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ARTHUR B. REEVE

CRAIG KENNEDY AND THE COMPASS
NORTH—SOUTH—EAST—WEST

SOUTH

RGL e-Book Cover^©

First published in Flynn's, 27 Dec 1924

Reprinted in Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, 16 Aug 1925

Collected in "The Fourteen Points,"
Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1925

This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2022
Version Date: 2022-02-11

Produced by Art Lortie, Matthias Kaether and Roy Glashan

All content added by RGL is proprietary and protected by copyright.

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Flynn's, 27 Dec 1924, with "South"

"The Fourteen Points," Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1925

Illustration from "Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine."

"Well—I wonder if he would like it—these intimate things I have told—"

"I'VE sent for you first, Kennedy, first, even before the police. I own this building, live in it. It's always been above reproach. And I want it known that Jerry Watkins is always on the watch for the safety of his tenants. If it was a prowler, a thief, no matter who it was, I want him caught. I want criminals to understand that there is a deadline about my properties beyond which they must fear to go!"

It seemed that the very stairs of the Studio Building palpitated as I followed Kennedy from creaking tread to creaking tread. Ahead of me, Craig was following a rather stout, florid individual, this same Jerry Watkins, owner of the building.

We were mounting to the top floor, where the famous artist, Norman Norcross, had his studio—mounting toward what?

The janitor had told Watkins; Watkins had got in immediate touch with Kennedy; and Kennedy and I had hurried downtown.

For the janitor had caught just a keyhole glimpse of Norcross, lying on the floor of his studio, motionless, in a pool of blood.

The heavy drapes at the windows were still undrawn. No light penetrated through the darkness to lift the somber shadows of tragedy. It was still—too still. Almost, I imagined, the man's spirit might be hovering about to assist us in the search for the murderer. 33

IT was Kennedy who relieved the tenseness. His pocket flash swept a quick semicircle of light about the studio floor. Light should have overcome the morbidity. It merely seemed to accentuate it.

There, on the floor, eyes staring up at the ceiling, arms outstretched like a human cross as if he would still have protected the picture he was painting, lay what only a few hours before had been gay, debonaire Norman Norcross.

Dark hair, thick and curly, the kind women love to run their fingers through, fell about his forehead in a tangled mass. This man had loved life. But here was death overtaken him, death in its grimmest form.

Evidently Norcross had been painting when the murderer appeared. There was all the evidence, too, of a terrific struggle that had ended so tragically for the artist.

He still wore his smock, covered with smudges of color that he had used in his work. But, crying out above all the marks of his work, were the vivid stains of the artist's life blood as it had trickled down from the wound in his breast—red—deep red.

"I must keep things as they are for the police," muttered Craig, busily absorbed in his examination of the body, everything that surrounded it. Nothing seemed to escape him, though he touched nothing.

I moved over in Kennedy's direction. There, as if thrown in either fear or horror, was a quaint dagger, a dainty work of metallic art, picked up, no doubt, in some antique shop. It was lying in the folds of a beautiful pile of rose chiffon and gauze. The blood was coagulated but still moist on the cold metal blade. What a setting for so ghastly an object!

"He must have been working on this picture. Some of that paint is scarcely fixed." Craig called my attention to the canvas on an easel.

In spite of the horror of the surroundings, I paused, fascinated. Never had I seen a more beautiful girl than the one taking form on the canvas before me.

"Do you know who that is?" Watkins asked it with the tone of one who himself knew.

"No," I admitted, only to be interrupted by Craig, with his wide acquaintance and uncanny memory for faces.

"I heard her sing last week. At the opera. Marcel Loti. Not only can she act. Loti can sing. She had created a furore. They tell me that next season her repertoire will include all the coveted soprano roles."

"So," I repeated, "that is Marcel Loti!" Still gazing with a sort of fascination at the canvas, I added, "Think of having a face, a form like that—and the voice of a nightingale!"

Watkins nodded again. "Yes, Loti. She used to come down to see Norcross every day. They seemed to be wildly in love with each other. They were like two children. I never saw Norcross like that with any other girl—and I've seen him with a good many!"

"I should say he did. He was the kind of man who made many friends. The women all liked him. But the men—well, there have been many rumors of trouble. Maybe you have heard some of the gossip?"

Kennedy nodded. As for me, I was too engrossed now in the portrait of Marcel Loti to pay much attention to the ramblings of Watkins.

MARCEL LOTI had youth, and Norcross had caught the spirit of it. It breathed in the exquisite modeling of her arms and hands, the very posture of the graceful body, and the fairy-like lightness of the slender limbs suggested through the folds and draperies of the pink chiffon.

"Look!" I exclaimed, coming back to earth. "She is draped in the same chiffon! That pile of stuff where the dagger is must be what Marcel Loti wore when she was posing."

Watkins understood. "Yes, Kennedy. Now I come to think of it, I've seen that dagger on the little desk Norcross used over there in the corner. He used it to open letters and as a paper cutter."

Hair that was golden, but not too fine, the kind I have seen some women have which seemed charged with electricity. No two hairs would keep together. It made a delightfully golden fluffy mass like an aureole. The eyes were beautiful—great dark eyes of rich brown, with a hint of witchery, fascination, passion—eyes that one would expect to see in Sicily or in Spain in the very young. They seemed to glow with a tender questioning of life, as of a dream unfolding. What messages must have been flashed from the eyes of Norcross to those of Marcel in these intimate sittings!

I shook my head. "If a girl ever looked at me like that," I exclaimed, "I'd never be able to paint!"

She was standing out of doors in the sunshine, the wind inflating the folds of her draperies like the sails of a bark. A tender smile on her parted lips showed a line of ivory teeth gleaming between the roses.

She was holding in her hand a bitten peach. One could see the marks of her teeth on its painted surface. Casually, the remarkably natural color of the peach struck me.

