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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

The Scandal Detectives. A short Story by F. Scott Fitzgerald




THE SCANDAL DETECTIVES


IT WAS a hot afternoon in May and Mrs. Buckner thought that a
pitcher of fruit lemonade might prevent the boys from filling up on
ice cream at the drug store. She belonged to that generation, since
retired, upon whom the great revolution in American family life
was to be visited ; but at that time she believed that her children's
relation to her was much as hers had been to her parents, for this
was more than twenty years ago.

Some generations are close to those that succeed them ; between
others the gap is infinite and unbridgeable. Mrs. Buckner a woman
of character, a member of Society in a large Middle- Western city
carrying a pitcher of fruit lemonade through her own spacious back
yard, was progressing across a hundred years. Her own thoughts
would have been comprehensible to her great-grandmother; what
was happening in a room above the stable would have been entirely
unintelligible to them both. In what had once served as the coach-
man's sleeping apartment, her son and a friend were not behaving
in a normal manner, but were, so to speak, experimenting in a void.
They were making the first tentative combinations of the ideas and
materials they found ready at their hand ideas destined to become,
in future years, first articulate, then startling and finally common-
place. At the moment when she called up to them they were sitting
with disarming quiet upon the still unhatched eggs of the mid-
twentieth century.

Riply Buckner descended the ladder and took the lemonade. Basil
Duke Lee looked abstractedly down at the transaction and said,
"Thank you very much, Mrs. Buckner."

"Are you sure it isn't too hot up there?"

"No, Mrs. Buckner. It's fine."

It was stifling ; but they were scarcely conscious of the heat, and
they drank two tall glasses each of the lemonade without knowing
that they were thirsty. Concealed beneath a sawed-out trapdoor
from which they presently took it was a composition book bound in
imitation red leather which currently absorbed much of their atten-


tion. On its first page was inscribed, if you penetrated the secret of
the lemon-juice ink: "THE BOOK OF SCANDAL, written by Riply
Buckner, Jr., and Basil D. Lee, Scandal Detectives."

In this book they had set down such deviations from rectitude on
the part of their fellow citizens as had reached their ears. Some of
these false steps were those of grizzled men, stories that had become
traditions in the city and were embalmed in the composition book by
virtue of indiscreet exhumations at family dinner tables. Others were
the more exciting sins, confirmed or merely rumored, of boys and
girls their own age. Some of the entries would have been read by
adults with bewilderment, others might have inspired wrath, and
there were three or four contemporary reports that would have pros-
trated the parents of the involved children with horror and despair.

One of the mildest items, a matter they had hesitated about setting
down, though it had shocked them only last year, was: "Elwood
Learning has been to the Burlesque Show three or four times at the
Star."

Another, and perhaps their favorite, because of its uniqueness, set
forth that "H. P. Cramner committed some theft in the East he
could be imprisoned for and had to come here" H. P. Cramner
being now one of the oldest and "most substantial" citizens of the
city.

The single defect in the book was that it could only be enjoyed
with the aid of the imagination, for the invisible ink must keep its
secrets until that day when, the pages being held close to the fire,
the items would appear. Close inspection was necessary to determine
which pages had been used already a rather grave charge against a
certain couple had been superimposed upon the dismal facts that
Mrs. R. B. Gary had consumption and that her son, Walter Gary,
had been expelled from Pawling School. The purpose of the work as
a whole was not blackmail. It was treasured against the time when its
protagonists should a do something" to Basil and Riply. Its possession
gave them a sense of power. Basil, for instance, had never seen
Mr. H. P. Cramner make a single threatening gesture in Basil's direc-
tion, but let him even hint that he was going to do something to
Basil and there preserved against him was the record of his past.

It is only fair to say that at this point the book passes entirely out
of this story. Years later a janitor discovered it beneath the trap-
door, and finding it apparently blank, gave it to his little girl ; so the
misdeeds of Elwood Learning and H. P. Cramner were definitely
entombed at last beneath a fair copy of Lincoln's Gettysburg
Address.

The book was Basil's idea. He was more the imaginative and in
most ways the stronger of the two. He was a shining-eyed, brown-
haired boy of fourteen, rather small as yet, and bright and lazy at
school. His favorite character in fiction was Arsne Lupin, the gentle-
man burglar, a romantic phenomenon lately imported from Europe
and much admired in the first bored decades of the century.

