Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1916-01-27

doubt that, if properly reminded OF
a certain bit of work Billy Capper had
done back in the Burmese city, Sir
George would recall him-and with
every reason for gr%atefulness. To-
mo~row-yes, before ever Sir George
had had his mornings peg, Capper
would present himself at Government
House and tell about that house on
Queens Terrace at Ramleh; about
the unconscious British officer who
was carried there and hurried thence
by night. and the tall well-knit man
in conference with Doctor Koch who
YVES now come to be a part OF the gar
rison of the Rock under the stolen
name of Woodhouse.
Capper had his dinner, then strolled
around the town to see he sights and
hear what he could hear. Listening
was a passion with him.
For the color and the exotic SAVIOR
Of Gibraltar on a hot August night
Capper had no eye. The knife edge
of a moon slicing the battlements
of the old Moorish castle up on the
heights: the minor tinkle of a guitar
sounding from a vine curtained BAL
cony: a Rifian muleteer's singsong re-
view Of his fractions beasts degraded
ancestry-not for these 1~ncidentals
did the practical mind under the bat
tered Capper bowler have room. Rath-
er the scraps of information and Cos
sip passed from n blue coated ar
tilleryman off duty, to another over
a mug of ale, or the confidence OF a
sloe-eyed dancer to the guitar player
in a tavern: this was meat for Cap
per. Carefully he h~usbanded his gold
piece, and judiciously he spent his
silver for drink. He enjoyed himself
in the ascetic spirit Of a monk in a
fast, believing that the morrow would
bring champagne in place OF the chin
wine his pitiful silver could command.
Then. of a sudden, he caught a
glimpse OF Louisa-Louisa Of the VIII
helmstrasse. Capper's heart skipped,
and an involuntary impulse crooked
his fingers into claws.
The girl was just coming out of a
cafe-the only cafe aspiring to Par
isian smartness Gibraltar boasts. Her
head was bare. Under an arm she had
tucked a stack of cigar boxes. HAD
it not been that a steady light from
an overhead arc cut her features out
of the soft shadow with the fneness
Of a diamond pointed tool, Capper
would have sworn his eyes were play.
ing him tricks. But Louisa's features
were unmistakable, whether in the
Lucullian surroundings of a Berlin
summer garden or here on a street in
Gibraltar. Capper had instinctively
crushed himself against the nearest
wall on seeing the girl; the crowd had
come between himself and her, and
she had not seer him.
All the weasel instinct of the man
came instantly to the fore that sec
ond OF recognition, and the CLINT in
his Dyes and barring of his teeth were
flashed from brute instinet-the In
stinct of the night prowling meat
hunter. All the vicious hate which
the soul of Billy Capper could distil
flooded to his eyes and made them
venomous. Sinking, lodging, cover
ing, he followed the girl with the
cigar boxes. She entered several
dance halls, offered her wares at the
door of a cheap hotel. For more than
an hour Capper Swallowed her through
the twisting streets Of the old Span
ish town. Finally she turned into a
narrow lane, climbed fagstone steps.
set the width of the lane, to a house
under the scarp of a cliff, and let
herself in at the street door. Capper,
following to the door as quickly as
he dared, found it locked.
The little spy was choking with a
lust to kill; his whole body tremtled
under the pulse of a murderous pas
sion. He had found Louisa-the girl
who had sold him out-and for her
private ends, Capper made no doubt
of that. Some day he had hoped to
run her down, and with his fingers
about her soft throat to tell her how
dangerous it was to trick Billy Cap
per. But to have her flung across his
path this way-this was luck! He'd
see this Louisa and have a little pow
WOW with her even if he had to break
his way into the house.
Capper felt the door knob again; the
door wouldn't yield. He drew back
a bit and looked up at the front of
the house. Just a dingy black wall
with three unlighted windows set in
it irregularly. The roof projected
over the gabled attic like the visor of
a cap. Beyond the farther corner of
| the house were ten feet of garden
space, and then the bold rock of the
cliff springing upward. A low wall
bounded the garden; over its top nod
ded the pale ghosts of moonf1owers
and oleanders. ..... .
Capper was over the wall in a
bound, and c%rouching amid flower
clusters, listening for possible alarm.