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Tracked to Doom

Short Stories

"Fox-in-the-Morning"

A Bird of Bagdad

A Blackjack Bargainer

A Call Loan

A Chaparral Christmas Gift

A Chaparral Prince

A Comedy in Rubber

A Cosmopolite in a Cafe

A Departmental Case

A Dinner at--------*

A Double-Dyed Deceiver

A Fog in Santone

A Harlem Tragedy

A Lickpenny Lover

A Little Local Colour

A Little Talk about Mobs

A Madison Square Arabian Night

A Matter of Mean Elevation

A Midsummer Knight's Dream

A Midsummer Masquerade

A Municipal Report

A Newspaper Story

A Night in New Arabia

A Philistine in Bohemia

A Poor Rule

A Ramble in Aphasia

A Retrieved Reformation

A Ruler of Men

A Sacrifice Hit

A Service of Love

A Snapshot at the President

A Strange Story

A Technical Error

A Tempered Wind

According to Their Lights

After Twenty Years

An Adjustment of Nature

An Afternoon Miracle

An Apology

An Unfinished Christmas Story

An Unfinished Story

Aristocracy Versus Hash

Art and the Bronco

At Arms With Morpheus

Babes in the Jungle

Best-Seller

Between Rounds

Bexar Scrip No. 2692

Blind Man's Holiday

Brickdust Row

Buried Treasure

By Courier

Calloway's Code

Caught

Cherchez La Femme

Christmas by Injunction

Compliments of the Season

Confessions of a Humorist

Conscience in Art

Cupid a La Carte

Cupid's Exile Number Two

Dickey

Dougherty's Eye-Opener

Elsie in New York

Extradited from Bohemia

Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled

Friends in San Rosario

From Each According to His Ability

From the Cabby's Seat

Georgia's Ruling

Girl

He Also Serves

Hearts and Crosses

Hearts and Hands

Helping the Other Fellow

Holding Up a Train

Hostages to Momus

Hygeia at the Solito

Innocents of Broadway

Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet

Jimmy Hayes and Muriel

Law and Order

Let Me Feel Your Pulse

Little Speck in Garnered Fruit

Lord Oakhurst's Curse

Lost on Dress Parade

Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches

Makes the Whole World Kin

Mammon and the Archer

Man About Town

Masters of Arts

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

Modern Rural Sports

Money Maze

Nemesis and the Candy Man

New York by Camp Fire Light

Next to Reading Matter

No Story

October and June

On Behalf of the Management

One Dollar's Worth

One Thousand Dollars

Out of Nazareth

Past One at Rooney's

Phoebe

Proof of the Pudding

Psyche and the Pskyscraper

Queries and Answers

Roads of Destiny

Roses, Ruses and Romance

Rouge et Noir

Round the Circle

Rus in Urbe

Schools and Schools

Seats of the Haughty

Shearing the Wolf

Ships

Shoes

Sisters of the Golden Circle

Smith

Sociology in Serge and Straw

Sound and Fury

Springtime a La Carte

Squaring the Circle

Strictly Business

Strictly Business

Suite Homes and Their Romance

Telemachus, Friend

The Admiral

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

The Assessor of Success

The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear

The Badge of Policeman O'Roon

The Brief Debut of Tildy

The Buyer From Cactus City

The Caballero's Way

The Cactus

The Caliph and the Cad

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock

The Call of the Tame

The Chair of Philanthromathematics

The Champion of the Weather

The Church with an Overshot-Wheel

The City of Dreadful Night

The Clarion Call

The Coming-Out of Maggie

The Complete Life of John Hopkins

The Cop and the Anthem

The Count and the Wedding Guest

The Country of Elusion

The Day Resurgent

The Day We Celebrate

The Defeat of the City

The Detective Detector

The Diamond of Kali

The Discounters of Money

The Dog and the Playlet

The Door of Unrest

The Dream

The Duel

The Duplicity of Hargraves

The Easter of the Soul

The Emancipation of Billy

The Enchanted Kiss

The Enchanted Profile

The Ethics of Pig

The Exact Science of Matrimony

The Ferry of Unfulfilment

The Fifth Wheel

The Flag Paramount

The Fool-Killer

The Foreign Policy of Company 99

The Fourth in Salvador

The Friendly Call

The Furnished Room

The Gift of the Magi

The Girl and the Graft

The Girl and the Habit

The Gold That Glittered

The Greater Coney

The Green Door

The Guardian of the Accolade

The Guilty Party - An East Side Tragedy

The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss

The Hand that Riles the World

The Handbook of Hymen

The Harbinger

The Head-Hunter

The Hiding of Black Bill

The Higher Abdication

