Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 36, No. 4, October 20, 1928

Orrin, immediately after seeing his aunts off to the operation, had taxied to his hotel, left his bags, and boarded a Fifth Avenue bus. He was keen to see New York, and thought, in the few hours before supper time, a bus ride would be a good way to see a considerable part of it quickly.

Aunt Cassie’s boy felt like an explorer. New York was a queer place, he decided. Merely getting around was an adventure. He was primed for excitement.

Coming over, Mrs. Frederick Topps-Jones had tried to tell him what it was like, but even that woman’s description had failed to give him any idea of the turmoil that he was now actually in.

“I am going to be late,” the man next to him said suddenly.

Orrin turned again. The stranger still had the preoccupied expression which certainly invited no conversation. A little resentfully Orrin decided not to make any comment.

He watched the man out of the corner of his eye. He saw him reach suddenly for an inside pocket, draw out a cigar and without clipping the end, stick it between his lips. He tried to light it. Apparently it wouldn’t draw, and with a gesture of disgust he hurled the cigar over the bus rail.

Orrin was amused. He wondered what kind of business this queer fellow was in. He noted that he was quietly dressed, wore a single gold ring on the left hand, and had the air of a professional man and the appearance of being a person of some consequence.

The bus slowed for the stop at the corner of the park. The middle-aged man said: “Here!” pressed something into Orrin’s hand, and left hurriedly. Orrin’s fingers closed instinctively.

When he opened his hand he discovered he held a burned match!

The bus moved on and Orrin laughed. “Odd,” he murmured, and stuck the match end in his vest pocket.

They were far uptown when Orrin decided he had done enough sight-seeing.

He dropped down the spiral stairs and said to the conductor:

“I’ll just step off here, if you don’t mind.”

“Help yourself, brother,” assented the conductor, reaching for the bell.

“I wonder if you could direct me back to the Hotel Belmont?”

“Sure!” The man grinned; his passenger was a foreigner — by token of manner and speech and obvious ignorance, but the conductor liked his face just the same. “ ’Cross town either way, just a few blocks, and you’ll find a subway station.”

The street was lined with trees, which threw dark shadows, but it was a good neighborhood and the houses were the solid, comfortable homes of well-to-do people.

Under a lamp at some distance a massive policeman stood idly. Beyond was a large public building, a school perhaps.

Orrin suddenly paused. His hand strayed to his pocket and he fingered the burned match. His eye was attracted by a gloomy pile amidst the trees directly opposite. Memory seemed to tug at him; the place reminded him of something out of his past, he could not tell when or where.

As he shook his head in frustration and started off, a sharp whistle sounded behind him and at the same instant two figures, one very tall and lean, the other short and dumpy, almost grotesquely fat, came running toward him from the shadows.

Their manner was so aggressive Orrin, surprised, braced himself for an attack.

One circled him, the other charged from the front. He feinted and in a second hands seized him from behind, pinioning his arms. Something voluminous and musty-smelling was slipped over his head and lashed around his elbows.

Orrin ducked and lunged, but hands were all over him; he felt himself being hustled off the sidewalk and across the smooth asphalt of the street; he stumbled up the opposite curb, shoved, pulled, half lifted by the grasping hands, and on to a grassy bank.

He was rather more thrilled than frightened, more offended at the indignity than overborne by a sense of helplessness. He laughed while he struggled and choked in the folds of the musty-bagging.

A lusty yell for help would bring the big policeman — but this was adventure.

An utter stranger had made him a present of a burned match; now he was being kidnaped; to-morrow, it might very well be, the newspapers would announce that he was held for ransom. These Americans made it interesting for you.

He was led stumbling across unkempt, weedy grass, and through shrubbery. He heard his captors talking excitedly together in whispers. They seemed to have been joined by more of the gang, and he heard one explain:

“We’ve got Van Dyl; we’re taking him to the haunted house.”

Another whispered excitedly: “The Kidder has made up a new Third Degree!”

Orrin had an inkling: he was the victim of mistaken identity.

His shoes scraped on a gravel drive and the scraping of many feet echoed in a cavernous place. There was a brief halt, with more excited whispering, and then three resounding raps on a door.

A voice, slightly tremulous with breathlessness, commanded: “Open, O Warden of the Outer Portal!”

Another voice, severely solemn, replied: “Who are ye who thus rudely demand entrance?”

“We are pilgrims just come from crossing the burning sands.”