Now that alone, from a twice-convicted smuggler, was enough to rouse suspicion; so off went Mr. Revenue Officer on the spyaround. He tackled Billy's cabin first, nothing to be found there; then the mate's quarters, nothing there; then the focsle, one man found with 200 cigars; nothing to do with the skipper though. Then he tackled the galley.

"Ah!" said the Revenue man, "there's nothing to see, but this smells suspicious."

"Can't say it's pleasant," replied Billy: "seems to me that dam cook has been smoking some unholy muck in the tobacco line here. Sort of seems more a case for a quarantine officer than a revenue man though."

"That don't go here," snapped the Revenue man, "you'd far better declare the stuff right off than let us find it and get fined yourself; though, to tell the truth, you'll a sight more likely get jugged the third time. Come, now, where is it? I tell you, bluff don't go down here."

"Who's bluffing?" answered Billy. "I've declared all the tobacco I've got aboard, and you can turn the darned old Rathcoole inside out, but you won't find another ounce."

"We'll see about that later," said the Rev

enue man.

Well! Nothing was found in the galley, and nothing elsewhere, till they came to the stoke-hold, and thence to the bunkers. Here the Revenue man was struck by the quantity of coal on hand for an in-bound ship, and his suspicions rose like the comb on an angry cockatoo.

"Seems you've got a lot of coal aboard, Captain Treharne," said he.

Yes. Good coal that," replied Billy. "Never used so little coal on a trip since I've skippered the Rathcoole."

"Seems to me you'd have room for a small packing case or two under that lot," surmised the Reveue man.

"Have a look and see," suggested Billy. Then the Revenue man stuck a shovel into the coal and gave a premonitory sniff.

"Lord! That's very like the smell of tobacco," said the officer.

"It is, very like," assented Billy. "Look here, captain, for the last time! Is there tobacco concealed aboard?" "Not a dam bit."

You've

"Then I'll have to search this coal. too much aboard for a home-bound, and this bunker reeks of tobacco."

"Well, then, search it. I don't mind a bit. Only, mind, you'll have to replace things as you find 'em."

"Very well, here goes then," said the Revenue man, and he started. He shoveled away till he got pretty black, and then he gave up and sent ashore for a couple of men. They came and shoveled, and between them they bunged up the stoke-hold with coal, and the reek of tobacco grew stronger. Then night fell, and the Revenue man stayed his hand till the morrow.

Next morning he turned up afresh with more helpers, and they hove coal about all day, out of the stoke-hold on to the deck in bags and buckets. The Rathcoole grew black

all over, as ships in the agonies of coaling always do, and finally, as evening fell again, the Revenue crew fetched up on the bottom of the bunkers, which were damp with a sticky liquid that reeked abominably of stale tobacco. Then said the revenue officer to Billy, who was calmly eyeing the finishing touches, "What in the earth, or the waters under the earth, is this liquor; and why, in heaven's name does it smell of nicotine this way?"

"Oh! that," replied Billy, "that's an idea McKay picked np in New Orleans for a coalsaver. You just buy tobacco sweepings, boil 'em down, pour the liquor over your coal, and there you are. See the way it's saved our coal this trip."

his detective force :

"Have you read "The Leavenworth Case ?'" "No."

"Well, get it. Read it. Keep it."

It is long since that famous story came to be regarded as a classic in the very anti-classical field of detective stories, and since then Anna Katherine Green has enhanced her reputation by a series of mystery stories which have made her in her own field supreme among American authors. Readers of "The Amethyst Box," which recently ran serially in LESLIE'S MONTHLY, need no invitation to read Mrs. Green's latest novel, "The Filagree Ball." The plot is so cunningly constructed that the reader indicts

and convicts half a dozen characters as the undoubted murderer in quick succession, only to find that one rule alone is invariable in Mrs. Green's work: When you are sure, you are wrong.

"Darrell of the Blessed Isles" is a book we have waited long for, and our hopes are cashed in at their full value. In a greater degree perhaps than any novelist now writing Mr. Bacheller is independent of plots, and while he has introduced more of the accustomed mechanism of the novel into this book than he used to think necessary, he wanders along in his easy fashion, stopping to tell a story wherever it is a good one, and to philosophize wherever philosophy is a pleasant thing, with an entire disregard of the ten commandments of novel writing, delightful to the reader overburdened with the ten thousand plots of

66

the last ten thousand novels. But when all is said, it is Darrell himself who makes the book. With all of Eben Holden's keenness Darrell is a wiser man than Uncle Eb. While Eben got his learning of Benjamin Franklin, Darrell has sat at the feet of Shakespeare, and his Kingdom of the Blessed Isles," far from being a place of vague and visionary thought, is to him as real as we trust it may be to all of us when we have learned what it means not to "live by bread alone." Darrell will be a close comrade to every reader of heart and head, and as a counsellor to whom to look for help or comfort or advice, we know of none better.

It is a genuine pleasure to announce that a new story by Mr. Bacheller will appear in the next number of LESLIE'S MONTHLY.

