CHAPTER XIII. THE JUDGE TAKES A HAND.

Clancy did not return to the Red Star Garage that night. He went to a hotel with Jimmie Fortune, and the two of them slept late the next morning, had breakfast at a restaurant at nine o’clock, and, when ten strokes boomed from the courthouse clock, made their way to the garage.

The judge and Rockwell were alone in the office when the two youths entered the place.

“Get out of here, both of you!” shouted Rockwell. “I know that young scalawag, Fortune, and I don’t want him around, on general principles. As for you, Clancy, I have no use for a fellow who can’t be trusted. You didn’t stay in the back room last night, and you didn’t show up here in time for work this morning. That’s what lets you out.”

“Just a minute,” interposed the judge, taking a long wallet from his pocket. “Before Clancy leaves this place, Rockwell, you’d better settle your account with him.” He took the note from the wallet and laid it down on the desk in front of the garage owner. “Give him a check for a thousand dollars,” finished the judge, “and no words about it.”

Rockwell appeared astounded. His startled eyes traveled to the judge and then returned to the note.

“I--I told Clancy I’d take this up in a week or two,” he muttered shiftily.

“You’re going to take it up now,” said Judge Pembroke. “I know you have the money in the bank, and that note is long past due. Be sure and add the interest when you make out the check.”

“You don’t know about this note, judge,” continued Rockwell. “I don’t reckon I owe the money or----”

“Why did you just say you had told Clancy you’d pay it in a week or two, if you questioned the validity of the note?”

“Well, I--I----”

“Don’t hem and haw and side-step with me,” said the judge sternly. “You have been trying to beat young Clancy out of the money. Do you want me to tell your customers how you hired Hibbard to steal that note from Clancy so you could get out of paying it? Would that sound well?”

Rockwell fell back in his chair, limp and dumfounded. His lips moved, but no sound came from them.

“You see,” pursued the judge relentlessly, “that I know what I am talking about. I’ll publish your contemptible methods far and wide if you don’t instantly settle this debt. I’m not here to waste words on you. Write that check!”

With his face ashen and his hands trembling, Rockwell, thoroughly cowed, bent over his desk. Fishing a check book out of a pigeonhole, he opened it, picked up a pen, and did a little figuring on a scratch block. When he wrote the check, it was for one thousand one hundred and twenty dollars.

“There, Clancy,” said the judge, handing the check to Owen. “Now you are square with Rockwell, and need have nothing more to do with him. There is a young fellow in this town who has recently opened a garage. He is square as a die, and I happen to know that you can buy a half interest in his place for that money. Of course,” and the judge smiled, “it isn’t a big place like this, but the business is growing. I’d advise you to buy in with Lafe Wynn.”

“Wynn?” murmured Rockwell. “He’s one of my competitors. I didn’t think, judge, that you’d do anything to help Lafe Wynn.”

“I’ll do everything to help Lafe Wynn,” said Judge Pembroke, getting up from his chair. “Clancy will buy a half interest, give a job to his friend, Jimmie Fortune, and it won’t be many months, Rockwell, until Clancy & Wynn run you out of business. They’ll treat their patrons on the square--and that’s a principle that will help them to grow. Don’t think for a minute,” he added, “that I don’t know how I have been robbed here. I’ve suspected what was going on, and now I’m no longer in doubt. My two cars are going over to the Square-deal Garage--and I guess I know a few more cars that will follow them.”

“You might be easy with me,” whimpered Rockwell, “now that I’ve given Clancy that money.”

“Easy with you for paying an honest debt?” returned the judge contemptuously. “Why, man, if you had your deserts you would be in jail.” He moved toward the door. “Come on, Clancy,” said he, “you and Fortune. We’re through here.”

The judge left the place, Clancy and Fortune trailing along behind him. The two pards were smiling happily, and Fortune was hanging to Clancy’s hand and working his arm up and down like a pump handle.

Rockwell watched them through the dingy window of his office.

“We’ll see about this,” he muttered, between his teeth, shaking his fist. “I’ll break that new firm of Clancy & Wynn. You’re a keen one, Pembroke, but you’ll find that I can go you one better. I--I reckon I shouldn’t have trusted that fellow, Hibbard, after all,” he added, as he turned heavily away from the window.

THE END.

* * * * *

Continuing to follow the fortunes of Owen Clancy, Burt L. Standish has written a cracking good story, which you will find in the next issue of this weekly. It is entitled “Owen Clancy’s Square Deal; or, The Motor Wizard and the Black Thunderbolt.” Owen buys a half interest in Lafe Wynn’s garage and settles down to make good. The _Black Thunderbolt_ is an automobile, and it is “some car.” There are some mighty exciting doings in it, too. The issue in which this story will be found will be out next week, on January 24th. It is No. 78.

HALL OF SHELLS.

An English traveler who has recently returned from Berlin gives an interesting account in one of the local papers of his visit to the new palace of the kaiser, at Potsdam.

There are many things which make the palace interesting to the privileged visitor, not the least among which is the kitchen, which stands in a separate building. Frederick the Great hated the smells of the kitchen and he had that most necessary adjunct to every house moved away from the palace. The eatables were conveyed to the royal dining hall by an underground passage. Emperor William still keeps up the custom of his predecessor.

