its first name, so to speak,” remarked Norroy.
“Meaning me?” 'asked Crawe, turning suddenly, and showing a vicious mouth.
“Meanin' you, old sport. I got you the minute you stepped over the threshold, as they say in the novels. Lady's under my protection now. She's got something you want to buy, has she? Well, we can bet you're offering less'n it's worth—we'll take that for granted. What's the offer?”
“The offer for six ordinary-looking green-jade plates is a thousand dollars a plate. Take any one of them to any antique dealer, and see if he'll give you more than a hundred apiece—if you don't believe I'm honest,” said Crawe, with a very good assumption of misunderstood and outraged rectitude.
“Surely not those rather dirty plates you showed me just now?” asked Norroy, turning to Holly, his manner greatly surprised. “Why, they aren't worth any——”
“See; what did I tell you?” demanded Crawe, more virtuous than ever. He trembled with ill-concealed impatience. “You've got the plates here—in this room?”
“Why, yes,” returned Norroy promptly. “And I'll answer for her. Turn over the money, and they're yours.”
A palsy seemed to have settled on Crawe. He had difficulty in reaching for his bill fold. When he produced it, he showed a number of crisp thousand-dollar notes. He selected six of their number, extending them to the girl. She took them. At the same moment Norroy plucked the bill fold from Crawe, extracted the remainder of the notes—a baker's dozen—and crammed them into his own pocket.
Crawe sprang at him; but a look at Norroy's face sent a chill through him. As he afterward told Hurrish: “The ugliest pair of eyes I ever saw. People with eyes like that don't stop at anything, Mr. Hurrish.”
“So you came prepared to pay twenty thousand for those plates, did you, Hemingway, old sport?” he asked, with an unpleasant smile. “Very well; we'll take your twenty thousand—instead of six. You needn't do any yelling about it, because you wouldn't et it back, and I'd have to strong-arm you and throw you out of the window—which some people don't like. Eh, me brave Hemingway?”
“Give me the plates, then!” snarled Crawe.
“Why, sure!” returned Norroy. “They're in that little dressing case at your feet. Just open it; you'll find 'em there, all correct.”
As Norroy had expected, Crawe wasted no time dropping on his knees, jerking the case toward him, and fumbling with the lock.
His back was toward Norroy. The secret agent had seen to that. There must be no outcry in a dressing room. Yet Norroy must detain Crawe until he found out just what Holly Lea was concealing from him; Norroy knew he could not afford to have all the battalions of Hurrish's spies and gorillas turned on him until he had the plates located, at least. Other men might have taken Holly's word that the plates would be delivered at the time of her Broadway opening, but Norroy studied manners and gestures, and paid little attention to words.
Norroy knew he was almost as far away from the plates as Crawe was himself when that worthy opened the dressing case, bending his head as he rifled it. Norroy gauged the exact distance, swung lightly on his toes, and struck Crawe at the angle he had decided upon. Unconsciousness was instantaneous. Crawe crumpled up like a sawdustless doll.
One of those monstrosities known as a “wardrobe trunk” stood open in the corner of the dressing room. Norroy pulled the two sections of the wardrobe trunk wider apart, pushed Crawe into of them, and closed the other on him.
“The key,” he said briefly to Holly Lea.
“He'll suffocate, won't he?” she asked. She was too interested to be shocked.
“Not to offend you,” returned the secret agent, with a slight smile, “your trunk has suffered too much at the hands of baggage smashers to be air-tight. There are numberless holes in it for the air to percolate through. But he may recover consciousness at any minute, so we must work fast. Pack any few heirlooms that you may deem indispensable. The clothes and other articles you've got now won't do for your new position. To-morrow you must be completely outfitted. But anything that's personally sacred?”
“Nothing,” she returned, rather forlornly. She slipped into her rather shabby ponyskin coat. “I'm ready now.”
Norroy sent for the manager of the theater, and enticed several stage hands into the dressing room, paid them, and had them carry the wardrobe trunk to the waiting motor, where, with great difficulty, it was lashed on. He paid the theater manager for dispensing with Holly's services for the remainder of the week—paid liberally—and Norroy and the girl were escorted with much ceremony by manager and chief usher to the car.
