‘The Odd-Nosed Hammer

By JOSEPH GOLLOMB

War Veteran Disappears from Boarding House—Salesman Suspected of
Murder—Fugitive Hides in Gaol While Police Search Vainly—Arrested as He
Steps from Prison—Girl Friend Collapses After Verdict—Brilliant Police Work

SOME PEOPLE seem to attract the tor-
ments of life because they are weak, some
because they are strong, and some appar-
ently because they meet life’s bullying with
a puzzled patient dignity which must enrage
a tyrant. At least that was how Vivian
Messiter met it. He was born and edu-
cated in England, but went to America
soon after graduation, attracted by what he
thought would be a wider choice there of
career and fortune.

He had sensitiveness, but with him it
seemed to be anything but an asset. He had
practical intelligence, but it never brought
him success. He tried ranching in New
Mexico, business in Denver and construc-
tional engineering in New York, without
much satisfaction. Meanwhile he married,
but even that failed and ended in divorce.

He had a daughter who filled his need for ¢

some strong, warm human relation; but she
was killed in an automobile accident.

The Great War came,

hoping for self-forgetting one way or

another. But early in the war he was shot 4
That left him neither 4

through both hips.
a cripple, which might have afforded him a
measure of release from further striving,
nor was he wholly cured, but had to walk
with a cane.

At the age of fifty-seven he found himself
back in England, in Southampton, agent in
that city for the Wolf Head Oil Company.
He had a depot where the oil consigned to
him was kept, and connected with it was
a small garage for his delivery automobile.
Here he spent his forenoons and early after-
noons, meeting whatever customers came.

After work he went to his lodging, a
single small furnished room in a boarding
Ronee in Carlton Road. It was here that he
attended to his business correspondence.

Mrs. Parott, who kept the boarding house,
respected him and felt sorry for him. If ever
a man: lived alone it was Messiter. Not a
soul came to see him; nor did Messiter ever
visit any one outside of business. Letters,
obviously not of a business nature, came
often from America; always in the same
handwriting. Except for this, Messiter
seemed as much alone in the world as if he
were one of life’s orphans.

He never went out for amusement but
spent his evenings alone in his rooms, smok-

OCTOBER, 1938

and Messiter en- AV
listed eagerly in the Canadian infantry, 2

Rewarded

This

ing countless cigarettes and reading.
went on till late in October, 1928.
Then one morning Mrs. Parott went into
his room to make up his bed and found that
it had not been slept in. She did not remem-
ber his coming back to the house the day

Looking out of the window...

before; so she looked for the usual telltale
cigarette butts with which his ashtray was
usually piled by morning. The ashtray was
as clean as Mrs. Parott had left it the morn-
ing before.

Mrs. Parott wondered at her lodger’s

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he saw a small delivery automobile was standing in front of the house.

Page Forty-One