The Higher Pragmatism

The Hypotheses of Failure

The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson

The Lady Higher Up

The Last Leaf

The Last of the Troubadours

The Lonesome Road

The Lost Blend

The Lotus And The Bottle

The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein

The Making of a New Yorker

The Man Higher Up

The Marionettes

The Marquis and Miss Sally

The Marry Month of May

The Memento

The Missing Chord

The Moment of Victory

The Octopus Marooned

The Passing of Black Eagle

The Pendulum

The Phonograph and the Graft

The Pimienta Pancakes

The Plutonian Fire

The Poet and the Peasant

The Pride of the Cities

The Princess and the Puma

The Prisoner of Zembla

The Proem

The Purple Dress

The Ransom of Mack

The Ransom of Red Chief

The Rathskeller and the Rose

The Red Roses of Tonia

The Reformation of Calliope

The Remnants of the Code

The Renaissance at Charleroi

The Roads We Take

The Robe of Peace

The Romance of a Busy Broker

The Rose of Dixie

The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball

The Rubber Plant's Story

The Shamrock and the Palm

The Shocks of Doom

The Skylight Room

The Sleuths

The Snow Man

The Social Triangle

The Song and the Sergeant

The Sparrows in Madison Square

The Sphinx Apple

The Tale of a Tainted Tenner

The Theory and the Hound

The Thing's the Play

The Third Ingredient

The Trimmed Lamp

The Unknown Quantity

The Unprofitable Servant

The Venturers

The Vitagraphoscope

The Voice of the City

The Whirligig of Life

The World and the Door

Thimble, Thimble

Tictocq

To Him Who Waits

Tobin's Palm

Tommy's Burglar

Tracked to Doom

Transformation of Martin Burney

Transients in Arcadia

Two Recalls

Two Renegades

Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

Ulysses and the Dogman

Vanity and Some Sables

What You Want

While the Auto Waits

Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking

Witches' Loaves







or
The Mystery of the Rue de Peychaud


'Tis midnight in Paris.

A myriad of lamps that line the Champs Elysees and the Rouge et Noir,
cast their reflection in the dark waters of the Seine as it flows
gloomily past the Place Vendome and the black walls of the Convent
Notadam.

The great French capital is astir.

It is the hour when crime and vice and wickedness reign.

Hundreds of fiacres drive madly through the streets conveying women,
flashing with jewels and as beautiful as dreams, from opera and concert,
and the little bijou supper rooms of the Cafe Tout le Temps are filled
with laughing groups, while bon mots, persiflage and repartee fly upon
the air--the jewels of thought and conversation.

Luxury and poverty brush each other in the streets. The homeless gamin,
begging a sou with which to purchase a bed, and the spendthrift roue,
scattering golden louis d'or, tread the same pavement.

When other cities sleep, Paris has just begun her wild revelry.

The first scene of our story is a cellar beneath the Rue de Peychaud.

The room is filled with smoke of pipes, and is stifling with the reeking
breath of its inmates. A single flaring gas jet dimly lights the scene,
which is one Rembrandt or Moreland and Keisel would have loved to paint.

A garcon is selling absinthe to such of the motley crowd as have a few
sous, dealing it out in niggardly portions in broken teacups.

Leaning against the bar is Carnaignole Cusheau--generally known as the
Gray Wolf.

He is the worst man in Paris.

He is more than four feet ten in height, and his sharp, ferocious
looking face and the mass of long, tangled gray hair that covers his
face and head, have earned for him the name he bears.

His striped blouse is wide open at the neck and falls outside of his
dingy leather trousers. The handle of a deadly looking knife protrudes
from his belt. One stroke of its blade would open a box of the finest
French sardines.

"Voila, Gray Wolf," cries Couteau, the bartender. "How many victims
to-day? There is no blood upon your hands. Has the Gray Wolf forgotten
how to bite?"

"Sacre Bleu, Mille Tonnerre, by George," hisses the Gray Wolf. "Monsieur
Couteau, you are bold indeed to speak to me thus.

"By Ventre St. Gris! I have not even dined to-day. Spoils indeed. There
is no living in Paris now. But one rich American have I garroted in a
fortnight.

"Bah! those Democrats. They have ruined the country. With their income
tax and their free trade, they have destroyed the millionaire business.
Carrambo! Diable! D--n it!"

