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mmm am t AUTHOR OF “THE OCCASIONAL OFFENDER,” “THE WIRE TAPPERS,” “GUN RUNNERS” ETC. NOVELIZED FROM THE PATHE PHOTO PLAY OF THE SAME NAME COPYHICHT. 1915. ARTHUR.STRINCtR, SYNOPSIS. On Windward Island Paiidort 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. Palidori floods the is land and kidnaps Golden's little daughter Margery. Twelve years later in New York a Masked One rescues Margery from L“- gar and takes her to her father’s home, whence she is recaptured. Margery’s mother fruitlessly implores Golden to find their daughter. The Laughing Mask again takes Margery away from Iygar Legar send 3 to Golden a warning and a demand for a portion of the chart of Windward Island. Margery meets her mother. The chart is lost in a fight be tween Manley and one of Legar’s hench men, but is recovered by the Laughing Mask. Count Da Espares figures In a dubious attempt to entrap Legar and claims to have killed him. Golden’s house Is dynamited during a masked bail. Le gar escapes but Da Espares is crushed In the ruins Margery rescues the Laughing Mask from the police. Manley finds Mar gery not indifferent to his love. He saves her from Mauki’s poisoned arrows. Man ley plans a mock funeral which fails to accomplish the desired purpose, the cap ture of the Iron Claw and his gang. The liaughlng Mask again frustrates the Iron Claw. ELEVENTH EPISODE The Saving of Dan O’Mara Young Peggy O’Mara was troubled In mind. She had become suspicious of her own father. On more than one occasion of late that debt-harried toiler from the Applewaithe works had been visited by a stranger who im pressed the sophisticated young Peggy as anything but attractive And an honest man, Peggy argued with her self, finds no need for stealing up to a house at night and closeting himself with its owner behind the locked door of a cellar workroom. So the spindle legged daughter of Dan O’Mara, watch ing for her chance, decided to investi gate. Put the girl’s chances for Investi gation were limited, for Peggy was a hard-driven young housekeeper, with a bedridden mother to look after as best she could. Late one night, however, when Dan O’Mara had led his myste rious visitor into his cellar workroom and locked the door behind him, the girl slipped off her broken-toed shoes and stole silently down to that under ground chamber of mystery. There, with her ear to the keyhole, she overheard enough to confirm her darkest suspicions. She waited until the mysterious visitor had stolen out through the house, with a parcel under his arm, and then once more made her way down to her father’s workrooqi. The door, this time, was unlocked. So she entered noiselessly and crept over to where Dan O’Mara sat staring at the wall with unseeing eyes. "Pop, what’re you thinkin’ about?” suddenly asked a tremulous voice close to liis shoulder. He swung about like a shot. “What should I be thinkin’ about?” he demanded. “You're thinkin’ about that man who was down here ten minutes ago,” was the girl’s answer. "What man?” equivocated the cul prit. "Chinatown Charlie.” “And how’d you know he's called Chinatown Charlie?” demanded rebel lious-eyed Dan O'Mara. “I know more’n that, pop,” said the girl, with a gulp. “I know that city crook’s ropin’ you in for work I never thought you’d do!” “Work? What work?” “There’s a bunch of opium smug glers got wise to the fact that the dye works is bringin’ in tons of that Kai sow wood from China. And certain o’ them blocks is goin’ to come in hol low with secret marks, and you’re goin’ to dig the opium out o’ them and hide it here until that hop runner for Chinatown Charlie comes and carries it away in a laundry bag!” “Ain't your mother got to have med icine?” demanded her father. “Ain't we behind in our rent? And ain’t the company docked me ten a month since that one-armed man had me machine work taken away from me?” “But you’ll more’n your ma- ! chine taken away from you, pop. You'll be queered with the company, for tamperin’ with stock, and then the bulls ’ll get wise and send you up the river for smugglin’!” “I’ve thought that out, me gerll. I’ve no love for goin’ against the law, at me time o’ life, out I guess we've got to take chances. We've got to, or go under for good and all! For I'm think in’ your poor mother was right when she said there was no crime so black as the crime o’ bein’ poor!” “But they’d promised to raise your pay, over to the dye works!” she re minded him. “Instead o' which they took off me machine and gave it to that one-armed snitch who claimed I’d been workin against the company by tryin’ to in vent a chemical color that'd soon be sandin' their old logwood plant t' the scrap heap!” Silent as Peggy O’Mara remained on the subject of her discovery, she brooded long and darkly on this heav ier cloud that hung over her home and her father’s good name. It haunted her thoughts as she worked. It filled her blind young heart with a spirit of revolt. It converted her into a di minutive yet lowering-browea Ishmael- IrMllffi ; ite. She hated the owner of the works, she told herself as she carried her fa ther’s dinner pail to the factory the