Ladysmith news-budget. [volume] (Ladysmith, Rusk County, Wis.) 1907-1927, 1920-05-21

window-sill, but what they signif1ed he
had no notion.
However, he went through his per-
Torrance conscientiously. 1t was his
way of taking formal possession of the
case.
He rose, little flushed, and, aban-
doning the magnifying-glass, made
comprehensive survey of the room
from a position near the door. If he
discovered anything, his discoveries
! were entirely negative, and served
only to deepen the mystery of the case.
AS Mr.. Snyder had said, there was
/ no chimney, and nobody could nave
entered through the locked door.
There remained the window. 1t was
small, and apprehensiveness possibly
on the score of burglars had caused
the proprietress to make it doubly Sc
cure with an iron bar No human be-
ing could have squeezed his way
through it.
After a quarter of an hour he left
the room, locking the door behind him.
No more unsatisfactory preliminary
investigation could ever have been
made.
1t was late that night that he wrote
and dispatched to headquarters the re-
port which had amused Mr.. Snyder.
The interval he filled up by making
guarded inquiries among his fellow
boarders.
He had no difficulty in making them
talk. Nothing like the death of Cap
tain Gunner had ever happened among
them, and the difficulty would have
been to start successfully any other
topic Of conversation.
Captain Muller, the big German.
who, by virtue of having been the dead
mans roommate, might, if he had de-
sired, have held the position of princi-
pal speaker and Star-witnesS, was the
only man who seemed to have nothing
to say. He was plainly man of silent
habit. and not even his vicariOus con-
nection with the tragedy could shake
him from it.
The theories of the others ranged
from heart-disease-in spite of the
doctors definite statement to the con-
trary-to the ingenious suggestion
from one of the party that Captain
Gunner had been bitten by snake at
some previous date, several years be-
fore, and that the poison had lain DOR
mant in his system until this moment.
The theorist claimed to have known
a man who had made voyage with
man to whom precisely similar ex.
perience had happened. The only weak
spot in the story was the fact that the
speakers informant had the reputa-
ton of being the most persevering liar
in his native state of Massachusetts,
and had twice claimed to have seen
the sea-serpent.
Young Mr.. Cakes went to his room
with the beginnings Of bad headache.
All the really reliable information
which he had acquired from his COM
panions he had embodied in his report,
and, as he had admitted in that docu-
ment, it did not lead to anything very
definite.
1t was in his room that he first
snatched at the avenging Indian the
DRY as a possible solution, and, if he
had been honest with himself he would
have admitted that there was good
deal of the emotions of the drowning
man toward the straw in his attitude
toward it,
Nothing supported the theory ex-
cept his active imagination.
Captain Gunner had certainly visit
ed India in the course of his wander
ings, but there the trail stopped. He
had never shown any of the signs
which might be supposed to mark the
man conscious of being ceaselessly pur-
sued by the outraged servants Of an
Indian god.
In his rambles along the waterfront
he had frequently met Indians, but ne
had betrayed no nervousness. On the
contrary, if they happened to get in
his way, he had usually kicked them.
This was moi the attitude of a hunted
man.
Cakes was bound to admit that his
confidence in the Indian theory was
not very robust. He had put it TO Mr..
Snyder in his report more as an evil
dence of good faith, as proof that
his busy brain was at work and that
he was bringing laudable nimbleness
of Imagination to the quest, than be-
cause he really believed it.
His innuendo against Mrs. Pickett
was pure spite. The woman irritated
him profoundly, and it soothed him to
fancy himself even for moment
watching her like hawk, and causing
her uneasiness by his relentless pur-
suit.
He was a detective, but he was
human.
Certainly Elliott Cakes was not en-
toying himself. The man of all others
whom he had admired and revered
most intensely all his life-Elliott
0akes, to wit-was beginning to show
signs of not being so tremendous as he
lad always pictured him.
He was being tried and found want
.ng.
He wished Mrs. Pickett would not
look at him like that. 1t hurt his self
I actanm