The Paternoster Ruby | Page 2

and smashing their way through the ice, opening a way for other ships; yesterday they had steamed into port with their precious cargoes, demoralizing the bull clique with a deluge of golden grain.
Page settled; he had sold five million bushels, and he delivered the goods. This was the opening fissure. Fluette was soon overwhelmed, and today he and his crowd would be holding a melancholy wake over the corpse.
This, however, is not a story of stupendous battles in the arena of Commerce. I have merely gone behind my proper starting-point by a matter of ten minutes or so--no more--to lay before you one of those inexplicable coincidences which, when they are flung at us, shake us from our self-possession. The stage was already set for me; serenely unsuspecting, I was headed straight toward it.
Police headquarters was my destination, and I had no sooner stepped across the threshold than I was told that the Captain was wanting to see me at once. So I went direct to his private office, where he was deep in conference with a party of four men, who, in spite of a general air of gloom which seemed to envelop them, looked like a quartet of prosperous brokers. It occurred to me that they might have been struck by the stick of the spent rocket.
As the Captain abruptly broke off an earnest speech to wheel his chair round and address me, the four men stared at me with a curious, unwavering interest.
Fancy how I was staggered by the first words. My chief thrust a card in my direction, on which was pencilled a street number.
"Go to this address at once, Swift," said he. "It looks like murder--old Page."
"Page!" I almost shouted. "You can't mean Felix Page!"
"What's the matter with you? Know anything about it?"
My stupefaction was pronounced enough to excite his wonder. I assure you, we are not often astonished at the Central Office.
I caught my breath and shook my head. Of course, I knew nothing about it. But it was something besides the amazing, unexpected intelligence of Felix Page's death that struck me right between the eyes. With the mention of his name, my mind cut one of those unaccountable capers which everybody has at some time in his life experienced.
The names of Felix Page and Alfred Fluette had been before me in one way or another for days; I had followed the remarkable wheat deal with about the same degree of interest that animated everybody else who was not immediately concerned; but not until this moment had it impressed me that I knew something respecting Page which had not appeared in the papers in connection with the corner. What was it?
But I could not remember. This was the scurvy trick my mind was playing. I stood there staring at the others, and they sat staring at me. A question was halted provokingly upon the very tip of my tongue, which, despite a most earnest whipping of memory, remained obstinately elusive.
Felix Page! What particular, unusual circumstance was associated in my mind with that name? Why should it come to flout me at this juncture without revealing itself?
My ineffectual effort to remember was cut short by my chief. He scowled, manifestly in perplexity at the way the news had affected me.
"These gentlemen," he said, with a gesture indicating the funereal quartet, "were more or less associated with Mr. Page; he don't seem to have had any close friends; but they can tell me nothing. Whatever line you pick up, you must find the end of it at the scene of the crime--the house. The address is on that card.
"Here 's all I know about it: It must have happened sometime during the night; the report came in from Sheridan Park station about daylight. Three men from there, Patrolmen Callahan and O'Brien and a plain-clothes man named Stodger, are at the house holding two suspects until somebody shows up from the Central Office. Stodger 's in a stew; can't seem to make head nor tail of what's happened.
"You hurry, Swift," he curtly concluded; "this is too important a matter to waste time over."
So it was. I saluted and hastily left him.
My brain was still in a whirl; my musings and the blunt, surprising announcement had come too close together for me to regard the supposed crime with unshaken equanimity. Then, too, I was still vainly striving to drag from memory's hiding-place the tantalizing circumstance which I somehow felt was pregnant with possibilities in the light of the financier's death. What on earth was it? I thought of everything else I had ever heard or read about the man.
But I was young--not only in the service, but in years as well--and this was one of my first hard rubs with that heartless old pedagogue, Experience.
Felix Page had enjoyed--I