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closet while the murder omm mitted. Markham ridicules the mm Vance is unshaken, He be tho murder was committed by tre {ollowing four: Mannix, r, Dr. Lindquist or Spotswoode. 6 is trying to get some information ek Alys ta Fosse, CHAPTER XXVIIL "Pm sure it will be a success." Ye spoke with disarming friendli- Ye "Were you home alone all Mon- day evening?" "Hardly." The idea seemed fo am- use her," "I went to the 'Scandals'-- bit I came home early, ~My. Mannix--was coming." "I trust he appreciated your &mervi- fice." Vance, I believe, was disap- pointed, by this unexpected alibi of fanvix's, It was, indeed, s final that further interrog: ation © concerning it seem d futile. After a momentary * pause, he changed the subject. "Tell me; what do you know about a Mr, Charles Cleaver? He was a friend of Miss Odell's." "Oh, Pop's all right." The girl wag plainly relieved by this turn in the v ation, "A good scout. He was nly gone on Margy, Even after che threw him over for Mr, Spots- woode, he was faithful, as you might say---always running after her, send- ing her flowers and presents. "Some men ave like that. Poor old Pop! He een phoned me Monday night to call up Margy for him and try to arrange a party.--Maybe if I'd done it, she wouldn't be dead now, . , , It's a funny world, isn't it?" "Oh, no end funny." Vance smoked calmly for a minute; I could not help admiring his self-control. "What time did Mr. Cleaver phone you Monday night----do you reeall?" From his voice one would have thought the question of no importance. "Let me see. . , . lips prettily, "It was just ten min-. utes to twelve, I remember that the little chime clock on the mantel over there was striking midnight, and at first 1 couldn't hear Pop very well. You see, I always keep my clock ten minutes fash so T'll never be late for an appointment." Vance compared the clock with his watch, "Res, it's ten minutes fast.--And What about. the party?" "Oh, I was tuo busy talking abput the new show, and I had to refuse, Anyway, Mr. Mannix didn't want to have au party that night. . , It wasn't my fault, was it?" "Not a bit of it," Vance assured her, "Work comes before pleasure--espe- cially work as important as yours, . 'And now, there is one other man I want to ask you about, and then I won't bother you any more, What was the situation between Miss Odell and Doctor Lindquist?" Miss La Fosse became genuinely perturbed. "I was afraid you were going to #sk me about him." There was ap- prehension in her eyes. "I don't know just what to say. He was wildly in Jove with Margy; and she led him on, too. But she was sorry for it after- ward, because he got jealous--like a crazy person. "He used to pester the life out of her. And once--do you know!--he threatened to shoot her and then shoot himself. I told Margy to look out for him. But she didn't seem to be afraid. Anyway I think she was taking an awful chance. , . . Oh! Do you think it could have been--do you really think--?"' "And wasn't there any one else," Vance interrupted, "who might have felt the same way?--any one Miss + Odell had rdason 'to feaz?" "No." Miss La Fosse shook her head. "Margy didn't know many men intimately. © She didn't change often, if you know what I mean. There " She pursed her Whwn's anybody else outside of those you've mentioned, except, of course, Mr, Spotswoode, He cut Pop out-- several months ago. She went to din- ; mer with him Monday night, too. I wanted her fogo to th 'Scandals! with XC i on His. Jad, ve been very you | 'ave nothing 'whatever to fear. No "one shall "know of our Ble visit I knew Lo uey| happy home to tell you whi Be because somehow 1 beli Say, you weren't stringing me, » any chance Vien put his hand on his heart and became serious. My dear Miss La Fosse, When 1 leave here it will be as though I had never entered. Dismiss me and Mr. Van Dine here from your mind." "Something in his manner banished her misgivings, and. she bade us a kittenish farewell. (Thursday, Sept. 13, afternoon). Vance, when we were again in the street. Fair Alys was 'a veritable mine of information--eh, what? Only you should have controlled yourself better when she mentioned her be- loved's