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umjsh,. ; ss 1 \V ¥// PHOTOPLAY 1 *i\ M \\n i . V OF THE h\7 Arihi n/Sr same name Vvj-l L > nil <P*inKU> tTNNCU SYNOPSIS. On Windward island Palldori intrigues Mrs. Golden into an appearance of evil which causes Golden to capture and tor ture the Italian by branding his face and crushing his hand. I’alidora opens the dyke gates and floods the island and in the general rush to escape the flood kid naps Golden’s six-year-old daughter Mar gory. Twelve years later in New York one’ calling himself "the Hammer of God" rescues an eighteen-year-old girl from the cadet Casavantl, to whom Jules Legar had delivered her. SECOND EPISODE The House of Unhappiness. Enoch Golden, with all his millions, •was a hard man. Those closest to him contended that he had experienced much to make him hard. The one person who stood in any way intimately and personally con nected with Golden was his young pri vate secretary, David Manley. For young Manley, often enough known to his associates as "Davie,” was both incorrigibly youthful and engagingly irresponsible. Golden, oddly enough, secretly liked this youth for his fool ishness. Golden smiled a little as he stepped into his massively furnished library and found young Manley curled up in one of the great leather chairs intently working over a pocket camera and quite oblivious of the tele phone bell shrilling from the rosewood desk beside him. Golden, as he seated himself at this desk and curtly an swered the phone call, blinked with mock disapproval at the youth bent over the camera. It was not until he heard Golden's great fist smite the rosewood desktop that Manley looked up. The man of millions was frowning over the letter still in his hand. "The condition of these tenements is shameful. Times are hard, and many, we find, are out of work. If you insist on raising the rents, as you threaten, our settlement workers claim that hundreds of the poor will have to leave their homes. So, for the sake of the mothers and children alone, J implore you to reconsider your earlier decision. "Sincerely, "AMOS SCHOFIELD, D. D.” “The fools!” said Golden aloud. "They know as much about business, Manley, as you know about bond is sues! Not raise my own rents! I guess Enoch Golden still knows enough to run his own business!” He stopped and looked at Manley. “What’s that gim-crack you’re wast ing your time on?” he demanded. "Gim-crack?” laughed Manley. “It's the neatest thing In cameras that ever came Into America. That’s a new Swiss telescopic lens I’ve just been ad justing to it. Take a snap of a flea biting your ear eighty paces away! And your income on those tenements, by the way, amounts to an annual re turn of just 43 per cent of the capital Invested! ” But Golden's patience was exhaust ed. “Get out of here!” was hi 3 brusque Intently Working Over a Pocket Camera. command. “Get down to Griswold’s bank with these checks, and be quick about It!” Whereupon Manley meekly took his departure. Two minutes later, how ever, yet another figure was passing through the gloomy silences of Enoch Golden’s home. It was a more purpose ful figure than that of the lazy-eyed young secretary. And over the face of this intruder as he cautiously made his way through the great house was an odd-looking band of yellow cloth, cut in the form of a mask. The center of this, drooping apronlike almost to his upper lip, was marked by an in verted crescent, which at first glance lent to the partly-covered face the faint suggestion of an ironically laugh ing mouth. Yet the unknown stranger was serious enough as he stopped be fore a door at the end of the second hall and pushed on one of a row of mother-of-pearl buttons. The door slid noiselessly back at that signal, and an electric elevator rose automatically to the level of the floor where he stood. Inside the elevator, he touched still another button, whereupon the cage rose noiselessly. Once it had come to a stop, he leaned against the appar ently blank wall of the elevator shaft and studied it closely. His exploring plainly found there a secret spring, for the next moment a panel slipped noiselessly to one side and he stepped into the room so art fully fireproofed with pressed steel panels and grained to look like oak, which Golden had once used as his bondroom. That room, although not used for years, was at the present moment far from empty. For pacing restlessly back and forth, as the stranger quietly entered, was a golden-haired woman of little more than twenty. The face under the mask smiled a little at her sudden movement and gasp of sur prise as he confronted her. "Are you still afraid of me?” he asked. “N-no!” hesitated the girl. "I’d give a good deal,” declared the other, "to know who you are!” “I’m—l’m afraid I can’t help you any, in that,” she finally told him. "Why not?” "Because I don’t know myself.” “I want to take you to a man who may be interested in you. who may even prove to be