Back of her and above her the deep blueness of the sky and the dazzling white of the clouds combined to set off the girl. What a marvel Norcross was with color!

EVERYTHING suggested success. On the walls were many paintings and works of art, collected by Norcross abroad while he was studying under the best teachers in France and Italy.

One end of the studio was devoted to work. Here were unfinished canvases, cases for colors, and art materials. Thrown about in artistic confusion were palettes, brushes—all the things used in his work. And Norcross was a worker.

Critics had called Norcross the "thinking artist." His work pulsated with life, breathed culture. Always these qualities predominated above mere manual dexterity.

Old tapestries, rare embroideries, and rarer laces, some, no doubt, filched from churches and monasteries centuries ago during turbulent religious struggles, were draped or hung about the walls or suspended from the gallery rail. Their arrangement and manner of draping were so skillfully accomplished, done in such an exquisite way, that it seemed to me a pity that the artist's ability in this direction had been confined to his own studio and not loaned to some of the larger collections in the city. Furniture, bronzes, and old ivories, all of them fit for museums, rivaled one another in interest and beauty and profusion.

I saw why women of wealth and culture delighted in visiting Norcross. His charms and persuasive qualities, his gentle deference to women long past the age of romance had opened wide the doors of the socially elect.

I picked up a memorandum book pushed under the base of a lamp on the table. It seemed to contain notes and information about his work.

Among the things written last on its pages, evidently uppermost in his mind, were some scribbled thoughts on the elusive qualities in Marcel Loti's beauty that evidently he felt he must attempt to transfer to the canvas. There was the suggested title of the picture, "Peaches and Cream."

My glance strayed from the vibrant beauty of the singer so wonderfully depicted in marvelously chosen and blended pigments to the tragic figure on the floor. Those eyes gazing up seemed still to be seeking the love light gleaming in the eyes of Marcel Loti. Even the film of death could not conceal the fact that death had come and ended his one last endeavor to win and keep his sweetheart's smile.

The pallor of his face and hands had robbed his body of that virile look, but one could imagine in life the hard muscles now stiffened in death. Those arms had clutched frantically and held close for the last time the beautiful girl in the picture.

Kennedy came close to me and peered long at the portrait. "Norcross could paint women!" he muttered. "He was the woman painter! .... But there is more than skill in this portrait. If ever Norcross put his soul, his life into his work, he has done it here. That girl made Norcross give of himself. It's the best thing he has ever done. Before, his work was for the material rewards of life, ambition to succeed. But this is a work of love. It was born in the greatest emotion the man had ever known—and executed by fingers touched with a tender skill. It shows through. You can see that."

"Look!" I exclaimed. "There are the colors he was using for that peach! No wonder the girl smiles over that bite. I've never seen a peach in life look like that!"

Kennedy's back was to me. "Don't say again you never saw a peach like that. Here is one. It's lying here on the floor. Did you ever see more exquisite coloring?"

One side of the fruit, not too large, but unusually well developed and apparently juicy, seemed to have absorbed all the red and orange and yellow of many sunrises and sunsets. It was perfect, flawless. And out of it only one bite had been taken—the counterpart of the bite portrayed in the picture.

There it was, under a table, as if it had been knocked over in the scuffle that must have taken place before Norcross had been stabbed. Or else it had been flung there, as the dagger had been tossed into the chiffon.

Then I noticed about the floor broken brushes, tubes of color, cloths, all the paraphernalia of a working artist. It seemed as if some one in indignation had swept the table clear and in an ungovernable rage had trod on the mute objects of its wrath.

CRAIG continued his search about the room, in the corners, under the furniture, about the walls. He even opened the drawers of the desk and peered into chests about the room.

"I notice one thing characteristic of Norcross. He was worldly wise—or else somebody has beaten me to it. I can find no old letters."

Watkins shook his head. "Kennedy, Norcross never kept anything like that. I have talked with him a lot. Always he was intimate, free with women. But over them he possessed a cynicism that used to make even me furious. He smiled and used women for his own advantage. But he never allowed them to use him. You couldn't get that man to write a sentimental note or letter—and he never kept those he received."

"I see." Kennedy nodded reflectively. "His philosophy of conduct toward women was not very flattering to the sex."

"I should say not And the worst of it was, the women never knew it. But every man could see it. That's why he had so few personal friends among men. Most men thought him a cad."

Watkins nodded back. "I heard him say once at a luncheon of a woman's club," he went on, recollecting, "'Every woman is loved by a lover, a husband, or a son—some one whose tenderness discovers in her a charm, an attraction to which others may be insensible. I ask myself, when I undertake to paint the portrait of a woman, how to please her.'"

"Yes," agreed Craig, "and he usually ended in making them love him. But he caught their elusive personality. He always made good on the portrait—even though the heart of the subject might break afterward!"

Watkins shook his head vigorously. "But it wasn't that way with Marcel Loti. He loved her, I tell you, desperately. I could see it. He was furiously jealous of her. He raved over any attention she received from other men. I have watched them. She would laugh at him. He would storm about in anger. Then Marcel would put her arms about him tenderly—and the storm would be over."

Kennedy was following intently. "At last he was in the position he had placed many other men and was feeling the heart-aches he had made many women feel."

"But this is—awful!" Watkins shivered, almost, as he looked again at the dead artist.

Suddenly Craig stooped over and picked up what looked like a piece of glass from the floor not far from the body. Curiously I watched him as he took it over to the light. It seemed to be a piece of a broken lens from an eye-glass.

"But," I jumped to the conclusion, "that is a piece of lens from somebody's eye-glasses .... possibly from the murderer's!" It was the only clue, to my knowledge, that we had found so far, this piece of lens. I was keenly excited about it. Craig rather disappointed me in his merely casual interest in it, however.

He merely smiled. "I might go to every lens maker and oculist in New York. But then there would be those of Los Angeles—and possibly London. I might find the prescription in the first place—or out in Kalamazoo.... But I'll keep it. It may help."

