good his escape, much to the disgust of his jailers, who supposed that weakness would effectually debar him from any attempt of that kind. A hunt was instituted by the sheriff, who had quite got over his wound, but King had covered his trail as skilfully as when he fled from New York, and the search was completely fruitless. His wife vanished at the same time, and an attempt was made to track her, but she did not go to her parents' home, and the authorities never solved the mystery of her disappearance." A most comical predicament, vouched for in the Dramatic Mirror by Miss Marie Wainwright, the actress. A COMBINATION LOCK. IN Chicago some years ago an actor and actresshusband and wife-who had grown tired of hotel-living, and who were booked for a stay of several weeks in that city, resolved to take a suite of furnished rooms and get their meals when and where their inclinations might direct. They arrived in Chicago on a Sunday, and, after some tiresome searching, found on Dearborn Street what they sought. Evidently the building had been intended originally for office uses, as in the bedroom was a large safe or vault of the most massive construction. Instead of being used to hold securities of priceless value, it was devoted to the humbler duty of receiving clothing. The heavy steel door, some five inches thick, was supplied with a combination lock. This was a novelty to the wife, who, as soon as she had bestowed some of her wraps in the safe, began a superficial study of the mechanism. She could not, of course, make out much about it, and her lord and master offered, in his superior wisdom, to explain it. "All you have to do," he said, "is to think of a word, shut the door, then spell the word on this dial, turn the handle, and then no one can open it who doesn't know the combination. Now step in for a moment; I will lock you in on the word 'open' and let you out again in an instant." The wife, who had not been married long enough to discover that her husband was not as clever as he thought, gayly stepped into the vault. "It will be awfully dark and stuffy here with the door closed," she exclaimed. "Don't be afraid, dear. I'll let you out again before you have time to think." He turned the handle, worked the combination to open," worked it back again, pulled at the door, but there was no sign of its yielding. Frantically he again ran the indicator over the letters making the word, but still the door would not budge. He shouted encour agingly to his wife, but it was evident that she could not hear him. "Was she already dead for want of air!" was the first awful thought, but he remembered that the vault was at least six feet square, and even if perfectly airtight must contain enough air to support life for some little time. But for how long? It was Sunday. It might be hours before he could find a locksmith, and even then it might take more hours to open that dreadful door. His darling might be dead! He would be her slayer! Perhaps the law would call it murder! These thoughts flashed through his mind in less time than it takes to read them. After shouting some reassuring words he rushed up to the landlady's room, on the floor above, and breathlessly and almost unintelligibly told something of the trouble. "You're the second fool who's got into a mess meddling with that safe," was the old woman's comforting comment. "Never mind that!" he cried. Can you get her out before she dies?" "Yes, I can. I don't have things about I don't understand; and if I did find them, I wouldn't meddle with them." "Never mind that, my good woman; only come and open the door." "It's easy to see you ain't been long married," was her grumbling comment, as she waddled after him down the stairs. She gave a few turns to the handle and threw the door open. The wife was discovered in a dead faint, but evidently still alive. A good many dollars spent in doctor's fees and a present for the landlady to some extent repaired the damages of the husband's experiment, but nothing could repair his eternally damaged reputation for omniscience. In after-days his wife was even occasionally known to hint that he had tried to kill her, and that she was sorry he hadn't succeeded and been duly hanged. A day or two after the occurrence he said to the landlady: "How was it the door wouldn't open on the combination I used?" "Because," she answered, "you must release the lock from one combination before you can set it on another. You men don't know everything, though you generally think you do." A mysterious mind-reading from a touch of the brain A SEVERED HAND A story of love and war A MODERN ELIJAH. The hero of a hotel fire HE WAS A GENTLEMAN A gambler's romance ARMSTRONG'S REVENGE An involuntary suicide-a story of the railroad HIS NATAL STAR A remarkable delusion THE MISER'S HAND Michael Angelo as a matchmaker A NAPOLEON OF LOVE How he won the widow WHAT KILLED HIM? A conundrum A KENTUCKY PRINCESS Harold R. Vynne Richard York One Who Knew Him Anonymous Austyn Granville "M. A." A Hero Worshipper Captain Absolute Mary Hartwell Catherwood The strange facts about an unexplained ghost THE BLACK CROSS A heroic woman's self-sacrifice THE TAVERN IN THE WOODS A thrilling adventure of border life THE WET DUNGEON-STRAW Julian Hawthorne Guy de Maupassant The pathos of the Bowery A BATTLE ON THE BORDER From Wall Street to an outlaw's cabin: a history A COMBINATION LOCK M. Quad Jean Richepin H. Elton Smith W. K. Robertson Le Roy Armstrong Marie Wainwright A humorous incident Sample Copy of this Number sent on receipt of 15 cents. |