All Story Magazine, December 1913 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

730 crush at Coney Island, into which I was brutally inveigled by a traveling salesman, whom I met at the hotel and whom I lost, together with my hat, my hearing, and my dignity somewhere amid the confetti and the noise and the seething mob on Surf Avenue. I never saw the salesman again. There was also a colonel from one of the Carolinas, who helped me to- ward an understanding of the why and wherefore of the South’s defeat. That I went to sleep in the middle of it did not matter. He woke me up and began all over again. However, Thursday morning came at last, and I remember whistling the “ British Grenadiers ” while I tubbed. The waiter at breakfast eyed me sus- piciously, because I smiled and did not ask him to take back the toast. But a head-line on the front page of my morning paper, and the news-matter that filled half the column below it, re- moved my cheerfulness slowly. It read: ROB ROY GANG PAYS ANOTHER CALL. CARD LEFT WITH J. F. BERMAN OF YONKERS, $5,000 in Cash and Jewels Gone. No Explosives or Drills Used to Open Safe. Yonkers Police Fail to Find Trace of Thieves. It appeared that Mr. Berman's house had been entered the previous evening, and the safe, containing money and most of the family jewels, had been opened and ransacked. In the card-tray in the hall there was found a card with a border of red and black squares, bearing the words: FOR CHARITY For a little while I stared at the type with my mouth open, and at first I think I barely understood just what it meant. “Campbell a—” THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE. I didn’t say it—hardly dared to think it. It seemed too ridiculous to be given a second thought. Yet I gave it a third and a fourth and a fifth and became more and more uncomfortable. The newspaper expressed small sympathy for Mr, Berman, and I thought the account of the matter was written in a rather facetious vein, vaguely suggesting between the lines that the loss sustained by the burglar- ized and apparently very frantic gentle- man represented about all he had ever subscribed—* for charity.” Quite evidently, too, the Rob Roy, Gang was a clever and renowned ag- gregation. Their depredations had created amusement for the masses, roused the anger of their victims, and demanded the respect of the police— the latter seeming to be unable to solve the mystery of the gang's existence and organization and identity. With something akin to awe, and feeling sure that every one was watch- ing me, I left the breakfast-table, sneaked up to my room, and, finding the card Campbell had given me, tore it up into very small pieces and burned them in an ash-tray, Then I breathed more freely and looked forward to.meeting Campbell with an entirely new interest. For the world I would not have missed my ap- pointment with this American “ five generations removed from Aberfoyle,” where his forefathers had been “ kings of men.” Might it be that he was a descendant of the robber-chieftain of the Mac- Gregors, made famous by Sir Walter Scott. His build, and his truly strange use of the Scottish tongue, lent color to the surmise, hinting, at the same time, that he might be somewhat of a fanatic about his ancestors. My anxiety to become acquainted with Rollins was shoved into the back- ground, and as I went out I was so keen to talk to some one about it that I said to the clerk, as I handed him my key: - comicbooks.conn