All citizens were registered, the name, address and occupation being duly reported. A full description of the person was added for identification when deeds were drawn up: “Panouthes, aged about forty-five, of middle size, dark complexion and handsome figure, bald, round-faced and straight nosed.”
Perhaps one of the strangest details of the Egyptian penal law was their method of dealing with robbers. All professional thieves sent in their names to the Arch-thief, and always informed him of the goods stolen, giving details. If, therefore, a robbery took place, the victim at once lodged a complaint with this chief of the thieves, stating the nature and value of the missing objects, and the time of the theft. The articles could thus be identified, and after paying one-quarter the value the owner received them back uninjured.
J. K.
An Amazing Novelette Filled With Weird Happenings
The
BODYMASTER
By Harold Ward
Foreword
Perhaps I have been suffering from an hallucination. Possibly during the weary months that I was lost to family and friends I was wandering about the country, my brain in the ferment which afterward developed into the attack of brain fever from which I have just recovered.
Yet the maggots of madness inside my skull could not have created all that I have seen. The proof of my sincerity lies in the fact that within these pages I have confessed complicity in crimes for which the law can hang me if it so desires. I am willing to admit that to the man of science my tale bristles with errors—errors of interpretation, but not of fact—for I am a detective, not a scientist.