George Barr McCutcheon

“ If the old-time novelists are to be credited, an abundantly veiled lady is more a source of interest; she is the vital, central figure in a mystery that continues from week to week, or month to month, as the case may be, until the last chapter is reached and she turns out to be the person you thought she was all the time. ”

“ Aren't you detectives always shadowing some one?”
“Yes, but we don't turn into shadows to do it, ma'am. We just—”
“There he is! Standing directly behind you. What object can you possibly have, Mr. Crow, in lying to me about—”
“Lying?” gasped Anderson, after a swift, apprehensive' glance over his shoulder. “I'm tellin' you the gospel truth. Maybe that confounded veil's botherin' your eyesight. Take it off, an' you'll 'see there aint no one—”
“Ah! What a remarkable leap! He must be possessed of wings.” ”

“ Doc Ellis says he never pulled a bigger er a stubborner tooth in all his experience than—”
“I think you ought to investigate the Veiled Lady of Nixon cottage” said Harry Squires, lowering his voice and glancing over his shoulder. “You can't tell what she's up to, Anderson. It wouldn't surprise me if she's a woman with a past. She may be using that veil as a disguise. What's more, there may be a price on her head. The country is full of those female spies, fighting tooth and nail for Germany. ”

“ Now, the village of Tinkletown is a slow-going, somnolent sort of place in which veils are worn by old ladies who wish to enjoy a pleasant snooze during the sermon without being caught in the act. That anyone should wear a veil with the same regularity and the same purpose that she wears the dress which renders the remainder of her person invisible is a circumstance calculated to excite the curiosity of even the most indifferent observers in the village of Tinkletown. ”

“ Where's the lady of the house?”
“I am the lady of the house, Mr. Crow,” said the lady, performing a graceful Delsartian movement with her long bare arms. Mr. Crow and his companions stared upward at her arms as if fascinated. “I am Mrs. Smith—Mrs. John Smith.”
“I guess not,” said Anderson sharply. “She wears a veil, asleep or awake. Hold on! Put your hands down! She's signalin' somebody, sure as you're alive,” he burst out, turning to the group of mouth-sagging, eye-roving gentlemen who followed every graceful curve and twist of those ivory arms. “What's the matter with you, Sim? ”

“ Anderson shot a startled look over his shoulder.
“There aint any man behind the tree. I'm all alone.”
“Are you trying to make sport of me, Mr. Crow?”
“I should say not. I been standin' here fer some time, an' I guess I'd know if anybody was—”
“Do you think I am blind?” demanded the lady quite sharply.
“Not if you can see a man behind this tree,” said he, with conviction. “You got the best eyesight of anybody I ever come across—that's all I got to say.” ”

“ They had never seen anyone so beautiful, so striking, or so startlingly dressed. She had just arisen from the comfortable wicker chair beside the table, the surface of which was littered with magazines, papers and documents in all sorts of disorder. ”

“ She was never abroad without the thick, voluminous veil, and her hands were never ungloved. Mrs. Nixon and Angie described her voice as refined and elegant, and she spoke English as well as anybody in town, not excepting Professor Rank of the high school.
By the end of her first week in the Nixon cottage, there wasn't a person in Tinkletown, exclusive of small babies, who had not advanced a theory concerning Mrs. Smith, the new tenant. On one point all agreed: she was the most “stuck-up” person ever seen in Tinkletown. ”

“ Miss Angie Nixon, who had never been nearer to Paris than Brattleboro, Vermont, said to her customers that from what she had seen of the new tenant's outfit, she was undoubtedly from the Tooleries. Miss Angie was the leading dressmaker of Tinkletown. If she had said the lady was from Somaliland, the statement would have gone unchallenged.
The same day, a man cook and a “hired girl” arrived from Boggs' City, having come up by rail from New York. ”

“ They say she never takes it out, even in the house.”
“Who told you that?”
“Angie Nixon. She says she believes she sleeps in it.”
“How does she deduce that?” demanded Anderson, idly feeling the badge of the New York Detective Association, which for obvious reasons,—it being a very hot night,—was attached to his suspenders.
“She deduced it through a keyhole,” replied Mr. Squires. “Angie was up at the cottage last night to get something she had left in an upstairs hall closet. She just happened to stoop to pick up something on the floor right in front of Mrs. Smith's door. ”

“ After the posse had turned into the unrelieved shades of Main Street, Mr. Crow halted every few yards and said: “Sh!”
He had related a portion but not all of his experiences, winding up with the statement that poor Mrs. Smith had been terribly frightened by the mysterious prowler, and that it was their duty as citizens to put an end to his activities if possible.
“Her description of him don't fit anybody livin' in this town,” he had said during the course of his narrative. “We aint got anybody who c'n jump thirty foot, or who c'n shin up a chimbly like a squirrel. ”

“ Illustration: “Wha-what's the rumpus?” Instead of replying, Mr. Crow pressed his hand to his heart and shook his head.
In his capacity as city editor, he wrote advertisements, personals, editorials, news-items, death-notices, locals and practically everything else in the paper except the poetry sent in by Miss Sue Becker. He even wrote the cable and telegraph matter, always ascribing it to a “Special Correspondent of The Banner.” ”

“ Marshal, I think you can trust him—” began Harry, but Anderson checked him with a resolute gesture. '
“Can't take any chances with him. He's got to come with me.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Harry.
“An' besides,” said Anderson, “a man in my position can't afford to be associatin' with actresses—an' you know it, Harry Squires. Come on, Alf!”
The next of the Tales of Tinkletown, “The Astonishing Acts of Anne,” will be published in an early issue. ”

“ He just kep' on tryin' to lick my hand, an' so she hit him a clip with a parysol an' says: 'Edgar, must I speak to you again? Come here, I say! Behave like a gentleman!' 'There aint no dog livin' that's goin' to behave like a gentleman if you call him names like that,' says I. 'It aint human nature,' says I. An' just to prove it to her, I turned and says to Shep: 'Aint that so, Shep, old sport?' An' what do you think that poor old dog done? He got right up on his hind legs an' tried to kiss me.”
“No wonder she wants to call him Edgar,” said Harry Squires. ”

“ Tall feller with—”
“And the lady saw him too?”
“She saw him first, I been tellin' you. She seemed to be able to see quicker'n I could, 'cause she saw nearly every moves he made. My eyesight aint as good as it used to be, an' besides, she could see plainer from where she stood. Come on now—no time to waste. We got to post ourselves all around the place an'—an' nab him if he shows himself again. All you fellers have got to do is to obey orders.”
AT the corner of Maple and Sickle streets, a few hundred feet from the Nixon cottage, the cavalcade received a whispered order to halt. ”

“ I admit it. I'll set up seegars fer everybody here. Sim, send a box of them 'Uncle Tom' specials round to my office first thing in the mornin'. Yes sir, Harry, my boy, you certainly caught me nappin' plenty. Taint often I git—”
“If you don't mind, Anderson,” interrupted Elmer K. Pratt, “I'll take a nickel's worth of chewin'-tobacco. My wife don't like me to smoke around the house.”
“Gentlemen,” said Harry Squires, “there are a few bottles of beer in the icebox, and the cook will make all the cheese and ham sandwiches we can eat. ”