next day, and she hated the hard voiced foreman of the shaft room. She turned to stare belligerently towards Anson Applewaithe, the immaculate son of the factory owner himself, as he ushered into the room of whirring shafts and flying belts a small group of visitors. Yet the Ishmael-like young face soft j ened a little as she looked at one mem | her of that approaching group. For one fair-haired girl of about twenty, ! dressed in black, whom young Apple waithe piloted about amid the roaring and clattering machinery and repeat edly addressed as “Miss Golden,” was l beautiful enough to bring a wayward pang of envy to the breast of Peggy O’Mara. As she watched her eyes sud denly widened in alarm. For Margery Golden, in staring about the room, had unconsciously moved closer*to one of the ponderous machines. There the loose end of her motor-cape was snapped at by a spinning cog wheel, as a hound snaps at a bone. The next moment the whirling teeth had fas tened themselves in the fabric of the garment edge, carrying it back be tween the jaws of the twin cogs that quickly closed on the cloth and seemed to reach out for more. At the same moment that Margery Golden turned about to determine the meaning of this sudden tug at her clothing, the alert-eyed Peggy O’Mara made an apparently maniacal spring for that astounded young woman’s throat. With a quick jerk of her thin young fingers Peggy tore the cape free where it was already straining against the white column of Its wearer’s throat. It was not until Margery Golden saw the iron teeth of the cog wheels swallowing up the last of her vanish ing cape that any inkling of her dan ger came home to her. Margery Golden stepped back and leaned against a guard rail. Then, aft er looking studiously at the slattern and slightly abashed figure of her de liverer, she opened her pocketbook and from it took out two or three neat ly folded bank notes. These she held smilingly out to the girl with the broken-toed shoes. But a quick flash spread over the usually colorless cheeks of Miss Peggy O’Mara as she backed determinedly away from the bills. ‘‘Don’t you care to take them?” asked the somewhat astonished young woman in black. “No ma’am!” was the girl’s almost sullen retort. “I ain’t earned ’em!” “But I rather think you have,” per sisted the other, still smiling. “You see, you saved my life. And surely you won’t embarrass me by arguing that it’s not worth that much!” “I don’t want your money,” an nounced the sullen-eyed girl, putting her hands behind her. But already young Applewaithe was discreetly do ing his best to pilot his visitors away from the scene. Peggy O’Mara stared after the de parting group. So intently did she stare after them that she was oblivi ous of the movements of the one-armed man who had been stooping low over his machine, in a pretense of filling its oil cups. He crept out to where a small gold locket had dropped from Margery Golden’s neck during the en counter. He caught it up from the oil stained floor, looked at it for one short moment, and then slipped it triumph antly into his pocket. After that he stood behind his machine, well out of sight, watching the fair-haired girl in black as she stepped out through the factory door. His eyes, as he watched her, were both calculating and sinis ter. But the pallid-faced girl standing so close beside him had no means of knowing that this preoccupied and stoop-shouldered workman who had lost his right hand was Jules Legar, long known to his enemies as the Iron Claw. That mysterious one-armed man, however, was destined to become bet ter acquainted with Peggy O’Mara than she imagined. For that night, when the uneasy-minded girl knew her father to be once more shut up in his cellar workroom, she was further disturbed by the sound of stealthy steps across the bare wooden floor of her home. She tiptoed out through the door, crossed to the cellar steps, and crept silently down into the dark ness. There, vaguely outlined against the door cracks in the wall shielding her father, she could make out a stealthily inquisitive figure. And she knew that figure could mean no good to the house of O'Mara. She crept as silently up the broken steps again, went to her father’s time ; worn tool chest and from it took out a somewhat rusty but ominous-looking revolver. The thin-armed girl with the thick bodied revolver then crept back to wards the cellar She had reached the top of the stairs when she saw a dark figure slowly emerge from the gloom. Then a gasp of surprise broke from j her lips, for she saw it was the one- THE DOUGLAS ENTERPRISE, DOUGLAS, GEORGIA. armed workman from the Applewaithe factory. And the next moment she re membered that this was the same man who had tried to rob her father of his work. And she no longer hesitated. “Get out o’ this house!” she com manded. “And get out quick, or I'll put a hole clean through you!” For a moment Legar stared round eyCd at the apparition confronting him. “Now, my girl, I mean no harm for you here,” he tried to argue, as he felt for the door behind him. “You mean ifitrm for me father — and that’s enough for me! Get out o’ here, and go while the goin’s