Climbing Clean in Elk Dud

Mitton: Why do elk tolerate magpies?

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The elk did not move. The magpie climbed onto the head, and the elk remained unperturbed and motionless. The magpie probed an ear with its bill and then stuck its head inside the ear to probe deeper. Then the magpie withdrew, turned its attention to the other ear and groomed it slowly and deliberately. The elk looked more silly than majestic with a magpie on its head, but the elk was probably more concerned with its ticks than with my opinion of its appearance.

Two more magpies arrived and began foraging on elk. A magpie started at the head, walked down the elk's neck and along the back to stand on the rump, when the elk obligingly lifted its tail. The magpie probed the edge of the tail and beneath the tail. No doubt about it, elk and magpies were cooperating to transfer ticks from the skin of elk to the bellies of magpies.

A cleaning mutualism is a mutually beneficial relationship between two species in which one removes ectoparasites, most commonly ticks, from the other. One individual is relieved of bothersome, usually blood-sucking hitchhikers and the other gains an easy meal in a safe interaction. Several cleaning mutualisms involve birds and large mammals. The textbook example is red-billed and yellow-billed African oxpeckers cleaning rhinos, cape buffalo, zebras and giraffes.

Several lesser-known mutualisms have been described in North America. Scrub jays remove ticks and insects from Columbian blacktail deer, and both scrub jays and crows groom wild boars. Magpies forage on feral horses in Nevada. Jays, crows, ravens and magpies are all members of the family Corvidae, meaning they are closely related. Many corvids engage in cleaning mutualisms, but not all; Steller's jays and ravens are not known to groom large mammals.

Two ravens dropped into the herd and I wondered whether they would also groom elk, but they had a surprise for me and for the young elk. A thing like this unsettles him. The older man came out at that moment, a black pipe between his teeth, and, seeing the two at the gate, a cloud passed over his face. Gordon, but in Ray's case a mistaken kindness. Dick's first impression was of the girl's astonishment. Apparently he was unusually honoured, and this was confirmed after John Bennett had left them.

And the old philosopher is a good fellow and the boss's confidential secretary. You've heard of Maitlands Consolidated, I suppose? The marble palace on the Strand Embankment in which the fabulously rich Mr. Maitland operated, was one of the show buildings of London. As it is, I seem doomed to be a clerk for the rest of my life. The voice was harsh, tremulous with anger. None of them had noticed the reappearance of John Bennett.

I've been trying for twenty years to get out. I've tried every silly scheme—that's true. But it was for you—".

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I don't give these young people all the company they ought to have at home, and I'm not much of a companion for them. It's too bad that you should be the witness of the first family jar we've had for years.

His voice and manner were those of an educated man. Dick wondered what occupation he followed, and why it should be so particularly obnoxious that he should be seeking some escape. The girl was quiet throughout the meal. She sat at Dick's left hand and she spoke very seldom. Stealing an occasional glance at her, he thought she looked preoccupied and troubled, and blamed his presence as the cause. Apparently no servant was kept at the cottage. She did the waiting herself, and she had replaced the plates when the old man asked:.

Gordon—what do you do for a living? My name is Richard Gordon—". Dick laughed again as at the absurdity of the question. On his way back to London that night his memory worked overtime, but he failed to place John Bennett of Horsham. Maitlands Consolidated had grown from one small office to its present palatial proportions in a comparatively short space of time. Maitland was a man advanced in years, patriarchal in appearance, sparing of speech. He had arrived in London unheralded, and had arrived, in the less accurate sense of the word, before London was aware of his existence.

Dick Gordon saw the speculator for the first time as he was waiting in the marble-walled vestibule. A man of middle height, bearded to his waist; his eyes almost hidden under heavy white brows; stout and laborious of gait, he came slowly through the outer office, where a score of clerks sat working under their green-shaded lamps, and, looking neither to the right nor left, walked into the elevator and was lost to view. You couldn't pry money from him, not if you used dynamite! He pays Philo a salary that the average secretary wouldn't look at, and if Philo wasn't such an easygoing devil, he'd have left years ago.

Dick Gordon was feeling a little uncomfortable. His presence at Maitlands was freakish, his excuse for calling as feeble as any weak brain could conceive. If he had spoken the truth to the flattered young man on whom he called in business hours, he would have said: I am not especially interested in you, but I regard you as a line that will lead me to another meeting, therefore I have made my being in the neighbourhood an excuse for calling. And because of this insane love I have for your sister, I am willing to meet even Philo, who will surely bore me. The elevator door opened at that moment and a man came out.

Instinctively Dick Gordon knew that this bald and middle-aged man with the good-humoured face was the subject of their discussion. His round, fat face creased in a smile as he recognized Ray, and after he had handed a bundle of documents to one of the clerks, he came over to where they were standing. He seemed to radiate a warming and quickening influence. Even Dick Gordon, who was not too ready to respond, came under the immediate influence of his geniality.

Gordon of the Public Prosecution Department—Ray was telling me," he said. He is certainly the most prosecutable gentleman I've met for years! Anyone would think the Frogs were after him. Philo Johnson, with a cheery nod, hurried back to the lift. Was it imagination on Dick's part? He could have sworn the face of Ray Bennett was a deeper shade of red, and that there was a look of anxiety in his eyes.

And my sister will also, I'm sure. She is often in town. His adieux were hurried and somewhat confused. Dick Gordon went out into the street puzzled. Of one thing he was certain: When he returned to his office, still sore with himself that he had acted rather like a moon-calf or a farm hand making his awkward advances to the village belle, he found a troubled-looking chief of police waiting for him, and at the sight of him Dick's eyes narrowed. Genter got in, and they were gone before I realized what had happened. Not that I'm worried. Genter has a gun, and he's a pretty tough fellow in a rough house.

Dick Gordon stared at and through the man, and then: I treated them as a joke once. Even tramps are entitled to their lodges and pass-words, grips and signs. That might be sheer imitation—and, in any case, all crooks of low mentality have tattoo marks.

But in that seven years we've had a series of very unpleasant crimes. Then there was the case of the President of the Northern Trading Company—clubbed as he was stepping out of his car in Park Lane. Then the big fire which destroyed the Mersey Rubber Stores, where four million pounds' worth of raw rubber went up in smoke.

