The Mistress of Mysteries

True Stories from the Notebook of Mary E Holland, a Woman Detective (1868-1915)

Illustrated by R.M. Brinkerhoff (1880-1958)

THE CASE OF THE MYSTIC CIRCLE

I CAN see the picture yet if I close my eyes — the gray ivy-covered buildings with the rugged spirit of the place protruding from every line of their grimly-plain architecture, the great stretch of short-cropped campus, already browned by the October winds, and beyond the background of hundred-year-old trees that had frowned down on the locality when it was still a whispering forest and the state whose name was attached to the University site of later days had not yet been born.

       Quiet, peaceful, serene is my picture, with the sentinel-like oaks seeming to serve as a bulwark cutting out the disturbing throb of the work-a-day world from the scholarly atmosphere of classroom and lecture hall.

       Not a scene where your probing finger would expect to find the trail of crime.

       And yet it is these surroundings which group themselves before me when my memory goes back to the puzzling mystery of "The Mystic Circle," the professor with the dual personality, and the girl in the blue tam-o-shanter with the frightened eyes.

       It is one of the few cases of my experience absolutely unique in criminal records, one of the few cases presenting an individual type in regard both to the underlying motive which caused its remarkable sequence of events and the manner in which its final denouement was precipitated.

       It is because the events referred to are of comparatively recent date and deal with certain personal elements which it is perhaps advisable not to thrust into the lime-light of publicity that I am disguising slightly both the name of the principal characters and the locality in question.

       The story, however, is a chronicle of facts, attested to not only by my own files but the archives of the Western Department of Postal Investigation of the United States Secret Service.

 
"SHOW the gentleman in!" I directed.

       I was busy, driven at a nervous tension which I endeavored to avoid in my work but into which I am often thrust before I realize the fact.

       For four days I had been buried in the details of a combined swindling and forgery case that had required not only the services of three operatives but my almost undivided individual attention. The night before I had slept less than four hours and then had been aroused by a sudden development of the case with the necessity of sending a man post-haste to Kansas City with a margin of barely two minutes to catch his train.

       For an hour I had been expecting a long distance telephone call from him and had been forced to hold up the work of my local agents pending its receipt.

       It was, therefore, with an impatience which I fear showed in my tones that I invited my caller to a chair>

 
FOR a moment I felt myself to be the scrutiny of a pair of singularly shrewd, direct eyes rather deeply set under frosted brows. Their owner was a man of, I should say, advanced middle age, precisely dressed, and with an indefinable suggestion of command which I would have at once associated with a military life had it not been for a certain sense of reserve almost equally strong.

       His first words, however, supplied the explanations.

       "I am Doctor Anton Fischer, assistant dean of the University of Roxana."

       (As I hinted before, I am disguising the name of the institution. As a matter of fact it is the officially maintained university of one of our largest and most progressive central western states.)

       At its mention, I stared frankly. The clients of a detective agency as a rule do not come from such circles. He noted my stare with a slight flush.

       "My errand, I will hasten to say, is somewhat out of my province. I am more at home with my books than I am with crime. Unfortunately, however, the affair which I am about to relate requires an immediate investigation. It may even be" — he broke off abruptly — "that the name of our institution itself may be involved unless immediate and decisive action is taken. Are you prepared to give us service which may involve somewhat intricate investigative work?"

       It was on the tip of my tongue to refuse him without further discussion. I glanced at the telephone on my desk. remembering the delayed call from Kansas City and the over-strain under which my agency was already laboring. But, instead, somewhat to my astonishment, I found myself bowing affirmatively. Perhaps it was the very uniqueness of crime behind university walls which appealed to me!

       "If you will state your case briefly," I suggested.

       Dr. Fischer leaned forward in his chair, and began with much the same academic style with which he would have addressed his class-room.

       "Two months ago, a young lady student at the university brought a curious letter to the wife of our Professor Winslow of the mathematics department. It was such a — er — remarkable letter that Mrs. Winslow brought it to the attention of her husband, who in his turn made its contents known to the faculty board."

       Dr. Fischer paused, clearing his throat in somewhat obvious perplexity.

       "Was it a threatening communication?" I suggested.