Riply Buckner, also in short pants, contributed to the partnership
a breathless practicality. His mind waited upon Basil's imagination
like a hair trigger and no scheme was too fantastic for his immediate
"Let's do it ! " Since the school's third baseball team, on which they
had been pitcher and catcher, decomposed after an unfortunate April
season, they had spent their afternoons struggling to evolve a way
of life which should measure up to the mysterious energies ferment-
ing inside them. In the cache beneath the trapdoor were some
"slouch" hats and bandanna handkerchiefs, some loaded dice, half of
a pair of handcuffs, a rope ladder of a tenuous crochet persuasion for
rear-window escapes into the alley, and a make-up box containing
two old theatrical wigs and crepe hair of various colors all to be
used when they decided what illegal enterprises to undertake.

Their lemonades finished, they lit Home Runs and held a desultory
conversation which touched on crime, professional baseball, sex and
the local stock company. This broke off at the sound of footsteps and
familiar voices in the adjoining alley.

From the window, they investigated. The voices belonged to Mar-
garet Torrence, Imogene Bissel and Connie Davies, who were cutting
through the alley from Imogene's back yard to Connie's at the end
of the block. The young ladies were thirteen, twelve and thirteen
years old respectively, and they considered themselves alone, for in
time to their march they were rendering a mildly daring parody in
a sort of whispering giggle and coming out strongly on the finale:
"Oh, my dar-ling Clemen-tine."

Basil and Riply leaned together from the window, then remember-
ing their undershirts sank down behind the sill.

"We heard you ! " they cried together.

The girls stopped and laughed. Margaret Torrence chewed exag-
geratedly to indicate gum, and gum with a purpose. Basil imme-
diately understood.

"Whereabouts?" he demanded.

"Over at Imogene's house."

They had been at Mrs. Bissel 's cigarettes. The implied recklessness
of their mood interested and excited the two boys and they pro-
longed the conversation. Connie Davies had been Riply's girl during
dancing-school term ; Margaret Torrence had played a part in Basil's
recent past; Imogene Bissel was just back from a year in Europe.
During the last month neither Basil nor Riply had thought about
girls, and, thus refreshed, they became conscious that the centre of
the world had shifted suddenly from the secret room to the little
group outside.

"Come on up," they suggested.

"Come on out. Come on down to the Whartons' yard."

"All right."

Barely remembering to put away the Scandal Book and the box of
disguises, the two boys hurried out, mounted their bicycles and rode
up the alley.

The Whar tons' own children had long grown up, but their yard
was still one of those predestined places where young people gather
in the afternoon. It had many advantages. It was large, open to other
yards on both sides, and it could be entered upon skates or bicycles
from the street. It contained an old seesaw, a swing and a pair of
flying rings; but it had been a rendezvous before these were put
up, for it had a child's quality the thing that makes young people
huddle inextricably on uncomfortable steps and desert the houses of
their friends to herd on the obscure premises of "people nobody
knows." The Whartons' yard had long been a happy compromise;
there were deep shadows there all day long and ever something vague
in bloom, and patient dogs around, and brown spots worn bare by
countless circling wheels and dragging feet. In sordid poverty, below
the bluff two hundred feet away, lived the "micks" they had merely
inherited the name, for they were now largely of Scandinavian
descent and when other amusements palled, a few cries were
enough to bring a gang of them swarming up the hill, to be faced if
numbers promised well, to be fled from into convenient houses if
things went the other way.

It was five o'clock and there was a small crowd gathered there for
that soft and romantic time before supper a time surpassed only by
the interim of summer dusk thereafter. Basil and Riply rode their
bicycles around abstractedly, in and out of trees, resting now and
then with a hand on someone's shoulder, shading their eyes from the
glow of the late sun that, like youth itself, is too strong to face
directly, but must be kept down to an undertone until it dies away.

Basil rode over to Imogene Bissel and balanced idly on his wheel
before her. Something in his face then must have attracted her, for
she looked up at him, looked at him really, and slowly smiled. She
was to be a beauty and belle of many proms in a few years. Now her
large brown eyes and large beautifully shaped mouth and the high
flush over her thin cheek bones made her face gnome-like and
offended those who wanted a child to look like a child. For a mo-
ment Basil was granted an insight into the future ; the spell of her
vitality crept over him suddenly. For the first time in his life he
realized a girl completely as something opposite and complementary
to him, and he was subject to a warm chill of mingled pleasure and
pain. It was a definite experience and he was immediately conscious
of it. The summer afternoon became lost in her suddenly the soft
air, the shadowy hedges and banks of flowers, the orange sunlight,
the laughter and voices, the tinkle of a piano over the way the odor
left all these things and went into Imogene's face as she sat there
looking up at him with a smile.

