ROBERT BARR Ultimate Collection: 20 Novels & 65+ Detective Stories. Robert Barr

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СКАЧАТЬ and it is about to play one of four favorite selections, Mr. Katzburg."

      "Katzoff is the name. As to the selection, I don't know much about music, although I am fond of popular pieces."

      Katzoff and I got along very nicely, although I did not seem to like him as well as either Johnson or Baumgarten. He left for Salzburg without bidding me good-bye. Missing him one day, I called at the Angleterre, and the porter told me he had gone.

      Next day I searched for him, wondering in what garb I should find him. I passed him twice as he sat on the bench, before I was sure enough to accost him. The sacrifice of his moustache had made a remarkable difference. His clean-shaven face caused him to look at least ten years younger. He wore a tall silk hat, and a long black morning coat. I found myself hardly able to withdraw my eyes from the white spats that partially covered his polished boots. He was reading an English paper, and did not observe my scrutiny. I approached him.

      "Well, Johnson," I said, "this is a lay out. You're English this time, I suppose?"

      The man looked up in evident surprise. Fumbling around the front of his waistcoat for a moment, he found a black silk string, which he pulled, bringing to his hand a little round disc of glass. This he stuck in one eye, grimacing slightly to keep it in place, and so regarded me apparently with some curiosity. My certainty that it was Johnson wavered for a moment, but I braved it out.

      "That monocle is a triumph, Johnson. In combination with the spats it absolutely staggers me. If you had tried that on as Baumgarten I don't know that I should have recognized you. Johnson, what's your game?"

      "You seem to be laboring under some delusion," he said at last. "My name is not Johnson. I am Lord Somerset Campbell, if you care to know."

      "Really? Oh, well, that's all right. I'm the Duke of Argyll, so we must be relatives. Blood is thicker than water, Campbell. Confess. Whom have you murdered?"

      "I knew," said his lordship, slowly, "that the largest lunatic asylum in the Tyrol is near here, but I was not aware that the patients were allowed to stroll in the Kurpark."

      "That's all very well, Johnson, but——"

      "Campbell, if you please."

      "I don't please, as it happens. This masquerade has gone on long enough. What's your crime? Or are you on the other side of the fence? Are you practising the detective business?"

      "My dear fellow, I don't know you, and I resent your impertinent curiosity. Allow me to wish you good-day."

      "It won't do, Johnson, it has gone too far. You have played on my feelings, and I won't stand it. I'll go to the authorities and relate the circumstances. They are just suspicious enough to——"

      "Which? The authorities or the circumstances?" asked Johnson, sitting down again.

      "Both, my dear boy, both, and you know it. Now, Johnson, make a clean breast of it, I won't give you away."

      Johnson sighed, and his glass dropped from his eye. He looked around cautiously. "Sit down," he said.

      "Then you are Johnson!" I cried, with some exultation.

      "I thought you weren't very sure," began Johnson. "However, it doesn't matter, but you should be above threatening a man. That was playing it low down."

      "I see you're from Chicago. Go on."

      "It's all on account of this accursed visitors' tax. That I decline to pay. I stay just under the week at a hotel, and then take a 'bus to the station, and another 'bus to another hotel. Of course my mistake was getting acquainted with you. I never suspected you were going to stay here a month."

      "But why didn't you let me know? Your misdemeanor is one I thoroughly sympathize with. I wouldn't have said anything."

      Johnson shook his head.

      "I took a fellow into my confidence once before. He told it as a dead secret to a friend, and the friend thought it a good joke, and related it, always under oath that it should go no further. The authorities had me arrested before the week was out, and fined me heavily besides exacting the tax."

      "But doesn't the 'bus fares, the changing, and all that amount to as much as the tax?"

      "I suppose it does. It isn't the money I object to, it's the principle of the thing."

      This interview was the last I ever had with Johnson. About a week later

       I read in the Visitors' List that Lord Somerset Campbell, who had been

       a guest of the Victoria (the swell hotel of the place), had left

       Schwindleburg for Innsbruck.

      The Reclamation of Joe Hollends.

       Table of Contents

      The public-houses of Burwell Road—and there were many of them for the length of the street—were rather proud of Joe Hollends. He was a perfected specimen of the work a pub produces. He was probably the most persistent drunkard the Road possessed, and the periodical gathering in of Joe by the police was one of the stock sights of the street. Many of the inhabitants could be taken to the station by one policeman; some required two; but Joe's average was four. He had been heard to boast that on one occasion he had been accompanied to the station by seven bobbies, but that was before the force had studied Joe and got him down to his correct mathematical equivalent. Now they tripped him up, a policeman taking one kicking leg and another the other, while the remaining two attended to the upper part of his body. Thus they carried him, followed by an admiring crowd, and watched by other envious drunkards who had to content themselves with a single officer when they went on a similar spree. Sometimes Joe managed to place a kick where it would do the most good against the stomach of a policeman, and when the officer rolled over there was for a few moments a renewal of the fight, silent on the part of the men and vociferous on the part of the drunkard, who had a fine flow of abusive language. Then the procession went on again. It was perfectly useless to put Joe on the police ambulance, for it required two men to sit on him while in transit, and the barrow is not made to stand such a load.

      Of course, when Joe staggered out of the pub and fell in the gutter, the ambulance did its duty, and trundled Joe to his abiding place, but the real fun occurred when Joe was gathered in during the third stage of his debauch. He passed through the oratorical stage, then the maudlin or sentimental stage, from which he emerged into the fighting stage, when he was usually ejected into the street, where he forthwith began to make Rome howl, and paint the town red. At this point the policeman's whistle sounded, and the force knew Joe was on the warpath, and that duty called them to the fray.

      It was believed in the neighborhood that Joe had been a college man, and this gave him additional standing with his admirers. His eloquence was undoubted, after several glasses varying in number according to the strength of their contents, and a man who had heard the great political speakers of the day admitted that none of them could hold a candle to Joe when he got on the subject of the wrongs of the working man and the tyranny of the capitalist. It was generally understood that Joe might have been anything he liked, and that he was no man's enemy but his own. It was also hinted that he could tell the bigwigs a thing or two if he had been consulted in affairs of State.

      One evening, when Joe was slowly progressing СКАЧАТЬ