       "I should hardly say threatening" he resumed, measuring his words. "It was the kind of a letter which one would associate with a mental pervert insidiously sensual, suggestive, hinting at more than it directly expressed and conveying an invitation to the young woman to join a presumably secret organization, under the rather sensational name of the "The Mystic Circle."

       "Surely nothing like a white slave letter?" I demanded in amazement.

       Dr. Fischer's frosted brows wrinkled.

       "If I may be permitted such an apparently vague answer, yes and no. Obviously the underlying purpose of the communication was to lure the young woman addressed into paths of wickedness."

 
A DISTINCT note of wanting was beginning to crisp through my caller's voice.

       "It was written by a man of course?" I said.

       "On the contrary, by a woman! At least, it bore a woman's signature," Dr. Fischer's long, thin hands opened and closed, as he felt my stare. "There have been a dozen similar letters since of the same general tenor. The situation has reached a point where it must be checked. The students are talking about it. Of course, they know nothing definite except that there is an undercurrent of unrest, uneasiness. Gossip is sometimes more harmful than definite facts. You must know that our university has a national position in the co-educational field. Discussion such as this may work incalculable injury, quite apart from the individual feature involved." My visitor leaned suddenly forward his voice tense. "You can understand the urgency of the case?"

       I bowed.

       "And will undertake it?"

       "You have placed it in the hands of the postal authorities?" I asked.

       "Naturally. But it was at their suggestion that I came to you," he hurried on. "They thought, perhaps, a woman could make greater headway in certain quarters than a man."

       With startling abruptness, my telephone shrilled. It was the deferred call from Kansas City. The voice of Bates had a confident ring of elation, which even three hundred miles of wire could not subdue. Our man hail been run to earth suddenly, unexpectedly, the evidence clinched the, case closed except the formalities of "reports." I sank back in my chair, conscious almost for the first time of the strain of the last four days. And I raised my eyes to find my visitor's gaze bent on me almost pleadingly.

       "You will take the case?" he repeated.

       "Have you the disturbing letters in your possession now?"

 
HE opened a black leather portfolio, fumbled in its depths, and drew out a sheaf of papers bound with a vide leather band.

       "Here are exact copies of all of them. The originals, you can, of course, see at the university."

       I spread out the row of typewritten sheets on my desk, turned to them with a frown, and the next moment found my attention gripped by a series of the most bizarre, most daringly phrased communications that it has ever been my lot to encounter in my years of journeyings down the byways of crime. Couched in less adroitly termed language, they would have been repelling.

       It was the very gracefulness of the rhetoric, the carefully polished sentences that lifted them from gutter vulgarity, and which it was not difficult to infer, doubled their menace. Quite obviously a recipient of refinement, as for example, a university bred woman would have turned with a shudder from their sentiments, stripped of their gracefully disgusting adjectives. As Dr. Fischer had stated, the trend was the same, leading in each case to an invitation to make one of the elect of the "Mystic Circle." The nature of that organization it was not difficult to guess. The boldness with which the mails had been used for its recruiting was quite another matter, arguing either a supreme contempt or an almost unbelievable ignorance of the law. The letters in each case bore the signature of Alberta Martin. which, of course, meant nothing. Method of reply had been provided not at the post office but at the university itself in a manner that you will understand later. I thrust the last letter into its place in the little stack, and glanced up suddenly.

       "I will take your case," I said abruptly.

       "I thought you would," replied my caller simply, "it is a cause to which a good woman would at once respond." He hesitated. "Will you go back with me?"

       "I am afraid you don't appreciate the demands of my business, and besides, I am not the sort of person you need on the scene. Oh, I will keep in personal touch with developments," I added at his glance of disappointment. "By the way these letters were all addressed to young women students of the university?"

       He nodded.

       "And all typewritten?"

       A second nod. "Even to the signatures."

       "And mailed from your local posit office at Roxana?"

       "In every case. The woman who must have sent them —–"

       "My dear Professor, it was not a woman who sent them. They are the work of a man."

       "A man? but —–"

       "A man of education," I continued thoughtfully, "one who is in close touch with your institution."

       "My dear madam, do you mean to infer —–"

       I interrupted him rather crisply. "I take it, Professor, that you desire two things —– the cessation of these letters and the punishment of the writer?"

       His face looked suddenly drawn and gray.