Obviously the work of a dozen fire bugs, for the stores consist of six big warehouses and each was fired simultaneously and in two places. And the Frogs were in it. We caught two of the men for the Rubber job; they were both 'Frogs' and bore the totem of the tribe—they were both ex-convicts, and one of them admitted that he had had instructions to carry out the job, but took back his words next day.

I never saw a man more scared than he was. And I can't blame him. If half that is said about the Frog is true, his admission cost him something. There it is, Mr. I can give you a dozen cases. Genter has been two years on their track. He has been tramping the country, sleeping under hedges, hogging in with all sorts of tramps, stealing rides with them and thieving with them; and when he wrote me and said he had got into touch with the organization and expected to be initiated, I thought we were near to getting them.

I've had Genter shadowed since he struck town. I'm sick about this morning. Dick Gordon opened a drawer of his desk, took out a leather folder and turned the leaves of its contents. They consisted of pages of photographs of men's wrists. He studied them carefully, as though he were looking at them for the first time, though, in truth, he had examined these records of captured men almost every day for years.

Then he closed the portfolio thoughtfully and put it away in the drawer. For a few minutes he sat, drumming his fingers on the edge of the writing-table, a frown on his youthful face. It was growing dark when the two tramps, skirting the village of Morby, came again to the post road.

The circumvention of Morby had been a painful and tiring business, for the rain which had been falling all day had transformed the ploughed fields into glutinous brown seas that made walking a test of patience. One was tall, unshaven, shabby, his faded brown coat was buttoned to his chin, his sagged and battered hat rested on the back of his head. His companion seemed short by comparison, though he was a well-made, broad- shouldered man, above the average height. They spoke no word as they plodded along the muddy road. Twice the shorter man stopped and peered backward in the gathering darkness, as though searching for a pursuer, and once he clutched the big man's arm and drew him to hiding behind the bushes that fringed the road.

This was when a car tore past with a roar and a splattering of liquid mud. After a while they turned off the road, and crossing a field, came to the edge of a wild waste of land traversed by an ancient cart track. But for all his seeming indifference, his keen eyes were taking in every detail of the scene.

Solitary building on the horizon Essex County he guessed this from the indicator number on the car that had passed ; waste land probably led to a disused clay pit There was an old notice-board fixed to a groggy post near the gate through which the cart track passed. It was too dark to read the faded lettering, but he saw the word "lime. It would be easy to locate. The only danger was if the Frogs were present in force. Under cover of his overcoat, he felt for the Browning and slipped it into his overcoat pocket. If the Frogs were in strength, there might be a tough fight.

Help there was none. He never expected there would be. Carlo had picked him up on the outskirts of the city in his disreputable car, and had driven him through the rain, tacking and turning, following secondary roads, avoiding towns and hamlets, so that, had he been sitting by the driver's side, he might have grown confused. But he was not. He was sitting in the darkness of the little van, and saw nothing. Wellingdale, with the shadows who had been watching him, had not been prepared for the car. A tramp with a motorcar was a monstrosity. Even Genter himself was taken aback when the car drew up to the pavement where he was waiting, and the voice of Carlo hissed, "Jump in!

They crossed the crest of a weed-grown ridge. Below, Genter saw a stretch of ground littered with rusting trollies, twisted Decourville rails, and pitted with deep, rain-filled holes. Beyond, on the sharp line of the quarry's edge, was a small wooden hut, and towards this Carlo led the way. He comes up the quarry face—there's a flight of steps that come up under the hut. The hut hangs over the edge, and you can't even see the steps, not if you hang over. They'd never catch him, not if they brought forty million cops. He knows everything, does the Frog. You'll never be without a friend again, Harry.

If you get into trouble, there's always the best lawyer to defend you. And you're the kind of chap we're looking for—there is plenty of trash. Poor fools that want to get in for the sake of the pickings. But you'll get big work, and if you do a special job for him, there's hundreds and hundreds of money for you.

If you're hungry or ill, the Frogs will find you out and help you. That's pretty good, ain't it? They were within a dozen yards of the hut now, a strong structure built of stout timber bulks, with one door and a shuttered window. Motioning Genter to remain where he was, the man called Carlo went forward and tapped on the door. Genter heard a voice, and then he saw the man step to the window, and the shutter open an inch.

There followed a long conversation in an undertone, and then Carlo came back. Do you know Rochmore? He comes home from his club every night by the eleven-five. Walks to his house. It is up a dark road, and a fellow could get him with a club without trouble. Just one smack and he's finished. It's not killing, you understand. Genter pulled back the cuff of his soddened coat and thrust his bare arm through the opening. His hand was caught in a firm grip, and immediately he felt something soft and wet pressed against his wrist. A rubber stamp, he noted mentally, and braced himself for the pain which would follow.

It came, the rapid pricking of a thousand needles, and he winced. Then the grip on his hand relaxed and he withdrew it, to look wonderingly on the blurred design of ink and blood that the tattooer had left. The shutter closed and was bolted. Then came the snick of a lock turning and the door opened. Genter went into the pitch-black darkness of the hut and heard the door locked by the unseen occupant.

Genter put out his hand and an envelope was placed in his outstretched palm. It was as though the mysterious Frog could see, even in that blackness. If you spend the journey money, or if you fail to come when you are wanted, you will be killed. Stealthily, he drew his Browning from his pocket and thumbed down the safety catch. You need not kill him. If you do, it doesn't matter. I expect his head's too hard—". Genter located the man now, and, growing accustomed to the darkness, guessed rather than saw the bulk of him.

Suddenly his hand shot out and grasped the arm of the Frog. I am Inspector Genter from police headquarters, and if you resist I'll kill you! For a second there was a deathly silence. Then Genter felt his pistol wrist seized in a vice-like grip. He struck out with his other hand, but the man stooped and the blow fell in the air, and then with a wrench the pistol was forced out of the big man's hand and he closed with his prisoner. So doing, his face touched the Frog's. Was it a mask he was wearing? The cold mica goggles came against his cheek.

That accounted for the muffled voice Powerful as he was, he could not break away from the arms which encircled him, and they struggled backward and forward in the darkness. Suddenly the Frog lifted his foot, and Genter, anticipating the kick, swerved round. There was a crash of broken glass, and then something came to the detective—a faint but pungent odour.