For a moment it was too much for him. He let it go, incapable of
exploiting it until he had digested it alone. He rode around fast in
a circle on his bicycle, passing near Imogene without looking at her.
When he came back after a while and asked if he could walk home
with her, she had forgotten the moment, if it had ever existed for
her, and was almost surprised. With Basil wheeling his bicycle
beside her, they started down the street.

"Can you come out tonight?" he asked eagerly. "There'll prob-
ably be a bunch in the Whartons' yard."

"I'll ask mother."

"I'll telephone you. I don't want to go unless you'll be there."

"Why?" She smiled at him again, encouraging him.

"Because I don't want to."

"But why don't you want to?"

"Listen," he said quickly. "What boys do you like better than
me?"

"Nobody. I like you and Hubert Blair best."

Basil felt no jealousy at the coupling of this name with his. There
was nothing to do about Hubert Blair but accept him philosophically,
as other boys did when dissecting the hearts of other girls.

"I like you better than anybody," he said deliriously.

The weight of the pink dappled sky above him was not endurable.
He was plunging along through air of ineffable loveliness while warm
freshets sprang up in his blood and he turned them, and with them
his whole life, like a stream toward this girl.

They reached the carriage door at the side of her house.

"Can't you come in, Basil?"

"No." He saw immediately that that was a mistake, but it was
said now. The intangible present had eluded him. Still he lingered,
"Do you want my school ring?"

"Yes, if you want to give it to me."

"I'll give it to you tonight." His voice shook slightly as he added,

"That is, I'll trade."

"What for?"

"Something."

"What ?" Her color spread ; she knew.

"You know. Will you trade?"

Imogene looked around uneasily. In the honey-sweet silence that
had gathered around the porch, Basil held his breath.
"You're awful," she whispered. "Maybe. . . Good-by."

II

It was the best hour of the day now and Basil was terribly happy.
This summer he and his mother and sister were going to the lakes
and next fall he was starting away to school. Then he would go to
Yale and be a great athlete, and after that if his two dreams had
fitted onto each other chronologically instead of existing independ-
ently side by side he was due to become a gentleman burglar.
Everything was fine. He had so many alluring things to think about
that it was hard to fall asleep at night.

That he was now crazy about Imogene Bissel was not a distrac-
tion, but another good thing. It had as yet no poignancy, only a bril-
liant and dynamic excitement that was bearing him along toward
the Wharton yard through the May twilight.

He wore his favorite clothes white duck knickerbockers, pepper-
and-salt Norfolk jacket, a Belmont collar and a gray knitted tie.
With his brown hair wet and shining, he made a handsome little
figure as he turned in upon the familiar but not reenchanted lawn
and joined the voices in the gathering darkness. Three or four girls
who lived in neighboring houses were present, and almost twice as
many boys; and a slightly older group adorning the side veranda
made a warm, remote nucleus against the lamps of the house and
contributed occasional mysterious ripples of laughter to the already
overburdened night.

Moving from shadowy group to group, Basil ascertained that
Imogene was not yet here. Finding Margaret Torrence, he spoke to
her aside, lightly.

"Have you still got that old ring of mine?"

Margaret had been his girl all year at dancing school, signified by
the fact that he had taken her to the cotillion which closed the sea-
son. The affair had languished toward the end; none the less, his
question was undiplomatic.

"IVe got it somewhere," Margaret replied carelessly. "Why? Do
you want it back?"

"Sort of."

"All right. I never did want it. It was you that made me take it,
Basil. Ill give it back to you tomorrow."

"You couldn't give it to me tonight, could you?" His heart leaped
as he saw a small figure come in at the rear gate. "I sort of want to
get it tonight."
"Oh, all right, Basil."

She ran across the street to her house and Basil followed. Mr. and
Mrs. Torrence were on the porch, and while Margaret went upstairs
for the ring he overcame his excitement and impatience and an-
swered those questions as to the health of his parents which are so
meaningless to the young. Then a sudden stiffening came over him,
his voice faded off and his glazed eyes fixed upon a scene that was
materializing over the way.

From the shadows far up the street, a swift, almost flying figure
emerged and floated into the patch of lamplight in front of the
Whartons' house. The figure wove here and there in a series of
geometric patterns, now off with a flash of sparks at the impact of
skates and pavement, now gliding miraculously backward, describing
a fantastic curve, with one foot lifted gracefully in the air, until the
young people moved forward in groups out of the darkness and
crowded to the pavement to watch. Basil gave a quiet little groan
as he realized that of all possible nights, Hubert Blair had chosen
this one to arrive.