good!” “Listen to me,” persisted Legar as he backed through the door, “you’re doing your father more harm, at this very moment, than I could ever do him.” "I’ll take me chance on that,” was her retort. “But you’re losing your chance, you’re—” Legar did not complete that sen tence. Instead, he leaped suddenly to wards the girl with the firearm, for he had noticed her dress sleeve catch in the screen-door hook. This had re sulted in the momentary deflection of that ever-menacing revolver barrel, and Legar’s long fingers had encom passed that weapon before she could level it again. With a quick turn or two he had twisted it out of her hand. Then he caught her by the shoulder and swung her fiercely about. "Now, my girl, I’m going to tell you a thing or two,” said the man with the revolver, stooping closer to her in the moonlight. “You think I’m an enemy of your father’s. But you’re wrong. All lamis a treasury agent. And I’ve been wondering if you know how many years it means for a man who gets caught in a twenty thousand-dollar dope-smuggling coup?” Legar turned and nodded pregnantly toward the cellar where he knew O’Mara to he. “You’ve nothin’ on me father!” pro tested the now terrified girl. “Nothing beyond the fact, of course, that he’s carrying Kaisow wood away from the Applewaithe factory. And why he’s doing that you know as well as I do!” A sob suddenly shook the meager body of the white-faced girl. “For Gawd’s sake, mister, gather me in if you want to! Take me, but don’t send me father up! He’s a good man, at heart, and wouldn’t so much as harm a fly.! You can kill me if you want to, but don’t be hard on me fa ther!” Legal - stood thoughtfully regarding her. “I don’t want to kill you, my girl, I want to help you. And if you’re willing to take a turn at helping me, in a move or two, I believe I could still make this thing come out all right.” “You’ll let me father off?” she de manded. “Yes.” "Then tell me what I’m to do.” “You remember that young lady at the' works this morning, who nearly got drawn into the machinery?” “The skirt with the starry eyes? Sure!” “Well, I want to meet that young lady, in secret.” “And where do I come in?” “I want you to go to her house and ask her to come to the sluiceroom of the factory tomorrow night.” “I can see that millionaire dame losin’ her beauty sleep to beat it out to a dye dump like this!” “Then it’s up to you to take her there,” was Legar’s retort. “But I ain’t no miracle worker!” Legar drew back. “Then our bargain is to fall through?” he demanded, with a head movement towards the cellar door. "But how’m I goin’ to make her come?” inquired the distressed girl. Legar drew out the gold locket which he had picked up from the factory floor. “This dropped from her throat when you tore her cape free this morning. Take that to her. Tell her you’d found it after she left. She’ll feel sorry for you. In fact, you’ve got to make her feel sorry for you. You’d better try a faint, when you’re talking to her, and tell her you haven’t eaten for a couple of days. She’ll try to give you money. But you must tell her that your moth er is worse off than you are.” “But s’posin’ she won’t swallow that sob stuff?” "It’s up to you to make her. And the best way to get her out here is to persuade her to fill a basket of food and wine and bring it back with her in her own car. She knows you belong to the factory settlement here, and she won’t be suspicious. You do your work right, and you'll have her here tomorrow night.” The youthful eyes which life had al ready left hard studied the sinister figure in the moonlight. "And when I get her out to that sluiceroom, what’re you goin’ to do with her?” The one-armed man laughed quietly. “That’s something strictly between her and me,” was his calmly enunci ated reply as he stepped slowly back and disappeared through the shrub bery beside the O’Mara cottage. The girl stood staring after him without moving. So intently did she look after that vanishing figure that she did not observe a second figure, even more mysterious than the first, as it slipped out of the shadows and stepped quietly up beside her. She turned with a start and stared up at the stranger confronting her. And it did not add to her peace of mind to discover that this stranger wore a mask over his face. “What d’ you want here?” was her brusque demand. “I’m looking for a young girl who happens to be in trouble,” was the quietly spoken reply. “Then I guess you’ll have to keep on travelin’,” announced Peggy as she swung up the broken steps with as sumed nonchalance, strode in through the door, and shut it after her. She stood there for several minutes before venturing to move. Then she silently reopened the door and stared out, to make sure that her visitor had taken his departure. Instead of catching sight of the masked figure, however, she was a little startled to see the one-armed man push his way in through the bushes and once more creep to the door where she stood. “What did that man want?” quick ly demanded the newcomer. "I didn’t wait to ask him,” was the girl’s retort. “No, I guess this isn’t a time for waiting,” ruminated the other aloud. "And