He tried to breathe, but found himself strangling, and his arms fell feebly by his side. The Frog held him for a minute, and then let the limp figure tall with a thud to the ground. In the morning a London police patrol found the body of Inspector Genter lying in the garden of an empty house, and rang for an ambulance. But a man who has been gassed by the concentrated fumes of hydrocyanic acid dies very quickly, and Genter had been dead ten seconds after the Frog smashed the thin class cylinder which he kept in the hut for such emergencies as these.

There was no detective in the world who looked less like a police officer, and a clever police officer, than Elk. He was tall and thin, and a slight stoop accentuated his weediness. His clothes seemed ill-fitting, and hung upon rather than fitted him. His dark, cadaverous face was set permanently in an expression of the deepest gloom, and few had ever seen him smile. His superiors found him generally a depressing influence, for his outlook on life was prejudiced and apparently embittered by his failure to secure promotion. Faulty education stood in his way here.

Ten times he had come up for examination, and ten times he had failed, invariably in the same subject—history. Dick, who knew him better than his immediate chiefs, guessed that these failures did not worry Mr. Elk as much as people thought. Indeed, he often detected a glum pride in his inability to remember historical dates, and once, in a moment of astonishing confidence, Elk had confessed that promotion would be an embarrassment to a man of his limited educational attainments.

For Elk's everyday English was one of his weaknesses. Gordon," he sighed as he sat down. Particularly why she picked him up at the corner of St. James's Square and drove him to Horsham last night. I saw them by accident as I was coming out of my club, and followed. They sat in her coupe for the greater part of two hours within a hundred yards of Bennett's house, and they were talking.

I know, because I stood in the rain behind the car, listening. If he had been making love to her I should have understood—a little. But they were talking, and talking money. I heard certain sums mentioned. At four o'clock he got out of the car and went into his house, and Lola drove off. She married King Henry, or it may have been Charles, because she wanted a gold snuff-box he had. I'm not sure whether it was a gold snuff-box or a silver bed. Anyway, she got it an' was be'eaded in I don't remember the date.

Young Bennett hasn't twopence of his own. There is something particularly interesting to me about this acquaintance. Old man Bennett's a crook of some kind. Doesn't do any regular work, but goes away for days at a time and comes back looking ill. Somebody reported his movements as suspicious—the local police. They've got nothing to do except guard chickens, and naturally they look on anybody who doesn't keep chickens as bein' a suspicious character.

I kept old Bennett under observation, but I never got to the bottom of his movements. He has run lots of queer stunts. He wrote a play once and put it on. It went dead on the fourth night. Then he took to playing the races on a system. That nearly broke him. Then he started a correspondence school at Horsham—'How to write good English'— and he lost money. Now he's taking pictures. I traced a typewriting agency to him seventeen years ago. They haven't all been failures.

He made money out of some. But I'd give my head to know what his regular game is. Once a month regular, sometimes twice, sometimes more often, he disappears and you can't find him or trail him. I've sounded every crook in town, but they're as much puzzled as I am. Lew Brady—that's the big sporting fellow who worked with Lola—he's interested too. Years ago he tackled the old man and tried to bully him into telling him what his lay was, and Bennett handled him rough.

He's as strong as an ox. She's not a bad girl—up to a point. Personally, vamps never appeal to me. Genter's dead, they tell me? The Frog's in that too? He walked to the window and looked out, Elk behind him. The man who had stood on the sidewalk had disappeared. At that moment the window shattered inward, and splinters of glass stung his face. Another second, and Elk was dragged violently to cover. A spent cartridge on the flat roof of 94, Onslow Gardens, and the print of feet, were all the evidence that the assassin left behind. Admission had been gained by the front door; there was a tradesman who saw a man let himself into the house, carrying what looked to be a fishing-rod under his arm, but which undoubtedly was a rifle in a cloth case.

The shooter had half-a-dozen ways of escape, including the fire-escape. Elk was silent and glum. Dick Gordon as silent, but cheerful, until the two men were back in his office. I was returning to my house when the first attempt was made.

The most ingenious effort to run me down with a light car—the darned thing even mounted the pavement after me. There is no such number on the register. The driver was gone before I could stop him. Nowadays secret societies are so common that every time a man shakes hands with me, he looks sort of disappointed if I don't pull my ear or flap my feet. And gang work on a large scale I've always looked upon as something you only hear about in exciting novels by my old friend Shylock—".

It's too much like work. I'll bet there's nothing in it, only a lot of wild coincidences stickin' together. I'll bet that the Frogs are just a silly society without any plan or reason. And I'll bet that Lola knows all about 'em," he added inconsistently. Elk walked back to "The Yard" by the most circuitous route. With his furled and ancient umbrella hanging on his arm, he had the appearance of an out-of-work clerk. His steel-rimmed spectacles, clipped at a groggy angle, assisted the illusion. Winter and summer he wore a soiled fawn top-coat, which was invariably unbuttoned, and he had worn the same yellowish-brown suit for as long as anybody could remember.

The rain came down, not in any great quantities, but incessantly. His hard derby hat glistened with moisture, but he did not put up his umbrella. Nobody had ever seen that article opened. He walked to Trafalgar Square and then stopped, stood in thought for some time, and retraced his steps.

Opposite the Public Prosecutor's office stood a tall street-seller with a little tray of matches, key-rings, pencils and the odds and ends that such men sell. His wares, for the moment, were covered by a shining oil-cloth. Elk had not noticed him before, and wondered why the man had taken up so unfavourable a stand, for the end of Onslow Gardens, the windiest and least comfortable position in Whitehall, is not a place where the hurrying pedestrian would stop to buy, even on a fine day.

The hawker was dressed in a shabby raincoat that reached to his heels; a soft felt hat was pulled down over his eyes, but Elk saw the hawk-like face and stopped. Elk was immediately interested. This man was American, and was trying to disguise his voice so that it appeared Cockney—the most impossible task that any American had ever undertaken, for the whine and intonation of the Cockney are inimitable. Without hesitation the man produced the written police permit to sell on the streets. It was made out in the name of "Joshua Broad," and was in order.