"You say you're going to the lakes this summer, Basil. Have you
taken a cottage?"

Basil became aware after a moment that Mr. Torrence was mak-
ing this remark for the third time.

"Oh, yes, sir," he answered "I mean, no. We're staying at the
club."

"Won't that be lovely?" said Mrs. Torrence.

Across the street, he saw Imogene standing under the lamp-post
and in front of her Hubert Blair, his jaunty cap on the side of his
head, maneuvering in a small circle. Basil winced as he heard his
chuckling laugh. He did not perceive Margaret until she was beside
him, pressing his ring into his hand like a bad penny. He muttered
a strained hollow good-by to her parents, and, weak with apprehen-
sion, followed her back across the street.

Hanging back in a shadow, he fixed his eyes not on Imogene but
on Hubert Blair. There was undoubtedly something rare about
Hubert. In the eyes of children less than fifteen, the shape of the
nose is the distinguishing mark of beauty. Parents may call attention
to lovely eyes, shining hair or gorgeous coloring, but the nose and its
juxtaposition on the face is what the adolescent sees. Upon the lithe,
stylish, athletic torso of Hubert Blair was set a conventional chubby
face, and upon this face was chiseled the piquant, retrouss6 nose of
a Harrison Fisher girl.

He was confident ; he had personality, uninhibited by doubts or
moods. He did not go to dancing school his parents had moved to
the city only a year ago but already he was a legend. Though most
of the boys disliked him, they did homage to his virtuosic athletic
ability, and for the girls his every movement, his pleasantries, his
very indifference, had a simply immeasurable fascination. Upon sev-
eral previous occasions Basil had discovered this ; now the discourag-
ing comedy began to unfold once more.

Hubert took off his skates, rolled one down his arm and caught it
by the strap before it reached the pavement ; he snatched the ribbon
from Imogene's hair and made off with it, dodging from under her
arms as she pursued him, laughing and fascinated, around the yard.
He cocked one foot behind the other and pretended to lean an elbow
against a tree, missed the tree on purpose and gracefully saved him-
self from falling. The boys watched him noncommittally at first.
Then they, too, broke out into activity, doing stunts and tricks as
fast as they could think of them until those on the porch craned their
recks at the sudden surge of activity in the garden. But Hubert
coolly turned his back on his own success. He took Imogene's hat and
began setting it in various quaint ways upon his head. Imogene and
the other girls were filled with delight.

Unable any longer to endure the nauseous spectacle, Basil went up
to the group and said, "Why, hello, Hube," in as negligent a tone as
he could command.

Hubert answered: "Why, hello, old old Basil the Boozle," and
set the hat a different way on his head, until Basil himself couldn't
resist an unwilling chortle of laughter.

"Basil the Boozle! Hello, Basil the Boozle !" The cry circled the
garden. Reproachfully he distinguished Riply's voice among the
others.

"Hube the Boob ! " Basil countered quickly ; but his ill humor de-
tracted from the effect though several boys repeated it appreciatively.

Gloom settled upon Basil, and through the heavy dusk the figure
of Imogene began to take on a new, unattainable charm. He was a
romantic boy and already he had endowed her heavily from his
fancy. Now he hated her for her indifference, but he must perversely
linger near in the vain hope of recovering the penny of ecstasy so
wantonly expended this afternoon.

He tried to talk to Margaret with decoy animataion, but Margaret
was not responsive. Already a voice had gone up in the darkness
calling in a child. Panic seized upon him ; the blessed hour of summer
evening was almost over. At a spreading of the group to let pedes-
trians through, he maneuvered Imogene unwillingly aside.

"I've got it," he whispered. "Here it is. Can I take you home?"

She looked at him distractedly. Her hand closed automatically on
the ring.

"What? Oh, I promised Hubert he could take me home." At the
sight of his face she pulled herself from her trance and forced a note
of indignation. "I saw you going off with Margaret Torrence just
as soon as I came into the yard."

"I didn't. I just went to get the ring."

"Yes, you did ! I saw you ! "

Her eyes moved back to Hubert Blair. He had replaced his roller
skates and was making little rhythmic jumps and twirls on his toes,
like a witch doctor throwing a slow hypnosis over an African tribe.
Basil's voice, explaining and arguing, went on, but Imogene moved
away. Helplessly he followed. There were other voices calling in the
darkness now and unwilling responses on all sides.

"All right, mother!"

"I'll be there in a second, mother."

"Mother, can't I please stay out five minutes more ?"

"I've got to go," Imogene cried. "It's almost nine."

Waving her hand and smiling absently at Basil, she started off
down the street. Hubert pranced and stunted at her side, circled
around her and made entrancing little figures ahead.

