Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

Can You Beat It?l By Hershfield. v' Polly and Her Pals Pa's Desk Was Made Useful for Once By Cliff Sterrett 41 ,^oiNGr] pownI. "K |Jj Us Boys u, x(tU)<i Eaglebeak Is Safe from Skinny Shaner R*C*«red United State* Patent Office By Tom McNamara OH MR. it LE*£aK I HEARD) YOU <?AU WON Ft)l AU ABOUT WHAT A WONDERFUL \ U|)H ? f ' ftAME \00 PITCHED XEsTeRDAX! ' < J BACK TWjO Y£AR.S AiO ! CHOCKED A OOOMPUU6R" GAMS AS THAT, SK1NN1 SHANE R'S 6006L1 DEPARTMENT SPaTOESQUE POSES, a)0 17. BOX STANDING' sTill this owe is a eiNcw: djVICJLJS&l. ' is THE lGTTeh k like a pie’s tail? ‘CAOSE IT'S AT 7HF END OF PORK, AIN’T iT? THE ns was a catcher! AID W, H&lMb t&'daM.. C. n A V |<|TWMJ_ NOT] C,eT AWAY J PRfcM MLTV / PKOM JlfOWE THE £A~e TBJOER /U'ODR OFFICE | U/HX DOES A FIREMAN ' M/EAR.RED SUSPENDER.S: r- — m. 7. '-V |— " t Better Than Sherlcck « , Holmes at His Best ®vt> CLEEK OF T HE < U* & O * ^ A Detective Story of Thrilling Interest, Love and Mystery By T. W. HANSHAW. Copyright by Doubleday, Page & Co. TO-DAY’S INSTALLMENT. ‘ Yea- a lady; in about a quarter ;>f an hour.” replied Narkom. “Show her out to ua when she comes. Which -s the way? Straight through? Thanks!’* And took it forthwith, walking out of the shop by means of a rear door, nftd down avenues of crowded bloom to a very wilderness of roses, where he came upon fuk, with coat laid aside, shirt sleeves stripped up. a bidding knife m one hand and a bit of woolen string in the other, engaged In the task of budding foreign roses upon English briars in a manner which brought Joy to the heart and gladness to the eye of an elderly Dutchman, who bent over and watched the operation. • On time to the tick. 1 see. ’ said C leek, pausing in hi* op erations to pull out an open- faced watch and glance at it. then, having introduced .Mr. Narkom —in tiuei t Dutch—to the aged florist as • Th* gentleman I spoke of: the one who has invented the new system of hybridizing orchids’*—be added in English: “You can ."'peak without re straint. dear friend—the old chap doesn’t understand a word; but if you are not alone- '* **A lady will join us presently. 1 fancy she would prefer the interview to be a little more private ” “Ah. I see Then that’s a gray horse of another color, as the Irish man said. Walk down the path to its end. There's a summer house there; we can have it all to ourselves Just give me time to finish binding in this cion, rlease, and I’ll be with you” carefully Inserting a thin sliver of green wood, with a “bud” attached, between the lifted edges of a “T” shaped slit in the bark of a sturdy briar. ' What is it this time, may I ask? Robbery or something worse?’* Much Worse-^-It's Murder. "Much worse—it s murder.” replied the superintendent. Wholesale and most diabolical murder—that affair of the five men a' Hampstead Is n fool to it for mystery and infernal cunning That’s what took me.out of town—I’ve been gathering data to lay before you. Come as quickly as you can. will you. Cleek? Time is of the utmost importance.” "I judged that from what you said over the phone. That is why I asked you to come here. I should have chosen some other place but for that. Perhaps it would have been wiser if I had. This is my little ‘corner of Eden,’ where I spend my odd times and hide the savor of the Yard under the cover of James Redway, an enthu siastic amateur gardener. 1 shouldn’t like to lose it—as I shall do. if you have been followed. What’s that? Boyce and Hammond and the old red limousine? My good friend, don’t count too long on the efficacy of that paltry trick. Neither Margot nor— well, the other party, is a fool. We deal with clever people, not with mere muffs into whose eyes you can throw dust with impunity Mr Narkom. Sooner or later they will find out how they are being had’ and then the new limousine will be no greater safeguard than the old one. They mean to have me, that lot—if they can." "Gad! You take ii calmly. Clock!” “Whj not? if one lore one’s nerve one parts with one’s wits. And mine are my stock in trade. ‘Who steals my purse,’ etcetera—you know the rest. What? Yes—straight along the path In front of you. I’ll be with you in a minute's time.’ He was; for Narkom had no sooner entered the little summer house to which he had been directed than he caught sight of him coming down the path with his coat and hat on and. with his handkerchief, composedly flicking specks of dust from his cloth ing as he advanced. "Well, now what. Mr. Narkom?” he queried as he entered—and forthwith began to tie up a trailing vine which had broken loose from its fastenings and sagged over the doorw ay. "Whole sale murder. I believe you said? Gad! that’s a nice order to throw into the lap of a peaceful citizen on a splendid day like this. Let's have the details— 1 can listen whilst I'm working. But first of ail, who's the client?” “Dadv Jennifer, of Crown Mansions. Holland Park” • Jennifer? Jennifer? Any relation to that Sir Gilbert Jennifer who was Lord Mayor of London some six or seven years ago?’ "Yes—his widow. As she was mere ly knighted, of course the title does u : descend, so, his son is simply plain Mr* Rk hard Jennifer and noth ing more. However, that doesn’t seem to cause him any regret, for he is a level-headed young chap—study ing for the Bar—and, as his father left plenty of money, with nothing on that score to worry over, either. A pity the father didn’t have a bit of the boy’s cool-headedness and com mon sense. He might have risen to be anything before he died, if he had; for there was influence behind him, and he had ability, too, of a sort. But his peppery temper and his utter lack of diplomacy spoiled everything. As a matter of fact he was once appointed to an extremely high post in connection with the British Embassy at St. Petersburg — even to the acting as deputy at the time when the Ambassador himself was stricken down with illness. That was his chance—but the beggar was a fool and muffed it.” "I wnow; I know,” interjected Cleek. "Interfered in politics, the ass; stirred up the Nihilistic pie by jabbing an Impertinent finger into it; criticised the Government after the manner of a Trafalgar Square ora tor; was ‘recalled’ in double-quick- order and had to be smuggled out of Russia to escape getting a Nihilist knife-blade slid between his ribs or a Nihilist bomb from scattering whit little brains he had. It was a mar vel that they did not get him some how, at some time, the donkey.” "Lady Jennifer is beginning to o >- iiava that they did—to question it, for all he died in his bed from what seemed clearly an attack of pneu monia, they may not have been at the bottom of that death and brought it about by some secret and unsuspected means At all events' she seems to fancy that upon one occasion he came home with green chalk upon his sleeve; and, although this may have been nothing more significant than just evidence of a visit to the billiard room of his club ” Nine Sets of Them. “Certainly.” interjected Cleek, as senting. "Many billiard rooms use colored chalk these days. But why does that fact distress her ladyship? And what possible difference can it make whether the chalk mark in question was white, blue, salmon- colored or green?” “A great deal. The mark on the doorstep of the fiat building in which she and her son reside was made with green chalk—in fact, all the Three- Seventeens were written with green chalk, I have discovered.” " ‘The Three-Seventeens?’ What on earth are the ’Three-Seventeens.’ please? I’d like that put clearer.” "Well, to speak correctly, it would certainly have been more proper to say ‘The Three-Hundred-and-Seven- teens.’ dear chap." replied Narkom; "for they are simply the figures three, one, seven set down in a row (three- seventeen, as one would say), and up to the present 1 have discovered nine separate and distinct sets of them; and out of all the cases of sudden death which 1 have been investigating during the past two days—In the ef fort to sound the probability of Lady Jennifer’s theory before 1 brought the case to you—the fact remains that, whereas a number of those deaths have been unattended by the preliminary* 'warning’ of the green- chalked Three-Seventeen, in no place has it been marked upon a man’s doorstep without that man’s funeral following within the space of a fort night!” "What’s that? What’s that?” rap ped out Cleek, screwing around on his heel. "Let’s have that plainer, plea-se. Do you mean to say that somebody goes about marking ‘Three hundred and seventeen’ upon people’s door steps and that within a fortnight afterward the head of the house dies suddenly? That’s it. is it? Good God! and you mean to tell me that you have discovered nine case? of that sort—nine of them! and yet i wait until now to consider the matter worthy of investigation. Why wasn’t | a combination so suspicious looked j into before?” To be Continued To-morrow. ')/ zt V fl&S