       "No matter where the truth may lead?" I pursued relentlessly.

       He recovered himself with an effort.

       "No matter where the truth may lead," he assented gravely.

       "Then you may expect one of my operatives to call at your office in the university tomorrow morning," I said.

 
MATILDA ROWAN was a young woman who might have been eighteen or twenty-eight. Even the critical observer would have placed her at nearer the former age than the latter, however. Perhaps this war due to her girlish sailor, her shoe-top skirts and the coquettish red bow binding the blue-black braid of her hair. As a matter of cold statistics, Miss Rowan was a full twenty-eight when she left the Chicago office of my agency — with orders to leave ten years of her age behind her in the five hours of her journey to her destination. When she took her departure from my desk, she was a quiet-mannered, rather sober-faced young business woman. When she made her appearance at Roxana I was as thoroughly convinced as though I had been at her side that she would be transformed into an impressionable college girl of the matinee idol age, with apparently no more serious thought in the big brown eyes under her sailor than the worship of romance.

       Her reception in the office of Dr. Fischer must have been a rare offering for the student of emotions, to judge from her descriptions later. The Doctor, buried in a mass of correspondence, turned impatiently at her entrance.

       "I desire to matriculate," she said with a display of her dimple.

       "The matriculation office, my dear young woman —–"

       "But I wish to matriculate for a special course."

       "A special course? I don't quite understand."

       "I mean for the study of criminology!" And she laid one of my business cards on the edge of his desk. The worthy professor stared from its inscription to her face with a dazed bewilderment.

       "I thought I impressed my meaning sufficiently that I desired an experienced detective. You are nothing but a college girl."

       "That is why I am an experienced detective, professor!"

       And quite suddenly she was occupying the chair at the end of the huge, flat-top desk and outlining the plan of campaign we had agreed upon.

       "In other words," she concluded as she rose, "as Matilda Rowan, student, I wish to be picked as a candidate for the 'Mystic Circle.' It is only by doing so that we run discover what it is, where it is, and the author of your mysterious letters."

       "Aren't you afraid that may prove a rather daring expedient?"

       She shrugged.

       "Will you attend to the details of my Matriculation, please?"

       Matilda Rowan proved to be a popular girl in university circles. She was a young woman to whom the attraction of friends, particularly those of her own sex, was a gift. And contrary to the general opinion of the qualifications of a detective, from an educational view-point she was easily enough prepared to hold her place in a class room to have leisure for the making of friends. At the end of a month, she was apparently as well established in the university social life as though she had been a student of a year's standing. Letters from me to a prominent citizen of Roxana, for whom I had done several professional favors, had been sufficient to secure her admittance to his home and an entree to college circles which might have been exceedingly difficult to obtain under other circumstances. But it was Miss Rowan's own abilities that really enabled her to absorb and be absorbed by the college atmosphere.

 
TWO new letters to prospective "Mystic Circle" candidates had been received in the meantime, both by young women of pronounced personal attractions. Neither had responded. In fact in no case brought to the attention of the authorities had there been record of a reply, although a method of response had been provided through the medium of a book case in the historical hall. Replies were to be left on the top of the case to be called for in due time by the writer. Although the Federal authorities had descended to the expedient of decoy responses, deposited according to instructions, the position of the case and the shifting stream of occupants constantly in the room during the day made detection practically impossible. It was known that the "decoys" vanished, presumably into the hands intended, but whether those belonged to a man or woman the watchers had been unable to determine. That such a situation could continue without some hint reaching the hundreds of students was of course, impossible. Although it is certain that nothing in the way of definite details penetrated beyond the closed doors of the faculty office, enough of the general unrest became apparent to give the superiors of the institution some anxious hours. And it was manifest that it was only a question of time before the newspapers would seize on a situation so pregnant with possibilities. In those four weeks Dr. Fisher aged four years. On two occasions, I held consultations with him, and once Inspector Livingston, of the Postal Service, made a trio at our discussion, but each time, the professor retraced his way, I fear very little encouraged. And in both cases, as though to mock the efforts of investigation, a new letter of the "Mystic Circle" found its way to the doctor's desk the morning after his return.

