THE FIRE-DOG OF FATE

A Mystery Novelette Scenario in Seven Short Shocks

This scenario is in reality a confession: the literary confession of the man who has written (and sold) probably more fiction than any other living author. By studying it carefully, the agile-minded reader will learn exactly how popular fiction is made.—The Editor.

CHAPTER I.

HOUSE party at the Adirondack shack of Mason Merwyck, multymilyunare. The "shack" includes 65 bedrooms, 41 baths, herd of young, spirited automobiles, power boats, powerless boats, electric plant, refrigerating plant, geranium, pie and other plants ad lib., etc., etc.

The party includes Hubert Parr—rich, handsome, flawless, wLose middle name is Virtue, who invented Integrity, was the original patentee of Probity and who is now engaged to Miriam Merwyck, earth's loveliest blueribboner in the class for Blondes. Also present,

Baron von Schlimm, who mislays his smile frequently, goes off in corners and glooms until exhausted {why?) and Mrs. Batesby-Batesby (no visible Batesby-Batesby), who permits her deep eyes to glint significantly at the baron, running about seven evil glints to the second. {Why?)

This evening Hubert starts for the den where Mason Merwyck sits over the 6 h. p. portable automatic couponclipper he carries to the woods. On the way, for an instant, Hubert glimpses a dark, sinister face at the window and sees a lean, crouching figure slink into the shadows. {Who is it?) As Hubert chats with Merwyck, the butler brings a sealed, mussy note. Merwyck reads it, gasps, gurgles, clutches, reels, falls and bangs frontal bone on the perfectly good and solid andiron. The note flutters into the fire. {Get this.) Hubert turns Merwyck over. He is dead!!

CHAPTER II.

ONLY he isn't. Commotion and consternation. Guests, family and servants flock in, Miriam throwing heart-rending fit over what the andiron has left of her father. Still, he breathes. Doctor is sent for. Hubert tries to explain. Von Schlimm smiles strangely and mentions hearing hot words in the den. {Why does he lie like this?) Shoots glance of secret understanding at Mrs. Batesby-Batesby. She nods and says she, too, heard the quarrel. Hubert tried to bump off Merwyck!

Suddenly everything changes!

The lean dark face appears at the window for—about—the thirty-second part of an ordinary instant. Von Schlimm alone seeing it, he starts violently, gulps emotionally, smiles wildly and explains thickly that he erred about the quarrel. {Why?) Simultaneously Hubert observing a corner of the note which has fluttered unburnt from the fire, picks up same, reads it—the fragment, not the fire—also starts, also gulps; and then, dropping fragment back into fire, squares his chest, draw's a long whistling breath and dumfounds the company by confessing that he attacked Merwyck. {Why?) Miriam cannot believe it; nobody could. The doctor arrives at this point, dips Mason Merwyck in hot water, wirings him out and restores his consciousness.

Miriam overjoyed; lets him speak for himself. Mason Merwyck speaks slowly, mentioning wimble-bugs and Alfred Kreymborg. In fine the fire-dog has walloped his wits aw-ay and Mason Merwyck is a babbling idiot.

CHAPTER III.

POOR Merwyck has reverted to the Original Nut condition; his one coherent babble is: "before six o'clock on the tenth!" This remark has great significance for Hubert {why?) and von Schlimm {why?) and also for Mrs. Batesby-Batesby {why?) The doctor orders that Dr. Steele Carver, the foremost American brain-repairer, be summoned, and goes. In a corner Mrs. Batesby-Batesby writes a note and tosses it from window. {Why?) Outdoors, a thin horrid laugh shudders the night. (Whose?)

Merwyck is loaded on a truck and taken to bed and calm is restored. Hubert, bidding Miriam keep faith in him {why not?) and he will save her in spite of all {from what?) pockets his automatic and leaves the house, chin set and purpose oozing from his pores. In the vicious shadows by the head gardener's cottage he locates the dark, sinister face and places right hook on same! {Why?) The fight—the awful rough and tumble fight. In the end Hubert vents triumphant yell, dances on the unconscious form and leaps away, just as the head gardener, lighting match, looks at the remains and gasps: "My God, sir! What have you done? What have you done?" {What has he done?)

MIDNIGHT. Moonlight on the lake. Hubert Parr forces Mrs. Batesby-Batesby into canoe and paddles swiftly from shore. {Why?) She screams; he laughs grimly; she screams again. They are halfway across the lake when from the shore shoots Mason Merwyck's 99-mile-an-hour hydroplane, Disaster XXIII, with von Schlimm at the wheel. {Why—oh, why?) Hubert, pausing, shoots 3 lb. bullets at von Schlimm, without effect. The crash! The shriek! The sickening succession of blubbly bubbles, where the shattered canoe sank just as the baron snatched Mrs. Batesby-Batesby.

Business of house-party galloping to lake shore, asking each other why and also what. Von Schlimm lands Mrs. Batesby-Batesby. And what, asks Mirriam, of Hubert? Von Schlimm laughs nastily. "Hubert Parr," says he, "has gone to his just deserts! Down on the bottom of Loony Lake, the black bass are playing leapfrog over his corpse!" (P. S.—N. B. They ain't, corpse not being there.)

CHAPTER IV.

