At the present time the public mind is so greatly agitated on the subject of horseless vehicles, that an illustration of the perpetual motionist's ideas on the subject is given. Here the weight of the vehicle and its occupants bears upon water in cylinders supported on the wheels. The pressure produced in the water in this way is conveyed by means of pipes to the back of the carriage, where it is employed to push the vehicle along. Such speed the inventor in this case expected to obtain, that, with great forethought, he has provided a "cow-catcher" at the front, by means of which unfortunate persons who inadvertently get in the way are to be gently waived aside. Of course, the larger the number of people carried, the greater the pressure on the water, and hence, in the inventor's mind, so much greater the speed.
[THE STIR OUTSIDE THE CAFÉ ROYAL.]
A STORY OF MISS VAN SNOOP, DETECTIVE.
By Clarence Rook.
Illustrated by Hal Hurst.
Colonel Mathurin was one of the aristocrats of crime; at least Mathurin was the name under which he had accomplished a daring bank robbery in Detroit which had involved the violent death of the manager, though it was generally believed by the police that the Rossiter who was at the bottom of some long firm frauds in Melbourne was none other than Mathurin under another name, and that the designer and chief gainer in a sensational murder case in the Midlands was the same mysterious and ubiquitous personage.
But Mathurin had for some years successfully eluded pursuit; indeed, it was generally known that he was the most desperate among criminals, and was determined never to be taken alive. Moreover, as he invariably worked through subordinates who knew nothing of his whereabouts and were scarcely acquainted with his appearance, the police had but a slender clue to his identity.
As a matter of fact, only two people beyond his immediate associates in crime could have sworn to Mathurin if they had met him face to face. One of them was the Detroit bank manager whom he had shot with his own hand before the eyes of his fiancée. It was through the other that Mathurin was arrested, extradited to the States, and finally made to atone for his life of crime. It all happened in a distressingly commonplace way, so far as the average spectator was concerned. But the story, which I have pieced together from the details supplied—firstly, by a certain detective sergeant whom I met in a tavern hard by Westminster; and secondly, by a certain young woman named Miss Van Snoop—has an element of romance, if you look below the surface.
