VOICE"

covered, and it was THE LAWYER. SPEAKING Banstow who was IN A DRY, UNIMPRESSIVE convicted. He was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. He served his term in full. In the meantime Lynneker became a bigger man in Africa. He lived in Johannesburg and owned great blocks of offices. But he always remained a dreamer. Sometimes he would ride out at night into the karoo. They say he dreamed of a united Africa. I don't know. He certainly wrote poetry in the intervals of amassing money. Two weeks after Banstow was released from prison Lynneker's body was found out in the karoo, with a bullet through his heart. He had ridden out alone one night, and as he had n't returned, they sent out a search-party and found him the next day. Banstow was suspected, but apparently he had escaped. Nothing more was seen of him."

The stranger paused and then languidly lighted another cheroot. The interval seemed so indefinite that at last Albert said:

"Where does Uncle Herbert come in?" "Your Uncle Herbert was a cipher," replied our visitor. "He was merely one of the people who came under the influence of Lynneker. As a matter of fact, I believe he was one of the worst cases. He worshiped Lynneker. Lynneker was the obsession of his life. He acted as secretary for him for his vast charitable con

cerns.

And when Lynneker was found

dead, he nearly went off his head. He howled like a terrier who has lost his master." He glanced round at us, and in the dim light I thought I detected a sneer of contempt.

"Lynneker died a millionaire," he proceeded, "and among other legacies he left your uncle certain blocks of mining shares. which were probably worth about forty or fifty thousand pounds. That's how he made his money."

There was a gasp of relief round the room, and Albert wiped his brow.

"Then the money was straight enough, after all," he said huskily.

The chilling voice of the stranger came through the darkness:

"As straight as any money can be." Richard stood up and moved to the mantelpiece.

"Why the hell could n't he tell us about this before, then? Why was he so secret?"

"Herbert Read had no nerves. The thing broke him up. Banstow had also been a friend of his at one time, and he was convinced that Banstow had killed his master. He had periods of melancholia. The doctors told him that unless he went away for a change and tried to get it out of his head, he would be in an asylum in a few months. And so I suppose

able to show him a certificate from the master of the Birmingham, proving that on the night of the murder Banstow was a steerage-passenger on board his ship, seventy-three miles east-northeast of the Azores. Lynneker was probably shot by some vagrant thief. Certainly his watch. and all his money were missing."

We all peered at the man hidden in the recesses of the easy-chair, and Albert said: "How was it you had this information ?"

The figure crossed its legs, and the voice replied languidly:

"I was interested. I happen to be Karl Banstow!"

Albert groped past me on tiptoe, muttering:

It is a curious fact regarding these telepathic processes I have hinted at in this chronicle of our uncle's return that from the day when it was demonstrated that the money we had inherited was to all intents and purposes clean, our own little affairs seemed to take their cue from this consciousness. Certain it is that since that time everything seems to have prospered for us. You should see Albert's shops, particularly the one on the Broadway, where he is still not too proud to serve himself. As for myself, as I am now in a position to lead the indolent life of a scribe in this little manor-house up in the Cotswolds, and as this position is due entirely to the generosity of Uncle Herbert, it seems only right and proper that I

counting the story of his return.

THE

HERE are only three ways of getting sleeping-quarters in the national capital when one and one's wife start out on a trip to see the war-whirl in Washington. these days, especially when one and the wife debark, unannounced, round midnight from a train which, on the solemn promise of the compiler of the railwayschedule, is due to reach the Union Station, Washington, at the velvety, wistful, cocktail hour of twilight. In the first place, one may spend the first night snatching bits of sleep in the meterless "taxicab" rechristened an Auto-To-Hire -between fruitless visits to all the hotels there are, which was what the wife and I did; secondly, one may start out bright and early the next morning and begin by cruising back over the hotel route again to find any sort of Washington hotel room and bath, ending up, if one is lucky, by finding them in Baltimore, which was what the wife did; and, finally, one may

spend the second night sleeping in a Washington bar-room, which was what I did.

