The New York herald., 1922-06-18

~ a guaranty of happy evening
to the wise addict Of the de-
tective story, though this one is
bit too long to devour at one sitting,
So it will be we'll to start it before
dinner and get well into it before
you settle down steadily to it, be-
cause you won't stop until it is fin
ished, and one really ought to get to
bed before 2 A. NJ, even in days OF
daylight saving. Mr.. Tracy is one OF
our star performers in the Big
League of mystery story writers; ne
may be depended upon always III
this one isn't quite home run, I
nevertheless scores: let us call it 4
safe three bagger.
The comparison is apt. because the
story is equipped with no less than
three corpses, and, furthermore,
there is pause, change in method
after he has, so to speak, landed MS
mystery safely on third base. The
first corpse is the one always needed
to start such a story. 1t is young
millionaire who gets himself killed
nicely, just on the eve of his mar
rage. 1t is a well managed slaugh-
ter. staged with more than the Gus
tomary wealth of detail, for the first
corpse when discovered by the butter
lies surrounded by no less than
twelve other young men who are
temporarily dead to the world,
heavily drugged. having been
"doped" at the end of a very wet
drinking match. There are "12-
count 'em-12" lying around in
shocking attitudes, beside the corpse,
when the Mortified English butler,
Brown, opens the door of the dining
room in the grim gray dawn after
the party. And there is also dead
goldfish floating wrong side up In
the little aquarium, and Brown nat
urally feels worse about the goldfish,
which had been pet OF his, than
about the twelve, for the goldfish
was highly respectable, ornamental
character, and the less said of some,
at least, of the twelve the better.
For, of course, one of them must
have killed their millionaire host. II
is an unusually large field Of start
ers, but the process of eliminating
them, one after another. is well man
aged.
The second corpse is thrown in.
more or less for good measure,
though he is material to the develop
ment of the plot He is a mere po-
liceman, an extraneous detective;
the point is that he was killed, pois-
oned, by the same instrumentality
as that which finished off poor Van
Cortlandt, but if you want to know
why Flanagan had to be sacrificed
and Just what the lethal instrument
was, and how it got itself from the
Fifth avenue mansion into Central
Park and thence into a police station,
why, you've got to read the book.
The third corpse is that of the real
villain, made into corpse quite
spectacularly in order to lead to the
climax He is a very nice villain,
too, with no crudity or lack of SUBJ
tlety about him. Mr.. Tracy always
plays the game fairly, observing all
the rules. and the villain is held well
in the background, or, rather, in con-
cealment, until the change of
method. about three-quarters of the
way through the story. There are
two well established ways of telling
such a mystery story one in which
the mystery is the whole thing and
there is no let up in puzzlement till
the very end, the other in which the
reader is more or less in the authors
confidence, and the chief interest lies
in proving the case, or in watching
the other characters, who have not
all the readers knowledge, work out
the right solution. In this book Mr.
Tracy combines these two. At frs;
il is sheer puzzle. which is perfectly
kept up. Then you reach a point
where, like the detectives of the
story, you know we'll enough who is
guilty, but are still at a loss how TO
pass beyond moral certainty TO evil