Lieutenant Townley heard, trembled, turned white, then stiffened. Von Dee was before him, talking. “Well, Lieutenant,” he said, “do you elect the Black Door?”
“I do not!” the prisoner answered. Von Dee nodded to the guards who led Lieutenant Townley away. A moment later came the report of the firing squad on the drill grounds.
“What did I tell you!” cried Von Dee to his brother. “Lieutenant Townley, one of the bravest, couldn’t face the unknown. He went the usual way.” For several moments he puffed his cigar silently, then: “Birwitz,” he asked suddenly, “do you know what lies beyond the Black Door?”
The younger Von Dee shook his head.
“Freedom,” said Captain Von Dee. “And I’ve never met a man brave enough to take it!”
THE MAN WHO TOLD
By John Cutler
Toward midnight in the smoking-room of the trans-Atlantic liner Howard, the author, held forth on realism and romance. In one of his pauses another of the company broke in:
“Realism,” said the interrupter, “is but the word with which those who can see nothing but the ordinary and humdrum in life try to excuse their blindness to the romances that unfold themselves all about us every day. The last time I heard the doctrine of realism preached was in the home of a wealthy New Yorker who declared that in his life there had never been the least tinge of the unusual or the romantic. He had never fallen in love and never had any adventures. Three days later in the morning he was found seated in a chair on the piazza of his summer home dead from a stab wound through the heart. Three hundred thousand dollars in cash which he had received from the sale of a block of bonds was missing from his office safe where he had placed it the preceding late afternoon because his bank was closed. The only clue found to the murderer was a blood-stained stiletto which was discovered between the Old and the New Testaments in a big family Bible on a high shelf in the library of the murdered man’s summer home. The mystery of the murder was never solved.”
“The plot of a very interesting story,” commented Howard and went on with his monologue. A little later the party broke up. On his way to his stateroom Winton, who had been one of them, dropped in at the wireless room and sent a message.