name--really, you should, Van old thing. I saw you jump and heard you heave, Such emotion is most un- becoming in a lawyer," From a booth in a drug-store near the hote! he telephoned Markham: "I am taking you to lunch. I have num= erous confidences I would pour into your ear." A debate ensued, hut in the end Vance emerged triumphant; and 'a moment later a taxicab was driving us down-town. "Alys is clever--there are brains in that fluffy head," he ruminated. "She's much smarter than Heath; she knew at once that Skeel wasn't guilty, Her characterization of the immacu- lete Tony was inelegant but how ac- curate--oh, how accurate! And you noticed, of course, how she trusted me. Touchir', wasn't it? . . . It's a knotty problem, Van. Something's amiss somewhere." He was silent, smoking, for several blocks. "Mannix. . . , . Curious he should crop up again. And he issued orders t¢ Alys to keep mum. Now, why? Maybe the reason he gave her was the real one, Who knows? ~On the other 'hand, was he with his chere amie from half-past ten till early morning? Well, well. Again, who knows? Something queer about that business discussion. "Then Cleaver. He called up just ten minutes before midnight--oh, yes, he callel up. 'That wasn't a fairy- tale. But how could he telephone from a speeding car? He couldn't. Maybe he really wanted to have a party with his recalcitrant Canary, don't y' know. But then, why the brummagem alibi? Funk? Maybe, "But why the circuitoysness?--why didn't he call his lost love direct? Ah, rerhaps he did!" Some one certainly called her by phone at twenty minutes to twelve. "We must look into that, Van. . . .. Yes, he may lave called her, and then .|when a man answered--who the deuce was that man, anyway ?--he may have appealed to Alys. Quite natural, y' know. Anyway, he wasn't in Boonton. Poor Markham! How upset he'll be when he finds out. "But what really worries me is that story of the doctor. Jealous mania: it squares with "Ambroise's character perfectly. He's the kind that does go off his head. I knew his confession of paternalism was a red herring. My word! So the doctor was making threats and flourished pistols, eh? Bad, bad. I don't like it. With those ears of his, he wouldnt. hesitate to pull the trigger. Paranoia--that's it. Delusions of persecution, Probably thought the girl and Pop--or maybe the girl and Spotswoddle--were plot- ting his misery and laughing at him. "You can't tell about those chaps. They're deep--and they're dangerous. The canny Alys had him sized up-- warned the Canary against him. , 4, . 'Taken by and large, it's a devilish tangle. Anyway, I feel rather bucked. we're moving--oh, undoubtdly we're | moving--though in: what direction I can't even guess. It's noyin'." Markham was waiting for us at the Bankers' Club. He greeted Vance irritably. "What have you got to tell me that's so damned important?" "Now don't get ratty." Vance was beaming. "How's your lode-star, Skeel, behaving?" "So far he's done everthing that's pure and refined except join the Ohristian Endeavor Society." "Sunday's coming. Give him time. beastly .an- "Was I di dragged away from another j{enAssment tw' reppet ou yy: state of squarely in pry Yes, pr | "My sleuthing goes better," exulted | «+s + So you're not happy, Markham off, former Soviet 'finance has been appointed Soviet afhassador D2 re Great, Bri 'Last { Elizabethan By BEVERLY SMITH The old man and his wite were sit{ing in the third ¢lasé compartment when we boarded the train at Cam- bridge for London. 'It was evening. The woman was in her fifties, ami 'able and pretty, dressed in worn black and wearing one of those towering hats "popularized by the late Quéen Alexandra, § But it was the man that drew our attention... A powerful old man, crag- glly built. He looked like a storm- beaten oak tree, A fine head. Un- combed iron-grey hair. Eyebrows like mustaches, piercing grey eyes, a huge Roman nose. The face deeply furrow- ed and seemed. He sipped reflective- ly from a quart bottle of Brown's Ordinary ale as he looked us over. "You are Americans, aren't you, sir?" he asked finally, in a rumbling voice. "I like Americans, I like your country, I helped to dig 'those tun- nels of yours