000

Just for friendship's sake we counsel our readers not to lay aside this magazine until they have finished Judge Shute's story. There are several more to follow, we are glad to say, chronicling the adventures in love and war of the boys who a generation ago grew up together in the old town of Exeter, New Hampshire. If ever there were real, red-blooded boys, noisy, troublesome, lovable boys, these are they. Many of our readers already know them well through their first appearance in "The Real Diary of a Real Boy," published last year. In the stories which we are privileged to print (each quite separate in plot) the adventures of Plupy and his brethren in arms rise to the dignity of an epic. There is something classical about their very names.

"Shall I ever forget," says their chronicler, "Jabber and Nipper, and Pewt and Beany, and Cawcaw and Plupy? And Diddly and Priscilla, and Bobberty and Phoebe, and Tabby? And Chitter and Crusoe, and Nibby and Skinny, and Stubby and Pacer, and Tongley? And Buck and Boozy, and Lubin and Zee, and Markeye? And Dutchy and Tickey, and Blobsey and Game-Eye, and Nigger and Pop, and Pile ?"

Every reader who loves boys will read these stories for the love of them.

The latest photograph of the Castles. well. The descriptions of western Kansas, of its beauties, its sunsets, the life on its plains, are "as accurate as photographs."

000

Agnes and Egerton Castle have been spending some time at Montreux, in Switzerland, working on their new novel. Mr. Castle writes to a friend in the most interesting manner relative to "The Star-Dreamer," which has already established itself as one of the most successful of his novels. He 66 says: As you know, the book was begun in 1901 during our stay in our summer residence at Hindhead (in Surrey). There is a wild garden apart from the pleasure grounds, and much of the Garden of Simples'-for that was then, as you remember, the title I had chosen-was written in that fragrant atmosphere. Over the highest wing of the house I had established my observatory-I have always been a stargazer myself, partly as a lover of the 'night's splendors and the music of the vast,' partly as the man whose earlier studies at Cambridge were all of Natural Philosophy. The silence of 'The Star-Dreamer,' the character of Sir David Cheveral, the wounded dreamer, with his folly of renunciation, and of Ellinor Marvel, impersonation of beautiful, vigorous, healthy life and love, who is to redeem him from cloudy phantasms' to the real joy of the world; even thescenery of Bindon-Cheveral, with its legend concerning the Herb Garden-all these things had been familiar to us for a long time before we began the book in earnest. It was only in the green and blue surroundings of our Hindhead house that they began to pulse into life, and nearly the whole of the first draft was written there in the summer of 1901."

B

OOKS are seldom what they seem, but people do not know this. They never wonder about anything except when they are told to. They were willing to make mysteries of "An Englishwoman's Love Letters" and "Elizabeth and Her German Garden" and "The Confessions of a Wife" because it was shouted from the housetops that these books had a hidden origin, and that everybody would be surprised if they only knew who wrote them. No matter if the parentage is stamped on every page of print, to call a book a mystery straightway makes it

one.

On the other hand, if only a story has a name on its title page, nobody thinks of pushing the inquiry farther. It is taken for granted that the person who signed the book wrote it. This, of course, is merely taking the word of a third person, and a publisher at that, but everybody does it.

It has been my own custom, however, for \ many years to tear the title pages out of all my books in order that I may determine their authorship entirely by internal evidence.

I have an aristocratic friend in Louisville.

MRS.

W1665

"There's a kind of slum of our town," he said one day, "that's had a book written about it. Now I've driven through the Cabbage Patch hundreds of times in my carriage and it isn't a bit like the book. I don't see how anybody that lived in Louisville could have got so far from the truth."

Just because the book was signed with a Louisville woman's name he never thought of questioning it, although all the evidence he had just given pointed to the conclusion that it was written by an outsider. I bought a copy at once and resolved to get at the truth.

As soon as I opened the book I was struck by its curious nomenclature. No self-respecting writer would ever name a character "Europena" unless for some ulterior purpose. What this purpose was became apparent when I took the names of persons mentioned in the first chapter and wrote them down in a column, thus:

Miss H azy Mrs. E inhorn Europe N a Aust R alia

Now there was a fact no one would have suspected unless he had made a dispassionate analysis, as I did. Still I was not satisfied. When did Mr. James write " Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch"? Where did he get his material, and, most important of all, why did he not sign his own name? The book itself, after careful scrutiny, gave up no further clue. Where, then, was I to turn? Obviously to the stories which Mr. James had written since the publication of the Wiggs book. I rushed hatless to a news stand.

"Give me the magazine which contains the latest James story," I shouted.

The vendor thrust into my hand a copy of the Jesse James Weekly, which had colored pictures on the cover representing men in red shirts shooting at one another, but I managed to reject this and get what I wanted. If the reader wishes to follow me in this demonstration let him now open "The Ambassadors "at the first page of the opening chapter.

