The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-05-31

death and cursed, like btazes.' sergeant. They put their car in a coach house under the innkeeper's in structions and entered the house Twenty minutes later I saw from my window a second car come across the plateau from the opposite direction.
 It did not come up to the inn, but stopped POO yards of in the shelter of a patch of wood. I noticed that it's occupants carefully reversed it before leaving it. A minute or two later l heard their steps on the gravel outside the window.
 My plan had been to lie hid in my bedroom and see what happened. l had a notion that if I could bring the police and my other more dangerous pursuers together something might work out of 1t to hay advantage. But now had better idea.
 scrubbed line of thanks to my host, opened the window and dropped quietly into gooseberry bush.
 Unobserved crossed the dike, crawl ed down the side lof a tributary burn and won the highroad on the far side of the patch of trees. There stood the car, very spick and span in the morn ing sunlight, but with the dust on her
 
 her, jumped into the chauffeur's seat and stole gently. out on to the plateau.
 Almost at once the road dipped so that lost sight of the inn, but the wind seemed to bring me the sound of angry voices.
 You may picture me driving that for ty horsepower car for all she was worth over the crisp moor roads on that shin ing May morning, glancing back at first over my shoulder and looking anxious 1y to the next turning; then driving with a vague eye, just wide enough awake to keep on the highway.
 For I was thinking desperately of what I had found in Scudder's note book.
 The little man had told me a pack of lies. All his yarns about the Bal kans and the foreign office conference were eye w@sfs and so was Karo1ides. And yet not quite, as you shall hear.
 I had staked everything on my be- lief in his story and had been let down. Here was his book telling me a diff ferent tale, and instead of being once bit, twice shy, believed it absolutely. Why2 I don't knoW,
 It rang desperately true, and the first yarn, if you understand me, had been in a queer way true also in spir- it. The 18th day of June was going to be a day of destiny, a bigger destiny than the ling of a man. It was so big that didn't blame Scudder for keeping me out of the game and want ing to play lone hand.
 That, was pretty clear, was his in- tention.
 He had told me something which sounded big enough, but the real thing was so immortally big that he, the man who had found it out, wanted it all for himself. I didn't blame him. It was risks, after a1L9athaf he-was chiefly greedy about.
 The whole story was in the notes, with gaps, you understand, which he would have filled up from his memory.
 He stuck down his authorities, too, and had an odd trick of giving them all numerical value and then strik ing balance, which stood for the re- liability of each stage in the yarn. The three names he had printed were authorities, and there was a man, Du- crosne. who got five out of possible five, and another fellow, AmmersfeeFt who got three.
 The bare bones of the tale were all that was in the boolz-these and one queer phrase which occurCed half a dozen times inside brackets. Thirty nine steps was the phrase, and at its last time of use it ran, Thirty nine steps I counted them; high tide 1O:17 D. m.''
 i I could make nothing of that. The first thing learned was that it was no question of preventing war 1 That was coming as sure as Christmas; 1 had been arranged, said Scudder, ever since February, 1912. Karolides was | going to be the occasion.
 He was booked all right and was go- ing to hand in his checks on June 10, 1 two weeks and four days from that 1 May-morning. I gathered from Scud- ! der's notes that nothing on earth could prevent that. His talk of Epirote ] guards that would skin their own grandmothers vas all nonsense. (To Re f1Onffnued.l