Crawe's car, a sleepy chauffeur on the front seat, stood a little way down the street. Norroy smiled.
“New York,” he said to his own driver.

### CHAPTER III.
#### The Jailing of Mr. Crawe.

The motor crept slowly, for the most part, from Freefield to Edgware, the next town. The snow which had been falling steadily since early in the afternoon had healed the hurts of fields and forests, hiding all damage done by its ungenerous cousin, the frost. From the black shapes of farmhouses and barns, orange light came out to lie gratefully on the soft velvet carpet, and the purplish spirals of smoke hung motionless above it.
Holly Lea, her heart beating wildly at this new enterprise in which she found herself, had forgotten all about Mr. Crawe until, at a particularly desolate spot, Norroy bade the chauffeur stop. Together they unlashed the trunk. Crawe's body tumbled out. They placed it in the bottom of the car, covered it with a lap robe, left the trunk in a ditch by the side of the road, and continued on as speedily as the snow would permit toward Edgware. Norroy had not spoken since they entered the car. He smoked innumerable cigarettes, and occasionally glanced at Holly, whose little face was rosy with the cold, whose eyes sparkled, and whose demeanor was carefree.
“What barbarians by nature women are!” he thought. There lay Crawe at her feet, still senseless, and she hardly noticed him. She was thinking of “The Devonshire Maid.” She was also thinking that she must be very much on her guard if she was to deceive so astute a person as Mr. Yorke Norroy concerning those plates. So far——
Norroy leaned over and whispered directions to the chauffeur—a minor member of the secret diplomatic corps—who grinned cheerfully. The car proceeded to the Edgware police station. Norroy descended, passed between the two green lights, and entered the bare room, where a sergeant sat behind some high railings.
“Have to report a case of attempted highway robbery, Mr. Sergeant,” said Norroy politely. “Two men made a felonious attempt to hold us up as we came out of Freefield. We had to fight back; wounded one man, who ran away. The other we stunned. Got him out in the motor; he's still senseless, too. We must go on to New York. What are we to do with him?”
“Do with him!” cried the sergeant ecstatically. Nothing ever happened in Edgware, and this was his opportunity. “You bring him in here—I'll show you!”
Between them, Norroy and the chauffeur brought in the body of Lycurgus Crawe. He was carried to the matron's room; a doctor was summoned. Norroy made out the charge against the supposed highwayman, told a realistic story, gave a false name and address in New York, and impressed upon his hearers that the prisoner was the notorious Lycurgus Crawe, last heard of as an employee of Philip Hurrish. The sergeant's eyes widened at every word. He foresaw yellow-journal notoriety, a trail in sleepy Edgware implicating well-known names, perhaps a woman in the case—for he saw Holly Lea sitting in the motor.
“I will appear to testify cheerfully,” said Norroy. “My telephone number is also written on the card.”
The sergeant shook hands with him as with a benefactor. Norroy returned to the car. He did not speak to Holly until they had left all the lights of Edgware behind them and were passing the splendid glare of the blast furnaces on the outskirts of the town. She was still giggling over what had been done to Mr. Crawe.
“I wonder,” said Norroy, touching her arm lightly, “I wonder if you are laughing at your own cleverness, Miss Holly?”
Something in his tone froze her smile. She saw his eyes in the snow glare. She tried to speak, stammered, hesitated. She did not meet his gaze.
“What do you mean?” she stammered.
“My dear child,” said Norroy, letting the sinister light fade from his eyes, “you see a chance to shine on Broadway in 'The Devonshire Maid.' More, I truly believe you were destined for a musical-comedy favorite. A man comes along and offers you the chance you've been awaiting for so many years. Are you going to refuse it? No; you are going to seize the opportunity with both hands and hold on for dear life.”
“I do-don't understand you,” she returned, but in a tone that implied she understood him very well, but hoped that he would not understand her.