The dining hall of the palace is small, as palace dining rooms go, and contains some very valuable paintings, but for formal events and even for family affairs, now that the kaiser’s family is getting to be so large, the great marble hall upstairs is used. Three hundred can dine at one time in this hall. Here have gathered nearly all the sovereigns of Europe, and on those occasions huge candles are used for lighting instead of the more modern electric light.

Other rooms of interest are the kaiser’s smoking room, to which some wonderful vases have recently been added, the gift of a visiting Chinese prince. The private palace of the theater holds about 350 persons and the stage is arranged to produce all the latest scenic effects. The kaiser prefers light comedy, and this is the kind of entertainment he gives his guests.

The most interesting apartment in the entire palace, however, is undoubtedly the hall of shells. The room is most beautiful, its walls adorned with thousands of shells of all kinds. They have been arranged deftly in charming patterns, while other shells in grottoes give a wonderful effect when lighted by electricity. It was in this room that Colonel Roosevelt, when ex-president, was entertained by the kaiser. The famous Imperial Christmas tree is set up in this room.

The kaiser has his own railway station at Wildpark, which is only a short distance from the palace.

The Wonderful Adventures of Cap’n Wiley.

Written by Himself. Edited by Burt L. Standish.

INTRODUCTORY.

I was sitting in my den desperately seeking the germ thought for a story when Cap’n Wiley blew in and appropriated the easy-chair.

“Ah, there, old top,” said he. “So I’ve caught you red-handed in your little sanctum sanctotum. What meaneth the distraught look which corregateth thy dome of thought?”

“Cap’n,” said I, “you jar me. I’m thinking.”

“Don’t do it,” he entreated. “You’re taking a frightful chance when you put such a strain on your impoverished gray matter. You don’t have to think to write the sort of souperific stuff you slosh out.”

“Don’t I!” I cried, exasperated. “Well, now, perhaps you think you could write it yourself?”

“No,” he answered cheerfully, “nothing quite as distressing. Now, if I was going to write, I’d hand the yearning public some real littery litterchewer, just for a change. I say, Burt, old sport, I think I’ll try one of your Havana imperfectos, if you have one inconvenient at hand.”

I brought out a box of cigars, and he helped himself to a handful. Then he “borrowed” a match, fired up, and settled back, with a sigh of satisfaction, on the easy-chair.

“Yes,” he murmured, “I think I could do it. I come from an immoderately cultured family. Why, my sister was educated in a female cemetery.”

“You mean a female seminary?”

“No, I don’t; I mean a female cemetery. Why, where else would a young lady learn the dead languages?”

I had no reply to make.

“But,” pursued the marine marvel, “it really wouldn’t be necessary for me to consort to fiction; if I were to write a truthful verbatem history of my own career from the cradle to the Hall of Fame, it would prove so fascinating that the reading public would gobble it up with humidity.”

I slipped him the skeptical smile, which seemed to arouse him to a point of high resentment.

“Say, you give me a cramp!” he exclaimed resentfully. “You think I can’t deliver the goods, hey? Well, I’ll show you, some. You’ve been grafting off me for some time by plaguerizing such little mementos of my chilling adventures as I have chanced to let drop in casual conversation with you, and I’m highly distended over it.

“Now, take it from me, Burt, from this mementous hour you cease to yearn your bread and butter by parisiting on little Walter. I’m going to write my own naughty biography, and I’ll do a job at it that will put your style of bunkoing the reading public strictly on the blink. I have only one fear: what if, on publication of my personal reminoosances, some one should be unfeeling and thoughtless enough to doubt my absolute voracity? That would break my tender heart.

“Nevertheless, I’ll take a chance, remembering, as the poet puts it, that truth must rise triumphant, even though it may seem to be getting walloped groggy. Farewell, Burt. Bide a wee. You’ll gaze on my beaming counterpane no more until I have completed the colossal task I have vowed to undertake. I observe by the beautiful hand-painted culendar above your rosewood desk that it is now the conclusive day of the month of March. I shall begin my labors upon the morrow.”

He was at the door when I laughingly called:

“Don’t forget that to-morrow is the first day of April, cap’n.”

He seared me with a look of scorn, and vanished.

I did not set eyes upon him again for more than two months, but, as he frequently absented himself for more or less protracted periods, I thought nothing of it. When he did turn up again I had quite forgotten about his threat to write his autobiography, and I don’t think I ever mentioned it to him. Some months later he met with that sad and terrible accident which brought his really adventurous life to a tragic termination.

Recently, in looking through a trunk in which were stowed some of the cap’n’s effects, a relative discovered a huge bundle of foolscap paper carefully tied up with ribbons made of cigar bands taken from my own cigars on various visits of Walter to my den. The paper was covered with writing, almost undecipherable in its hasty scrawl, which told that the penman had dashed off every line at fever heat. It proved to be the autobiography, and was given into my hands.

I have edited it with some pains, being at times compelled to use the blue pencil freely, and to tone down in many places the cap’n’s flamboyant style.

BURT L. STANDISH.