ACCORDING TO CODE

BY KATHERINE MAYO

FIRST SERGEANT STOUT of A Troop becomes his name like any hero of English ballad. First Sergeant Stout is towering tall, and broad and sinewy in proportion. There is not a meagre thing about him, from his heart and his smile to the grip of his hand, whether in strangle-hold or in greeting. Just as he stands, he might have roamed the woods with Robin Hood, or fought on the field of Crecy in the morning of the world.

But First Sergeant Stout has one peculiarity which in the morning of the world could never have marked him. Sometimes, when he turns his head to right or to left, his head sticks fast that way until he takes it between his two hands and lifts it back again; and the reason is that he carries a bullet close to his spinal cord, lodged between the first and second vertebræ.

Once on a time, Sergeant Stout had charge of a substation in the town of Unionville, County Fayette. And among those days came a night when, at exactly a quarter past ten o'clock, the sub-station telephone rang determinedly.

There was nothing novel in this, since the sub-station telephone was always determinedly ringing, day and night, to the tune of somebody's troubles. But this time the thing was vicariously expressed; or, you might call it, feebly conglomerate.

The constable of the village of Republic held the wire. He complained that one Charles Erhart, drunken and violent, had beaten his wife, had driven her and their children out of doors, and was now intrenched in the house, with the black flag flying.

"She's given me a warrant to arrest the man, but I can't do it," said the constable. "He'll shoot me if I try. So I thought some of you fellers might like to come over and tackle him.”

The sergeant looked at his watch. "The trolley leaves in fifteen minutes," said he. "I'll be up on that.” The trolley left Unionville at half after ten, reaching Republic, the end of the line, just one hour later.

"Last run for the night," the motorman remarked as they sighted the terminus.

"I know. And I've only about half an hour's business to do here. Then I'd like to get back. Do you think you could wait?"

"Sure," said motorman and conductor together. "Glad to do it for you, sergeant."

Hovering in the middle of the road, at the "'s-far- 'swe-go" point, hung the constable — a little man, nervous and deprecatory. Religious pedagogy would have been more in his line than the enforcement of law. Now he was depressed by a threatened lumbago, and by the abnormal hours that his duty was laying upon him. Also he was worried by the present disturbance in his bailiwick, and therefore sincerely relieved to see an officer of the State Police.

"He's a bad one, that Charlie Erhart, at the best of times. And when he's drunk he's awful. I could n't. pretend to handle him- it would n't be safe. Like's

not he'd hurt me. But you As if struck by a new thought, the constable suddenly stopped in his tracks to turn and stare at the sergeant. "Why, you—why, I thought you'd bring a squad!"

"To arrest one man?" the sergeant inquired gravely. "Well, you see we're rather busy just now, so we have to spread ourselves out."

They were walking rapidly through the midnight streets, turning corners, here and again, into darker and narrower quarters. The ring of their steps stood out upon the silence with a lone and chiseled clarity, as though all the rest of the world had fled to the moon. Yet, to the constable's twittering mind that very silence teemed with a horrible imminence. The blackness in each succeeding alley seemed coiled to leap at him. He dared neither to face it nor to leave it at his back.

His gait began to slacken, to falter. At last he stopped. "I guess I'll leave you here." He flung out the words in a heap, as if to smother his scruples. — "You just go on down the street, then take the second turn to the left, and the house is on the far side third from the corner. You can't miss it. And my lumbago's coming on so fast I guess I'll have to get home to bed. Glad you came, anyway. Good-night to you."

"Wait a moment," said the sergeant. "If you are not coming along, I want to see the woman before I go farther."

The constable indicated the tenement house in which the fugitive family had taken refuge. Then he whisked around, like a rabbit afraid of being caught by its long ears, and vanished into the dark.

Mrs. Erhart, nursing a swollen eye and a cut cheek,

clutching a moaning baby in her arms and with a cluster of half-clad, half-starved, wholly frightened and miserable children shivering about her, told her tale without reserve. The single little lamp in the room, by its wretched light, showed her battered face in tragic planes. Her voice was hoarse, hard, monotonous. She had no more hope no more illusion no more shame.

"He has tried to kill us all, me and the children often. He does n't get helpless drunk. He gets mad drunk. Some day he will kill us, I guess. There's nought to prevent him. Do I want him arrested? Yes, sir, I do that! He's tried to take our lives this very night. And he's keeping us out of all the home we've got· all the home we've got. But" — and she looked up with a sudden strange flicker of feeling akin to pride — “I reckon he'll kill you if you try to touch him, big as you are. He sure will! Erhart's a terror, he is! And to-day he's cut loose, for a fact."

Armed now with an indisputable justification for entering the house, Sergeant Stout went ahead with his errand. The place, when he found it, proved to have a narrow passageway running from the street to its back door.

Sergeant Stout, taking the passageway, walked quietly round to the back door and knocked. "Who's there?"

"State Police."

"You don't get in!"

The voice was loose, flat, blaring - a foolish, violent voice.

The sergeant set his shoulder against the door. It groaned, creaked, splintered, gave way, opening directly

into the kitchen. Confusion filled the place. Broken furniture, smashed dishes, messes of scattered food, made in the smudgy lamp's dim light a scene to be grasped at a glance. But there was no time to look about. Directly at hand, half-crouching, lurching sidewise for the spring of attack, lowered a big, evil-visaged hulk of a man. His eyes were red, inflamed with rage and drink; his breath came in gusts, like the breath of an angry bull.

"You would, would you! You - bloody-Cossack! I'll learn you to interfere with the rights of an honest laboring man in his home!"

He held his right hand behind him as he spoke. Now he jerked it forward, with its gun.

With a jump the sergeant grabbed him, wrenched the revolver out of his grip, and, though the other struggled with all his brute strength, forced him steadily down to the floor. Then, with practised touch, he made search for further weapons, and was already locking the handcuffs on the wrists of the prostrate prisoner when a voice from beyond made him raise his head.

Opposite the back entrance, on the other side of the kitchen, an open doorway framed the blackness of the front room. That doorway had been empty. But now, around its casement, and to the left as the sergeant faced it, projected a long, dully gleaming bar, barrel of a rifle, while behind, faint against the night within, showed the left hand and the left eye of the

gunman.

the

"You!" he had called, having already brought his rifle to bear. And the sergeant, stooping above his fallen assailant, looked up in quick attention. The