very kind to you!” The pale face with the haunted eyes suddenly hardened. "I no longer ask for kindness from men,” was her almost passionate re tort. “Oh, this old scoundrel won’t be too dangerously kind, especially until the ice is broken. I warrant you that much. But with him, I’ll also warrant, you’ll face none of the affronts that you may have faced in the Owl's Nest.” “But why should he be interested in me?” “Because you may remind him of a daughter he himself once had.” "Then what must I do?” “You must put on a dress 1 have ready, one exactly like the one his own daughter used to wear. And I’d like you to let down your hair.” So the girl, still touched with won der, was cautiously led to another part of the great house, where she let down her hair and dressed herself in a girl ish little frock which she found al ready laid out for her. And the won* der was still in her eyes as the masked stranger smuggled her quietly down through the house, and, as the aged millionaire bent low to unlock the bot tom drawer of his desk, motioned her noiselessly into the library and into an armchair facing the desk. By the time Golden had raised his head again the mysterious stranger bad slipped out of sight. Golden, as he sat upright, stared for several moments of silence at the strange figure in the armchair. “Who are you?” the grim-faced old financier finally demanded. But the girl remained silent. Golden, studying her more closely, rose unsteadily to his feet. "How did you get here?” he asked. And passing a hand across his mois tened brow he asked still again: “Who are you?” “I don’t know,” answered the girl. Golden rose to his feet, and still staring hungrily at that mild yet cloud ed face, crossed to her side. He held her face between his hands, peering into it. Then, with a weary shake of the head, he dropped his hands. "It was too much to expect,” he huskily murmured. "Too much to hope for!” His grief-stricken face touched the girl’s heart. "Oh, sir, what had you hoped for?” she managed to ask. “I hope for nothing,” was the broken man's reply. "But once 1 had a daughter, and I lost her.” "How did you lose her?” "She was stolen from me, as a child.” "And what became of her?” "God only knows! Yet, for a mo ment I was mad enough to think, to hope. But I have no longer any right to hope,” he added with sudden pas sion. "All I ask is that once before I die I meet face to face that one-armed devil with hia scar of shame!” “One-armed, and with a scar?” cried the startled girl, leaning suddenly for ward in her chair. Golden wheeled about at her cry. “What does that mean to you?” “Why, it was a one-armed man with a scarred face who kept me a pris oner! It was he, Legar, who always told me my parents were dead.” “Legar!” repeated the bewildered millionaire. “Legar? But my man’s name was Palidori.” “Girl, let me see your arm!” With trembling fingers he thrust up , the flimsy sleeve, staring breathlessly tut nnrcf.-AS ENTERPRISE. HOTTGLAS. GEORGIA. at the milk-white skin. Then a groan of disappointment broke from his throat. “No the mark is not there!” “What mark?” asked the wondering girl. "My daughter carried a scar on her right arm. My men, when she was a child on Windward island, caught and killed a shark. The child, when no one watched her, thrust a hand in between the brute’s jaws. Those dying jaws closed on the flesh, and an iron bar had to be used to open them again. And they said that scar would always stay with her.” The girl, wide-eyed, dropped back into the armchair, p "Why, I seem to remember,” she said, staring before her. “I seem to remember years ago, rows and rows of sharp teeth and the sudden pain as those teeth came together.” “But the scar!” cried Golden. "There is no scar!” “I seem to remember about that, too. It was long ago, after Legar had brought me across water, and then miles and miles in a railway train. I remember him taking me to a man who wore round eyeglasses, and show ing him my arm. This man gave me something to make me sleep. But when I wakened my arm was sore again, for weeks and weeks. And when it healed the scar was gone. I remember— v But she stopped sud denly, for the telephone bell close be side Golden shrilled out a sudden call. Mechanically the man at the desk took up the receiver, his eyes still on the girl facing him. “This is Eastman of the central of fice speaking,” said the voice over the wire. "A short while ago a young woman was seen entering your house.” “Well, what of it?” was the impa tient inquiry. “Our office merely wants to warn you that the girl is Blondie Casey, the ccme-on for the Cookson gang. She’s the smoothest swindler In the busi ness. And as long as that baby-eyed she-crook Is in your house, Golden, your house will be In danger!” Golden hung up his receiver and sat Holding His Breath, He Crept Closer and Still Closer. studying his desktop. Then with his grim mouth fixed he crossed to the rear door and opened it, stepping out into the