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Welcome to today's triple Z..... The triple Z podcast is a daily program that you can use to help you fall asleep each night. Just turn down the volume, lay back, relax, and enjoy as you fall asleep.
"The Ghost Breaker" is a play written by Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard, which was first performed in 1909. It was later adapted into a silent film in 1914 and a talkie film in 1922. The play is a mix of comedy, romance, and supernatural elements, set in a haunted mansion in Cuba.

The story revolves around a young man named Warren Jarvis, who finds himself stranded in a decrepit old mansion on a stormy night. He soon discovers that the mansion is haunted by ghosts and supernatural occurrences. Alongside him is a courageous and resourceful woman named Hope Desmond, who is also trapped in the mansion. Together, they try to unravel the mysteries surrounding the ghosts and find a way to escape.
"The Ghost Breaker" is known for its blend of comedic and eerie elements, providing a thrilling and entertaining experience for audiences. It explores themes of bravery, love, and the supernatural, creating an engaging story within the haunted setting of the mansion.
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Chapter One
JARVIS OF KENTUCKY

Down the winding roadway came the thunder of hoofbeats!
As the two horsemen approached through the deepening twilight a sobbing negro woman peered timidly through the doorway of the old Southern manor house. There was a call from within.
"Put out this light, Mandy," were the words of the weak voice. "Hurry, Mandy. Maybe it's the Marcums coming back."
"Yas, Cunnel; yassir." She obediently retreated, and the dim light within was suddenly extinguished.
The two riders turned in from the thoroughfare, speeding past the half-swung gate up the drive toward the broad portico. The foremost slid from his saddle before his horse had come to a stop.
"Hold her, Rusty!" And then he leaped up the steps, to dash into the dark entry.
"Who is it? Stop!"
There was no weakness of spirit in the tremulous tones from the room within.
"Dad! dad! I've come!"
"Oh, my boy! You're just in time," and the speech ended in a sigh which sent a thrill of horror through the newcomer. "Just ... in ... time!"
"Lawd be praised, Marse Warren," sobbed the negress, as she sank to her knees before the table, where she fumbled with the lamp.
"Light the lamp ... why, it's Mandy!" and the young man ran a nervous hand across his forehead as the wick caught the flame. "Dad! What's the trouble? Where's mother? Why were the lights all out?"
In the corner of the room, on an antique "settle," was stretched the form of old Colonel Jarvis of Meadow Green.
"It's the end, Warren. I stood off Yankee charges and artillery, but a sneaking hound from the hills has put the finish on it all--and sent it in a bullet through my back, without giving me the chance to fight back, as the Yanks did."
Warren Jarvis dropped to his knees beside his father. His pleasant, youthful face was drawn to mummy-like wanness. His eyes glowed with curious intensity, as they devoured the beloved features of the old man. The rays from the oil lamp cast a melancholy glow over the furniture of a bygone society, in this characteristic parlor of an old Southern mansion. But their effect upon the ghastly features of Colonel Henderson Jarvis presaged only too well the tragedy which was to come.
The aged man raised a weak arm, to encircle the shoulders of his son. His eyes closed in exhaustion, and for a full moment the lips moved without the emanation of a word.
Warren Jarvis turned toward the panic-stricken Mandy.
"Quick! What is the trouble? Where is mother? Speak up, Mandy.... I've come all the way from New York in answer to father's telegram. What's the trouble?"
Mandy became more disconsolate, and, with the hysterical sorrow of a Southern family servant, the more incapable of expression.
"Warren ... Warren, my boy!" were the words which at last came from the white lips of his father. "I am going to leave you soon.... I kept up until you arrived, for I must give the honor of the family into your keeping, before it is all over.... Are you prepared to take it up where I stand now?"
The young man nodded. He beckoned to the servant woman, with an eloquent pantomimic command, to bring his sire a drink. The girl silently obeyed, leaving the room for the moment.
"Father, I've come back from the East to do anything, everything. Tell me--what happened, and where is mother? I am frantic!" His shoulders shook as though from a chill. His face was close to his father's, as the colonel's gray eyes opened upon him.