We know that Mr. James was born on April 15, 1843, and that this is his 37th book. April is the fourth month. We thus have as the component parts of our cipher formula the numbers 1843 (with its digits and their combinations, 1, 8, 4, 3, 18 and 43) together with 4, 15 and 37. Taking the volume firmly in the left hand and using the right forefinger as a pointer, begin by counting 43. The 43d word is "The." Now reverse the digits of this number, making it 34, and multiply it by 8, the second figure of the year. Add 7 (the sum of the digits 3 and 4) and then 2, because we are counting for the second time. 34x8+7+2=281. Counting on 281 words we reach the word "on." Now take the number 15 (the day of the month on which our author was born) and subtract from it 3, because we are counting for the third time. The twelfth word is "could." Begin again with 15 and subtract from it 4 (April is the 4th month). The eleventh word after "could" is "for." Take 15 for the third time and add 37, since this is the 37th novel. The 52d word after "for" is "one." Count 4 more (the fourth month again) and we get " no." Then return to the useful number 15. Multiply it by 7, since we are counting for the 7th time, thus making 105. Subtract 4, the previous number counted. We have not yet used the 1 from 1843, so let us now subtract it, making the result an even 100, which we proceed to count, reaching the word "have."

The reader who has carefully followed the demonstration to this point will need no further explanation of the principle of the cipher and will be able to continue the count for himself. We count thus: 66, getting the word about," 6 to the word "touching," 274 to "possibly," 57 to "know," 113 to "I" 16 to things," 567 to "time," 841 to " some," 43 (the original number again) to "my," 781 to novels," and 42 to "any

64

66

thing." At first glance this combination of words seems a mere hodge-podge, but a slight rearrangement gives us this sentence :

"No one could possibly know anything about the things I have been touching on for some time in my novels." This is a statement in which many readers of Mr. James' later work will doubtless concur. But to proceed with the cipher :

Continuing the system then we reach the second sentence

of the solution in this way : 142 to, 278 general, 3 are, 167 understanding, 52 not, 168 people, 10 them, 452 other, 237 in, 306 and, 197 have, 38 more, 23 more, 118 they, 18 wanted, 2 yet. Third sentence: 337 that, 118 American, 191 subject, 423 could, 200 I, 337 natural, 175 back, 339 1-2 how, 59 after, 243 straight, 193 go, 4 to, 138 simple. Fourth sentence: 89 to, 98 to, 79 intelligence, 99 such, 11 simplicity, 137 I, 94 a, 29 densest, 115 the, 50 in, 94 the, 50 after, 1 long, 1 years, 47 appeal, 99 produced, 53 disposition, 173 have, 94 secret, 95 as, 62 plain, 2 tale, 16 still, 56 had, 220 to, 50 of. Fifth sentence: 74 in, 99 it, 134 a, 130 I, 177 word, 139 have, 75 at, 30 out, 30 brought, 55 last, 284 names, 186 but, 71 in, 80 difference, 48 with, 34 a. Sixth sentence: 26 it, 124 liked, 2 yet, 6 not, 43 was, 32 very, 34 romantic, 57 the, 11 slightly, 21 but, 6 pathetic, 17 at, 30 much, 10 all, 74 public, 23 it, 43 and. Seventh sentence: 46 never, 47 people, 216 was, 79 it, 241 guessed, 18 whose. Again, making the necessary transpositions, we have this:

"No one could possibly know anything about the things I have been touching on for some time in my novels. In general other people are not up to understanding them, yet they have wanted more and more. After that how could I go back to the simple, natural, straight American subject. Still, after long years, I had in secret the disposition to have produced a plain tale of such simplicity as to ap

peal to the

densest in

telligence. In a word, I have brought it out, but with a difference in names. It was not at all romantic, and but slightly pathetic, yet the public liked it very much. People never guessed whose it was." And so forth. The communication probably continues to the end of "The Ambassadors," and any reader with a few minutes at his disposal may discover it for himself.

Interesting though this is as a literary confession, we are now in a position to deduce a fact of still greater importance. All of Henry James' recent books are written in cipher!! This is the first satisfactory explanation why he gave up the simple and lucid diction of the "Daisy Miller" days and adopted the cryptic style which distinguishes him now. It is really strange that any one could read any of his books of the last five years without realizing that they must contain a cryptogram. Such sentences could not possibly have been constructed with any other intent.

I considered next "The Letters of a SelfMade Merchant to his Son."

I went through the book with the greatest care and was rewarded by finding on page 64 what I was looking for. To the ordinary eye it was a mere misprint, the word "presses spelled "preses," but I felt perfectly certain that, like the misplaced italics in the Shakespeare folio, it would point the way to discoveries.

May I ask the reader again to follow me with the book before him? "Preses" is the 16th word on page 64. It contains 6 letters, and its initial letter "p" is the 16th in the alphabet. 16+16+6=38 6x6=36. Turn, then, to the 36th word on page 38. This word is "one." When I reached this point I perceived that the cipher differed materially from the others. Yet I think that, after its principle is explained by a few examples, it will be no more difficult to understand than the one in "The Ambassadors."

We have already made two counts and this is the third. So, when we have multiplied our 6 by 6, we must divide the total (36) by 3, making 12. Tothis we append, not add,

6, the number of letters in "preses," and obtain 126. Remembering that this is the third count, multiply 126 by 3. Count 378 therefore and the word "look" is reached.