"Hist!" suddenly says Chamounix the rag-picker, who is worth 20,000,000
francs, "some one comes!"

The cellar door opened and a man crept softly down the rickety steps.
The crowd watches him with silent awe.

He went to the bar, laid his card on the counter, bought a drink of
absinthe, and then drawing from his pocket a little mirror, set it up on
the counter and proceeded to don a false beard and hair and paint his
face into wrinkles, until he closely resembled an old man seventy-one
years of age.

He then went into a dark corner and watched the crowd of people with
sharp, ferret-like eyes.

Gray Wolf slipped cautiously to the bar and examined the card left by
the newcomer.

"Holy Saint Bridget!" he exclaims. "It is Tictocq, the detective."

Ten minutes later a beautiful woman enters the cellar. Tenderly
nurtured, and accustomed to every luxury that money could procure, she
had, when a young vivandiere at the Convent of Saint Susan de la
Montarde, run away with the Gray Wolf, fascinated by his many crimes and
the knowledge that his business never allowed him to scrape his feet in
the hall or snore.

"Parbleu, Marie," snarls the Gray Wolf. "Que voulez vous? Avez-vous le
beau cheval de mon frere, oule joli chien de votre pere?"

"No, no, Gray Wolf," shouts the motley group of assassins, rogues and
pickpockets, even their hardened hearts appalled at his fearful words.
Mon Dieu! You cannot be so cruel!"

"Tiens!" shouts the Gray Wolf, now maddened to desperation, and drawing
his gleaming knife. "Voila! Canaille! Tout le monde, carte blanche
enbonpoint sauve que peut entre nous revenez nous a nous moutons!"

The horrifed sans-culottes shrink back in terror as the Gray Wolf seizes
Maria by the hair and cuts her into twenty-nine pieces, each exactly the
same size.

As he stands with reeking hands above the corpse, amid a deep silence,
the old, gray-bearded man who has been watching the scene springs
forward, tears off his false beard and locks, and Tictocq, the famous
French detective, stands before them.

Spellbound and immovable, the denizens of the cellar gaze at the
greatest modern detective as he goes about the customary duties of his
office.

He first measures the distance from the murdered woman to a point on the
wall, then he takes down the name of the bartender and the day of the
month and the year. Then drawing from his pocket a powerful microscope,
he examines a little of the blood that stands upon the floor in little
pools.

"Mon Dieu!" he mutters, "it is as I feared--human blood."

He then enters rapidly in a memorandum book the result of his
investigations, and leaves the cellar.

Tictocq bends his rapid steps in the direction of the headquarters of
the Paris gendarmerie, but suddenly pausing, he strikes his hand upon
his brow with a gesture of impatience.

"Mille tonnerre," he mutters. "I should have asked the name of that man
with the knife in his hand."

* * * *

It is reception night at the palace of the Duchess Valerie du Bellairs.

The apartments are flooded with a mellow light from paraffine candles in
solid silver candelabra.

The company is the most aristocratic and wealthy in Paris.

Three or four brass bands are playing behind a portiere between the coal
shed, and also behind time. Footmen in gay-laced livery bring in beer
noiselessly and carry out apple-peelings dropped by the guests.

Valerie, seventh Duchess du Bellairs, leans back on a solid gold ottoman
on eiderdown cushions, surrounded by the wittiest, the bravest, and the
handsomest courtiers in the capital.

"Ah, madame," said the Prince Champvilliers, of Palms Royale, corner of
Seventy-third Street, "as Montesquiaux says, 'Rien de plus bon tutti
frutti'--Youth seems your inheritance. You are to-night the most
beautiful, the wittiest in your own salon. I can scarce believe my own
senses, when I remember that thirty-one years ago you--"

"Saw it off!" says the Duchess peremptorily.

The Prince bows low, and drawing a jewelled dagger, stabs himself to the
heart.

"The displeasure of your grace is worse than death," he says, as he
takes his overcoat and hat from a corner of the mantelpiece and leaves
the room.

"Voila," says Beebe Francillon, fanning herself languidly. "That is the
way with men. Flatter them, and they kiss your hand. Loose but a moment
the silken leash that holds them captive through their vanity and
self-opinionativeness, and the son-of-a-gun gets on his ear at once. The
devil go with him, I say."

"Ah, mon Princesse," sighs the Count Pumpernickel, stooping and
whispering with eloquent eyes into her ear. "You are too hard upon us.
Balzac says, 'All women are not to themselves what no one else is to
another.' Do you not agree with him?"