You're from Hampshire or Massachusetts. Never had a key. Never had anything worth locking up," said Elk, fingering the articles on the tray. Elk took the pedlar in from the soles of his stout shoes to his soddened hat, and, with a nod, went on. The hawker looked after the detective until he was out of sight, and then, fixing a cover over his tray, strapped it tight and walked in the direction Elk had taken.

Coming out of Maitlands to lunch, Ray Bennett saw a shabby and saturnine man standing on the edge of the pavement, but gave him no more than a passing glance. He, at any rate, did not know Elk and was quite unconscious of the fact that he was being followed to the little chophouse where Philo Johnson and he took their modest luncheon. In any circumstances Ray would not have observed the shadow, but to-day, in his condition of mind, he had no thought for anybody but himself, or any offence but the bearded and ancient Maitland's outrageous behaviour.

And this morning the papers say that he has given five thousand to the Northern Hospitals! Trade has been bad, and the stock market is as dead as Ptolemy. The old man wanted to put you off—said that you were superfluous anyway. If you'd only look on the bright side of things, Ray—". Philo sighed, and for once his good-humoured face was clouded.

Then it relaxed into a broad grin. I only earn about fifty per cent more than you, and yet the old man allows me to handle hundreds of thousands. Then you're always getting more than you need. How is your sister? It's easy to be a philosopher over other people's worries, Who's that disreputable bird?

Dine here every day, Mr. They were nearing the imposing home of Maitlands Consolidated, when Mr. Johnson suddenly broke off in the middle of an interesting exposition of his philosophy and quickened his pace. On the pavement ahead of them he saw Ray Bennett, and by his side the slim figure of a girl. Their backs were toward the two men, but Elk guessed rightly when he decided that the girl was Ella Bennett.

He had seen her twice before, and he had a wonderful memory for backs. Turning as the stout man came up to her, hat in hand, she greeted him with a quick and friendly smile. There was a pink tinge to Johnson's homely face "Sweet on her," thought Elk, interested , and his handshake was warm and something more than cordial. And, curiously enough, am absolutely sure I saw him on a 'bus just now, though his train left two hours ago. She glanced at Elk hovering in the background, and the sight of his glum countenance seemed to arouse some unpleasant memory, for the brightness went out of her face.

She bowed slightly and then said something in a low tone to her brother. Elk saw the boy frown. She put out her hand to Johnson, Elk she favoured with a distant inclination of her head, and was gone, leaving the three men looking after her. Two, for when Mr. Elk looked around, the boy had disappeared into the building. Good people and bad people. The gooder they are, the slighter I know 'em. He strolled aimlessly away as Johnson walked up the steps into Maitlands, but he did not go far. Crossing the road, he retraced his steps and took up his station in the doorway.

At four o'clock a taxicab drew up before the imposing door of Maitlands Consolidated, and a few minutes later the old man shuffled out, looking neither to the right nor to the left. Elk regarded him with more than ordinary interest. He knew the financier by sight, and had paid two or three visits to the office in connection with certain petty thefts committed by cleaners. In this way he had become acquainted with Philo Johnson, for old Maitland had delegated the interview to his subordinate.

Elk judged the old man to be in the region of seventy, and wondered for the first time where he lived, and in what state. It was a curious fact that he knew nothing whatever about the financier, the least paragraphed of any of the big City forces. The detective had no business with the head of this flourishing firm.

His task was to discover the association between Lola Bassano and this impecunious clerk. He knew inside him that Dick Gordon's interest in the young man was not altogether disinterested, and suspected rightly that the pretty sister of Ray Bennett lay behind it. But the itch for knowledge about Maitland, suddenly aroused by the realization that the old man's home life was an unknown quantity, was too strong to be resisted. As the taxicab moved off, Elk beckoned another. The first of the cabs drove rapidly in the direction of North London, and halted at a busy junction of streets in Finsbury Park.

This is a part of the town which great financiers do not as a rule choose for their habitations. It is a working-class district, full of small houses, usually occupied by two or more families; and when the cab stopped and the old man nimbly descended, Elk's mouth opened in an '0' of surprise. Maitland did not pay the cabman, but hurried round the corner into the busy thoroughfare, with Elk at his heels.

He walked a hundred yards, and then boarded a street car. Elk sprinted, and swung himself on board as the car was moving. The old man found a seat, took a battered newspaper from his pocket, and began reading. He turned into a side street of apparently interminable length, crossed the road, and came into a narrow and even meaner street than that which he had traversed; and then, to Elk's amazement, pushed open the iron gate of a dark and dirty little house, opened the door and went in, closing it behind him.

The detective looked up and down the street. It was crowded with poor children. Elk looked at the house again, scarcely believing his eyes. The windows were unclean, the soiled curtains visible were ragged, and the tiny forecourt bore an appearance of neglect. He made up his mind, and, walking to the door, knocked. For some time there was no reply, and then he heard the shuffle of slippered feet in the passage, and an old woman with a yellow face opened the door. He had caught one glimpse of the interior. A grimy-looking passage with a strip of faded carpet, and a flight of uncovered stairs.

He proceeded to make a few local inquiries. I don't know who or what he is. I can tell you this, though: He buys all his goods here. What those two people live on, an ordinary healthy child would eat at one meal! Elk went back to the west, a little mystified. The miser was a common figure of fiction, and not uncommonly met with in real life. But old Maitland must be a super-miser, he thought, and decided to give the matter a little further attention. For the moment, he was concentrating his efforts upon Miss Lola Bassano, that interesting lady.

In one of the fashionable thoroughfares leading from Cavendish Square is a block of flats, occupied by wealthy tenants. Its rents are remarkably high, even for that exclusive quarter, and even Elk, who was not easily surprised, was a little staggered when he learnt that Lola Bassano occupied a suite in this expensive building. It was to Caverley House that he made his way after returning to Maitland's office, to find the premises closed.

There was no indicator on the wall, but the lift-man, who regarded Elk with some suspicion, as he was entitled to do, announced that Miss Bassano lived on the third floor. Elk, I've often wondered how she got a suite in Caverley House. They tell me she used to run a gambling joint on Jermyn Street. You haven't come to raid her, have you? He was about to say something more when the lift-man walked to the door and peered at one of its polished panels.

Though in letters to Madeline his writing was an inconsistent scrawl, in his laboratory notes it was precise. I only know what I observe. That is the way! Observe what you observe, and if it does violence to all the nice correct views of science — out they go! I am very pleast, Martin. But now find out the Why, the underneath principle.