He was back again, admiring the peach in the picture. He drew my attention to the naturalness of the coloring through the fuzz.

In fact there was such a display of artistic criticism about the peach—and none about the girl—that I was restive. I felt anxious to do a little detecting on my own concerning that lens. In that, it seemed to me, he had a clue, perhaps a difficult clue, but nevertheless something real, tangible. Now I was expected to listen raptly to a rhapsody on a tinted peach in a picture!

I might have been more willing to let the lens wait in order to listen to an appreciation of Marcel Loti. But that was not forthcoming. Nothing but peaches.

"Craig," I interrupted at last, a bit exasperated, "there on that canvas is a girl—in my vernacular, a peach of a girl. In her I am interested. But peaches—I can buy a basket at the first fruit stand, yellow Albertas, Delaware peaches, wonderful California peaches—for three dollars—maybe less."

There was no more use for Canute to order the tide to halt than for me to try to curb Kennedy in his raving enthusiasm over the talent of Norman Norcross in painting peaches. It couldn't be done. I had to listen. In fact, I had to like it. Almost, I felt, I could have sat down and painted that peach. There wasn't a tint, an outline, a shadow that Craig failed to expatiate upon.

He shook his head absently. "There are probably thousands of them in the world just like or nearly like this one. Try it yourself."

I felt suddenly chagrined about my good idea. There is nothing that so takes the wind out of one's sails in a case of this sort quite like, "Well, try it yourself!" I was silent.

Kennedy had been regarding the portrait, his mind, however, now on the girl of it.

"Did anyone ever visit the studio with Marcel Loti, do you know?" he asked Watkins.

"Yes. Not long ago. A man.... I think his name was Bullard. Yes. He came with Miss Loti to see the picture. Norcross was violently angry. Bullard didn't stay long. Bullard and Norcross loved each other like a couple of wild cats."

"I'm going to see Marcel Loti," remarked Kennedy, thoughtfully. "Watkins, you had better get the police in now. I have done all I can—here."

KENNEDY began by looking up addresses. It did not take long to discover that Marcel Loti lived in the Opera Apartments.

It was more of a surprise to me, then, when I found that Kennedy was bending his steps to the Felton, a well-known new bachelor apartment. I understood the reason when he asked the hall-boy for Mr. Lee Bullard.

"Mr. Bullard left on the Midnight Limited for Chicago, sah," was all he could get out of the boy.

Still another cross-town trip brought us to the Grand Central section of Park Avenue where the architects and builders and engineers hold forth. Craig was calling at the office of the Craven Company, contracting engineers, where Bullard was nest in control.

In as business-like a tone as if he had under his arm a million-dollar construction job to let, he asked for Mr. Bullard. A very efficient young lady appeared.

"I am Mr. Bullard'? secretary. Mr. Bullard left last night for Chicago, on our Lake Shore job. Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Kennedy?"

"I see. Too bad." Kennedy, while we were standing in the reception room, had been studying vacantly a flashlight photograph of some engineers' dinner. His eye wandered toward it again. "Is Mr. Bullard in that?" he asked, casually.

"Yes—right... there he is," The secretary laid her pencil on the figure of a rather athletic young man in evening clothes seated with some others at one of the white tables. There was a bit of distortion and some halation, as in many of these dinner pictures. But we could make him out well enough. The face was that of a man accustomed to rule men, from even days of pre-school football captaincy.

I stared at just one thing, however. He was wearing big horn-rimmed glasses—"cheetahs."

Kennedy said nothing, bowed himself out, and outside remarked, merely: "Now for the Opera Apartments. I have satisfied myself of one thing."

AT last we were waiting in the little reception room at the apartment of Marcel Loti. The maid had disappeared into an adjoining room, ostensibly to work, but, somehow, I had the uncomfortable fancy that we were being watched.

Soon down the hall we could hear footsteps and a wonderfully sweet voice singing softly a little French chanson.

At the door Marcel Loti halted, making one of those quick little bows that delighted the audiences every time she appeared after an encore.

She laughed lightly as she intuitively identified Kennedy in the pair of unpardonably early visitors. Her beautiful teeth showed a glint of ivory between her coral lips.

There was an air of expectation, a spirit of exhilaration, that seemed to permeate the very room which she entered and lifted the spirits of us both buoyantly. The richness of her full, carefully enunciated tones betrayed the singer's training. Her words, the commonest of them, had life.

Kennedy and I bowed to her beauty, her grace. She was young, about twenty-two, I fancied, the most radiantly beautiful creature I had ever seen. Some orchid-colored morning gown illuminated her face, spreading over its creamy whiteness a flush of rose.

As she stood, Kennedy moved over and placed a big chair. There was nothing presumptuous about it even in a stranger. It was done as thoughtfulness.

"May I ask you to be seated while I talk?" he anticipated. "I fear that some of what I have to say may be hard to bear."

Marcel startled suddenly. Her dark eyes glowed with anxiety as she regarded Craig. She clutched her heart dramatically.

"Wh-what is it?" she asked, suddenly. "I want to know—and yet I have a feeling it is bad news for me. Why does a woman's heart betray her so? Is it—about Norman—Norman Norcross?"

"Are you strong, Miss Loti?" Craig looked her steadily in the eye for a few seconds before he replied, sympathetically: "Yes, I have come from Mr. Norcross. He—"

She rose in her excitement. "He has sent for me? Call Celeste. I'll go right away."

Marcel's eyes opened wide in sudden terror. Then she covered her face with the same beautiful hands I had admired in the picture.

"Not sent for me? Then—Norman must be too ill. He would want me." It was said with the dignified simplicity of a woman sure of her lover. Suddenly a new idea seized her. She took Kennedy's arm in her agitation. Almost in a whisper she asked: "What is it? Is he—" She could not finish the sentence. Death and Marcel Loti were so alien to each other that her lips even refused the word.