       From a superficial standpoint, one might have thought that Bliss Rowan's social progress was making little definite development toward the solution of the mystery. The communications of the "Mystic Circle" were still continuing, their effect was increasing in its menace to the institution, and apparently we were still as far from evidence of the identity of the writer as at first. Let me quote from a report of Miss Rowan's made exactly four weeks after her arrival at Roxana:

       "My investigations have been along two lines, the students who have received communications, and those persons who might have a common acquaintance with the various recipients. In the former connection, I have established confidential relations with at least two of the girls, and am convinced that no hint of an explanation has occurred to them, Furthermore, in all of the secret societies at the university there is no organization which approaches in any way the character of the body referred to in the letters in question. This line of approach has yielded absolutely nothing.

 
NOW for my other angle of investigation. A number of persons at the institution may be said to have a common acquaintance with all of the young women to whom letters have been addressed. Those fall under two heads, students and members of the faculty. It would be impossible for an outsider to have sufficient knowledge of the various girls in question to engineer the letters, even if it were not for the method of reply provided. I am assured, therefore, that the letters are being written by some persons in active touch with university affairs. To associate a professor of the mental caliber necessary for the university staff with the communications seems rather far-fetched. My suspicions would incline more naturally toward one of the college students. I have narrowed my list of suspects in this connection to three, all of whom are daily visitors to the historical hall, all of whom have a knowledge of the typewriter and all of whom are rated among the 'faster' set at the school. If I can only manage to receive one of the communications, I am confident that I will be in a position to make rapid progress."

       I give the report for two reasons — to indicate the reasoning of a professional detective, and to show how easily that reasoning, in spite of the care of its building, may lead even an experienced investigator astray. At this point, we were all absolutely at sea, and yet with a more or less tangible suspicion, which we were convinced would crystalize into definite evidence with the next development in the case. And yet not one of us was prepared for the astonishing climax that was to follow on the heels of this development.

 
MATILDA ROWAN'S report was written on Saturday afternoon.

       On the following Monday morning occurred the incident of Dora Haines. As Miss Rowan, late for the ten o'clock lecture on American History, hurried through the door of the classroom, she was conscious that a young woman, with a flushed face and signs of recent weeping in her eyes, was removing a blue tam-o-shanter in the cloak room.

       When my operative took her seat at her Desk, the dishevelled young woman was immediately behind her. And then for the moment Miss Rowan lost sight of the incident. Professor Ira Wordsworth was ascending to his dace on the platform and thumbing over his memoranda preparatory to the opening of his lecture.

       Professor Wordsworth was a tall, well-built, rather striking looking man of early middle age, with a faculty of lending a human element to his lectures that made them the most popular in the curriculum. Miss Rowan was leaning forward preparing for an entertaining three-quarters of an hour when she became aware that the professor was gazing fixedly in her direction. There was a peculiar gleam in his eyes, and his rather pale face was suddenly flushed. For perhaps a moment his state continued, and then his eyes dropped to the memoranda of his lecture. Miss Rowan turned instinctively. In the seat behind her was the girl of the red swollen eyes. Abruptly her interest in the exposition on the Thirteen Colonies ceased. Across the aisle and farther to the rear of the room was a vacant seat. Unobtrusively Miss Rowan changed to it. Every feature of the agitated young woman was now in easy range of her vision. It was apparent that she, too, had lost her interest in the lecture. Once her head dropped into her arms, and shortly afterward from her waist she drew a crumpled sheet of paper. Spreading it on her desk, she sat staring at it with her shoulders twitching spasmodically. Miss Rowan barely repressed a cry of understanding. Another "Mystic Circle" candidate had been approached. As the lecturer closed his portfolio and stepped back, she hurried impulsively forward.

       "Miss Haines," she said in a low tone, as the strangely mannered girl before her moved toward the door. "Perhaps I can be of assistance to you?"

       The brown eyes stared at her suspiciously.

       "No, thank you!" the other returned coldly.

 
MISS ROWAN stepped aside with a flush. Why she glanced toward the lecturer's platform, she could not hare told. Professor Wordsworth again was staring in her direction. This time she knew, however, that it was the figure of Dora Haines that invited his attention. It was not until the girl disappeared through the doorway of the corridor that the Professor's gaze sank.

