All Story Magazine, December 1913 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A THIEVES’ COMEDY. dust-bin until I could pick it out and clean it myself. That forenoon I called upon my lawyers, told them to look after my rents and so forth—to sack everybody dt Pidderington Park but the house- keeper, a maid, and the gardener, who had a wife and a fine little chap they were foolish enough to give my name to; and, further, the lawyers were to give me one thousand pounds —if I were worth that much. They said I could have eleven hun- dred if I wanted all the cash that was legally mine; but I stuck to my plan and took the thousand, determined to make it ten in six months or go to the wall. I disliked that man Rollins intense- ly, more particularly since I could learn nothing of him in London; and I also entertained an antipathy toward the ‘“ heiress daughter” of Sysonsby’s story. But, as one will, I thought I'd rather like to see whether she was as ravishingly beautiful as she ‘ novel- ettishly ” ought to be. That was possibly one reason why I booked a passage on the Randania— but the other two were much more 1m- portant. I wanted to learn, first hand if I could, more of the future owner of Didderington Manor and to sink my identity and my thousand where I be- lieved the quickest results could be ob- tained, and thought it would be rich if Rollins should own the manor and most of the park, while I held the lodge and the gate with money ld made right under his nose. When I booked a berth under the name of John TT. Mason and glanced at the passenger-list, I felt that the Earl of Didderington had given the chance of recognition the slip. Yet, though there was no one on the Randania with whom I was even dis- tantly acquainted, the majority of the passengers being Americans returning from summering in Europe—I held to my stateroom pretty religiously, bri- bing a steward to serve all my meals 725 there, only going up on deck after dark. The weather was ideal, and usually for an hour or two after dinner the decks were quite lively ; then the crowd would thin out by twos and threes; careful mamas would trot frivolous daughters away from light flirtations in shadowy corners. The piano in the music-room, that hammered “sugar-moons” and “ Junes " and “ spoons” out of its sys- tem for hours on end, would give one last wail in the form of ‘ Auld Lang Syne” or “My Country, “Tis of Thee ’—* God Save the King” I call it—and join hands with its tormentors in silence; the chatter and the laughter would die away into the bowels of the ship, and the men, left to their own devices, would struggle with desultory, monotoned conversation for a little while until, one by one, their ‘ good- night ” cigars would go whirling over- board, and they would descend to their cabins. In the smoke-room, of course, men sat late, idljng with chance and their refreshments till the deck steward re- spectfully intimated his intention to put out the lights. Upon the third night out, when al- most every one else had: gone to bed, I was strolling up and down the deck, trying to appreciate the moon and the rather pretty effect upon the water. Some chaps—TI don’t mean poets— go into ecstacies over that sort of thing. I can’t. It probably goes a little too deep for me—that is, I don’t care to say too much about it. I had the deck to myself, though there were still sounds of hilarity ema- nating from the smoke-room. Away to starboard I saw what I at first presumed was a particularly large and restless star. Halting and leaning over the rail, I discovered the star to be the headlight of a tramp or some- thing of the kind, and for a few min- utes the bobbing light interested me. I wondered what she carried, where she had come from, whither she was comlicloooks.com