Kennedy's continued silence told her the answer. The color faded from her cheeks. She swayed slightly, but with an effort regained her poise for the instant "How?" she asked, simply.

"Miss Loti, Mr. Norcross is dead. He died before your portrait. I have heard you were... lovers. So I came to tell you first—and to try to get your help.... Can you tell me whether he had had any quarrel with anyone recently? Have you ever heard that he feared anyone?"

"Fear anyone? Norman was afraid of nothing!" She said it in pride in spite of her agitation. Still it seemed as if she could not realize that her lover had been taken away from her. She looked at Craig helplessly, hopelessly. "I was to have luncheon with Norman—to-day!"

The tears rolled down her cheeks now, unheeded. Her hands were clasping and unclasping each other alternately. She seemed as if she hardly knew what to do next. It was pitiful to see her grief. Regardless of appearance, she sank into the big chair, her face buried in its broad arms, sobbing and listening alternately to Craig's story. He told her as gently as he could. But such a message, no matter how tactful the bearer, is like piling a weight on the heart of a woman who loves.

"Is there—any thing I can do for Norman now?" She finally lifted her tear-stained face and cried.

"No. They wouldn't let you, yet. But I want to ask you a few questions. I wonder whether you could tell me something about the relations between Norman Norcross and Lee Bullard?"

Marcel Loti colored slightly, but faced Kennedy quite frankly. "If I say anything, it might hurt Lee Bullard—and I don't know enough to permit me to say anything that would hurt anybody else!" She stopped abruptly.

I wondered at her reticence. Could she be shielding Bullard for some unknown reason? I wondered, too, if she knew that Bullard had left town.

It was evident the girl was hurt sorely at the news. Yet it was strange she could think of Bullard's safety at the time of her lover's death, I thought—when Bullard might possibly be the murderer, also. Women were a puzzle to me. When I began to study their psychology I was beyond my depth.

She looked at him still tearfully. "All the men I know very well were jealous of Norman. But he was more jealous of them. He wanted me only for himself—and I was willing. Of course it made hard feelings. But I never saw anything that might have suggested—murder." She shuddered.

"Didn't Lee Bullard and Norcross have a fight once in his studio while you were there?" Craig put the question kindly but firmly.

"Yes," she hesitated, "they did—and over me. What of it? It wasn't the first time men have fought over a woman."

"And Bullard threatened Norcross that he would get him, didn't he?" Craig was building. But she did not know that. His information seemed rather to worry her.

"He threatened Norman only after Norman had called him everything on the calendar—and ordered him from the studio." Marcel was trying hard to justify both. "But Norman didn't mean those things. I was an obsession with him, I suppose.... And I loved his jealousy—although it worried me, too. It delighted me to think I was loved so deeply by such a wonderful man—and then when I stopped to think about it, I wondered where it was all going to end.... Now it is over.... I... I feel... lost!"

"Last night, for a short time." She said it reluctantly and seemed to cut it short, perhaps to have told it before she thought.

"Y-yes, in a way. He wanted me to give him up, of course. He wanted me to marry him. But I loved Norman deeply. I could do nothing but refuse Lee, again."

Marcel shook her head wearily at the continued questioning. "Of course he was. He always was when I refused him.... But, Mr. Kennedy, I am weary, broken-hearted. I feel as if I have been the cause of Norman's death, as if he had died for me. Now please don't make my words condemn another man to death. Don't twist them. Let me be alone—with my grief. I can't stand much more!"

The girl showed the strain of her sorrow. Her eyes were wells of tragedy. The flaming redness of her lips was the only color visible on her beautiful face.

She rose slowly, called her maid, and left us. I watched her as she passed up the hall, every step the poetry of motion—but the poetry that brings the tears, rather than the smiles.

WE were silent as we left the place. Kennedy asked me finally whether I had noticed the apartment. I stopped to think of the strangeness of the fact. For once I had met a woman whose personality was so charming, so overwhelming, that it transcended her mere surroundings.

"I've talked to Watkins, his landlord, and Marcel Loti, his lover," considered Craig. "If Bullard had been in town I should certainly have talked to his rival. I won't go back to that studio. The police are there by now, messing things up beautifully, and Watkins doesn't know anything more than he has told, I am sure. He seems to have a gossipy knowledge of some of the women Norcross knew, but very little about the men. Surely Norcross must have had some friends among the men in his own profession. I would like to learn something of the man's past, something about him when he was in Europe studying, or even before that, before he had made good."

"Why don't you stop in at the Berkeley Gallery, then? Berkeley always exhibited the work of Norcross, was always delighted to get a finished piece from him. It meant a quick and profitable sale." This much I could tell Craig with certainty. The art critic on the Star would thrill for a week over a new canvas by Norcross. "Let's stop in. Berkeley will know, if anybody knows."

"I can't believe it, Mr. Kennedy!" gasped the amazed art dealer. "It doesn't seem possible that that genius has been cut down in the beginning of his career. He would have gone far!"

"I want to work fast on this case, Mr. Berkeley," explained Craig. "I don't want the murderer to cover up his tracks successfully. I want to find out who the intimate friends of the artist were besides Marcel Loti. You can get important evidence from those who know the life and habits of a man."

Berkeley knitted his brows. "Oh, he had several friends in his profession—Gruby, A. C. Lawrence, and Micello, the young Italian."

"Any of those men could tell you more about him than I could. They knew his habits, his manner of living, much about his intimate affairs. Then, of course, there is Harriet Amory. She recognized his ability from the first, you know," Berkeley advised as an afterthought.

"The same. She has befriended many a poor devil in the Latin Quarter. Over in France so much of her time, you know. She makes it a business to help those Americans who show real talent. Norcross was poor, but a genius. She just pushed him along, provided the best teachers, gave him money to travel a bit, to sit at the feet of the old masters, as it were, and learn from their marvelous creations. His success verified her judgment. She rarely goes wrong. She has been a big sister to many a struggling American artist, has won their love, belongs as an honorary member to all their clubs and organizations, and all that."