"Your mother passed away last night--it was too much for her poor weak, aching heart, Warren," and his voice sank again to a whisper, as he added, "Your first duty will be to lay us away together, and then to avenge this double murder."
Warren Jarvis lost his worldly-wise self-control, acquired through the adventurous years since he had journeyed forth from the quaint old Kentucky home. A sob broke from his lips, and his face sank on the arm of the old aristocrat,-he was instinctively boyish in his grief, returning once more to the shelter of that paternal shoulder.
Mandy had returned with a glass of stimulant, which she held to the colonel's lips. The draught refreshed him immensely. He gently patted the shoulders of his son, and continued with firmer tones:
"There, Warren boy, pull yourself together. The doctor will be along in his buggy soon. He dressed my wound, two days ago, and he sat with your dear mother ever since she received the shock of the shooting. I sent the Marlowe girls back to their house just an hour ago to rest, because they were worn out.... Everyone has been good and tried to help, but it is no use.... Leave us alone, Mandy."
The woman stepped unsteadily through the door, her hands covering her twitching face. There she bumped into a fat, coal-black darky, he who had accompanied the son on the long ride. She drew him into the shelter of the corridor, leaving father and son together for the final confidences.
"But, father, it was all so sudden? Are you comfortable now? Where is your wound?"

Warren rose more upright on his knees. He now observed the swathings about the elder's breast, beneath the crumpled soft shirt. He caressed the shattered frame with affectionate simplicity.
"I must speak quickly, Warren, for although I suffer no more pain, Dr. Grayson told me the truth--my strength is going every hour. Your mother had been in poor health, and I had ridden down to the village to see the doctor, for a tonic for her. On the way out again, I passed Henley's poolroom, where the cheap gamblers are still running their crooked betting on the Louisville and Lexington races. Jim Marcum crossed from the front of the saloon, and I had to rein in quickly to keep from running him down. He looked up at me, with his hand on his hip. 'Trying the same old trick on me that you did with my brother Ed?' he called. I had nothing to say to Jim Marcum--you know, Warren, that old feud was over these thirty years, as far as I was concerned. I looked him in the eye, and he dropped his gaze, like a wolf which daren't stare back at you. Then I rode on. As I turned the corner, past the little church, I heard a shot and tumbled forward in the saddle."
Warren's hands clenched until the nails cut his palms.
"The cowardly hound!" he muttered.
"Just as my father was shot by Marcum's father, right after the War--in the back, Warren. The horse knew enough to stop, and I rolled down to the ground. Dr. Grayson ran down the street, carried me into the church vestibule, and dressed my back. They wanted to keep me in the parson's house--but I told them to bring me on home, for I wanted to be near your mother. It was a mistake ... a grave mistake. For when they brought me back in the doctor's buggy and called her to the portico, she fainted, and never regained consciousness. That's all, Warren. The end came last night for her--to-night I will join her."
He opened his eyes with ghastly intensity of expression. Then, to the surprise of the younger man, he half raised himself on his elbow.
"Warren!" and the tones were almost shrill, "you must get Jim Marcum if it's the last act of your life. He broke the feud law when he killed a woman, as he did with the death of your mother. My dying command is that you end this old fight between our families: he is the last of his line, and you the last of yours. The feud began nearly eighty years ago. It is a different world then in that old Kentucky. I have tried to live upright, God-fearing, and had supposed that time would efface the old hatred. At least I ignored it. But Jim Marcum never forgot that your Uncle Warren had killed his father in that stand-up battle in the old tobacco warehouse; it is the curse of the Blue Grass State, this feud law. But you must carry out the vengeance, Warren. When you scotch that snake, there will be no more."
"Didn't they try to get Marcum, dad?" asked Warren slowly, trying to realize it all.
"No. He disappeared--helped by some of those touts and gamblers. They say he has gone to the mountains. But you follow him, after ... after I...." He sank back again, groaning. "God bless you, boy. When you end this bitter debt, you will have done everything in the world I ever wanted,-what a fine son you have been through all the years!"