Only after a minute did Basil realize that another young lady was
addressing him.

"What?" he demanded absently.

"Hubert Blair is the nicest boy in town and you're the most con-
ceited," repeated Margaret Torrence with deep conviction.

He stared at her in pained surprise. Margaret wrinkled her nose
at him and yielded up her person to the now-insistent demands com-
ing from across the street. As Basil gazed stupidly after her and then
watched the forms of Imogene and Hubert disappear around the
corner, there was a low mutter of thunder along the sultry sky and
a moment later a solitary drop plunged through the lamplit leaves
overhead and splattered on the sidewalk at his feet. The day was to
close in rain.

Ill

It came quickly and he was drenched and running before he
reached his house eight blocks away. But the change of weather had
swept over his heart and he leaped up every few steps, swallowing
the rain and crying " Yo-o-o ! " aloud, as if he himself were a part of
the fresh, violent disturbance of the night. Imogene was gone, washed
out like the day's dust on the sidewalk. Her beauty would come back
into his mind in brighter weather, but here in the storm he was alone
with himself. A sense of extraordinary power welled up in him, until
to leave the ground permanently with one of his wild leaps would
not have surprised him. He was a lone wolf, secret and untamed ; a
night prowler, demoniac and free. Only when he reached his own
house did his emotion begin to turn, speculatively and almost with-
out passion, against Hubert Blair.

He changed his clothes, and putting on pajamas and dressing-gown
descended to the kitchen, where he happened upon a new chocolate
cake. He ate a fourth of it and drank most of a bottle of milk. His
elation somewhat diminished, he called up Riply Buckner on the
phone.

"I've got a scheme," he said.

"What about?"

"How to do something to H. B. with the S. D."

Riply understood immediately what he meant. Hubert had been
so indiscreet as to fascinate other girls besides Miss Bissell that
evening.

"Well have to take in Bill Kampf," Basil said.

"All right."

"See you at recess tomorrow. . . . Good night!"

IV

Four days later, when Mr. and Mrs. George P. Blair were finish-
ing dinner, Hubert was called to the telephone. Mrs. Blair took ad-
vantage of his absence to speak to her husband of what had been on
her mind all day.

"George, those boys, or whatever they are, came again last
night."

He frowned.

"Did you see them?"

"Hilda did. She almost caught one of them. You see, I told her
about the note they left last Tuesday, the one that said, 'First warn-
ing, S.D.,' so she was ready for them. They rang the back-door bell
this time and she answered it straight from the dishes. If her hands
hadn't been soapy she could have caught one, because she grabbed
him when he handed her a note, but her hands were soapy so he
slipped away."

"What did he look like?"

"She said he might have been a very little man, but she thought he
was a boy in a false face. He dodged like a boy, she said, and she
thought he had short pants on. The note was like the other. It said
'Second warning, S.D.' "

"If youVe got it, I'd like to see it after dinner."

Hubert came back from the phone. "It was Imogene Bissel," he
said. "She wants me to come over to her house. A bunch are going
over there tonight."

"Hubert," asked his father, "do you know any boy with the
initials S.D.?"

"No, sir."

"Have you thought?"

"Yeah, I thought. I knew a boy named Sam Davis, but I haven't
seen him for a year."

"Who was he?"

"Oh, a sort of tough. He was at Number 44 School when I went
there."

"Did he have it in for you ?"

"I don't think so."

"Who do you think could be doing this ? Has anybody got it in for
you that you know about ?

"I don't know, papa ; I don't think so."

"I don't like the looks of this thing," said Mr. Blair thoughtfully.
"Of course it may be only some boys, but it may be "

He was silent. Later, he studied the note. It was in red ink and
there was a skull and crossbones in the corner, but being printed, it
told him nothing at all.

Meanwhile Hubert kissed his mother, set his cap jauntily on the
side of his head, and passing through the kitchen stepped out on the
back stoop, intending to take the usual short cut along the alley. It
was a bright moonlit night and he paused for a moment on the stoop
to tie his shoe. If he had but known that the telephone call just re-
ceived had been a decoy, that it had not come from Imogene Bissel's
house, had not indeed been a girl's voice at all, and that shadowy
and grotesque forms were skulking in the alley just outside the gate,
he would not have sprung so gracefully and lithely down the steps
with his hands in his pockets or whistled the first bar of the Grizzly
Bear into the apparently friendly night.

