Behind locked and barred doors, surrounded by numberless mysterious-looking instruments, sat Curlie Carson. To the right of him was a narrow window. Through that window, a dizzy depth below, lay the city. Its square, flat roofs formed a mammoth checker-board. Between the squares criss-crossed the narrow black streets. Like a white chalk-line, drawn by a careless child, the river wound its crooked way across this checker-board.

"Let's get a breath of fresh air." Bruce Manning yawned and stretched, then slid off his high stool at the bookkeeping desk. Barney Menter followed his example.

Lucile Tucker stirred in her berth, opened her eyes drowsily, then half-framed a thought into a whispered: "What was that?" The next instant she sat bolt upright. She had heard it again, this time not in a dream. It was a faint rat-tat-tat, with a hollow sound to it as if beaten on the head of a barrel.

In the center of the "big top," which sheltered the mammoth three-ring circus, brass horns blared to the rhythmic beat of a huge bass drum. Eight trained elephants, giant actors of the sawdust ring, patiently stood in line, awaiting the command to make way for the tumblers, trapeze performers, bareback riders and the queen of the circus.

When considering the manuscript of "The Blue Envelope" my publishers wrote me asking that I offer some sort of proof that the experiences of Marian and Lucile might really have happened to two girls so situated. My answer ran somewhat as follows:

In a cabin far up the side of Pine Mountain, within ten paces of the murmuring waters of Ages Creek, there stood an old, two roomed log cabin. In one room of that cabin sat a girl. She was a large, strong girl, with the glow of ruddy health on her cheeks. Her dress, though simple, displayed a taste too often missing in the Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky, and one might have guessed that she was from outside the mountains.

Starting back with a suppressed exclamation of surprise on her lips, Lucile Tucker stared in mystification and amazement. What was this ghost-like apparition that had appeared at the entrance to the long dark passage-way? A young woman's face, a face of beauty and refinement, surrounded by a perfect circle of white. In the almost complete darkness of the place, that was all Lucile could see. And such a place for such a face-the far corner of the third floor of one of the largest department stores in the world. At that very moment, from somewhere out of the darkness, came the slow, deep,...

Marian Norton started, took one step backward, then stood staring. Startled by this sudden action, the spotted reindeer behind her lunged backward to blunder into the brown one that followed him, and this one was in turn thrown against a white one that followed the two. This set all three of them into such a general mix-up that it was a full minute before the girl could get them quieted and could again allow her eyes to seek the object of her alarm.

As Johnny Thompson stood in the dark doorway of the gray stone court-yard he shivered. He was not cold, though this was Siberia-Vladivostok-and a late winter night. But he was excited.

It was that mystic hour when witches are abroad in the land: one o'clock in the morning. The vast auditorium of the Civic Opera House was a well of darkness and silence. Had you looked in upon this scene at this eerie hour you would most certainly have said, "There is no one here. This grandest of all auditoriums is deserted." But you would have been mistaken.