hall and peremptorily called for his butler as he did so. Manley, returning from his errand, at the same moment stepped into the room from another door. He stared at the girl as he stopped to pick up his pocket camera. “Who are you?” he pertly inquired, as Golden re-entered the room. But his eyes, the next moment, were on neither Golden nor the girl. His gaze passed beyond those two strange ly diverse figures to yet a third, the crouching figure of an eavesdropper clinging to the wistaria vines that framed the huge window on the far side of the room. Manley, crossing the room on the run, took the window, glass and all, in one leap. He landed on a hydrangea bush even as the burly eavesdropper dropped to the grass beside him. The next moment the two men clinched. The fight was an uneven one, but Manley stuck to his man. He stuck to him until that worthy, with a sud den blow on the jaw, sent the lithe bodied young secretary staggering to the ground. Before Manley could recover him self, tfle mysterious eavesdropper broke away, vaulted to the street and signaled to a waiting automobile. Then Manley’s senses came back to him, and rolling over into the open roadway, he took the camera from his pocket and held it between him and the disappearing touring car. He pressed the spring, knowing that his telescopic lens would carry to the waiting film the secret of that mys terious car's license number. • •*•••* The Arrows of Conflagration. Jules Legar, in his role as a master of underworld activities, was both adroit in his engagement of the serv ices of others and painstaking in the preparation of the field wherein they should labor. Like the humble weasel, he held that every warren should have both an exit and an entrance. So when Legar and his scientific friend, Dr. Herman Stein, engaged their triple-floor office suite at the top of the Centra! Tower building, they in sisted on certain structural altera tions in those offices. Not only was one of the largest windows comman deered for the installation of a strangely complex apparatus used in Stein’s electric wave-projector (which was announced to be the latest im provement on wireless), but the upper and lower floors of the suites were connected by a smooth-walled shaft which, it was explained, would make easier the passage back and forth of chemicals and apparatus needed by the illustrious Doctor Stein in his carefully guarded experiments. Equally well prepared was Legar’s second base of activities, the secret subcellar beneath the Owl’s Nest. This second warren, deep as it stood un derground, was also provided with a secret passageway leading into a wa ter-gate opening on the East river it self. It was from both these points that Legar was conducting his campaign against his old-time enemy Enoch Golden. And both of these points might have remained as well hidden as their user still dreamed them to be had it not been for the casual agency of a pocket camera. For less than an hour’s work in the office of the regis ter of automobiles had duly shown Manley that license No. 6249 belonged to one Prof. Herman Stein of 42 Maple avenue. Yet Manley, armed as he was with the knowledge of this car’s iden tity, showed no undue haste in inter fering with its movements. For still another hour of cautious shadowing on the part of Golden’s private secre tary provided him with the knowledge that Doctor Stein was in the habit of motoring from Maple avenue to the Central Tower building, and from that prosperous skyscraper to an humble point within a block of the Owl’s Nest itself. Thirty minutes later found Manley in a telephone booth, talking to his employer. “Have you received any message from that man Legar?” asked the younger man, after impatiently ex plaining who he was. “I have received a message, but I don’t know it came from Legar.” “Then how did you get it?” “It was thrown through my house window folded up in a beer bottle.” “Will you please read me that mes sage. And quickly, for this is impor tant.” “Here it is,” answered the bewil dered voice over the wire. “ ‘You are keeping Blondie Casey a prisoner in your house. Unless you liberate her within an hour your house will go up in flames. And after that house, your next house, and the next.’ It Is signed ‘The Cookson Gang.’ But what am I to believe? What am I to do? And what is the answer to all these mys teries?” “Whatever you do, don’t let them get that young woman away from you! ” Faintly the listener could hear the sound of sudden calls, of quick ques tions and answers and counter-ques tion. Then the voice of Golden was once more frantically calling him over the wire. “Manley, Manley, is that you? You’ve spoken too late. Wilson, my butler, has just hurried in to me here. Ten minutes ago a stranger claiming to be a meter inspector got entrance to the house. Do you hear me, they’ve taken that girl! She’s gone!” “Gone?” echoed Manley. “Then I haven't time to stand here talking.” Yet. Enoch Golden, even as Manley himself, had little time for talking over that strange abduction. For two minutes later his still flurried butler announced the arrival of James Gris wold, the president of the Union- Traders’ bank, on urgent business. “Golden,” began that visitor almost as soon as he had crosse4,the thresh old, “I have counted myself among your friends. But when I receive a note like this, threatening me and my business, I regard it as about time to see you, face to face.” Golden took the sheet of paper from the banker's hand. He stood regard ing it with troubled eyes. For it read: “You are a friend of Enoch Golden, the oppressor of the poor, the scaven ger of unclean gold. The blow that is about to fall on you and your bank falls because of this alliance with evil doers. You are warned.” The grim-jawed millionaire turned on his visitor. “That is not all,” declared the bank er. “Nor is this afternoon’s paper, with its bitter attack on you and your tenements all. But three hours later my fellow banker, Gresham of the Third National, received a warn ing identical with mine, and already the building of the Third National bank is in flames! And what, I want to know, sir, is the meaning of it all?” The telephone bell interrupted Gold en as he was about to speak. “Yes, this is Mr. Golden’s house. Yes, Mr. Griswold is here. What’s that?” He leaned forward for a mo ment, listening. Then the receiver fell from his flaccid hand. “My God, Gris wold, your building is on fire! The Union-Traders’ bank Is burning.” The next minute Griswold was hur rying from the house and leaping into his waiting limousine. Golden, sitting at his desk, stared startled and vacant-eyed before him. Yet that young secretary who was so foolishly accepted as feather-head ed was, at the time being, anything but idle. Ten minutes after his talk over the wire with Golden he was in a taxicab speeding towards the Stein house on Maple avenue. A block away from that house he dismounted, saun tering casually up to the home of Legar’s confederate as a tradesman's delivery wagon stopped before it. “Boy,” he said to the youthful driver of the wagon, “that housemaid at the door there is my steady. But we scrapped and she won’t even see me. Here’s a dollar if you let me hand in that box of groceries for you!” “Sure,” said the boy, as he pocketed the bill. Manley, whistling blithely, carried his armful of parcels into the tradesman’s entrance. “My driver says these things weren’t paid for,” he coolly announced. “Dey vass paid for, ef’ry-ding vass paid for!” cried the German girl. "Then you go and tell him that,” was the other’s calm suggestion. And as the belligerent-eyed maid strode out to the wagon, Manley slipped in through the still open door, dropped his parcels and stole quickly yet guardedly up through the silent house. When he came to a large room, half library and half laboratory he stared in wonder at the strange apparatus which stood on a table in the center of this room. He heard the sound of ap proaching steps. He saw a door on his right and darted through it. He realized, as soon as he had done so, that he had committed the fatal error of diving into a trap. As he peered out through the still partly opened door he saw that it was the German maid who had entered the room. Then she crossed to the closet door itself, straightened the edge of the disordered rug, closed the door and turned the key in the lock. A moment later, Manley, with his ear against the panel, heard the sound of heavier steps. Then came the even more interesting sound of voices. “Veil, wat do you say of Oldt Stein now, maybe? You still t’ink he talk foolish ven he claim dose actinic rays in conjunction mit converging wireless impulses couldn’t maybe start a leetle combustion von or two miles away, eh?” "A little combustion, Stein?” said an unknown voice, “you’ve peddled ’em out like gunfire, all over the damned city.” Manley suddenly ducked back be hind a waterproof, smelling acridly of acid burns, for footsteps had ap proached the closet door and the key was being turned in the lock. The fugitive stood close against the wall, draped by the waterproof, as the spectacled scientist groped blinkingly about for his housecoat. "Und you, Legar, If you blease, show me on der map choost vat remains to be done. Vlch buildings vill you have viped out, ven der viping is still goot?” Manley, emerging from under cover, saw that the old German had left the closet door a trifle open. So moving cautiously forward, he peered out Into the room. Clustered about the table, bent close over the map, he could see Stein and Legar and two of his un known accomplices. Manley advanced silently into the room, crouching low as he went. For on the table he had already caught sight of the blueprint of Stein’s projector apparatus. So, holding his breath, he crept closer and still closer. He had the blueprint in his hand, but before he could slip back from the table edge his presence was