Gottlieb had sent him into Zenith, to the huge Zenith General Hospital, to secure a strain of meningococcus from an interesting patient. The bored reception clerk — who was interested only in obtaining the names, business addresses, and religions of patients, and did not care who died or who spat on the beautiful blue and white linoleum or who went about collecting meningococci, so long as the addresses were properly entered — loftily told him to go up to Ward D. Through the long hallways, past numberless rooms from which peered yellow-faced old women sitting up in bed in linty nightgowns, Martin wandered, trying to look important, hoping to be taken for a doctor, and succeeding only in feeling extraordinarily embarrassed.

He passed several nurses rapidly, half nodding to them, in the manner or what he conceived to be the manner of a brilliant young surgeon who is about to operate. He was so absorbed in looking like a brilliant young surgeon that he was completely lost, and discovered himself in a wing filled with private suites. He had no more time to go on being impressive. Like all males, he hated to confess ignorance by asking directions, but grudgingly he stopped at the door of a bedroom in which a probationer nurse was scrubbing the floor. She was a smallish and slender probationer, muffled in a harsh blue denim dress, an enormous white apron, and a turban bound about her head with an elastic — a uniform as grubby as her pail of scrub-water.

She peered up with the alert impudence of a squirrel. Her indolent amusement, her manner of treating him as though they were a pair of children making tongues at each other in a railroad station, was infuriating to the earnest young assistant of Professor Gottlieb. Her every movement was swiftly smooth as the running of a cat.

All the way to Ward D he was furious at her veiled derision. He was an eminent scientist, and it was outrageous that he should have to endure impudence from a probationer — a singularly vulgar probationer, a thin and slangy young woman apparently from the West. He repeated his rebuke: But her image had not wilted, when he had found the intern who was to help him and had taken the spinal fluid.

She was before him, provocative, enduring. He had raced back to her room and they were staring at each other before it came to him that he had not worked out the crushing things he was going to say. She had risen from her scrubbing. She had taken off her turban, and her hair was silky and honey-colored, her eyes were blue, her face childish. There was nothing of the slavey in her. He could imagine her running down hillsides, shinning up a sack of straw. I was just — Scrubbing makes me bad-tempered.

He felt an instant and complete comradeship with her, a relation free from the fencing and posing of his struggle with Madeline. He knew that this girl was of his own people. If she was vulgar, jocular, unreticent, she was also gallant, she was full of laughter at humbugs, she was capable of a loyalty too casual and natural to seem heroic. His voice was lively, though his words were only:. Are you in the U. To a passing nurse, the two youngsters would have seemed absorbed in hospital business. Martin stood at the door, she by her scrubbing pail.

She had reassumed her turban; its bagginess obscured her bright hair. I like the lab side. You get it here. You ought to hear some of the docs that are the sweetest old pussies with their patients — the way they bawl out the nurses. But labs — they seem sort of real. Sound of mating birds, sound of spring blossoms dropping in the tranquil air, the bark of sleepy dogs at midnight; who is to set them down and make them anything but hackneyed?

And as natural, as conventional, as youthfully gauche, as eternally beautiful and authentic as those ancient sounds was the talk of Martin and Leora in that passionate half-hour when each found in the other a part of his own self, always vaguely missed, discovered now with astonished joy. They rattled like hero and heroine of a sticky tale, like sweat-shop operatives, like bouncing rustics, like prince and princess. Their words were silly and inconsequential, heard one by one, yet taken together they were as wise and important as the tides or the sounding wind.

He told her that he admired Max Gottlieb, that he had crossed her North Dakota on a train, and that he was an excellent hockey-player. She had no especial personal ambition; she had come here because she liked adventure. She hinted, with debonair regret, that she was not too popular with the superintendent of nurses; she meant to be good but somehow she was always dragged into rebellions connected with midnight fudge or elopements. There was nothing heroic in her story but from her placid way of telling it he had an impression of gay courage. All the way back to Mohalis he alternately raged and rejoiced.

He informed himself that he was a moron to make this long trip into Zenith twice in one day; he remembered that he was engaged to a girl called Madeline Fox; he worried the matter of unfaithfulness; he asserted that Leora Tozer was merely an imitation nurse who was as illiterate as a kitchen wench and as impertinent as a newsboy; he decided, several times he decided, to telephone her and free himself from the engagement. He had to wait for twenty minutes in a reception-room like that of an undertaker.

He was in a panic. What was he doing here? Would he even recognize her, in mufti? Then he leaped up. She was at the door. Her sulky blue uniform was gone; she was childishly slim and light in a princess frock that was a straight line from high collar and soft young breast to her feet.

It seemed natural to tuck her hand under his arm as they left the hospital. She moved beside him with a little dancing step, shyer now than she had been in the dignity of her job but looking up at him with confidence. She thought it over. Am I an idiot to admit it? He pressed her hand with his arm. I liked — I felt somehow we two could be chums. He was absorbed in Leora. He found in her a casualness, a lack of prejudice, a directness, surprising in the daughter of Andrew Jackson Tozer. She was feminine but undemanding; she was never Improving and rarely shocked; she was neither flirtatious nor cold.

She was indeed the first girl to whom he had ever talked without self-consciousness. It is doubtful if Leora herself had a chance to say anything, for he poured out his every confidence as a disciple of Gottlieb. To Madeline, Gottlieb was a wicked old man who made fun of the sanctities of Marriage and Easter lilies, to Clif, he was a bore, but Leora glowed as Martin banged the table and quoted his idol: He intoned it reverently, staring across the table at her, almost glaring at her.

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Do you get him? They dined together twice in two weeks, and only twice in that time, though she telephoned to him, did Martin see his honest affianced, Madeline. Her bed-ridden grand-aunt in Zenith, who was her excuse for coming so far to take hospital training. The hamlet of Wheatsylvania, North Dakota; one street of shanties with the red grain-elevators at the end.

Her father, Andrew Jackson Tozer, sometimes known as Jackass Tozer; owner of the bank, of the creamery, and an elevator, therefore the chief person in town; pious at Wednesday evening prayer-meeting, fussing over every penny he gave to Leora or her mother. Bert Tozer, her brother; squirrel teeth, a gold eye-glass chain over his ear, cashier and all the rest of the staff in the one-room bank owned by his father. And round about the village, the living wheat, arched above by tremendous clouds. They said it with clasping hands, confessing eyes, in that blatant restaurant.