unter the Hudson." His voice was not that of the edu- cated man nor of the cockney nor of the ordinary laboring man. He spoke & good English, without any of the usual mannerisms, We asked him what he did on the tunnels. "High pressure work," he explain: ed. "I am a diver--the oldest diver in the world, I suppose. I've had more water outside of me and less inside of me than any man living." He roared with laughter that shook the train, and took a deep draught of ale, "You will excuse me boasting, sir, but this is my day off, and we're én- joying ourselves, eh, Mary? I'm sixty- six years old. Find me another diver of that age who still works at eighty- five feet under. But I'm slipping. When I was in my prime I was a tough one, wasn't I Mary?" She nodded assent, gazing at him proudly. He went on talking, Stories of div- ing in France and India, Stories of drinking bouts, endurance feats. The great war? The old diver was in it for four years, and dismissed it with a laugh, Wounded? Certainly, He opened his shirt, to show where the bullet had missed his heart. He told of how, when the canal was stopped in Flanders, he went down without diving equipment and removed. the obstruction in the locks. "That was just duck diving," he sald. "And what do you think the obstruction was? A five-gallon tin of rum, Yes' sir, rum. We took ft over after nightfall to an old Belgian woman that brought us coffes, and after that, our coffee was half rum for a month. "One day the sergeant locked me up. Said I was drunk, I took thirty winks, and there the sergeant was at the door. 'The locks are jammed, Holly,' he sald. 'You've got 'to go down. Hurry! I sald 'According to you, I'm drunk. I won't go down until the captain comes, and certifies me sober ' They brought the captain, they certified me sober, and I went down, The sergeant got the black marks for the delay, thy marks I}: should have had. They don't lightly say Holly's had too much." On and on he went. He quoted Irigersoll with approval and with ex- traordinary accuracy on the question we ed "two | Quite. 2; crowd } | collected ""We Held ofr. hroath, at 1 vest him | two minute 'nearly bro! 1 poles and I heat him. He out- -spit me, 1-lifted the 'biggest ri put {he othér down. A fine man. "Finally he said to me, 'Bet you all ig you have that in halt an hour I can |, run halt a mile, drink half a dozen pints of heer and 'make half a pafr of boots.' I had three quid with me, 1 took him on. ' "He set out hell-bent, with me and the whole pub after him. four minutes he ran in a cobbler's shop. It was his own. cobbler. like a avild man. 'Bring beer,' he yelled, and we brought him half a dozen half pints. Hard to believe, but, sure as I'm sitting here, in half an hour he'd finished a boot pretty as you please. The beer was easy for him. A fine man. "But my three quid was gone, and the laugh was on me, I scratched my head a while. 'Wait a' minute,' 1 sald 'You've won, but you're so tired out now that you couldn't even run half {hi a mile in a halt hour. One condition. You will have to wear my boots. Three quid on it.' "He laughed and laughed, He was a good runner. He thought I'd had too much beer. The people from the pub laughed too. =~ * 'Some along,' I said. Ill get you the boots." We went to my quarters, all the crowd along. Nobody knew I was a diver. I brought out my div- ing boots, extra heavy, forty pounds of lead in each of them, He looked kind of pale, but he was a man. He strapped those boots on and set out. He went about two hundred yards in the first ten minutes, and he fell over, dead beat, "I had to take the boots off him before I carried him to a pub." : THe old diver leaned back agaln, and his laugh rattled the windows. He took a deep draught of the dle, and offered it to his wife, She sip- ped it modestly, and handed it back. He was unlike any Englishman I have ever met He seemed to belong to a lordlier day. The last of the Elizabethans, happy with his ale in a third-clags compartment.