detected and his retreat cut off. He darted for the window, going through it like a circus rider through a paper hoop. A minute later the conspirators were after him. But Manley, rolling through a. clump of shrubbery and doubling rabbitlike on his pursuers, dodged under cover. By the time he had recovered his breath and his wits he slipped unobserved from the grounds, rounded the block and climbed into his waiting taxicab. “Police headquarters!” he told the driver. Brief as was Manley’s visit to police headquarters, that call resulted in sudden and startling movement from the great gray structure in Center street. For the mysterious fires were now breaking out even in crowded tenements on the East side, keeping a bewildered fire department shut tling impotently back and forth. The attack on Legar’s skyline quar ters was a feverishly hurried and yet a surprisingly orderly one. It was not until the police reached the top floor that the elevator came to a stop. At the same moment that they poured out into the narrow hallway a mechanician in his shirt sleeves opened the door leading from Legar's private workroom and started down the hall. Before he could retreat or slam shut that door the lieutenant’s revolver was covering him. Reach ing back to his hip, his hand was al ready on the butt of a blue-metaled automatic. Before he could whip out that weapon, however, the lieutenant’s quick eye comprehended the move ment and his own firearm spoke first. The shirt-sleeved figure fell in a heap, where he had stood in the open doorway. At the sound of that shot, from within could be heard sudden calls and shouts and hurrying steps. “That’s Legar,” cried Manley, as ha caught sight of the one-armed figure side by side with a bespectacled Ger man striving and fighting to pusb shut the intervening door. But the fallen man’s body lay in the way, and He Slipped Unobserved From the Grounds. the door refused to close. Before that body could be dragged to one side, the lieutenant and his men were in through the door, wielding night sticks and flashing firearms. It was Manley himself who caught up a chair and brought it crashing down on a strangely complicated mech anism standing squarely in the light of the Tower window. But Legar himself had not been idle. At the first wild charge into hia tower room, the master criminal had dropped crouching behind a work table, darted across to his parcel chute and there touched a hidden spring. The next moment the chuto stood open and Legar was descend ing like a plummet to the floor below. But not before Manley had caught sight of his vanishing head and start ed in pursuit. Manley was joined a minute later by the police. In the meantime Legar had escaped to the street by way of the fire escape. He hailed a taxicab and hurried eastward to the Owl’s Nest. Two minutes after Legar went rocking and swerving eastward he was followed by a stranger in a second cab. This stranger drove straight to the water front, two blocks to the north, dis missed his taxi, and earnestly con ferred with a roughly-dressed long shoreman, who later rounded the slip in a rowboat and took the stranger aboard. • •••••• Legar, in his quarters beneath th» Owl’s Nest, was in anything but an amiable mood. He stared about at his coterie of unsavory confederates. A gleam of triumph showed in his narrowing eyes as he spied a white faced girl in a chair near the fireplace. “So we’ve got you back, little one?* he mocked. She winced as he wheeled her roughly about, but remained silent. A sleepy-eyed parrot, standing on its perch beside the empty fireplace, stirred uneasily at Legar’s rough movements. The girl, rising slowly from her chair, stared into Legar’a evil face. “What are you going to do with me?” she demanded. Legar laughed. "You won’t be asking questions about it, when you find out!” "Courage, little one, courage!” said a low yet distinct voice. Legar, at the sound, wheeled sud denly about. "Who taught that damned bird to talk?” he demanded. There was a stir of uneasiness about the room. “Why, cap, that parrot can't talk,* declared the tremulous coke-snuffer at the end of the table, “it never could talk!” “Then who said ‘Courage’?” called out the irate master criminal. "I did,” said the same distinct yet ghostly voice. And had that wide eyed group stared closer into the fire place, Instead of at the silent and motionless bird on its perch, they might have noticed where a small stone, little bigger than a man’s hand, had been worked loose and lifted away from the heavy wall separating that unseen watcher from the room into which he had been peering. Yet that stone was once more in place before Legar and his worthies peered, squinting-eyed, about the smoke-stained masonry. Only, the hands of the girl, sitting silent and thoughtful in ner chair, were no long er trembling. The cowering look had faded from her eyes. For to her that voice had not seemed an altogether unfamiliar one. (TO BE CONTINUED.)