Her first words were:. By any canon of respectable behavior he should have felt like a low dog; he assured himself that he must feel like a low dog; but he could not bring it off. He mourned that he had sinned against loyalty. But his agitation broke against the solidity of his union with Leora. Her companionship released his soul. Even when, as advocate for Madeline, he pleaded that Leora was a trivial young woman who probably chewed gum in private and certainly was careless about her nails in public, her commonness was dear to the commonness that was in himself, valid as ambition or reverence, an earthy base to her gaiety as it was to his nervous scientific curiosity.

He was absent-minded in the laboratory, that fatal next day. Gottlieb had twice to ask him whether he had prepared the new batch of medium, and Gottlieb was an autocrat, sterner with his favorites than with the ruck of students. My God, am I to spend my life with Dummkopfe? I cannot be always alone, Martin! Are you going to fail me? Two, three days now you haf not been keen about work. He worked himself up to a state of virtue in which it was agreeably clear to him that he must throw Madeline over, entirely as a rebuke.

He went to her in the evening prepared to blaze out at her first complaining, to forgive her finally, but to break their engagement and make life resolutely simple again. She ran to him. Have you been working frightfully hard? Think of all the years you have ahead to do splendid things in. I want you to rest. He was determined that he would not love it and, as he probably had no sense of humor whatever, it is doubtful whether he appreciated it, but its differentness aroused him.

He saw that it was she, with her pretenses, who was the child, and the detached and fearless Leora who was mature, mistress of a real world. The reproofs with which he had planned to crush her vanished. He wanted to talk about Leora, to shout about Leora, to exult in her, his woman.

He dragged out a few sound but unimpassioned flatteries; he observed that Madeline was a handsome young woman and a sound English scholar; and while she gaped with disappointment at his lukewarmness, he got himself away, at ten. He had finally succeeded very well indeed in feeling like a low dog.

He had told Clif nothing about Leora. He thought well of himself for the calmness with which he came into their room. Was she horrid to ickly Martykins? Yoicks for the drink. He told three new stories about Professor Robertshaw, all of them scurrilous and most of them untrue, on their way, and he almost coaxed Martin into cheerfulness. Clif and the hairy-handed Barney greeted each other in a high and worthy manner:. May your circulation proceed unchecked and particularly the dorsal carpal branch of the ulnar artery, in which connection, comrade, Prof.

Egbert Arrowsmith and I would fain trifle with another bottle of that renowned strawberry pop. The back room was simpler: Barney poured, from a bottle plainly marked Ginger Ale, two glasses of powerful and appalling raw whiskey, and Clif and Martin took them to the table in the corner. The effect was swift. He told Clif that he was going to write a book exposing idealism, but what he meant was that he was going to do something clever about his dual engagement. He would invite Leora and Madeline to lunch together, tell them the truth, and see which of them loved him.

He whooped, and had another whiskey; he told Clif that he was a fine fellow, and Barney that he was a public benefactor, and unsteadily he retired to the telephone, which was shut off from public hearing in a closet. At the Zenith General Hospital he got the night superintendent, and the night Superintendent was a man frosty and suspicious.

Who are you, anyway? When Leora came to the telephone he said quickly, and soberly now, feeling as though he had come from the menace of thronging strangers into the security of her presence:. Meet me Grand lobby tomorrow, twelve-thirty. I was so frightened. I thought maybe it was a telegram or something. What is it, dear? I do hope nothing has happened! Forgot to tell you. Listen, I want you come in and meet — come meet um at lunch. Or did the Giants win in the ninth? Barney, our wandering-boy-tonight looks like a necropsy. Slip him another strawberry pop, quick.

Say, Doctor, I think you better call a physician. I regard her with nothing but respect. But never mind, if you say so. By several drinks Martin was warmed into a hazy carelessness, and Clif solicitously dragged him home after he had desired to fight three large academic sophomores. But in the morning he awoke with a crackling skull and a realization that he was going to face Leora and Madeline at lunch. His half-hour journey with Madeline into Zenith seemed a visible and oppressing thing, like a tornado cloud.

He had not merely to get through each minute as it came; the whole grim thirty minutes were present at the same time. While he was practicing the tactful observation he was going to present two minutes from now, he could still hear the clumsy thing he had said two minutes before. But he could not sidetrack her.

What are you so mysterious about? Oh, Martin, is it a joke? Did you just want to run away from Mama for a while and we have a bat at the Grand together? Since the torture of the coming lunch was inevitable, he wondered why he should go on trying to resist his punishment. You remember you were saying how few girls there are in Mohalis that really appreciate — appreciate ideals. ANY friend of yours — Oh, Mart! I mean, for your own sake.

They have such an advantage. She, the proper, ignored the passengers as she clasped his hand. She sounded so frightened that his anger at her reflections on Leora turned into misery. Incidentally, her thumb was gouging painfully into the back of his hand. The old duffer across the aisle is staring at us. For whatever infidelities he might ever commit he was adequately punished before they had reached the Grand Hotel.

The Grand was, in , the best hotel in Zenith. It has been humbled since by the supercilious modesty of the vast Hotel Thornleigh; dirty now is its tessellated floor and all the wild gilt tarnished, and in its ponderous leather chairs are torn seams and stogie ashes and horse-dealers. But in its day it was the proudest inn between Chicago and Pittsburgh; an oriental palace, the entrance a score of brick Moorish arches, the lobby towering from a black and white marble floor, up past gilt iron balconies, to the green, pink, pearl, and amber skylight seven stories above.

They found Leora in the lobby, tiny on an enormous couch built round a pillar. She stared at Madeline, quiet, waiting.

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Martin perceived that Leora was unusually sloppy — his own word. The resentment was not toward Leora. Scanning them together not haughtily, as the choosing and lofty male, but anxiously he was more irritated than ever by Madeline. That she should be better dressed was an affront. His affection flew to guard Leora, to wrap and protect her. While they murmured nothing in particular to each other he herded them into the famous dining-room of the Grand. It was full of gilt chandeliers, red plush chairs, heavy silverware, and aged Negro retainers with gold and green waistcoats.