       Miss Rowan's next lecture was not scheduled until one o'clock. I think that no matter what its hour, however, she would have "cut" it. With a glance at her watch, she made her way to the cloak room, donned bat and veil, and a few minutes later was hurrying across the campus in the direction of "town." It was not until she reached the postoffice that the briskness of her step slackened. Making her way into the diminutive building, she knocked three times at a door, across whose glazed glass front was the legend "Postmaster — Private." It was opened almost at once.

       Two men in the room before her glanced at her curiously. One was Postmaster Williams. The second was Inspector Livingston of the Government Service.

       "What's up Miss Rowan?" The inspector removed a long brown cigar in deference to her arrival and pushed a chair toward her.

       "You have had another 'Mystic Circle' letter?" the young woman began briskly.

       The inspector showed his surprise.

       "The university has only just telephoned us of the fact. How did you know it?"

       "I didn't know it. I only guessed it. The recipient was Dora Haines."

       "Perhaps she told you?"

       "I told you I didn't know it."

       Miss Rowan sank into a chair and stared at the floor. She glanced up suddenly. "I think I have found a way of clearing up the case. I believe I know the man you want!"

       The Inspector sprang to his feet.

       "Who on earth —" he began in surprise —

       She held up her hand. "Not now, please I — I am afraid you would laugh at me if I told you my suspicion. It seems so — so preposterous."

       "Is the man a student?"

       "No — that is where we have all been wrong. He is — but I would rather you would wait until you proved me right or wrong. Can you get an electric battery, a film of mercury and a post-office key?"

       The two men stared. Leaning forward, Miss Rowan talked with a crisp earnestness for perhaps two minutes.

       Late that afternoon, a young woman in a blue tam-o-shanter, stole into the shadowy recesses of Historical Hall glanced cautiously around her, and then approaching the huge bookcase against the farther wall, seemed to find an item of sudden and absorbing interest in one of its rows of green and red volumes. When she moved away, the oak top of the bookcase was no longer bare. Just beyond its edge was a crumpled letter.

       Twenty-four hours later the girlish figure in the tam-o-shanter again approached the reference books of Historical Hall, repeated its search of a certain red and green volume, and vanished in the same frightened manner as before. In the girl's hand was a sealed unaddressed envelope. As she reached the doorway of the classroom two men stepped from behind a pillar in the corridor outside. Without a word she extended to the foremost the envelope she was holding and a moment later was darting across the campus.

 
INSPECTOR LIVINGSTON motioned to his companion and stepped briskly toward the stairs leading to the office of the Dean. It was not until the door had closed behind him, and he had read twice through the contents of the unaddressed envelope in his lithe fingers that he spoke.

       "The bait is working" he said with a gesture of satisfaction. "Tomorrow we will try the key and the electric battery."

       At three o'clock in the afternoon the last class of the day in Historical Hall was dismissed. At a quarter past the hour, Matilda Rowan, hurrying into the building, paused at her desk, recovered a forgotten note book and with a swift glance around her stepped into the corridor. An observer following her a moment later, might have fancied she had returned to the campus, or perhaps ascended to the floor above. As a matter of fact she was crouching behind a wide pillar in company with a stolid-faced man with folded arms.

       The position of the pillar was somewhat Unique. A person at its side could command a view of the section of the class room of Historical Hall containing the reference book cases. A person behind the pillar could see nothing of the room beyond.

       And yet neither Miss Rowan or her companion made a move to withdraw from its shadow.

       An hour dragged by, an hour and a half. The evening twilight was casting a thick gray veil down the length of the corridor. The door from the campus opened abruptly and a group of students accompanied by the tall erect figure of Professor Wordsworth entered. Obviously they were indulging in a spirited debate on a point in the morning lecture. The excited tones of the students drifted back to the couple behind the pillar as the group entered the class room. They were approaching the bookcases evidently for the purpose of settling their dispute.

       Silence. And then from the farther side of the pillar in the corridor, a small electric bulb flashed into a yellow-white light. Only an instant it burned melting into the shadows as abruptly as it appeared. Inspector Livingston gripped Miss Rowan's arm. From the class room appeared the group of students and the professor. A gust of wind blew the outer door shut behind them with a slam. Matilda Rowan's eyes were gleaming.

       "It has succeeded!" she cried.