Warren rose to his feet, and with hands clasped tensely behind him walked to the window. He heard a sound of buggy wheels and the trotting of a horse; it neared the house.
"It must be the doctor, dad. I'm glad he is here again." He turned about to look at the clear-cut face. He was horror-stricken: the eyes were closed, the hand had dropped limply, and already the fine firm mouth had opened weakly, with a piteous weakness. He rushed forward, dropping again by the side of the couch.
A step behind him did not interrupt the soft pleadings of the tearful voice.
"Dad, dad! Won't you speak to me? You must hold out. The doctor has come. Dad, old daddie mine. Speak! Speak!"
The eyes opened, but there was no expression in them. The mouth closed convulsively, and as he leaned close he heard the last message: "God bless you, boy!... Take ... care ... of ... yourself."
Warren's face was buried on the bosom as it ceased to breathe. A kindly touch on his shoulder brought him to a knowledge of the doctor's presence.
"It's so good that you arrived in time, Warren," was the soft-voiced comment. "Your father passed away happy, I know--he had held himself to this life by a marvelous will-power until you came. Steady yourself now."
The doctor knelt by the couch and, with the manly tenderness of an old family friend, crossed the tired patrician hands above that valiant heart.
Warren Jarvis answered not. He walked toward the window again. He peered out into the great, black, miserable, lonely void stretching away toward the southeast. In those distant hills, beyond his vision but familiar as the landmarks of his boyhood, he knew the cowardly assassin of his parents was exulting over the cruel success.

Not a tear came to his relief. His pleasant face hardened to the rigidity of a stone image. The sinews of his athletic frame thrilled with a new emotion--the feud hatred inherited through generations of Kentucky fighters. He would have gladly given his own life for the sublime pleasure of throttling with his bare hands the scoundrel who had wiped out all that was fine and sweet in his life.
Behind him the doctor gave whispered orders to Mandy and two tearful women neighbors who had quietly slipped into the house. Warren did not notice them in his abstraction; they respected his suffering by leaving the room without a greeting.
As he stood there the soft spring breeze fluttered the curtains of the broad parlor windows, bearing in the fragrance of the vines on the portico outside. It was all so silent and different from the brilliant social life he had left behind in New York. Warren's whole life seemed to flit past him, as he stood there now, with the impersonality of a kaleidoscope.
He remembered the early years on this beautiful Blue Grass estate of his father's ... the romantic boyhood of the South, enlivened by horseback rides, hunting trips, boating, fishing--those elemental country sports so sadly lacking in the life of the city youth, ... the faithful, admiring negro servants to whom young "Marse Warren" had been a veritable Sir Galahad--the flower of the neighborhood chivalry. Indeed, in this portion of the States still glows the tradition of the ancient knighthood: the gallantry to women, the reverence for family honor, the bravery in men, the loyalty to neighborhood, commonwealth, and nation,-in verity, the spirit of ideal citizenship.
Warren saw once more the gentle face of his mother, as she worked in her old-fashioned garden of rosemary, hollyhocks, larkspur, iris, rue, ... heard the soft dialect of quaint old ladies gossiping on the broad, shaded portico ... listened again to the laughter of neighboring judges, colonels, majors--his father's old cronies--as they good-naturedly wrangled and bantered over the battles of the War, the merits of their respective thoroughbreds, or the correct manner in which to concoct that nectarian classic of the Southland, the mint julep!
To Warren's retrospection came the vision of his departure for the famous college in the East, the joyful vacation times, and finally his decision to seek adventure far, far to the south--in Brazil, Guatemala, Panama, where he had developed his own executive caliber as a commander of men, in the great construction work on the Big Ditch.... Then came the sorrowful day when he had returned from his travels, to behold the ravages of time on his mother's aging face and his father's stooping shoulders. Even the servants were changed, and it had been to keep a closer bond with the dear old estate that he had taken faithful Rusty Snow as his manservant when he went on to New York again to pursue his profession.