His whistle aroused varying emotions in the alley. Basil had given
his daring and successful falsetto imitation over the telephone a little
too soon, and though the Scandal Detectives had hurried, their prepa-
rations were not quite in order. They had become separated. Basil,
got up like a Southern planter of the old persuasion, just outside the
Blairs' gate; Bill Kampf, with a long Balkan mustache attached by
a wire to the lower cartilage of his nose, was approaching in the
shadow of the fence ; but Riply Buckner, in a full rabbinical beard,
was impeded by a length of rope he was trying to coil and was still a
hundred feet away. The rope was an essential part of their plan ; for,
after much cogitation, they had decided what they were going to do
to Hubert Blair. They were going to tie him up, gag him and put
him in his own garbage can.

The idea at first horrified them it would ruin his suit, it was
awfully dirty and he might smother. In fact the garbage can, symbol
of all that was repulsive, won the day only because it made every
other idea seem tame. They disposed of the objections his suit
could be cleaned, it was where he ought to be anyhow, and if they
left the lid off he couldn't smother. To be sure of this they had paid
a visit of inspection to the Buckners' garbage can and stared into it,
fascinated, envisaging Hubert among the rinds and eggshells. Then
two of them, at least, resolutely put that part out of their minds and
concentrated upon the luring of him into the alley and the over-
whelming of him there.

Hubert's cheerful whistle caught them off guard and each of the
three stood stock-still, unable to communicate with the others. It
flashed through Basil's mind that if he grabbed Hubert without Riply
at hand to apply the gag as had been arranged, Hubert's cries might
alarm that gigantic cook in the kitchen who had almost taken him
the night before. The thought threw him into a state of indecision.
At that precise moment Hubert opened the gate and came out into
the alley.

The two stood five feet apart, staring at each other, and all at once
Basil made a startling discovery. He discovered he liked Hubert
Blair liked him as well as any boy he knew. He had absolutely no
wish to lay hands on Hubert Blair and stuff him into a garbage can,
jaunty cap and all. He would have fought to prevent that con-
tingency. As his mind, unstrung by his situation, gave pasture to this
inconvenient thought, he turned and dashed out of the alley and up
the street.

For a moment the apparition had startled Hubert, but when it
turned and made off he was heartened and gave chase. Out-distanced,
he decided after fifty yards to let well enough alone ; and returning
to the alley, started rather precipitously down toward the other end
and came face to face with another small and hairy stranger.

Bill Kampf, being more simply organized than Basil, had no
scruples of any kind. It had been decided to put Hubert into a
garbage can, and though he had nothing at all against Hubert, the
idea had made a pattern on his brain which he intended to follow.
He was a natural man that is to say, a hunter and once a creature
took on the aspect of a quarry, he would pursue it without qualms
until it stopped struggling.

But he had been witness to Basil's inexplicable flight, and suppos-
ing that Hubert's father had appeared and was now directly behind
him, he, too, faced about and made off down the alley. Presently he
met Riply Buckner, who, without waiting to inquire the cause of his
flight, enthusiastically joined him. Again Hubert was surprised into
pursuing a little way. Then, deciding once and for all to let well
enough alone, he returned on a dead run to his house.

Meanwhile Basil had discovered that he was not pursued, and
keeping in the shadows, made his way back to the alley. He was not
frightened he had simply been incapable of action. The alley was
empty ; neither Bill nor Riply was in sight. He saw Mr. Blair come
to the back gate, open it, look up and down and go back into the
house. He came closer. There was a great chatter in the kitchen
Hubert's voice, loud and boastful, and Mrs. Blair's frightened, and
the two Swedish domestics contributing bursts of hilarious laughter.
Then through an open window he heard Mr. Blair's voice at the tele-
phone :

"I want to speak to the chief of police. . . . Chief, this is George
P. Blair. . . . Chief, there's a gang of toughs around here who "

Basil was off like a flash, tearing at his Confederate whiskers as he
ran.



Imogene Bissel, having just turned thirteen, was not accustomed
to having callers at night. She was spending a bored and solitary
evening inspecting the months' bills which were scattered over her
mother's desk, when she heard Hubert Blair and his father admitted
into the front hall.

"I just thought I'd bring him over myself," Mr. Blair was saying
to her mother. "There seems to be a gang of toughs hanging around
our alley tonight."

Mrs. Bissel had not called upon Mrs. Blair and she was consider-
ably taken aback by this unexpected visit. She even entertained the
uncharitable thought that this was a crude overture, undertaken by
Mr. Blair on behalf of his wife.

"Really I" she exclaimed. "Imogene will be delighted to see
Hubert, I'm sure. . . . Imogene!"