for that reason we’ll have to speed up that bargain of ours, and put the thing through tonight!” "Tonight?” echoed the girl in a whis per of alarm. “Do you want to save your father?” “I’ll bring ’er,” she announced with grim determination. “I’ll bring her, even though I have to throw a string o’ fits to start her on the way!” The Drums of Death. It was not until Margery Golden was seated in the suede-upholstered landaulet that she found time to ques- The Girl Seemed Honest. tion the expediency of her midnight mission. Yet as she looked at the un happy and hollow-eyed girl at her side she felt sure that her journey, odd as it had at first seemed to her, could not be altogether a mistake. The girl was honest, of that there could be no ques tion, for she had journeyed many long miles to restore a trivial bit of jewelry to its owner. She had also refused to accept money. She had even seemed unwilling, after Margery had packed a large motor hamper with jelly and milk and potted meats, to have that luxurious young lady venture so far a-field at such an hour of the night. But Margery felt that it was a case where the loss of time might possibly mean the loss of a life, and she was glad, as they went humming out past the thinning lights of the city’s re motest suburbs, that she had not hesi tated to do what she could to repay her debt to the daughter of Dan O’Mara. "Why are we stopping at the Apple waithe works?” she asked as the car drew up beside the unlighted roadside. "Because me mother’s here for the night,” explained the wistful-eyed girl as she clambered down from the car, grateful for the gloom that already surrounded her. "You see, ma’am, they put us out o’ the house this mornin’! So pop got the watchman here to let me mother sleep in one o’ the base ment rooms.” "Will your father be here?" inquired the somewhat bewildered young wom an at her heels. “I can get ’im, ma’am,” explained the girl as she put down the hamper, "if you’ll just step in through that door.” "But who’ll take me to where your iiH With a Bed-Ridden Mother to Look After. mother is?" asked Margery, gathering up her skirts as she glanced into the dingy storeroom feebly lighted by its one dingy electric bulb. “I’ll be back in a minute, ma’am,” the girl replied, only too glad of any rea sonable excuse for disappearing. Margery, in the meantime, peered doubtfully about the somber building in which she found herself so unex pectedly a visitor. Along one side of the room in which she stood she could make out dark masses of dye wood piled as high as her head. Beside this she saw, in the uncertain light, an open pit filled with water. Into one side of this pit ran a cement-walled sluiceway, stained almost black, with a Watergate set in the upper part ot its channel. The opening in the far side of the pit, which was guarded by a heavy iron grill as big as a park gate, led into a high-walled cavern across which stretched a number of huge steel drums. Set in these drums were rows of knife-edged cleavers. The polished surfaces of these great blades of steel shone ominously in the half-light. Margery was still staring at the great drums bristling with cleavers when with a suddenness that startled her the electric lights were thrown on across the roof of the chamber. She wheeled about quickly to discover the cause for this. As she did so, an invol untary gasp escaped from her lips. For standing beside the door, with his fin ger still on the switch, the Iron Claw himself confronted her. “Why are you afraid of me?” he con fidently purred. For the girl drew slowly away while he as slowly fol lowed after her, step by step. Then, with a movement that was feline in its quickness, he flung out an arm and seized her. Then he turned her delib erately about until she faced the black walled sluiceway. But the girl shrank back. “Don’t be afraid of it, my dear,” he mocked as he led her forcibly, step by step, to the lip of the channel through which the mill water was curling and eddying. “In fact, I want you to look at it closely and understand it fully. It’s wonderful, wonderful for many reasons. At the end of this sluice, you see, is a log mangle. I have seen those knives shred a six-inch timber in less than a minute’s time.” He turned and stared down at the white-faced girl, drinking to the full the dizzy wine of her terror, wringing a voluptuous delight out of her word less gape of horror. Then the look on his face suddenly altered, and he wheeled about, still clutching the girl close to his side. He stood staring at the door which he had locked but a minute before. And hi 3 face sudden ly hardened as he saw the heavy iron latch of that door move. Margery, following his glance, also watched that door. And when she heard the thump of a heavy timber on its panels a new hope sped through her. That hope equipped her with fresh strength. It prompted her to struggle against the Iron Claw with the utmost power of her desperate young body. But her enemy, for all her efforts, was too much for her. Foot by foot' he forced her back towards the open sluiceway. Then, with a mut tered gasp of finality and a sudden up ward heave of his