--Montreal Standard. ee -- amie A Fudge Secret This i§ a fudge recipe apparently infallible, resulting in the delicious, creamy candy which is the despair of those who can make only the hard, grainy kind, The recipe itself is an ordinary one. Two cupfuls of granulated sugar, mixed thoroughly with as much cocoa as one likes, usually two teblespoon- fuls. One cupful of milk added apd the mixture slowly boiled, until when tested in cold water, it forms a soft ball. A piece of butter the size of a walnut and The secret is not beating or stir- ring the ingredients until the fudge has cooled. a "Most of our so-called reasoning con- sists in finding arguments for beliey- ing as we do.--Robinson. , x i -- For Toothache--Minard's Liniment. So. it went, | ; first me, then him, 'We conldn't either In about He was a He started on the leather "Found i in Labrador al Rapid Growth: of Vegetation in Short Season Feature of Country Amherst, Mass.--Profegsor Fred C. s of the Massachusetts Agricul- os College here has just returhed bi a summer spent in the interest of agricultural development in Labra- dor. He expressed himself as opti- mistic over the agricultural prospects of the region. His work was in connec- tion with the Grenfell Mission, Prof, Sears described a ten-acre field which has been cleared of fir, spruce and hackmatack at Northwest River, The soil, he siid, is sandy and success is anticipated in the growing of asparagus, strawberries and rasp- berries 'and potatoes. The rapid 'growth of vegetation during the few weeks of warm weather is almost un- believable, he said. Potatoes planted on July 28 were sufficiently grown to use on Oct, 1, He witnessed cab- bages grow in four weeks from spind- ling transplants to fully developed eads. Following his investigations of the summer of 1928, the professor shipped to St. Anthony, apple, cherry, crab- apple and plum trees. He found them making excellent growth on his visit this year. Prof. Sears' research was directed to promotion of agriculture in a re- gion where winter holds sway approx- imately eight months of the year, and where the frost never leaves the sub- stratum of the soil. Several substa- tions have been established in Lab- rador and tests are being made on growth of both ornamental and com- mercial plants, as well as fertilizer and acidity. tests, the raising of alfal- a, drainage and improvement of gar- den vegetables. Prof. Sears has had 30 years ex- perience in investigational work, ten of which were spent in Nova Scotia. His investigations have carried him into Canada and eastern and western United States. One of the most interesting phases of Prof. Sears' work in Labrador is that relating to the introduction of flowering plants, Red flowers are vir- Sually non-existent in Larador--why it has not been explained. Blue flow- ers thrive and Prof. Sears hopes that] vod | ones will be male to blossom as ee ities SYMPATHY Let us cherish sympathy. By at- tention and exercise it may be im- proved in every man. It prepares the virtue; and without it there can be no true politeness. Nothing 1s more odious than that fnsensibility which wraps a man up in himself and his own concerns, and prevents his being rows of another.~--Beattie. ---- HABITS That which the easiest becomes a to will once, to will strongly and de- cisively, Thus fix your Boating lite, and leave it no longer to be drifted hither and thither, like > withered leat, by every wind that blows, . ES rey Canada's Largest City Bids Fair to be Canada's Most Progressive Meteorilia 0 need. Your state of mind's exe-| 2 ~~ [crable. . . . Cheerio! I've brought mind for receiving the impressions of |, moved with either the joys or the sor-| Babit In wa 1s the wil Learn, then, | med with hLeliotrope ribbons and a black |, satin 'bodice fastened at her me in one sentence the secret of mar- ried happiness... She is Mrs. Walker, the wife of Mr, William Walker, who recently cele- brated the seventy-second anniversary of his wedding. She said: "Let a man do as he kes and keep him well fed." Having said that she lapsed into silence for ten mimites. Then she said: "Never argue with a man, because he fs always wrong; never let a man have to look for a stud or a pair off clean socks, because it will put him fn a bad temper for the rest of the day" « Mr. and Mrs. Walker were celebrat- ing when I called at their house, Telegrams and great grandchildren were arriving every few minutes, Mr, Walker was dressed in his best pea-jacket, and Mrs. Walker's sequins shone in the light of a bright fire. The Toby 'Jug Her little house, which is full of treasures, including a Toby jug more than three hundred years old, shone, too. When I asked Mr. Walker if they had quarrelled: during their seventy- two years of married life, he shouted with laughter; and Mrs; Walker, look- ing at him sevevely through her spec: tacles, said: 'Be quiet, Willle, It is nothing to laugh at. Of course, we have quarrelled, but only aout little things. "How could two people live happily together for setenty- -two years with- out quarrelling?