 
THE inspector glanced at her curiously and then crossing the hall, he entered the class room, and continued until he had reached the bookcase. From its top, he removed a curious assortment of articles — a needle, an electric battery and a punctured film of mercury. From the mercury a wire led to the wall beyond and thence to the electric bulb behind the hall pillar outside. Even the electric novice could have told you that the removal of an article, however slight, a letter for instance, balanced on the top of the needle, would have jarred the mercurial film into an igniting current.

       The tell-tale flame in the tiny electric bulb forty feet away would have been almost immediate.

       "Trapped!" cried the inspector, stuffing the battery into his pocket.

       "Not quite!" reminded Miss Rowan with a Sigh. "There were six persons before the bookcase. We will have to wait for the evidence of the postoffice key tomorrow."

       The inspector Whirled. "Say, does the name of the man we want begin with W?"

       Miss Rowan hesitated.

       "Suppose we wait until the last exhibit is in," she said quietly.

 
CALLERS at the Roxana postoffice commented on the fact that a new public telephone of a decidedly metropolitan suggestion was being installed in the lobby. The workmen however were experiencing difficulty in making a proper connection. Although the booth had been in place for twenty-four hours, a sign on the door still proclaimed "Not in Use." Once or twice, the curious observed that an inner curtain, stretched before the upper glass half of the door, barred a view within and surreptitiously tried the knob, only to discover the fact that the workmen in leaving had carefully locked it. Had they been able to draw aside the concealing curtain they would have seen an unusual sight. In the booth were two men drawn up on stools with their heads wearily sunk on their arms. For twelve hours they had occupied this cramped position. In spite of the weariness of aching limbs, however, their eyes were not closed. In the line of their vision was an electric bulb unlighted. Not until a glow flashed within would their vigil be ended. It was not an ordinary bulb, lighted in the ordinary way. The wire from which it was suspended, extended through the booth to the ceiling along the plaster, so thin and snake-like that from the lobby it would scarcely be noticed until it dropped down beyond the wall of "Lock-boxes" of the postoffice down until its further end was connected with a certain receptacle in the lowermost tier, bearing the number "36."

       A queer arrangement for a prosaic electric light, surely — and all the queerer when 3ou discovered that the opening of "36" sent a current quivering through the suspended wire, quivering along its draped length until at the end it broke into a sudden flame. And this flame hung in the bulb in the curtain-draped telephone booth! It may have been chance — or it may have been design — but the booth was scarcely three feet from the postoffice box, No. 36! The men within bounding outward, could have touched it with a single leap.

       The delivery of the evening mail at Roxana at half past five o'clock was an event of the day. To the office came business men and clerks, "society" girls and idlers, eager alike for possible offerings of the post and the shreds of the town's gossip. The University had its own special drawer, the opening of which was entrusted either to the Dean or his secretary. Most of the professors, in addition, had their own personal boxes, and as a rule followed the Roxana custom of calling at the office on their way home from their day's labors.

 
IT was not surprising, therefore, that shortly before the half hour struck, the tall figure of Professor Wordsworth passed through the postoffice door and made its way, with a bow to a group of acquaintances, to the box at the rear of the lobby devoted to the letters of his family. The Postal Service had nothing for the Wordsworths that night. Cautiously pushing to the door of the box, the professor hesitated, drew out a second key from his pocket, and passing to the front of the lobby allowed his eyes to wander over the rows of boxes in that section. Suddenly he stooped down. The next instant his key was in the lock of "36." With a nervous twist it turned the door flew open, and his hand reached toward a letter exposed before him.

       The professor sighed gently, raised the letter, and then at his shoulders the door of the telephone booth swung outward. Into the lobby stepped two men with weary haggard faces. The foremost gripped his arm.

       "You are my prisoner, Professor Wordsworth," said Inspector Livingston Quietly. "Will you go with me peaceably?"

       "Prisoner?" The splendid nerve of the man was already in evidence.

       From the street stepped a young girlish appearing woman with a red hair ribbon showing under her sailor hat. Inspector Livingston motioned to her suddenly. To the man whose arm he held he continued grimly. "I charge you with mis-use of the United States mails, and the agent behind the letters of the "Mystic Circle."

       The professor shrugged.

       "My dear man," he began. But the trio were already on their way to the door. Behind them sauntered the young woman of the red hair ribbon. At Box "36" she paused to close its still open door, with a peculiar sparkle in her eyes.