It was the first time I had ever slept in a bar-room all night. Since the previous November 1, or the date upon which Congress had spread a big blue blotting-pad all over the District of Columbia and had rubbed the district as good as dry, the particular hotel bar-room in mind had n't been a practical bar-room to the extent of using it for alcoholic illuminating purposes. Still, the clerk in the hotel, which is on a Fourteenth and K Street corner, continued to speak of the room as a bar in a sentimental, fondly reminiscent way, in tones one uses when speaking of "grandpa's room" long, long months after the dear old gentleman has perished.

This clerk, like all Washington hotel clerks in war-time, had laughed heartily when asked for a room and bath; then a softer emotion seemed to grip him, and he began to talk sentimentally about "our

bar." It was below-stairs, in the basement, he said, and seven beds had been placed therein only that very morning. For two dollars, the clerk continued, I might sleep all night in the bar. He added that I could take it or leave it, and he contributed the additional information that it would cost a great deal more than two dollars to sleep all night in a bar-room in any other town between New York and San Francisco, which is doubtless true.

The wife, of course, could not sleep there. Nevertheless, I decided to take an option on one of the two-dollar bar beds, which the clerk said I might do by paying something on account; say, two dollars on account. Then followed a weary day of room-seeking, varied with real thrills every time the flivver of a war contractor, headed toward the Treasury to dig another scuttleful of money out of the bins in the Treasury basement, exploded past the eyelashes of another lineal descendant of Captain Kidd who was navigating our meterless "taxi." The hastening contractors hit us only twice that first day, and they were good enough to scatter their shots so that one contractor hit the wife's side of our Auto-To-Hire, damaging her mud-guard, whereas the other contractor slammed in on my side of our car, thus avoiding all jealousy, and hit me back. of the Pension Office.

Half a dozen Pension Office

Too much was enough. squares to the east of the loomed the Union Station. There we repaired forthwith, and by telephone the wife got in touch with the Baltimore Young Women's Christian Association and a room. I had just time to grab off a seat for her in an outgoing day-coach of one of the late afternoon sections of the Washington Baltimore Liquor Local, which reaches Baltimore just before the dinner-hour, and is known, I believe, to some of the district natives as the Martini Flier, and by many more as the Bronx Express, each according to taste. Anyway, this particular apéritif section was ready. to get under way toward the dinner-hour; so the wife and I parted regretfully, but cheered by the realization that tempo

rarily, at least, we would have comfortable sleeping-quarters, the wife in the Baltimore Y. W. C. A. and I in the Washington bar-room. Fair enough!

With no sleep so far on our little pleasure-jaunt since leaving the old home in Manhattan the day before save the occasional taxinaps on the previous night's cruise of the city in search of a room, I was keen for my bar-room bed the minute the wife had departed on the Baltimorebound liquor local. But the uncertainty of our future housing accommodations during our prospective Washington visit caused me to spend what was left of the day and evening searching the widths and depths of Washington in a last effort to find quarters. Betimes I broke the monotony of my lone motor-ride by telephoning to the house of friends who had rented homes in Washington in ante-bellum days, and were still able to pay bellum rents. As I made my identity known to said friends over the wire, the news that I was in Washington was about as welcome as a coal bill in father's Christmas mail. One might have thought, to judge from the cordiality of the voice without the smile at the other end of the telephone line, that I was Billy Sunday calling up a friend and accidentally getting in touch with the Distillers' League.

One could n't, however, blame these Washington friends: that thought, long ago struck off, to the effect that "Providence provides us with our relatives, but, thank Heaven! we can pick our own friends," does n't work out in Washington as well as once it did. In times like these, for instance, young Brother-in-law Horace, junior at Yale if he had gone back the autumn after the war declaration, decides to leave the dear old college on its back in New Haven and go down to Washington and look around for a governmental job, where he can grapple with some big work that requires brains and untiring energy and all that sort of thing. So in drops Horace, accompanied by much luggage, and stays at Brother-in-law Elmer's house, out Chevy Chase way, while looking for the best job in the army,