Warren's mind burrowed in the memories of the feudism of the countryside, the sole blot on its simple yet aristocratic modes. He remembered the fragmentary stories of the ancient Marcum-Jarvis quarrel ... this had cost the lives of men for three generations, in an equity of vengeful settlement based strictly on the Mosaic law of "an eye for an eye--a tooth for a tooth." The Marcum family fortunes had been dissipated, those of the Jarvis clan ascending--yet still the feud continued, until the men of both families had paid for the bitterness with their lives. Now his father had been the last Jarvis to go--after a lull of many years.
The sweetness of the old memories was swept by the maelstrom of hate which surged through his heart. As a boy he hardly knew the meaning of the word--the grim looks of the kinsmen, the tear-stained face of his mother, had been little explanation--little had been said. But now the iron of vengeance had entered his soul; and he turned about suddenly, facing the body of the colonel.
Advancing toward the settle, he knelt by the body, even as a knight of old, to take his vows. He raised his clenched right hand.
"Father! I swear by my love for you and my mother that I will wipe out the Marcums, cost what it may. I will devote my life to settling the score Jim Marcum has made. I swear it to you, father!"
It seemed to him as though a faint smile of approbation flitted across the face despite the seal of the Great Calm. Even as he knelt there, his quick brain began to lay the plans--and then ... then he remembered what he must see upstairs! His brief moments in the old home had been so absorbed by the dying words of his sire, by the engulfing flame of hate which had burned away all the sweetness of the environment, that he had selfishly forgotten everything but his own grief.
He staggered to his feet and walked slowly from the room.

Outside the door, on an old-fashioned chair in the long corridor running from portico to kitchen, he found faithful Rusty, sobbing with his face in his hands.
"Oh, Marse Warren! Oh, Marse Warren!"
"Rusty, call Mandy," was the simple answer.
Rusty hastened to obey. The woman was assisting the two neighbors in some preparations on the floor above. She came down the stairs tremulously, catching his outstretched hand and kissing it impetuously.
"Where is she, Mandy?" he asked, in a stifled voice.
Mandy spoke not, but ascended the stairway, as Warren followed with bowed head. Each broad step seemed steeper than the one below. At last he raised his eyes before the doorway of his parents' bedroom. Mandy stepped aside.
Within, on a little mahogany sewing-table, burned a dozen candles in his great-grandmother's Colonial candelabra. He turned unsteadily to the right, and saw her!
"O mother, mother!..."
That was all.

Chapter 2
THE BLIND PURSUIT

The sad days immediately following the double funeral were so filled with visits from relatives and old friends, legal transactions necessary for the transfer of the estate of the old colonel, a successful tobacco factor in his time, and a hundred and one other engrossments, that in the months afterward they were hazy as an unpleasant dream.
With the newly acquired calm which surprised him, Warren Jarvis left no stone unturned to ascertain, with quiet inquiries, the location of Jim Marcum.
There was no clew. The man had mounted a horse on the day of the shooting, to disappear down the dusty Kentucky road, leaving the village far behind and ignoring the possible escape by railroad. His simplicity was cunning, for the blue hills offered more avenues of disappearance than the iron roadbed of the local transportation.
Equally cunning, however, was his determined pursuer. Warren Jarvis, after burying his parents, and making the conventional round of respectful ceremonies, started again for his neglected business in New York. Here he planned to adjust his affairs, then to return to the mountain country, by a roundabout route, to begin his man-hunt, incognito and unsuspected.
"I'll cover every mountain trail, every valley path until I find Jim Marcum," he confided to Major Selby, his father's closest friend, as they stood on the train platform waiting for the final minute of departure. "When it happens I will let you know, Major. Until that time, good-by, and God bless you."
The train had come, and unaccompanied by Rusty Snow this time, Jarvis clambered up the steps to wave to the old Kentuckian. As the major turned away, he stroked his snowy mustache with a shrewd twinkle in his blue eyes, to soliloquize:
"I calculate the boy will make his father proud. The old feud blood runs in the Jarvis veins, and even the North can't spoil him. I wonder why Rusty didn't go along--that darky will be broken-hearted to be left behind on the old place."
But Rusty knew very well why he had been left behind!