"These toughs were evidently lying in wait for Hubert," continued
Mr. Blair. "But he's a pretty spunky boy and he managed to drive
them away. However, I didn't want him to come down here alone."

"Of course not," she agreed. But she was unable to imagine why
Hubert should have come at all. He was a nice enough boy, but
surely Imogene had seen enough of him the last three afternoons. In
fact, Mrs. Bissel was annoyed, and there was a minimum of warmth
in her voice when she asked Mr. Blair to come in.

They were still in the hall, and Mr. Blair was just beginning to
perceive that all was not as it should be, when there was another ring
at the bell. Upon the door being opened, Basil Lee, red-faced and
breathless, stood on the threshold.

"How do you do, Mrs. Bissel? Hello, Imogene!" he cried in an
unnecessarily hearty voice. "Where's the party?"

The salutation might have sounded to a dispassionate observer
somewhat harsh and unnatural, but it fell upon the ears of an al-
ready disconcerted group.

"There isn't any party," said Imogene wonderingly.

"What?" Basil's mouth dropped open in exaggerated horror, his
voice trembled slightly. "You mean to say you didn't call me up and
tell me to come over here to a party?"

"Why, of course not, Basil ! "

Imogene was excited by Hubert's unexpected arrival and it oc-
curred to her that Basil had invented this excuse to spoil it. Alone of
those present, she was close to the truth ; but she underestimated the
urgency of Basil's motive, which was not jealousy but mortal fear.

"You called me up, didn't you, Imogene?" demanded Hubert con-
fidently.

"Why, no, Hubert ! I didn't call up anybody."

Amid a chorus of bewildered protestations, there was another ring
at the doorbell and the pregnant night yielded up Riply Buckner,
Jr., and William S. Kampf. Like Basil, they were somewhat rumpled
and breathless, and they no less rudely and peremptorily demanded
the whereabouts of the party, insisting with curious vehemence that
Imogene had just now invited them over the phone.

Hubert laughed, the others began to laugh and the tensity re-
laxed. Imogene, because she believed Hubert, now began to believe
them all. Unable to restrain himself any longer in the presence of
this unhoped-for audience, Hubert burst out with his amazing ad-
venture.

"I guess there's a gang laying for us all!" he exclaimed. "There
were some guys laying for me in our alley when I went out. There
was a big fellow with gray whiskers, but when he saw me he ran
away. Then I went along the alley and there was a bunch more, sort
of foreigners or something, and I started after'm and they ran. I
tried to catchem, but I guess they were good and scared, because
they ran too fast for me"

So interested were Hubert and his father in the story that they
failed to perceive that three of his listeners were growing purple in
the face or to mark the uproarious laughter that greeted Mrs. Bissel's
polite proposal that they have a party, after all.

"Tell about the warnings, Hubert," prompted Mr. Blair. "You see,
Hubert had received these warnings. Did you boys get any warn-
ings?"

"I did," said Basil suddenly. "I got a sort of warning on a piece of
paper about a week ago."

For a moment, as Mr. Blair's worried eye fell upon Basil, a strong
sense not precisely of suspicion but rather of obscure misgiving
passed over him. Possibly that odd aspect of Basil's eyebrows, where
wisps of crepe hair still lingered, connected itself in his subconscious
mind with what was bizarre in the events of the evening. He shook
his head somewhat puzzled. Then his thoughts glided back restfully
to Hubert's courage and presence of mind.

Hubert, meanwhile, having exhausted his facts, was making tenta-
tive leaps into the realms of imagination.

"I said, 'So, you're the guy that's been sending these warnings/ and
he swung his left at me, and I dodged and swung my right back at
him. I guess I must have landed, because he gave a yell and ran.
Gosh, he could run ! You'd ought to of seen him, Bill he could run
as fast as you."

"Was he big?" asked Basil, blowing his nose noisily.

"Sure ! About as big as father."

"Were the other ones big too?"

"Sure! They were pretty big. I didn't wait to see. I just yelled,
'You get out of here, you bunch of toughs, or I'll show you!' They
started to sort of fight, but I swung my right at one of them and they
didn't wait for any more."

"Hubert says he thinks they were Italians," interrupted Mr. Blair.
"Didn't you, Hubert?"

"They were sort of funny-looking," Hubert said. "One fellow
looked like an Italian."

Mrs. Bissel led the way to the dining room, where she had caused
a cake and grape juice supper to be spread. Imogene took a chair by
Hubert's side.

"Now tell me all about it, Hubert," she said, attentively folding
her hands.