THE action shifts to Chillimyste, the Newport palace of J. Vanderpont Morgould. It is the night of the big dinner. 1678 liveried servants are draped about the $17,000,000 worth of furniture and fittings; a billion dollars worth of food is in sight or getting ready to appear. The guests stroll in, she-guests with bones cracking under the weight of diamonds. Ready money stuff.

Station hack pants up to back door. Handsome youth descends, plainly dressed, but determined (that's right; it is Hubert) and makes his way to butler. He slips butler $8,000 in small bills and one request: "Take this, my good fellow, and let me serve Miss Gladys Morgould!" The butler falls. Hubert dons livery. {Why? Wait.)

The dinner. Gladys more sparkling than usual, although politely astonished at the sight of the strange servant. The soup! Hubert pours one gallon red-hot soup down Gladys' neck, gasps while she shrieks, lambastes neck with napkin and finally flees. The excitement calms—then soars as Gladys shrieks again. The stranger had a motive; he has stolen the pink Pearl of Palaloo from her necklace! She faints. {Why?) Her father, with a dreadful cry, falls down in an epileptic fit. {Also why?)

CHAPTER V.

SIX miles up the coast. Seventeen minutes later. Hubert Parr, throwing himself from a steaming motor-cycle, dashes at the little fisherman's hut and pounds on the door. Three armed men answer. Hubert whispars something (what?) and, with bowed heads, they let him enter. (Why?) The leader, a mighty man about four times the size of Samson and a good deal stronger, conducts Hubert to a trap-door in an inner room. Hubert lifts it and, smiling strangely, descends. (Whither?)

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Continued from page 65

Returning to Chillimyste. Vanderpont Morgould finishes up his fit in good shape and then explains to a few intimate friends that the Pink Pearl of Palaloo held the exact location, the password and the combination of his Secret Vault. (Now you begin to get a line on Hubert's stunt, but not too much of a line.) If they cannot overtake him before he penetrates the inner vault. . . . (Well? Well? What then?)

The wild dash through the—particularly inky and dangerous—night with Morgould's demon chauffeur driving his master and six armed footmen. They reach the fisherman's hut. TOO (2) LATE!!!!! Hubert Parr, his pockets bulging papers (what papers?) left ten minutes ago! (Note: Morgould might have another fit here? Yes?)

CHAPTER VI.

BACK to Mason Merwyck's camp. Afternoon of the fatal (why fatal?) tenth, about which Merwyck babbles so annoyingly. Dr. Steele Carver is here at last, with five assistants and sixteen trained nurses, two drums of ether and his half-ton kit of tools. They shut off the top floor, uncork the ether, give the tools a last filip on the grindstone and go to work.

Ghastly suspense all through house party, as Dr. Carver removes top of Mason Merwyck's cranium, dusts off his brain, puts in a new mainspring and oils her up generally. Miriam, wringing hands, is all but busted with grief (having fallen for the statement that Hubert is no more and continuing fell, as it were.)

Mrs. Batesby-Batesby slips from house stealthily (why?) and with an awful smile. She hurries to the shadow of the Big Pine. The dark, sinister stranger drops from the upper boughs and shakes his head sadly; there is no word from von Schlimm. (Oh, yes, von Schlimm disappeared some days ago.) Mrs. BatesbyBatesby gasps, gurgles, reels, etc., etc. Glad scream comes from house, in Miriam's voice: "He is sane! He is sane!" Mrs. Batesby-Batesby makes horrid sound in larynx, draws pistol and shoots herself—bang! bang! bang! (Possibly one bang will kill her?)

(Why?)

CHAPTER VII.

EW YORK CITY. Executive offices of the New York Central railroad. Directors' meeting in progress. Wild commotion outside. Six crashes, two loud thuds and the sound of a bursting door—and Hubert Parr stands in their midst!! Big speech stuff. "Gentlemen! Here is a billion dollars! I want to buy the New York Central! Thanks! Now run out the Twentieth Century Limited and kick everything else off the rails, for I'll make Loony Lake by six o'clock for HER sake!" (Meaning?)

The tremendous start, with six locomotives tandem and a Pullman to hold them down. Poughkeepsie: on time! Albany: three minutes ahead! Schenectady: nine minutes ahead. Hubert Parr, cheering, suddenly gasps. Von Schlimm is pursuing the train in a 96cylinder Blitzenblast racer: and now, just when victory seemed Hubert's, von Schlimm trains a machine-gun on the foremost engine driver! There is a rattling crash of artillery and then. . . .

TO THE EDITOR OF VANITY FAIR: The last half of the last chapter, of course, always explains everything. The last half of this one tells what was in the note Merwyck received, what was in the chunk Hubert read, who the dark man was and how von Schlimm and Mrs. Batesby-Batesby were connected with the plot. It also makes clear how Hubert escaped a watery grave, what Morgould had to do with the affair, how Hubert found out about the Secret Vault and what he found in it. It makes clear as the June sunshine just how Hubert saved all the virtuous people in sight, what Merwyck said when he came out of the ether, and so on; in fact, it tells everything except what Dr. Carver charged for the operation. But while I know that our original agreement was for a complete scenario, these things are in the nature of trade secrets and if I told them here somebody might go to work and write the story and sell it. I am sorry—truly sorry—but this is a risk I cannot take. Cordially, but firmly, yours,

The Author.