And with all his jolly laughter, plump complacency, and characteristic African simplicity, Rusty Snow possessed an inherent faculty of subtle concentration which had served the family of Jarvis since the days when he had been a slave pickanninny.
A week or more he spent in the peaceful Southern hamlet of Meadow Green, imbibing gin and ginger "pop" in the saloons frequented by those walking bureaus of information, the negro barbers. He consorted with darky jockeys and horse-trainers--this was the center of the great thoroughbred breeding district--and everywhere he went, with glistening smiles, laughing eyes, and infectious amiability, he bore one query in his mind. Where was Jim Marcum?
The query seemed unanswerable.
Rusty confided his failure to Major Selby, who in turn sent a letter to Warren Jarvis at his New York club. There the latter was hastening his preparations for the great trek through the mountains. Warren had closed his office, where, profiting by his experiences in South and Central America, he had maintained a successful exporting agency: all his affairs were in hand, and that hand closed. All his outstanding investments had been hypothecated, with shrewd advantage. At last he was ready, certain that should he lose his life in the vengeful venture, his kinsfolk would be taken care of, without legal complications: with all his inherited romanticism, Jarvis of Kentucky was a man of astuteness.
He was sitting in the grill of his club, brooding over a solitary glass, unmindful of the friendly chatter of the members about him, when a uniformed page brought him a yellow envelope. He tore open the telegram, sensing important news. It was only from Meadow Green that he received his club mail. And it was from Louisville that the message came. It was simple, and yet it left him bewildered.
"WARREN JARVIS, Export Club, N.Y.
Coming with Marcum. Buy supplies.
RUSTY."

At first Warren smiled, then he swore, as only a chivalrous Southron can! Why should Rusty be coming with Marcum? He could not have arrested or imprisoned him. What were the supplies? Evidently this was some attempt at code which was beyond his ability to guess.
He spent the night and the next day in a perplexed mood.
A wire sent to Major Selby, inquiring as to the whereabouts of the negro, brought back the simple reply, "Missing--no one knows."
Toward evening, after much perturbation, Warren decided upon a measure of preparedness for whatever might happen. He had given up his bachelor quarters on Madison Avenue two mornings previous, in expectation of the long trip through Kentucky. One night he had spent at his club. Yet, if Marcum were coming to New York, it were best to be located in some place where he could cover his own identity without attracting attention. Such a place would naturally be a large hotel. Accordingly he registered at the Hotel Belmont under an alias. This was close to the Grand Central Station--handy for a quick departure from town, if such were necessary.
Jarvis packed two suitcases with his modest needs for the Southern trip, and donned his evening clothes for dinner at the club. Several telephone calls convinced him that Rusty had not made an appearance as yet.
When he reached the club, the big building was swarming with men of his acquaintance, yet he seemed curiously apart from them. Since his father's murder and the death of his mother, he had proceeded under what engineers call "forced draught." His nerves, like iron, had been drawn tight--to the snapping point: only some great climax of relief would disentangle the tense feelings which he now controlled with external calmness, and sub-surface tremors which warned him of an approaching catastrophe.
For an hour he sat brooding in the quiet library of the club. He had tried to eat; but all the artistry of the famous French chef could not conjure up an appetite. Men passed by him, glancing curiously at the usually jovial companion; the twisted, drawn expression surprised them. He tried to read a magazine; the printed lines "pied" themselves before his twitching eyes, blurring into a vision of that last bitter scene in the room with his dying father. And even the vision had faded now, to dissolve into one dull mass of color--a wavering, throbbing field of red!
"Mr. Warren Jarvis! Mr. Warren Jarvis!"
The page stood by the library door, calling. He sprang to his feet, brought back to a consciousness of the present with galvanic suddenness. He turned, bewildered for an instant, and then walked slowly toward the boy.
"What is it?" he asked.
"A man wants to see you, sir, down at the front door. A colored man...."
Jarvis waited for no more. He hurried down the oaken stairway, out through the vestibule, and hatless, breathless--relieved to a great extent from his tension--he caught the hand of faithful Rusty Snow.