Hubert ran over the adventure once more. A knife now made its
appearance in the belt of one conspirator; Hubert's parleys with
them lengthened and grew in volume and virulence. He had told
them just what they might expect if they fooled with him. They had
started to draw knives, but had thought better of it and taken to
flight.

In the middle of this recital there was a curious snorting sound
from across the table, but when Imogene looked ovef, Basil was
spreading jelly on a piece of coffee cake and his eyes were brightly
innocent. A minute later, however, the sound was repeated, and this
time she intercepted a specifically malicious expression upon his
face.

"I wonder what you'd have done, Basil," she said cuttingly. "Ill
bet you'd be running yet I "

Basil put the piece of coffee cake in his mouth and immediately
choked on it an accident which Bill Kampf and Riply Buckner
found hilariously amusing. Their amusement at various casual inci-
dents at table seemed to increase as Hubert's story continued. The
alley now swarmed with malefactors, and as Hubert struggled on
against overwhelming odds, Imogene found herself growing restless
without in the least realizing that the tale was boring her. On the
contrary, each time Hubert recollected new incidents and began
again, she looked spitefully over at Basil, and her dislike for him
grew.

When they moved into the library, Imogene went to the piano,
where she sat alone while the boys gathered around Hubert on the
couch. To her chagrin, they seemed quite content to listen indefi-
nitely. Odd little noises squeaked out of them from time to time, but
whenever the narrative slackened they would beg for more.

"Go on, Hubert. Which one did you say could run as fast as Bill
Kampf?"

She was glad when, after half an hour, they all got up to go.

"It's a strange affair from beginning to end," Mr. Blair was say-
ing. "I don't like it. I'm going to have a detective look into the
matter tomorrow. What did they want of Hubert? What were they
going to do to him?"

No one offered a suggestion. Even Hubert was silent, contem-
plating his possible fate with certain respectful awe. During breaks
in his narration the talk had turned to such collateral matters as
murders and ghosts, and all the boys had talked themselves into a
state of considerable panic. In fact each had come to believe, in
varying degrees, that a band of kidnappers infested the vicinity.

"I don't like it," repeated Mr. Blair. a ln fact I'm going to see all
of you boys to your own homes."

Basil greeted this offer with relief. The evening had been a mad
success, but furies once aroused sometimes get out of hand. He did
not feel like walking the streets alone tonight.

In the hall, Imogene, taking advantage of her mother's somewhat
fatigued farewell to Mr. Blair, beckoned Hubert back into the
library. Instantly attuned to adversity, Basil listened. There was a
whisper and a short scuffle, followed by an indiscreet but unmistak-
able sound. With the corners of his mouth falling, Basil went out the
door. He had stacked the cards dexterously, but Life had played
a trump from its sleeve at the last.

A moment later they all started off, clinging together in a group,
turning corners with cautious glances behind and ahead. What Basil
and Riply and Bill expected to see as they peered warily into the
sinister mouths of alleys and around great dark trees and behind
concealing fences they did not know in all probability the same
hairy and grotesque desperadoes who had lain in wait for Hubert
Blair that night.

VI

A week later Basil and Riply heard that Hubert and his mother
had gone to the seashore for the summer. Basil was sorry. He had
wanted to learn from Hubert some of the graceful mannerisms that
his contemporaries found so dazzling and that might come in so
handy next fall when he went away to school. In tribute to Hubert's
passing, he practised leaning against a tree and missing it and rolling
a skate down his arm, and he wore his cap in Hubert's manner, set
jauntily on the side of his head.

This was only for a while. He perceived eventually that though
boys and girls would always listen to him while he talked, their
mouths literally moving in response to his, they would never look at
him as they had looked at Hubert. So he abandoned the loud
chuckle that so annoyed his mother and set his cap straight upon his
head once more.

But the change in him went deeper than that. He was no longer
sure that he wanted to be a gentleman burglar, though he still read
of their exploits with breathless admiration. Outside of Hubert's
gate, he had for a moment felt morally alone ; and he realized that
whatever combinations he might make of the materials of life would
have to be safely within the law. And after another week he found
that he no longer grieved over losing Imogene. Meeting her, he saw
only the familiar little girl he had always known. The ecstatic
moment of that afternoon had been a premature birth, an emotion
left over from an already fleeting spring.

He did not know that he had frightened Mrs. Blair out of town
and that because of him a special policeman walked a placid beat
for many a night. All he knew was the vague and restless yearn-
ings of three long spring months were somehow satisfied. They
reached combustion in that last week flared up, exploded and
burned out. His face was turned without regret toward the bound-
less possibilities of summer.
1928 Taps at Reveille