Kennedy nodded. "I have often heard about her. She did a lot toward rebuilding devastated France after the war, too—sort of good Samaritan to everybody in hard luck—quite the opposite of her father down in the Street. I think you're right, Berkeley. I'll try to see her. She is more likely than anyone else to know just the things in his life that I want to find out about."

Berkeley nodded. "I know she's out at her country place now. I saw her in her car on the Avenue shopping last week. She's down near Southampton. Wonderful place there."

Kennedy jumped up. "I'm going right down there, before it occurs to the police to get to her. They will learn of Harriet Amory, just as they have no doubt of Marcel Loti, already. They'll get her antagonized by their methods; she'll shut up like an oyster—won't say a word." He shook his head. I knew he was thinking how things must be going by now with the hammer-and-tongs quizzing of Marcel. "I want to keep just a jump and a half ahead of them. It's the only way."

"I wonder if the news will precede us—or shall we have that all over again?" I considered, as we started in Craig's roadster.

AS we turned into the wonderful driveway of the Amory estate, I looked about me in admiration. Straight from the gate for a long distance was a beautiful hard yellow-pebbled road bordered on each side by rows of trees uniform in size and symmetrical in shape. The lawn on each side of the road was dotted profusely with the vivid orange of the butterfly weed, making a brilliant contrast with the bright green of the well-kept grass.

Up the road we sped. Around a turn, we found the tree-bordered drive led directly to the white-pillared mansion.

A porch extended the length of the house. In the rear the grounds sloped down in terrace after terrace. A profusion of shrubbery, evergreens, and flowers, had turned the spot into fairyland. It was a high brick Colonial mansion betraying wealth, distinction, hospitality.

Harriet Amory was decidedly informal. She met us outside, in her garden, evidently coming in from some real work. I must admit I was startled at her appearance. I had half expected to see a woman dignified, well along in years, overburdened with the weight of social position and many charities.

But Harriet Amory was cast in a different mold. The war had brushed away every shred of social stiffness and class distinction. Her mingling with youthful artists, painters, musicians, had given her a viewpoint on life that refused to allow her to grow old. Her hair was decidedly gray, but abundant, and she wore it in a buoyant bob. Deep, throaty, but unusual tones booming with good nature characterized her greeting of us. Her eyes were blue, deep blue, surmounted by the blackest of lashes, a striking incongruity, I thought, with the grayness of her hair.

Harriet Amory's personality was such that khaki knickers in the afternoon created no surprise. She had been working, had adopted working togs, and somehow she and those clothes gave dignity to labor.

Brushing her hands lightly, gleaming white teeth parted in a smile of welcome, she remarked to Kennedy, "If I had expected callers from the city this afternoon I should not have gone out to work. But do come into the house. You see, this garden is my hobby out here in Southampton."

We followed her into the cool depths of the house. Everywhere one looked, Harriet Amory's personality seemed to invite. Cool, sturdy, reliable chairs, suggesting the woman herself, were about.

"Now, Mr. Kennedy, what is it?" she asked, as we settled ourselves. "Your face is so serious, I know you have something of importance to tell me. Don't hesitate. I know the signs. I have been the confidante of many a fine boy over in France."

There was a detachment surrounding Harriet Amory that seemed to lift her and her personal affairs out of the ordinary'. She seemed to be like a guardian angel hovering solicitously over the lives of others, with no entanglements of her own life to interfere with her benefactions. Yet she seemed a warm-hearted, big-hearted woman.

"My news isn't public news yet. Miss Amory," began Kennedy, as if in some doubt just how to break the shock of it. "You see, Mr. Berkeley of the Berkeley Galleries suggested your name to me—as one who might know something of the life and friends of the artist, Norman Norcross."

She nodded curiously, with just a suggestion in it to proceed. Kennedy cleared his throat. But before he Could go on she interrupted him: "Mr. Norcross is a genius. A few years more will see him received as the greatest painter the States have produced in this generation. I am an enthusiast over the work of Norcross. Over there is a picture he painted of me. He was much younger when he did that."

We looked. There Harriet Amory was, in the golden age of woman. She was attired in the costume of a French nurse. Out of her eyes shone a compassionate understanding for all the woes of Europe, and a desire to relieve them. There was a directness, an intangible quality of strength in the lovely face that suggested a reservoir of energy and nerve force. Our engrossed silence told her better than words our appreciation of the portrait.

"It's my favorite portrait of myself—a delightful age for a woman to be in—and an exciting time in which to live," she commented, a bit pleased at us, I fancied. "Now I like the quiet on my place here, where I can putter about. When I get tired drawing the best out of my young friends abroad and in New York, I come down here to see what I can do with my flowers and fruit. I am never satisfied with them as they are. I always want to improve them. I yearn for the skill of Burbank."

Craig seemed at once fascinated by Harriet Amory. I could not criticize him, at least, for that. Her cosmopolitan training, her breadth of vision, and her supreme intelligence made her a woman apart. It was a joy to listen to her.

"But my hobby isn't your hobby. You have something to tell me. What is it?" she asked, directly, again.

"I'm interested in Mr. Norcross," began Kennedy again, seeking a way of breaking the news. "Will you tell me something of his friends and his habits?" he asked, quickly, feeling about.

She looked shrewdly toward me. "Well, good publicity hurts no one. Mr. Jameson, being a good newspaperman, will probably give Mr. Norcross a good write-up, eh? I don't mind telling you what I know about him—His is an interesting life—It takes me back several years—more than I like to think about. Age is the bogie-man of every woman, you know." She rose, gave a slight tug at the bell pull. The butler brought refreshing beverages and some cigarettes.

I couldn't keep my eyes from her, as she sat casually in a big chair, a deep red in color, her striking locks with an impressive background. She leaned far back in the chair puffing for a few minutes at the cigarette. She did not speak until it was time to flip the first ashes. Then an amused little laugh broke her reverie.