“You see, you weren't meant to be dishonest,” went on Norroy kindly. “A dishonest person would have taken the money I offered, too. But you only wanted the chance to prove you were worthy of the opportunity. So you put off the delivery of the plates until you should have had your chance, didn't you? I'm not angry. Tell me!”
“I really don't understand you at all.”
Holly was quite cool now.
“Really,” ruminated Norroy, “it's a pity to waste you on mere stage playing. What an admirable assistant you would make! You can act, little girl. But the minute you said you wouldn't take the money I understood. You confirmed my suspicions by telling me you wouldn't give me the plates until you had your Broadway opening.”
“Well, wasn't I right?” asked Holly indignantly. “Once you got the plates, would you do anything for me?”
“You mean: 'Once I found you didn't have the plates, would I do anything for you?'” returned Norroy steadily.
Again she failed to meet his gaze.
“Why, what do you mean?” she managed to articulate, but with some difficulty.
“I mean that, after your Broadway opening, you'd have said: 'My dear sir, I'm very sorry I haven't the plates, but I've made good in this play, so whose business is it?' But I can't afford to wait that long for the plates. You'll get your chance at the part just the same as though you had them; also, you'll get the money—it's at the Tenth National Bank now, waiting for you; but really—and when I say 'really' I mean it—you must tell me what's become of them.”
She did not immediately answer. Soon, however, she touched Norroy's arm.
“I suppose you're a professional detective?” she whispered. “I didn't know they were so clever.”
“None of that, Miss Holly,” said Norroy, smiling. “Out with the truth about the plates.”
“I'm sorry,” she murmured. “You don't know how sorry I am. But I sold them.”
Norroy checked an ejaculation, and lighted a cigarette, watching her over the flame of the burning match.
“And I didn't get much for them, either,” she complained bitterly. “Only a few hundred dollars. But I had to have new costumes. They wouldn't book my act with last year's clothes, and the plates were the only things I had that I could get any money on. So I sold them.”
Norroy remained silent. Only a few hours ago this affair, so tremendously important was it, had reduced him to brooding so obsessing that he stared out from the Gothic structure in which he had stood to a street that he knew better than any in the world, and saw nothing. Now he brooded again, but this time he saw many things. He saw millions imperiled through the cruel necessity of a young girl needing a few trumpery clothes with which to keep herself employed and fed. He saw a chase opening up before him apparently endless—the chase after those six green plates. For just how much of their secret was told on each plate he did not know; just which plate held the unknown, much sought thing to be learned he had no means of telling. She had sold them! He did not hoodwink himself into believing that he would find them in the shop she had left them. He knew without calculating that the theatrical season had begun about the time she had received the plates. She must have sold them soon after they came. Goods did not stay in shops that long.
Millions—a whole nation, perhaps—imperiled through a child's momentary necessity! The thought repeated itself many times in his mind. How could one find tragedy in an existence where the hurt of so many was a tree that had burgeoned from roots firmly set in comedy?
He laughed. She had never heard a laugh just like his. It frightened her a little. The glow of his cigarette lit his bronzed, clearly defined features. He saw that he had alarmed her, and patted her hand kindly.
“It's too bad; means a lot of trouble, maybe,” he said, in his most careless tone. “But we must find them, that's all. When did you sell them?”
Her answer confirmed his fears. “But I intended to get them back for you before the opening night,” she assured him earnestly. “I guess the man I sold them to still has them. I'd do anything to get them back.”
“I may remind you of that,” said Norroy. “A woman is useful in such affairs sometimes. You may have to lie, cheat, even steal. Will you do any of those things?”
“All of them,” she said promptly, feeling for his hand. “All of them. Really I will.”
“Why?” asked Norroy.
“I just don't know,” she answered. “I've lied, of course; I tried to cheat you in this, too, didn't I? But I've never stolen, and never intended to. And I haven't cared about doing the other things. But somehow I've had a feeling since you first came into my dressing room and spoke about those plates—a woman does feel things that way, you know. A feeling of bigness, of something to be done that's worth while, something that'll help people. Something that isn't selfish, isn't cruel, isn't anything but good, although it seems all the other way. I didn't feel at all shocked at what you did to that Hemingway man. Maybe it's you I trust and believe in. But somehow I feel curiously light, as though I were treading on air, as though I were living for the first time. Life seems to be unrolling before me like a wonderful picture—and it was always so drab and ugly before. I can't tell just why it seems so changed, but maybe it's that I've stumbled out of being nobody suddenly. I'm somebody now. Just what, I don't know. But one of those who help to make the world a better place to live in. One of those who are steering the ship, instead of one of the thousands huddled up on the steerage deck, not knowing nor understanding where the ship's bound for, or why.”