He was ordering, with agony. He had appropriated four dollars for the orgy, strictly including the tip, and his standard of good food was that he must spend every cent of the four dollars. She chanted with horrifying politeness:. I have to master the growth of the language and so on and so forth. Are you staying East for some time? Birchall, that operates in your hospital? He sings won-derfully, and he comes from the most frightfully nice family. And he plays the slickest — the most gorgeous game of tennis.

He always goes to all these millionaire parties on Royal Ridge. She spoke familiarly of what were known as the Leaders of Zenith Society, the personages who appeared daily in the society columns of the Advocate—Times, the Cowxes and Van Antrims and Dodsworths. Martin was astonished by the familiarity; he remembered that she had once gone to a charity ball in Zenith but he had not known that she was so intimate with the peerage. Certainly Leora had appallingly never heard of these great ones, nor even attended the concerts, the lectures, the recitals at which Madeline apparently spent all her glittering evenings.

He could do it now, if he got it over quickly. Madeline had sprung up. She had never looked quite so proud and fine. She stared at them, and walked away, wordless.

He felt her hand on his. She was smiling, easy, a little mocking. Perhaps you like me better because you can bully me — because I tag after you and She never would. And I know your work is more important to you than I am, maybe more important than you are. I simply admire you frightfully Heaven knows why, but I do , while She has sense enough to make you admire Her and tag after Her. Yet his absorption in her was not stagnant. He was always making discoveries about the observations of life which she kept incubating in her secret little head while she made smoke rings with her cigarettes and smiled silently.

He longed for the girl Leora; she stirred him, and with gay frank passion she answered him; but to another, sexless Leora he talked more honestly than to Gottlieb or his own worried self, while with her boyish nod or an occasional word she encouraged him to confidence in his evolving ambition and disdains.

Digamma Pi fraternity was giving a dance. She was intimidated by the luminous cases of mahogany and plate glass, by the opera hats and lustrous mufflers and creamy riding breeches. When he had tried on a dinner suit and come out for her approval, his long brown tie and soft-collared shirt somewhat rustic behind the low evening waistcoat, and when the clerk had gone to fetch collars, she wailed:.

For the Digamma Ball, the University Armory was extremely decorated. The brick walls were dizzy with bunting, spotty with paper chrysanthemums and plaster skulls and wooden scalpels ten feet long. In six years at Mohalis, Martin had gone to less than a score of dances, though the refined titillations of communal embracing were the chief delight of the co-educational university. When he arrived at the Armory, with Leora timorously brave in a blue crepe de chine made in no recognized style, he did not care whether he had a single two-step, though he did achingly desire to have the men crowd in and ask Leora, admire her and make her welcome.

Yet he was too proud to introduce her about, lest he seem to be begging his friends to dance with her. They stood alone, under the balcony, disconsolately facing the vastness of the floor, while beyond them flashed the current of dancers, beautiful, formidable, desirable. He did not enjoy the dance, though she waltzed easily and himself not too badly. He did not even enjoy having her in his arms.

He could not believe that she was in his arms. As they revolved he saw Duer join a brilliance of pretty girls and distinguished-looking women about the great Dr. Silva, dean of the medical school. Angus seemed appallingly at home, and he waltzed off with the prettiest girl, sliding, swinging, deft. Martin tried to hate him as a fool, but he remembered that yesterday Angus had been elected to the honorary society of Sigma Xi. Leora and he crept back to the exact spot beneath the balcony where they had stood before, to their den, their one safe refuge. While he tried to be nonchalant and talk up to his new clothes, he was cursing the men he saw go by laughing with girls, ignoring his Leora.

He fretted over his lack of popularity among the dancing-men of the medical school. He wished Clif Clawson were present — Clif liked any sort of assembly, but he could not afford dress-clothes. Then, rejoicing as at sight of the best-beloved, he saw Irving Watters, that paragon of professional normality, wandering toward them, but Watters passed by, merely nodding. Thrice Martin hoped and desponded, and now all his pride was gone. Anything to let her have a good time! Up ambled Fatty Pfaff, just arrived. Martin pounced on him lovingly. You a stag tonight?

Meet my friend Miss Tozer. That he himself stood alone through the dance did not occur to him. He leaned against a pillar and gloated. He felt gorgeously unselfish. That various girl wallflowers were sitting near him, waiting to be asked, did not occur to him either. He saw Fatty introduce Leora to a decorative pair of Digams, one of whom begged her for the next.

Thereafter she had more invitations than she could take. It seemed to him that she clung too closely to her partners, that she followed their steps too eagerly. After the fifth dance he was agitated. Fact I might like a little dancing myself — And the way she grins and gawps at that fool Brindle Morgan, the — the — the damnedest — Oh, you and I are going to have a talk, young woman!

So when you go and get jealous on me again, you sneak off and get rid of it. I love you so much. It was regarded as immoral, at the University of Winnemac, to dance after midnight, and at that hour the guests crowded into the Imperial Cafeteria. Ordinarily it closed at eight, but tonight it kept open till one, and developed a spirit of almost lascivious mirth.

Fatty Pfaff did a jig, another humorous student, with a napkin over his arm, pretended to be a waiter, and a girl but she was much disapproved smoked a cigarette. At the door Clif Clawson was waiting for Martin and Leora. He was in his familiar shiny gray suit, with a blue flannel shirt. He had not met Leora. He eyed her now with patronizing enmity. Well, Leory, I suppose you and Martykins here have now ratiocinated all these questions of polo and, uh, Monte Carlo and so on.

She had an immense power of accepting people as they were. Clif turned into a jovial and for him unusually quiet companion. Ex-farmhand, ex-book-agent, ex-mechanic, he had so little money yet so scratching a desire to be resplendent that he took refuge in pride in poverty, pride in being offensive. Now, when Leora seemed to look through his boasting, he liked her as quickly as had Martin, and they buzzed with gaiety. Martin was warmed to benevolence toward mankind, including Angus Duer, who was at the end of the room at a table with Dean Silva and his silvery women.