"I stilt smile over that first meeting, Mr. Kennedy. It was early evening when I drove down to the pension where he was staying. I was late for an appointment and was running up the dark stairs, when I almost fell over him at the turn. We both laughed, but I was surprised to hear in the darkness the voice of the girl I had come to visit. She was in trouble and had appealed to me. I couldn't do anything but come to the child's assistance.

"She was impetuous and zealous in her work. Her model had become tired of posing, but she hadn't become tired of painting. There was an argument; it ended in a fight and a demand for money on the part of the model. The girl had only a few francs, not enough to satisfy the model. I was late and the model was insistent. In despair my little friend had appealed to Norman Nor-cross to help her. There they were on the steps, counting their francs like two puzzled, impecunious children. Well, the model was bought off.

"Mr. Norcross asked me if I wanted to see his work. I agreed to look at it, and I recognized his genius even then. It was some simple theme, an old mother, wrinkled and bent, in a rocking chair, alone. In her hand she held a baby's shoe. But one could see the memories in that dear old face. The thing I marveled at was the way his skilled fingers drew her neck. One could almost see the emotion pulling at those withered muscles and filling her throat with suffocating sobs. He has never lost that ability. Just look, when you see his pictures next. The throats and Decks of his women are perfect. There was nothing for me to do then but to encourage that young man—and he has gone far beyond my expectations."

I sat back in ray chair, charmed by her reminiscences. What stories she might tell of struggling artists, hungry and away from home! Craig was now silently listening.

"In those days young Norcross was such an innocent. He had three or four very good friends besides myself. It was like a family, that little group of happy, industrious, ambitious boys and girls. They knew I was glad to see any progress in their work, and they would come to me for approval and advice. But of them all, young Norcross had the genius, the untiring zeal, the ability to concentrate which the others lacked.

"Then, he had a way with him. Moments when he was discouraged, he would come up to see me and to talk of his parents. When Norman became sentimental over his mother and father, I knew something was wrong. He would finally end in telling me the trouble—the inability to proceed further in his art through lack of funds, generally.

"There was something fine about the boy, too. All that I loaned him he has paid back to me long ago. Always he accepted assistance as a loan, never as a gift. I didn't want to take the money back, but I felt if it helped him in his opinion of himself, I would not be the means to destroy that in the least....

"Nights we would take rides about the city streets. Paris at night was a joy to me. There would always be a gay party of us. I enjoyed the society of these young people. While I was very little older, still it seemed I was of them but not like them. I think I felt their sorrows and triumphs more keenly than even they did.

"The lights, the happy people, the rush and whir of motors, the excitement of seeing others some of us knew, the gay repartee, the artistic atmosphere in which I lived with these young folks, were like a tonic to me. They were like me in one respect. They could see beauty, something in almost every contact of the day. I have been out with them at times when the smallest bit of beauty would inspire a theme for a picture.

"I remember Norman one night getting an idea for a picture that brought him many medals and much honor. I hadn't heard from a friend for some time and we agreed to look the boy up, to see what might be the trouble. We walked over to his studio. Near the building was a florist's. Suddenly Norman touched my arm, stopped. 'Look!' he whispered, quietly. I saw what he meant in an instant. It was a study in contrasts. Only a man with a soul could have seen it and grasped it.

"By the window was a girl, richly dressed, holding some orchids which she had just purchased. Even her admiration was dull, satiated with the rich things of life. By the cellar door on the sidewalk, where the waste was kept, was a sprig, I think it must have been yellow forsythia, a touch of spring which had blossomed through the crack of the side of the cellar-way. It was only a few inches high, just one little tiny branch trying to obey in its own way its purpose for existence. Over it, crying with delight, was a dirty little waif, with the dirtiest of faces and the most beautiful eyes imaginable. She could not have been more than six or seven. But there she was dancing up and down in her glee, clapping her hands. Face alight, she leaned over and tenderly drew the sprig out of the crack beside the cellar door. She hugged it to her heart, held it up and kissed it with fervor and all die grace that only a little French child can command.

"Norman's face beamed with sympathy. He hastened to that child and asked her if he could paint her. He gave her a franc to buy more blooms. She gave us her address, and her thrifty parents allowed her to pose for him. The flower-filled windows of the shop were the background. He caught the happy spirit of the child, fresh and eager for simple delights, and the ennui of the young lady, surfeited with the luxuries of life. Those were his themes, all inspiring, nothing debasing.

"And every picture was better than the previous one. His were the singing colors, the wonderful technique, the spiritual outlook on life that existed not in painting Madonnas, but in uplifting ideas that inspire beautiful conduct." She stopped for a minute and drew her hand lightly over her forehead. "It's warm in here, don't you think? I wonder if you would care to walk in my garden with me while I tell you more of his later life—his later work?"

Craig rose, and I was just as delighted. Tempting vistas of those gardens had been the only thing that had distracted me from our charming hostess.

"But don't you think, Miss Amory, with your own poetic soul, your love of the beautiful and fine served as a wonderful inspiration in that early impressionable part of his career?" I asked her. "I wonder if those pictures were his ideas of the world as he saw it through your eyes."

"Possibly my influence helped. I hope so. But to do what Norman Norcross does, one has to have the divine gift of seeing things beautifully, born in one."

Down one of the paved terraces we stopped and gazed about us. To the left was a rock garden gloriously rich and luxuriant. Away in the distance, as much like nature as artificiality could leave it, was a bit of woodland. Here during the progress of the year were found the wild flowers common to Long Island.

"That is my joy in the spring," she exclaimed to us. "All the arbutus I want to look at—and then leave alone. Later the fringed gentians that are appealing to so many wasteful fingers—and down there," indicating with a graceful sweep of her arm, "are my fruit trees—my hobby of all hobbies."