She stopped suddenly.
“I suppose this sounds all very conceited and silly to you, doesn't it? It doesn't sound in words like it feels. I suppose I'm wrong.”
Norroy surveyed her again as he lighted one of his interminable crested paper tubes—watched her as one well worth watching.
“No,” he said, “it doesn't sound either silly or conceited, and you've expressed your feelings well enough. Your imagination's been touched, that's all. You've found the magic carpet; you're soaring aloft on it. And you're right. You have stumbled onto one of the biggest things of your day. And I believe you'll count in the world before it's over.”
He asked her the address of the shop where the plates had been sold. She told him; repeated also bitterly the amount paid her for them.
“Two hundred dollars,” he said, with whimsical protest to the heavens. “Two hundred dollars!”
He took out the roll of thousand-dollar bills he had taken from Crawe.
“And I know,” he said, tapping them, “that it will take more than this to buy them back before the chase is over.”
He felt something put into his hand—the six notes Crawe had given her. “More than these, too?” she asked, releasing her hold on them.
“Why do you give this up?” asked Norroy curiously, holding the notes in a slim gloved hand, staring from them to her.
“Because the only excuse for stealing that money is to use it to do some good with,” she replied, in all earnestness. “You're broad-minded enough to admit it's stealing, aren't you?”
“Stealing from a thief, yes,” was Norroy's answer. “And you object to stolen money, do you—even this kind?”
“Didn't I say why?” returned Holly. “It would make me no better than that horrible man if I kept it.”
“And I?”
Norroy was smiling.
“I mayn't express myself well,” said Holly, rather unhappily; “but I meant you would do good with it, which would excuse the theft.”
“And how do you know I'll do good with it? How do you know I'm not really as bad as he is?”
“I told you before—that feeling of bigness, of something worth while. That would be enough. A woman's never wrong about those feelings unless she's in love with the man, is she? And now, besides that, I'm beginning to understand.”
“Understand what?” was his slow response.
“About the plates—what they are.”
“Strong did write you, then? But no,” he corrected himself hastily, ashamed of the words showing such lack of reasoning, “else you wouldn't have sold them for two hundred dollars—unless you've tried to get them back, and failed.”
“Don't you believe in gratitude? You won mine for good and all when you said you'd give me my chance after I'd deceived you. If you suspect people of lying all the time, then there's no especial cleverness in your doubting me before. Don't disappoint me, Mr. Norroy.”
Norroy eyed her in gratified surprise. She was capable of real thought, this bewitching bundle of childish charm. He no longer doubted her ability to help him in the long chase, the road of which was unwinding like a ribbon before him. What was better, he no longer doubted her sincerity.
“Forgive me,” said Yorke Norroy, who, like all big men, never hesitated to apologize when in the wrong. “I do believe in you. I accept the right to call on you for help. Personally I trust you. But officially I have no right to share my information about the plates. You said you understood—or were beginning to. If you are right, I shall not deceive you. Tell me.”
She nodded toward the chauffeur, whispering:
“Does he know?”
“No one in America—on my side of the battlefield—except myself and one other. A secret is always safer under one hat. Next to that, it's safer under two.”
“And under a bonnet it isn't safe at all?”
“I, like you, seldom fail in my intuitions, little Holly. They make an exception in favor of your bonnet.”
“How near are we to New York?”
He flashed the radium hands of his watch upward; knowing the time they had started and the car's average speed, he made a little calculation.
“We'll wait, then,” she said.
The car plunged forward into a gully filled with snow, necessitating the reversal of the motor. The snow was drifting high in their path. Both Norroy and Holly looked like polar explorers in their shaggy, snow-packed motor coats. Norroy viewed the road before him, and corrected his calculation.