Without plan, Martin sprang up, raced down the room. Holding out his hand he clamored:. Duer regarded the outstretched hand as though it was an instrument which he had seen before but whose use he could not quite remember. He picked it up and shook it tentatively. He did not turn his back; he was worse than rude — he looked patient. Martin returned to Leora and Clif, to tell them the incident as a cosmic tragedy. They agreed that Angus Duer was to be shot.

I know less about medicine than Prof Robertshaw. It was almost four when Martin returned from taking Leora home and sagged into bed. He could not sleep. The aloofness of Angus Duer racked him as an insult to himself, as somehow an implied insult to Leora, but his boyish rage had passed into a bleaker worry. He was so tired that behind his closed eyelids were flashes of fire. His whirling mind flew over every sentence he had said or heard that night, till round his twisting body there was fevered shouting.

As he grumped across the medical campus next day, he came unexpectedly upon Angus and he was smitten with the guiltiness and embarrassment one has toward a person who has borrowed money and probably will not return it. He was dismayingly even. It struck me when I was going out that you looked huffy. Fact is, I had a rotten headache. Like to see it? And I noticed you were with a peach, at the dance. Suppose she might like to go along with us, she and some friend of hers?

It was not till melancholy dusk, when Leora had accepted and promised to bring with her a probationer-nurse named Nelly Byers, that Martin began to brood:. What Play it was did not much matter. The Dodsworth Theatre was splendid with the aristocracy from the big houses on Royal Ridge. Leora and Nelly Byers admired the bloods — graduates of Yale and Harvard and Princeton, lawyers and bankers, motor-manufacturers and inheritors of real estate, virtuosi of golf, familiars of New York — who with their shrill and glistening women occupied the front rows.

Miss Byers pointed out the Dodsworths, who were often mentioned in Town Topics. Martin was in a mood of determined hospitality. He was going to give them supper and that was all there was to it. Angus was studying Leora, looking from her to Martin, watching their glances of affection. That a keen young man should make a comrade of a girl who could not bring him social advancement, that such a thing as the boy and girl passion between Martin and Leora could exist, was probably inconceivable to him.

He decided that she was conveniently frail. He gave Martin a refined version of a leer, and set himself to acquiring her for his own uses. Of course I understand why girls fall for Martin here, with his romantic eyes, but a grind like me, I have to go on working without a single person to give me sympathy. Oh, well, I deserve it for being shy of women. With unexpected defiance from Leora: Why, child, honestly, I long to be a Don Juan. Martin twitched with jealousy.

He blurted that they must be going — Leora really had to be back — The trolleys ran infrequently after midnight and they walked to the hospital through hollow and sounding streets. Angus and Leora kept up a high-strung chatter, while Martin stalked beside them, silent, sulky, proud of being sulky. Skittering through a garage alley they came out on the mass of Zenith General Hospital, a block long, five stories of bleak windows with infrequent dim blotches of light.

No one was about. The first floor was but five feet from the ground, and they lifted Leora up to the limestone ledge of a half-open corridor window. Martin felt empty, dissatisfied. The night was full of a chill mournfulness. He felt the tragedy of parting — that in the briefness of life he should lose one moment of her living presence. The frigid edge of the stone sill bit his hands, but he vaulted, thrust up his knee, crawled hastily through the window.

Ahead of him, in the cork-floored hallway lit only by a tiny electric globe, Leora was tiptoeing toward a flight of stairs. He ran after her, on his toes. She squeaked as he caught her arm. She peered along the corridor, and his quickened imagination created sneaking forms, eyes peering from doorways. She sighed, then, resolutely: Stand there, in the shadow. He followed her to the floor above, to a white door, then breathlessly inside. As he closed the door he was touched by this cramped refuge, with its camp-beds and photographs from home and softly wrinkled linen.

He clasped her, but with hand against his chest she forbade him, as she mourned:. How can you distrust me so? Women not like him? Likes himself too well. And then you jealous! To have to sit there and grin like a hyena, with him between us, when I wanted to talk to you, to kiss you! Their profound and unresisted kiss was the more blind in memory of that barren hour with Angus.

They forgot that the superintendent of nurses might dreadfully come bursting in; they forgot that Angus was waiting. In the still ghostliness of the hall, he laughed as he thought of how irritably Angus must have marched away. But from the window he discovered Angus huddled on the stone steps, asleep. As he touched the ground, he whistled, but stopped short. There was a reek of dirty overalls, of unbathed flesh. Martin kicked his shins, struck at his boulder of red cheek, tried to twist his arm. He broke loose, started to flee, and halted.

The struggle, in its contrast to the aching sweetness of Leora, had infuriated him.

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He faced the watchman, raging. From the awakened Angus, suddenly appearing beside him, there was a thin sound of disgust. Why do you dirty your hands on scum like him? Under the sleepy street-lamp, Martin saw a man go mad. It was not the unfeeling Angus Duer who stared at the watchman; it was a killer, and his eyes were the terrible eyes of the killer, speaking to the least experienced a message of death. Martin was slim but he had pitched hay and strung telephone wire. They ran up an alley, across a courtyard. They came to a thoroughfare as an owl trolley glowed and rattled round the corner; they ran beside it, swung up on the steps, and were safe.

Angus stood on the back platform, sobbing. He laid his filthy hands on me! Hold me here on the car. Angus was shaky and stumbling — Angus the punctilious. Martin led him into the lunch-room where, between catsup bottles, they had raw whisky in granite-like coffee cups. Angus leaned his head on his arm and sobbed, careless of stares, till he had drunk himself into obliteration, and Martin steered him home. Then to Martin, in his furnished room with Clif snoring, the evening became incredible and nothing more incredible than Angus Duer.

Next morning, in the hall of the Anatomy Building, he saw Angus and rushed toward him. But the rest was nerve-gnawing. Droning afternoons of hospital demonstrations, among stumbling students barked at by tired clinical professors. The competitive exactions of surgery on dogs, in which Angus Duer lorded it with impatient perfection. Martin admired the professor of internal medicine, T.

He was a round little man with a little crescent of mustache. He was a Doc Vickerson of Elk Mills, grown wiser and soberer and more sure. Roscoe Geake, professor of otolaryngology. Roscoe Geake was a peddler. He would have done well with oil stock. As an otolaryngologist he believed that tonsils had been placed in the human organism for the purpose of providing specialists with closed motors.

Geake denounced this cant about Letting Nature Alone.

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