"Do you see much of Mr. Norcross now?" began Craig again, attempting to get at the purpose of his visit.

"Not as I did in France. The artistic atmosphere is so different over there. There is a camaraderie that is strangely lacking here even among the same people. Until recently I have been away. My other interests demanded my tame and energy over there. Norman was painting over here. He has had several important commissions and seems extremely busy."

"Do you—Dr—know his American friends as intimately as those he made over in France?"

"Frankly, no. Partly for the reason I explained, and partly because they are of a new circle. The older one gets, the harder it is to make new intimate friends. I have met many of his friends. But on this side of the water my social duties preclude giving much time to art-except as individual cases I hear about need help."

"Micello I like very much—the true artist. He is a young Italian who has struggled to make good and has succeeded. His specialty is landscape work. Lawrence is more versatile—as to both art and morals—not always a good influence. Naturally an artist needs money. Lawrence needs it all the time—always broke. He dabbles with the girls who care for the wild life, and it is already having its effect on his work. If Norman doesn't leave him and his ways alone, his own work will be affected." Harriet Amory was thoughtful.

"He told me a short time ago he had an unfinished picture. I believe he thought it was his sincerest work. The portrait he finished last, before that, he received more for than for any other he has ever done. It was a success financially. But it lacked that greater quality, to me—improvement. There is something wrong when a man's work stands still."

Craig nodded in agreement. For a moment the conversation lagged. We were wending our way slowly about the artificial pool. Its lights and shadows as it reflected the shrubs and flowers about it focused our attention.

"Has Mr. Norcross given you permission for this interview about himself?" Miss Amory asked of me. It seemed as if she placed the responsibility for our presence on her estate on my shoulders.

I hesitated and looked quickly at Craig. I did not want to tell a deliberate lie. Such a woman commanded too much respect, too, for deliberate deception. Neither did I want prematurely to betray Craig's purpose in seeking information.

"Well, I wonder if he would like it—these intimate things I have told. Possibly he would. Sometimes when one grows great there is a delight in boasting of humble beginnings. It makes the man seem the greater. Then others like to conceal an ordinary origin. That, to me, is a sort of mental degeneracy." Over the rail about the pool she leaned, looking reflectively into its green and silver depths. The breeze tossed her hair lightly and her checks glowed with color. "For what publication is the story written, Mr. Jameson?" she asked, in the manner of a woman desirous of entertaining strangers with whom she had little in common.

"I'm not going to have anything published, Miss Amory, as far as I know. I have merely come out with Mr. Kennedy." I smiled.

She looked next at Craig curiously. "Why do you want this information, may I ask? I'll tell you more if you give me a reason."

Kennedy cleared his throat. "I want to know the friends of Norman Norcross because of a grievous wrong that has been done him. Can you tell me about any of his enemies?"

"Wrong? What wrong has been done to him?" She asked it with a sudden anxiety in her tone. Before Craig could enlighten her, she added: "Norman has enemies, of course. Anyone who puts his head a little higher than the multitude invites a club. But his enemies are jealous rivals in his profession. Their enmity would consist in unkind criticism or bickering. Norman has the strength of character to rise above that, to disregard it."

"If it were that alone, he might," Craig added, then went on, solemnly: "But Norman Norcross is dead. His jealous rivals will be troubled no more by his spectacular work."

"Dead! Dead! I can't believe it! I will not believe it! Surely you must be having a practical joke!" She half whispered it as her knuckles hardened under the pressure of clutching the rail.

"No, Miss Amory; it is too true. Norman Norcross was killed some time last night. That is why I am so anxious for you to tell me of his associates—all those you know he knew. Were you acquainted with any of his women friends here in America? Anything at all may help."

She seemed to wish to avoid answering that question. As she struggled with the shock of her emotion, her face became sad and pensive.

"Little did I think, when I rebuked him over that last completed picture when he asked me to see it right after my arrival home, that my plain words would be my last advice to him. I couldn't go against my better judgment. But now I wish I had. His last memory would have been kinder to me, perhaps. It looked like a made-to-order picture, not one inspired—and I told him so."

She turned from the pool and walked silently ahead of us. Of course we respected her grief. Had she not watched over this artist's phenomenal progress quite like a successful horticulturist with some new flower whose beauty he is watching develop from day to day?

Down the steps she walked silently, almost blindly, through a wilderness of flowers. All the flowers I had ever heard my grandmother mention were here in this garden. Old-fashioned coriopsis was wind-blown over snapdragons and zinnias, a riot of colors, a stimulation to the eye. But Miss Amory saw nothing of it. Her thoughts were on the stricken life of her protege.

Some women take their grief with noise, a hurricane of emotion. Others bite their nails and suffer in silence. But Harriet Amory's expression of grief was quite masculine. She smoked in silence.

"Shall we leave you for a while?" Craig asked, thoughtfully. "You can rejoin us later, at the house."

"No, don't." She turned to us with a sad, sweet smile. "I'm down here, unconsciously, with the things I love best. When I am troubled or pondering some question, I come here. You may consider yourself honored. Only my intimates get past the lily pool."

I looked about. Here was a new method, to me, in vineyards. The grape vines I had known grew on arbors either arched or upright. But these vines were planted with single arbors for each vine. There seemed to be more than a hundred of them, all with the promise of a wonderful harvest.

"That is the way they do it in France," explained Harriet Amory. "You should see the sketch I have of this little vineyard Norman painted for me. It is most exquisite."

Then, I saw, came the fruit trees, a novel scheme for them, too, I thought. They were trained to grow on a wall. How beautiful they looked now. But how much more beautiful they must have been in the springtime in blossom.

"You are surprised at my wall garden? It is common in the old gardens of England, in France, and in Germany. Over there wall fruit is no novelty. And what a price you have to pay for it in the markets!"