“The store where I sold the plates will be closed by that time,” she said. The lights of another small town came into view.
Norroy gave an order to the man driving.
“We'll stop off here and take the train to New York the remainder of the way,” he said, glancing up from a railroad time-table which he had read with the assistance of the radium-handed watch. “I can't wait as long as the car will take to get there in such weather as this to reach the shop. When we reach town, we'll go directly to the shop. Meanwhile, my friend on the front seat will have taken your bag to a furnished apartment which will be made ready for you. And before that you'll have told me what you know of the plates.”

### CHAPTER IV.
#### The Last of the Opium Makers.

The train from the South lingered at the little station just long enough for the breathless two to clamber aboard with the assistance of a porter. Norroy engaged a drawing-room, ordered a brandy and soda for himself, and hot chocolate for the girl. Then he pressed her for particulars.
“I've just done a little simple arithmetic,” said Holly. “First, you said poor Captain Strong——”
Her eyes filmed with tears again, but she mastered the sob in her voice, and continued, striving for a businesslike tone:
“You said poor Captain Strong had been ki-killed by some one hired by the same man who sent that Mr. Hemingway to me to-day. Then you said afterward that it was done to make money. That showed me that the plates weren't valuable because—well,” she added apologetically, “I've read books, detective stories, you know, about the eyes of idols stolen from sacred temples, things that Chinese and East Indians and Persians and people worshiped. I thought it was that way. Those two things added together showed me the plates weren't—er—sacred or anything like that. See?”
“I understand,” Norroy corrected gravely.
“I meant 'understand.'”
She flushed; then, to cover her confusion:
“What a pretty cigarette case! That looks sacred.”
She smiled.
“Go on,” directed Norroy, returning the case to his pocket, and twirling the slim cigarette between fingers comparatively as slender. The girl hid her own spotlessly clean but somewhat ill-kept hands at this close sight of his, and continued hurriedly:
“Then you said something like this: 'To make mischief to the world in general.' Still I didn't have any idea of what they were, although my head was all in a whirl. I thought of you—the kind of man I always thought of as so careful of his reputation, so very honorable about everything—you looked all that—knocking a man senseless from behind, stealing his money, and still I knew you were right—felt it. Then I thought of this other man letting twenty thousand dollars go so carelessly that it looked as if he'd pay more if even that wasn't enough. I was just wild with excitement and curiosity, and I thought, thought, thought until my head seemed to burst. Then you did another awfully dishonorable thing—you know what I mean, dishonorable if you judge the action just by the action itself—that lie you told in the police station that would keep that man in jail and maybe get him into the penitentiary——”
“Where he should be now by rights; and if he were sentenced for all the things he's done, he'd stay there for the remainder of his life,” interpolated Norroy, smoking furiously. It wasn't exactly pleasant to hear that sweet young mouth using the words “steal,” “dishonorable,” and “lie” with reference to him—Yorke Norroy.
“Didn't you hear his name—his real name? Lycurgus Crawe, the 'get-rich-quick' man. Specialty, getting the nickels, dimes, and quarters of foreign-born laborers who want to buy homes or invest money at as high interest as they can get, and who don't know how to read English well enough to realize that their contracts with Crawe gave him their money in exchange-for nothing but promises,” said Yorke Norroy smoothly, but with a flash of that merciless justice of his that was above ready-made moralities. “If his life was worth risking a seat in an electric chair, I'd take it as quickly as I'd take a rattler's! Lynch law has some merits. Didn't you hear the name? Lycurgus Crawe!”
“I'd never heard his name before,” 'answered Holly, with apology and contrition. “And I wasn't criticizing what you did. I keep telling you I felt you were right. But the other name—Philip Hurrish. The cheap vaudeville theaters are full of dope fiends, Mr. Norroy—excuse the slang, but I don't know any other word. They 'sniff'—that is, use 'coke'—cocaine, you know. Some of them use the 'gun'—I mean the 'needle'—oh, they're all 'up against the white stuff——'”
Desperately she was about to make another attempted emendation when Norroy gave her the correct phrase:
“You mean they use morphine; some inject it, some eat it; I understand.”