"Lawd be praised!" murmured that jubilant henchman. "I done thought he might beat me to it!"
"What do you mean, Rusty? Why didn't you come inside?"
"Dat cop at de door wouldn't let no darky come in. I want to talk to you right away, Marse Warren. Right away quick."
Jarvis turned about, with a direction to await him.
He hurried to the coat-room, caught up his light overcoat and hat, and rushed out through the door. Rusty helped him into the garment, with fingers tremulous with joy at the renewal of this familiar and loving task.
"Come, we'll go down the side street. I've given up my apartment, and there's no place to talk but the sidewalk. What did your telegram mean, Rusty?"
"Well, sah, jest what it said. I done followed dat man all de way from Meadow Green to de Manhattan Hotel, dat's what it mean."
Jarvis stopped and, with eyes dilating, looked Rusty full in the face.
"Jim Marcum in New York? What can he be doing here?"
Rusty chuckled.
"Me--oh--my, boss, but dat's jest what I thought at fust. But now I knows. I spent all my time an' all de money I could beg offen de major tryin' to snoop aroun' dem gin-mills down home to l'arn. An' it wasn't ontel yestiddy afternoon dat I seen dis yere Marcum come galloping down on hossback, wid some poh white trash moonshiner ridin' wid 'im. Dey goes right to de depoh an' jumps offen de hosses. I wuz in Eph Black's saloon, but dar ain't nuffin missin' me. I walks over to de station agent's winder an' I sees dis Marcum wid a roll o' bills dat would choke a hoss. He buys a ticket, an' den he goes down de patform. I axes Hen Barrows, de agent, where dat man goin'. He says Noo York. Den I is satisfied. I jest walks down de track to de junction, by de water tank."
"Hurry up, Rusty. What about Marcum?" was Warren's impatient interjection.

"Wall, I sees dis yere man with 'im watchin' de platform--an' wen de train pull in, inter it Marcum goes. She alluz slows up at de sidin'-cause dere's a junction, an' so I jumps 'er, at de hind platform. Well, Marse Warren, dat man he's on de train. It's only day coaches ontel we gets to Lueyville, an' I walks from de Jim Crow car through de train just onct. Dis Marcum he don't recollect me,-I'm just a darky to him. But I sees 'im a-workin' in his seat wid som'pin dat shows he recollects you, sah."
"What was that, Rusty?"
"He was a-oilin' a gun--an' you know who dat gun is for. He'll be a-lookin' for you, Marse Warren."
"What did you do then? How did you manage to stay on the train?"
"Oh, I jest stuck dere, Marse Warren. Dis nigger has had enough 'sperience in dis world to know dat he spends all he has w'en he has it. So de day you left I takes de money you gives me for a railroad ticket, an' buys one an' puts it inside my pocket. So, I was ready for dis Marcum. I follows 'im to Lueyville, whar I telegram to you, and keeps right on 'is trail w'en he changes cars for Cincinnati. He keeps on comin' to Noo York, an' I am in de day coach all dat time. Den I follows right to de Manhattan Hotel. He ain't nebber been in Noo York befoh, because he walks all de way to de hotel instid o' takin' a taxicab. Dat man ain't no quality!"
Warren was lost in thought. He stopped at the next corner.
"Listen, Rusty. You did good work. I wanted to have you find him, and instead he came right to me. Now, we must end this whole thing to-night." For an instant the Kentuckian was nonplused, and instinctively turned to the old family servant with that curious trust which the native Southerner instinctively places in the "family" negro. "What shall I do now, Rusty?"
Rusty's usually big eyes narrowed to slits in which the whites were hardly visible.
"Marse Warren, jest wait for dat man. He's here, you knows it, for your life. Ef you cain't git him, I can. I got mah razor an' dat's a better weepon dan any ole gun. You jest wait--an' let me do de rest."
Warren turned and started back toward the club.
"I'll be waiting at the Export Club, Rusty. If he hunts up my address on Madison Avenue, the hall boy will send him there. If he wants to see me, he already has my address--and everyone in Meadow Green knows the club as my address. Now, you go up to the rooms I have taken in the Belmont Hotel. The room number is 417-you just wait there until you hear from me. What did you mean by 'supplies' in that telegram, Rusty?"