Smoking incessantly, but glowing with a certain pride at her possessions, she turned at length to Craig and pointed to some beautiful purple and red plums, extremely large fruit, growing with the branches of the trees trained like vines against the wall, and fastened here and there by pieces of leather to it. One could see how carefully these trees had been set away from the wall then trained toward it, how the soil had been prepared. I remembered now the wall on the outside as we came along the road, where, in its shade, ferns and Alpine flowers grew bordering the estate.

Now as I looked about I felt that this garden might make an Englishman think he was in an estate at home.

Suddenly she turned again to Craig. "You asked me if I knew Norman's friends among the women here. I have met one or two. But I can't say I knew them."

"One was Katherine Holt, the actress, a very charming girl. The other was Marcel Loti, the singer. Both have a wide circle of friends and it is not strange that Norman should be drawn to both." With a quiet smile she added, "I hear they do not like each other."

Craig was listening in silence. Now I noticed we had left the plum trees and were standing before a row of beautiful pears growing in the same attractive fashion. Kennedy waited, surveying them thoughtfully.

"Do you know, Miss Amory," I exclaimed, involuntarily, "this is the first time I have ever thought of fruit trees as anything else than utilitarian—just good for fruit, good to eat, in the fall—and, of course, to enjoy the blossoms for a week or two in the spring. But these are an asset to the beauty of any estate."

"There can't be a dozen wall gardens of any size in America, I imagine," remarked Kennedy. "Certainly none like this—although I believe it is just becoming a fad."

"Yes, some of my friends are adopting the wall garden. I have all kinds of fruit grown this way. It takes time and patience. Much pruning, a seemingly heartless amount of it, and rigid thinning of the fruit in the spring, too, make the wonderful results you see. One doesn't get them in a day. Work, vision, and time are what the wall gardener must possess."

Suddenly I stopped. What had been admiration before at the other specimens of fruit turned into wonder at the glorious sight now. Before us the wall continued over a hundred feet, a hundred feet of wall peaches, just ripening with the largest, most vividly colored peaches it had ever been my privilege to see.

Kennedy was in rapture over them. He seemed to recall the names from English gardens—the Early Beatrice, the Royal George, the Grosse Mignonne and the Sterling Castle, ripening in the order named.

He picked up a padded, cup-shaped fruit picker on a rustic table, with a short handle, toying with it as he talked.

"I suppose," he remarked, "I don't know what those peaches mean to you, Miss Amory."

She smiled wanly back. It was difficult to avoid the hint of Kennedy as he toyed with the fruit gatherer. She picked one, passed it wearily to him.

"Isn't that marvelous coloring?" she murmured. "These trees to me are priceless. Here, Mr. Jameson, is one for you. No, you don't know what these peaches are to me. I have never seen their equal anywhere. I have given of myself in their propagation. I brought them from England eight years ago. They are my pet hobby. Just look at that peach bloom!"

She was still holding the peach she had picked for me. Slowly Kennedy reached into his waistcoat pocket.

Craig passed her the broken piece of lens he had found near the murdered artist's body.

Harriet Amory stared silently at Craig. The peach in her hand dropped to the gravel path. Slowly she took another long puff at her cigarette. Then that fell to the path, too, bitten through in her agitation. Suddenly her eyes fell. The whole life of the woman seemed to depart.

"Miss Amory," began Craig, in a low voice, "you come here when you are troubled. You were here this morning. Were you troubled then?"

"It rained last night. These half-smoked cigarettes, so many of them, lying about were used this morning—and they are the kind you smoke. I have bought them in France, too."

I didn't think a woman could age in a few moments as she had done. Her eyes shone mistily, tenderly as she looked once on the beautiful peaches.

Again she dropped her head, closed her tired eyes wearily. Craig waited silently. I was aghast at the sudden turn of events.

"My God, Mr. Kennedy!" she exclaimed, striding a step or two at length. "It was more than a woman could bear!" She raised her arms upward, hands clasped, the silent tears creeping down her checks. "I had made him, had loved him, given him all! My life and my fortune were his. My friends had helped him, through my influence. At first he worshiped me. Each new picture he painted brought us closer. They were beautiful, happy days and I forgot the world when I was with him.... But we each had our work. The thought of each other stirred us and thrilled us to accomplish great things—until he came back to America—and she came into his life!"

"Yes." It was said bitterly. "She had youth, beauty—was a song bird—and I—I had nothing more to give. Norman was by now woman crazy—and I was cast aside....

"I endured his neglect, his silence, as long as I could. I went to see him, to plead for the return of the old days, the old happiness. He was working on her portrait. He was painting his new love, painting this beautiful new sweetheart—with my peach in her hand—the peach of the old! My peach—from a basket I had sent him! I looked at that picture:—and something seemed to snap in my brain. That girl had bitten into my peach. It was like biting into my very heart. That peach, that lovely peach turned to—acid. I raved. I tried to destroy the picture. I had picked up a paper-cutter to slash it—and was going to strike, when Norman tried to stop me—I saw red—and——"

She paused a moment. The gust of her passionate remembrance had passed. Now she faced cold reality.

"I don't know what you're going to do with me, Mr. Kennedy. I don't care. The sooner it's over, the better— because—oh, Norman, I love you—still!"

Silently now her lips were calling her murdered sweetheart's name—and there was no answering call. It was her worst punishment.

"Every clue had been obliterated," murmured Kennedy, almost to himself, "except the fragment of the lens—and there might be thousands of them all over the world. But the moment I saw that peach I knew there is only one wall garden, in America, with the Royal George, grown with the characteristic exposure—to the south—nowhere else. I, too, knew you knew when I came here!"

She faltered, swayed, caught at a tree to save herself, dragging it down from the wall.

THE END

ARTHUR B. REEVE

CRAIG KENNEDY AND THE COMPASS NORTH—SOUTH—EAST—WEST

SOUTH

THE END

CRAIG KENNEDY AND THE COMPASS
NORTH—SOUTH—EAST—WEST