New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1920-09-05

Ter ana 1Orm an OFRanlZaCIOn TO track
down criminals and recover their loot
without mingling with the police or
other forces of the law. The story is
told of their first adventure in their
new business.
There is an initial mistake In this
book which casts its shadow over the
whole story. Mr.. Fox has considered
| it necessary or wise or picturesque
or something or other to introduce his
band Of reformed crooks in an utterly
impossible Arabian Nights setting.
The result is that there is at no time
any deluson Of reality for the reader,
and Mr.. Fox fails utterly to get away
| with one or two other matters, such
as the house on Riverside Drive sur
rounded by an electrically charged
iron fence and the three black pearls
which glow in the dark like radium
that might otherwise be tolerably ac-
cepted for the sake Of the story. In
short, with the materials for a good
story under his hand the authors lack
of invention has driven him to offer his
readers collection of impossbilities.
Mr. Fox, however, has succeeded in
making his characters human beings,
and there is good deal of praise due
him for that. Only too often in mys-
terry stories is the detector of crime
endowed with q prescience beyond the
powers Of man. The reformed crimi-
mails in The Man Who Convicted Him
self, the persons they seek to help
and those whose cunning they over
reach are all enriched by the spark of
life. Mr.. Fox's difficulty is not In
creating men and women, but in plac-
ing their sphere Of action on this
planet.
His story concerns itself with a rob-
berry accompanied by what appears to
be murder and further enhanced by
blackmail and a slight thread Of love
romance. Two criminals and q practi-
cal joker are run to earth by the ex-
emplary ex-crooks and one brand (fe-
male) is plucked from the burning.
The seemingly murdered person is re-
stored to life and the only blood shed
is near the end Of the book, when no.
body cares. Spiritualism participates
both in the various crimes and their
solutions and there are numerous ex-
cursions into scientific regions as far
off the highway of the average reader
as the North Pole is from the Bowery
which is to say you have your choice
of considering Mr.. Fox an Admiral
Peary or DR.. Cook of science. Early
in the story the finger of guilt points
at the arch criminal, but the veil of
mystery is not entirely rent asunder
until all the extraordinary happenings
have occurred. BY the time the last
page has been perused all the charac-
ters are properly happy or properly
punished and the ex-crooks are con-
WINGED that the path of rectitude leads
to the permanent bankroll.
The Danger OF Circumstential Evidence
T> HE two remaining stories in this
collection seem designed to show
that circumstantial evidence is
an unsafe. basis for a conviction of
murder. Miss Vane's story is the bet
ter of the two. Mr.. Williams's story
is more a collection of incidents than
anything else. 1t opens with murder,
rapidly succeeded by the introduction
Of two slapstick comedians disguised as
police detectives. The murdered man
is described as master financier, but
he talks and acts like racetrack tout.
across the pages, an inquest is held
twenty minutes after the murder is
discovered, and ultimately there is a
trial which seems certain to result in
! the conviction of two men on circum-
stantial evidence.
1t is at this point that the sun inter-
venes as witness through the medium
! of series of photographs taken by en-
Office boy, and a remarkable invention
by the real murderer, who shoots him
SELF as he hears the prisoners exon
Grated and freed by the judge after the
photographs have been exhibited in
court. Circumstantial evidence having
thus proved the guilt of three men and
caused the death Of one, the murderer
confesses Gin strict confidence), and it
turns out that the man who shot him
self in the courtroom did so because he
was about to be exposed as German
spy. The murderer, by the way, was
one of the two men exonerated by the
production Of the photographs.
Real Earth and Real People
"a Ar ISIS WAVES story comes back to
| IVH earth and real people. There
is a murdered man whom no
one regrets; there is q man who might
readily have been suspected Of the
crime, but is not; there is another man
who is convicted Of the murder; there
! is a fourth man who should have been
the first one to be examined, but the
peculiarities of the administration Of
the law in British courts, as described
by Miss vane, permit him first to