 
THE dull gray dawn was splotching the windows of the police station before our all-night gruelling of Professor Ira Wordsworth produced its result. And then as is often the case in stoical resistance, the assured demeanor of outraged innocence which had carried the prisoner through the racking hours of the inquisition crumpled with an abruptness that was startling. It was the statement, fired at him with pitiless force, that his wife had also been taken into custody as an accomplice, which I think, finally pierced his armor.

       "Release her," he said sullenly, "and I will tell the truth."

       "The truth?" flashed inspector Livingston.

       "She is as innocent as you are. She knows nothing whatever of this affair. As a matter of fact you will never punish the person really responsible!"

       The Inspector glanced at his prisoner with a grin of assurance.

       "And why?"

       "Because he will always evade you as he has evaded me!"

       "And who is he?"

       "My second self!" The professor's shoulders shrugged contemptuously at the laugh tint followed. "Oh, I could hardly expect you to understand even one of the simplest facts of accepted psychology. You have heard of dual personality, have you? That is one of the subjects of which our twentieth century representatives of the law are in blissful ignorance. It is beyond the A-B-C of their Comprehension. Some day —"

       "Say professor you are not in the class-room!" interrupted the inspector grimly.

 
"I PERCEIVE that I am not!" was the withering reply. In spite of the ignominy of his position, there was something really impressive, convincing in the man's bearing! He hesitated for a moment and then continued more slowly. "At the outbreak of the Philippine War I enlisted for service in the Islands. The hell of jungle-fighting that I went through is a matter of record. In the course of six months, I found myself the wreck of a man fever-wasted, emaciated, mind-wandering. It was then that a suspicion that I had long cherished flamed into a certainty. In myself were two natures, — one silent, law-abiding, honestly ambitious, the other that of a devil incarnate. In my first state, I was reverential in my relations to women. In my second state, lustful, heedless of barriers, finding an intoxicating pleasure in the ruin I created. I suppose it was the effect of my privations that gave my second self the temporary mastery. I was invalided home, conscious that, unsuspected by those around me, was a devil, concealed in me, only waiting for an opportunity to strike. I fled from my friends, my associations, and tried to flee from myself. In Ohio my unequal struggle with my other self, came to an end. The demon in me won. I deluged the country with the most hideous literature dictated by my inner self. Fairly groveling at the depths to which it forced me to descend. In a dim way, I realized that my mailorder propaganda had aroused the law. In fact, I later read as much in the newspapers. Horror-stricken, I hid myself in the Canadian wilderness. Gradually, as my health Returned, I again won the mastery over my perverted Nemesis. I came back to my old haunts, obtained a position as teacher, won success, gradually worked my way to the staff of the university, fighting with a sullen desperation, conscious that only in work was my salvation. And then the very tension of my efforts, the strain of my fight a second time proved my undoing. In a moment of brain-fog and nerve exhaustion the demon in me again broke from his shell. My campaign to ensnare women directed itself against the students of the university, in a sort of cult, echoes of which I had heard abroad. The letters of the "Mystic Circle" followed. As an organization it existed only on paper — as yet. Had I been given time to elaborate my plans —" he broke off for a moment and then continued jerkily.

       "Often I have made one of faculty meetings called to discuss those letters, my better self struggling like a prisoner in chains, against the awful proof, which only I could realize. And this I suppose is the end?"

       "Not quite the end!" said the inspector grimly. He was much too bluntly matter-of-fact to appreciate the niceties of advanced psychology. "The end rests with the court."

 
THE prisoner sighed "May I ask," he queried ironically, "how you found my trail?"

       The inspector lighted a cigar.

       "Do you remember Miss Matilda Rowan, the young woman of your classes? She is a —"

       "Detective," supplied the professor Thoughtfully. "I always imagined those eyes of hers were too shrewd for an eighteen-year-old college girl!"

       "It was she who answered your last letter and who conceived the plan of renting a postoffice box and sending you the key through it. Of course we knew that you could never be brought to secure such a box yourself. With the key once in your possession, it was only a question of time before you would spring the trap. Clever, eh?"

       The professor drew a deep breath.

       "Yes," he agreed. "It was clever!"

[THE END.]

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