shoulders, he flung the girl headlong into the water. As he did so the door burst open. For the heavy-hearted Peggy O’Mara, after slipping guiltily away from the sluiceroom where she had left her quite unsuspecting victim, awakened for the first time to the full enormity of her offense. As she stood there in the darkness, staring back at the dark mass of the factory walls, the aches of remorse lay heavy on her young heart. She was standing there, with tears of helplessness in her eyes, when a figure stepped up to her. She would have fled, incontinently, at the ap proach of that intruder. But the stranger held her with a gently re straining hand. And as she peered up at his face she saw that it was the man in the laughing mask. “The righting of wrongs is a part of my business in life. Can I help you?” The girl hesitated. “Yes.” she finally confessed, with a burst of tears. And through her sobs she brokenly recounted as much she dared of that night’s proceedings. But she continued to weep. “And me father’ll be goin’ to the pen for what I’m tellin’ you,” she wailed out in her misery. “He will not,” avowed the Laughing Mask, with decision. “He’ll have more than help before this night is over, and a better job and a clear con science before another one comes! But tell me first where you left this girl you brought out’ from the city?’’ “Inside the door o’ the sluiceroom there.” “Good God!” gasped the man in the mask. Then he caught the spindle legged Peggy O’Mara by the hand and started for the shadowy pile of the fac tory on the run. “Quick!” he said as he ran, “show me the door!" The half-breathless girl pointed it out to him. But as he ran up to it he found it locked. He stooped and fran tically caught up a piece of timber al most as long and heavy as his own body. Peggy O’Mara, seeing that its weight seemed more than he could manage, promptly ran to his assist ance. “Now, come together,” he said, “for we’ve got to knock that door in!” Twice, three times, they charged the door before it gave way. But the mo ment its panels crashed in the Laugh ing Mask leaped through the opening. As he did so he caught sight of the two struggling figures on the brink of the blackened runway. As he saw the figure of the woman flung headlong into the open sluiceway he leaped with a shout towards the one-armed man who stood on its brink. But that one armed man, with a lightninglike move ment, whipped a revolver from his pocket, swung round on the intruder, and fired. The Laughing Mask wheeled half way about, staggered a step or two, and then fell forward on his face. The wide-eyed Peggy O’Mara, fol lowing at his heels, saw both that fall and the fact that the Iron Claw had al ready leaped towards the control board of the water mangle. Peggy screamed aloud, shrilly and belligerent ly, as she leaped for the man already before the control board. She caught at him, clawing at his upraised arm, fought him with every jot of her thin blooded girlish body. But she was no match for that de termined and malignant opponent. The most she could do was to distract and harry him for a precious moment or two. Then, realizing she was a factor to be eliminated without scruple, he caught her bodily up from the floor, raised her above his head, and with a sickening thud, sent her body against the solid masonry of the factory wall. She lay there stunned, without mov ing, moaning brokenly with pain, as Legar darted back to the control lever of the mangle drums and shifted that lever to the spot marked “start.” The next moment he had thrown over the switch of the sluicegate control. He ventured one triumphant glance in the direction of the whirring mangle knives and the slowly ascend ing gate. Then, with a grimace of sat isfaction, he leaped over the inert body of the Laughing Mask, ran to the door, and disappeared in the darkness. Had that flight been less hurried Legar might have observed that the eyes of the Laughing Mask were open, and the inert body, weak as it was from the loss of blood from a flesh wound in the hip, was already pain fully gathering itself together for some predetermined movement. That move ment, wavering and unsteady as it was, took the crawling man directly to the control board of the water mangle. There, by a supreme effort, he raised himself to his feet, groped about with an unsteady hand, and swung back the lever. The next moment the roar of the machinery stopped, the threshing knives stood poised. But it had been only in the nick of time. For Mar gery Golden, who had clung to the sluicegate until its withdrawing bars had compelled her to relax he. last desperate clutch on its bars and drop back into the black tid carrying her closer and closer to those flailing blades of death, now caught and clung to a graphite-covered driving chain lit tle more .hau a yard from the fore most nangle drum which towered above her like an open 'aw. And as she clung there, a renewing wave of hope swept through her body, for from the sluiceway wall above her she could hear a reissuring if somewhat un steady voice calling down to her. And that voice, she knew, was the voice of the Laughing Mask! (TO BE CONTINUED '