"Cheese it!" says the Princess. "Philosophy palls upon me. I'll shake
you."

"Hosses?" says the Count.

Arm and arm they go out to the salon au Beurre.

Armande de Fleury, the young pianissimo danseuse from the Folies Bergere
is about to sing.

She slightly clears her throat and lays a voluptuous cud of chewing gum
upon the piano as the first notes of the accompaniment ring through the
salon.

As she prepares to sing, the Duchess du Bellairs grasps the arm of her
ottoman in a vice-like grip, and she watches with an expression of
almost anguished suspense.

She scarcely breathes.

Then, as Armande de Fleury, before uttering a note, reels, wavers, turns
white as snow and falls dead upon the floor, the Duchess breathes a sigh
of relief.

The Duchess had poisoned her.

Then the guests crowd about the piano, gazing with bated breath, and
shuddering as they look upon the music rack and observe that the song
that Armande came so near singing is "Sweet Marie."

Twenty minutes later a dark and muffled figure was seen to emerge from a
recess in the mullioned wall of the Arc de Triomphe and pass rapidly
northward.

It was no other than Tictocq, the detective.

The network of evidence was fast being drawn about the murderer of Marie
Cusheau.

. . . . . .

It is midnight on the steeple of the Cathedral of Notadam.

It is also the same time at other given points in the vicinity.

The spire of the Cathedral is 20,000 feet above the pavement, and a
casual observer, by making a rapid mathematical calculation, would have
readily perceived that this Cathedral is, at least, double the height of
others that measure only 10,000 feet.

At the summit of the spire there is a little wooden platform on which
there is room for but one man to stand.

Crouching on this precarious footing, which swayed, dizzily with every
breeze that blew, was a man closely muffled, and disguised as a
wholesale grocer.

Old Francois Beongfallong, the great astronomer, who is studying the
sidereal spheres from his attic window in the Rue de Bologny, shudders
as he turns his telescope upon the solitary figure upon the spire.

"Sacre Bleu!" he hisses between his new celluloid teeth. "It is Tictocq,
the detective. I wonder whom he is following now?"

While Tictocq is watching with lynx-like eyes the hill of Montmartre, he
suddenly hears a heavy breathing beside him, and turning, gazes into the
ferocious eyes of the Gray Wolf.

Carnaignole Cusheau had put on his W. U. Tel. Co. climbers and climbed
the steeple.

"Parbleu, monsieur," says Tictocq. "To whom am I indebted for the honor
of this visit?"

The Gray Wolf smiled softly and depreciatingly.

"You are Tictocq, the detective?" he said.

"I am."

"Then listen. I am the murderer of Marie Cusheau. She was my wife and
she had cold feet and ate onions. What was I to do? Yet life is sweet to
me. I do not wish to be guillotined. I have heard that you are on my
track. Is it true that the case is in your hands?"

"It is."

"Thank le bon Dieu, then, I am saved."

The Gray Wolf carefully adjusts the climbers on his feet and descends
the spire.

Tictocq takes out his notebook and writes in it.

"At last," he says, "I have a clue."

Monsieur le Compte Carnaignole Cusheau, once known as the Gray Wolf,
stands in the magnificent drawing-room of his palace on East 47th
Street.

Three days after his confession to Tictocq, he happened to look in the
pockets of a discarded pair of pants and found twenty million francs in
gold.

Suddenly the door opens and Tictocq, the detective, with a dozen
gensd'arme, enters the room.

"You are my prisoner," says the detective.

"On what charge?"

"The murder of Marie Cusheau on the night of August 17th."

"Your proofs?"

"I saw you do it, and your own confession on the spire of Notadam."

The Count laughed and took a paper from his pocket. "Read this," he
said, "here is proof that Marie Cusheau died of heart failure."

Tictocq looked at the paper.

It was a check for 100,000 francs.

Tictocq dismissed the gensd'arme with a wave of his hand.

"We have made a mistake, monsieurs," he said, but as he turns to leave
the room, Count Carnaignole stops him.

"One moment, monsieur."

The Count Carnaignole tears from his own face a false beard and reveals
the flashing eyes and well-known features of Tictocq, the detective.

Then, springing forward, he snatches a wig and false eyebrows from his
visitor, and the Gray Wolf, grinding his teeth in rage, stands before
him.

The murderer of Marie Cusheau was never discovered.




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