| It's against nature." Mrs, Walker yas . full of such epi- grams. Mr, Walker poured out wed- ding anniversary port, and Mrs. Walk- er moved closér to the fire, "IL was nearly twenty when we mar- ried," sald Mr) Walker, and she was eighteen and a bit. "We had-a pound each of our own when we martied, and practically no furniture except a bed and a few tables and chairs." "And new liten," said Mrs, Walker, giving him andther severe look, "You can't start may linen." ried life without new "I was earnjng two shilings a day on a farm," fontinuea Mr Walker, "and we saved money on it. We had two children, There's one of them running aboutin the garden now." He rose frem his hair and called: "Paul, come a minute," and Paul, aged sixty-nine , came in smiling. "He's a wondetful lad," sald Mr, Walle er, beaming at/Paul, "and he loves his Biren og you, Paul?" "Ay," sald to a glass of m glad she's mar- ried, Women! ro ns married. It J extremely active for his age, and I hsked him if he could | old men of th . n and Onions eat fat bacon and breakfast," sald Mr, Eat "Tell th raw onions "| Walker, "If theyjcan eat mat sald Mrs. lady of ninety-one in a lace cap trim: throat' with an. old gold brooch, told give any ik some of the modern | nine fe To-lay she can. stroke and swim 5 now you see the result." 7 Here Mrs. Best broke fn with information that Marjorie's a. began with her bath after birth, "I noticed," she sald, "that my baby did not ory in the water, She seeme ed to like it! As the days and the weeks passed sho seemed to like it even more. "When she was ibout five months old she used to deligh* in putting her * head under water, and I was struck by the fact that she was mat at all afraid, She Does Not Know Pear "Later on I held my hand under her chin and allowed her to float. 1° = believe to this day chat if it had been a bigger bath she would have 'float - ed alone," =; 0 "Marjorie, both parents asserted, does not know the meaning of fear, She has never been frightened of any- thing in her life. . She is not even afraid of the dark ness, and merely laughs when she is unable to find her way about in the pitch blackness, wa "My wife," said Mr. Best, "is a of a Christian Scientist, but I lieve that fear is'a thing that to be foreign to children. "Too many parents frighten th with threats of bogey-men, and sort of thing, They do not realize that they would never be frightened of anything unless they were taught to be." The story 'of how ntfle Marjorie received her first baptism of water was related by the proud parents. . "I knew that she was a born swim- mer," said Mr. Best, "and I had mot the slightest hesitation in arranging for her to take her plunge. She was fit, willing, and, in fact, just as much at home in the water as out of 4t." "And 1" sald Mrs. Best, "took her to the end of a diving-board and drop- ped her in." an '8wam Forty-five Fest "And 1," said Mr, Best, "was in the water waiting for her. When she came to the surface she was smiling and clapping her hands with glee." "The distance from the diving-hoard to the water was 15 feet, and the depth of fhe water was 9 feet. bit HE hat loved it, and everybody there applauded her. She .had her picture and all about her in the papers right away. During a recent trip in the Beren- garia the little mermaid was the hero- ine of the swimming pool in the ship, Her antics both above and under wa- ter earned her unstinted applause. - She swam the length of the bath45: teet--calmly and comfortab! d was still fresh 'enough afterwa was blown ov over the Atlantic, 2 Baby Brother Her Rival we