The darky chuckled.
"Lawsee, Marse Warren, I knows dat you is a reg'lar Noo Yorker by dis time and don't carry de supplies of a gentlemen. I mean a .38-caliber! Has you got one?"
Warren smiled for the first time since their surprising meeting.
"No, I guess I have become a victim of New York. The worst weapon I have on me, Rusty, is a fountain pen--and I'm afraid Jim Marcum couldn't read the ammunition!"
Rusty looked slyly about him. They were in a dark spot on Fifth Avenue, the shop fronts deserted and not a pedestrian within a block. The darky slipped his hand into his pocket, and surreptitiously handed his master a heavy, portentous automatic which would have sent joy into the heart of a Texas Ranger. There was a vibration of honest pride in his voice as he explained:
"Dere, Marse Warren. I went widout po'k chops an' chicken all de way to Noo York jest to lay in supplies while I was waitin' betwixt trains at Lueyville! I 'lowed you all 'd be too wrapped up in yoh troubles ter bother about dis, an' I recomembered dis here Noo York Sullivan Law w'ich makes it a crime fer a decent citerzen ter carry a gun, so dat the burglars kin work in peace. Take it, Marse Warren, an' plant every seed in de right place!"
The tears came into the eyes of the Kentuckian.
"Rusty, you're a jewel!"
"Yassir, in a ebony settin'! But, now, please git back to dat club place, an' wait fer Jim Marcum. Dat man's mind was on his bizness when I seen him in de smokin' cyar, an' he ain't thinkin' of nothin' else!"
They strolled down toward the club again. Warren gave a few parting directions and handed Rusty a roll of bills for emergency.
"Remember, Rusty, when you hear from me by any message at all, you're to come at once,-I'll just mention my first name. I'm registered at the Belmont as John Kelly of New Orleans--I couldn't hide my Southern accent. Tell them you're my valet, and show the key--I can trust you to get up to the room. If I call for you, pay the bill from that change, and don't let the grass grow under those number twelves!"
Rusty smirked happily.
"Hallelujah, Marse Warren, you'se jokin' agin--de fightin' blood of de Jarvises is bilin'-I knows de signs. Why, Marse Warren, I recollects yoh father when...."
But his master's face changed.
"Not now, Rusty. I'm thinking too much about my father. No more talk for either of us. Just action."

He turned into the side street toward the Export Club. Rusty--fresh from Kentucky psychology--doffed his cap and disappeared as Warren entered the Grecian portal.
Inside the clubhouse he found a letter awaiting him. It was scrawled in the bold, ungrammared style which might have been expected. He read it standing tensely by the doorway, as dozens of men walked in and out, little dreaming of the tragedy attached to that casual fragment of white note-paper. It was written on the stationery of the Hotel Manhattan--diagonally across the street from the hostelry where Warren had inadvertently registered for his brief stay in the city.
He read the words again and again.
"DEAR JARVIS; export Club, new York.
am visiting in New York and would like to see you and call off our kwarrel youre fathers death was misunderstandin and were last of our families will be at Above hotel all evenin and tomorrow come Around when you get chance and shake hands i Will prove I aint meant no harm.
Friend JIM MARCUM."
The Kentuckian crumpled the note in his hand, and then walked toward the fireplace of the grill. It had been weeks since any logs had been burned there, but the flakes of soot still clung to the stone casement. Warren struck a match, and a curious smile illumined his face as he ignited the paper, holding its flaming fabric between his fingers until the last half-inch had burned. He dropped the tiny fragment after lighting his cigar with its flame.
One of his friends, a Brazilian coffee merchant, addressed him in the native tongue, which Warren spoke as fluently as English.
"Ah, se�or, you care not for your letter?"
"Oh, it's just a little invitation to a party to-night," laughed Jarvis of Kentucky. "If anyone found it on my person, he might think I kept late hours and associated with bad company. Let us have a drink to our friendship in the club, for I may take a long journey to-night, and never see you again!"