Grand Forks herald., 1917-02-16

gas stove in 1t. kept very clean: an
other was q library with shelves and
shelves full of French and Spanish
novels; another was a bathroom. The
room beyond the Bathroom was a
storeroom full Of timed meats, soups.
fed an expedition to the South Pole:
The next room was larder full OF
hams, sides of bacon. cheeses. dried
tongues and salt butter. The last room
was a cellar full of champagne, bur-
gundy. port and old brandy.
On the floor of the cellar lay a
smashed bottle of burgundy with q
little wine still in the bottom Of 1t.
1t looked to me as if my tenant might
have dropped that bottle when the
snake bit him. l took one of the long
laths on which the bottles lay, from
one of the bins. and poked under the
bottles. and raped here and there.
Presently I heard rustic. stepped
back and dropped on pne knee. That
the floor. The bottom row of bottles
was not above six inches from the
floor, and it was dark under it. l
peered about; presently / fancied I
saw something move, and fired at a
venture and sprang to my feet. There
was a noise of thrashing and snake
came squirming out. / fired the other
barrel into 1t and cut it into strips. 1
have no doubt that it was the snake
which had bitten Vicenti.
There was nothing more / could do
and ! went home to bed. leaving No,
l6 in the hands of the police. 1 was
some time getting to sleep, for could
not help trying to puzzle out the ex-
planation Of Vicentrs barricading
himself in the house.
There was no doubt that with all these
yis,s~ -
or three years siege. With those bar
ricades the house could not be carried
by assault-not by fifty men. He
could probably have shot as many as
that before they got through the first
barricadc. l wondered and wondered
who his enemies were. wondered
how they had found out that ths,
house was not empty: / wondered
what part the pretty girl with the
brown velvety eyes had played in the
business. l did not think that it was
small one.
The papers were quiet till the in
quest; then they were noisy enough.
They found plenty of answers to the
questions the case raised. They found
too many. Some said that Nicenti had
fallen victim to the vengeance of the
Camorra; others Of the Malta; others
of the Black Hand: others of the
Russian revolutionaries. Others again
suggested that he had had some val
liable jewels in the house. and that
as soon as his enemies were sure that
the snakes had done their work. they
would have come in the daytime, kill
ed the snakes. searched the house at
their leisure and carried off the jew
els. They could not all be right;
though they could all be wrong; and
all of them were quite sure that q
| L.
many. people would soon be solved. II
was not.
| The inquest was adjourned. and
presently the newspapers let the mat
ter drop and 1 was no longer pestered
by reporters wanting to interview me
about how I felt during what the pla-
cards called Peers Heroic Snake
Hunt" For weeks my friends called
me Heroic Snake-Hunter.
The police. however, did not let the
matter drop; they were hunting
and the rest for the man who had
bought the snakes. They got on his
track easily enough. He was plainly
the young Spanish collector who had
bought them for his collection. as he
put it. But the police did not find the
young Spanish collector. The other
chance of getting to the bottom of the
business was to find the pretty girl
who had told me that she was Nicen-
It's niece. l grew very tired of detec-
tives calling to see me with photo
graphs of all the female scum Of Eu-
rope and the Americas. on the chance
that might recognize one of them as
her
1t was not the slightest use my tell
ing them that she was quite all right
"a lady, and not an adventures at
all. The other. odd thing was, that
though Vicenti was worth nearly a
million, no heirs turned up to claim
the money The police could not dis
cover anything about him, neither
who he was nor what his business had
been.