“Yes; and others use 'heroin'—is that the name? Others 'Birney's'—I'm not sure of that name, either—but all these things are manufactured by this man Philip Hurrish. And some of the 'fiends'—poor things!—how they curse him! So when you mentioned that terrible man's name I remembered the letters Captain Strong wrote me, and right away I understood. Here are some of the letters. I took them out of my bag before we left the motor—that's what I kept you waiting for. There!'
She folded over a portion of one.
“That tells me Captain Strong has been ordered to take his troop to join General Somebody-or-the-other to go to that town where the opium manufactories were. Then here's another. This was terribly interesting. I showed it to ever so many people. It says that until the early part of last century people who used opium either ate it in some form of pills or else took it under the name of laudanum. He tells me there to read 'The Confessions of an English Opium Eater.' He was always advising me to read good books, poor Captain Strong. Then he goes on to say that some great Chinese chemist found a way to take most of the harmful stuff out of opium—a secret process—he invented the pipe, too—he says it's a—what?” She handed the letter to Norroy, who read:
“Hung-Tshi-Ling discovered the method of extracting most of the harmful alkaloids from gum opium. The pipe is really a chemical retort . . . instead of being unpalatable and sickening to take, it became pleasant; the habit increased all over the world, until now there are as many white men using it as Chinese. But——
Norroy paused. “And here is where Captain Strong sums up the situation exactly as it is, little Holly:
“Nobody knew how to make Shandoo—as Hung-Tshi-Ling's secret-process opium was made—except the employees of the two factories. By command of the Chinese government, we are to burn those factories, destroy all the opium in the warehouses, and execute every man, woman, or child who knows the process—thank God, I have nothing to do with the latter part of it; that is the public executioner's job. The government figures that as no one else can make Shandoo, when all that has been exported is used up, the great majority of opium smokers, being unable to get anything but vile concoctions that sicken the stomach, will cease to use opium, and the curse of it will be lifted from the world.”
Norroy returned the letter.
“Precisely, little Holly. And when Strong found those plates, quite by accident—for he was quartered in the yamen of the original Hung-Tshi-Ling—he had no idea that he was about to nullify all the good that came out of those cruel executions. He sent them to you, thinking them curious antiques that you might use to decorate your room, didn't he?”
She nodded, tears in her eyes again.
“Then I was right?” she asked, feeling for her handkerchief.
“Right in everything,” replied Norroy. “Right in your intuition as to my desire to save the world—and particularly this country, where there is more opium smoking now than anywhere on the globe—from China's century or so of stagnation and lethargy. Right in your syllogisms—or, say, synthetic deductions—concerning Hurrish. And right in believing that on those six plates is carved the only existing formula for making Hung-Tshi-Ling's opium—Shandoo, They're not in my hands now, those plates,” he added, throwing away his cigarette, and grinding it into the carpet with his heel; “but they will be, little Holly; they will be.”
“It's come at last,” said the girl, nodding her head solemnly. “It's come at last!”
Norroy was roused out of his own plans by her almost religious tone.
“What?” he asked.
“My reason for existing, I guess,” she said, turning off her mood with a gay little laugh. “I always wanted an excuse for that; always wanted to be worth while. You can have your old 'Devonshire Maid.' I'm going to act on a real stage at last. I'm going to help you. I'm going to live, breathe, eat, sleep with only one idea. The same as yours—to do some good. To be worth while. To find those plates—with you!”
Late that night Norroy addressed a letter to Hurrish. It was brief and to the point. It advised the millionaire to be more particular in his choice of tools and methods, and inclosed Norroy's personal check for twenty thousand dollars. Norroy had won the first round, and could afford to be generous. And, besides, Norroy was peculiar in one thing. In words, he frequently deprecated the homely virtues, like business honesty, but in action he always examplified them in his own conduct.
The second story in this series will be published two weeks hence, in the first December POPULAR, on sale November 7th.
This work was published before January 1, 1930, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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