a cow cate ath AT ta ESS DRIEST nen hee ne bP Pee ame wR Palm Dairies Limited Deliveries to all parts of the city 930 North Park Ave. VICTORIA, B.C. Telephone Garden 3232 DOMINION HOTEL Victoria, B.C. Comfertable Rooms Moderate Rates We Operate a Fleet of Modern Cars Service and Satisfaction Guaranteed HILL'S Drive Yourself Cars Phone Garden 4423 721 View Street Victoria, B.C. Drive Over the Malahat STOP for Gas and Refreshments at Scenic Lookout Canada’s Greatest View from Our Observation Platform Vancouver Island Indian Totem Poles, Brace- lets, Baskets and Sweaters. Eskimo carved Walrus and Fossil Ivory. Alaskan Black Dia- mond Jewelry. Myrtlewood from Oregon and Mulga Wood from Australia. ARCTIC STUDIO John D. C. McTavish, Mgr. Established in Dawson in the Days of ‘98 by MORTE H. CRAIG, Artist and Designer 615 Fort St. G 3952 Victoria, B.C. Page Forty-Two departure from his routine, but gave the matter little thought until the third morn- ing came without a sign of Messiter. Then she began to wonder and to worry. A con- siderate lodger like Mr. Messiter would have let her know if he meant to stay away from the house for a number of days. Mrs. Parott talked it over with her hus- band and was going to notify the police. But with masculine logic Mr. Parott pointed out that Mr. Messiter’s rent was paid up; that a single gentleman is entitled to go off on a trip without explanation; and that if their lodger should happen to be indulging in a quiet spree he would be justifiably angered if Mr. Parott had meanwhile notified the police. POLicE NOTIFIED For a few days Mrs. Parott let herself be dissuaded; then she put on her shawl and without consulting her husband went to the police station and told her fears. The police went to Mr. Messiter’s garage to investi- gate. They found it padlocked, apparently by Mr. Messiter; for the lock was one of those that do not spring shut on pressure but have to be locked with a key. The police, too, were inclined to think Mrs. Parott’s fears more feminine than logical; they refused to break the garage door open; and advised Mrs. Parott not to worry about her lodger. Meanwhile, the home office of the Wolf Head Oil Company also wondered what had happened to Messiter that he so sud- denly stopped writing them and in no other way kept in touch. They wrote him; then telegraphed. The mail accumulated in the letter box in the garage door; the telegrams came back as undeliverable. Finally the oil company decided to consider Messiter’s post vacated. A representative was sent in his place, with authority to break into the gar- age and take possession. The agent came to Southampton, found the garage locked and with the aid of a crowbar broke into the place. In the garage, by the side of the delivery truck, lay the body of Vivian Messiter, many days dead. Blood was spattered on the nearest wall and there had been a pool of it about his head where it had fallen on the floor. The skull was battered in, one blow struck from behind, another on the fore- head. The Southampton police looked for some weapon that might be the one which had dealt the blows on that shattered skull. After much searching of the premises they found behind one of the oil drums a hammer with a peculiar nose. Also, it had dried blood on it; a human hair, but no fingerprints. The hair matched Messiter’s. They looked for other clues in the garage, but found none. They searched the dead man’s clothes. There was no money in his pockets. They opened a gold locket, a small, much- rubbed trinket he carried in a secret pocket. In it was a snapshot of a woman in a nurse’s uniform. The police then searched the dead man’s furnished room. They found a large number of letters, all in the same handwriting. There was not a place mentioned, not a date, not a single clue that would lead to some address. And not one of the letters was signed. Only Mrs. Parott’s recollection that all the stamps on the envelopes, as they arrived at her house, were Canadian, gave the Southampton police any indication as to where the letters had been mailed. ROMANCE IN LETTERS The contents of the letters revealed much, but helped the police little. The writer was in love with Messiter and was obviously loved by him. But even in their love letters the two must have used a sort of code; some of the passages, those which approached nearest an abandonment to emotion, were meaningless without the key. It was as if both Messiter and the writer of the letters dared not let themselves go, even in the privacy of their love letters; as if they were afraid of themselves or of some malicious fate that would one day open the door to the hiding place of their love. The code was worked out by some expert in the Southampton police, but it brought them no nearer the identity of the writer. It only let the police read more fully the heart of Messiter. And even as the police were working on the case another communication came, a cable, a frantic inquiry, unsigned, as to the meaning of the long silence on the part of Messiter. Part of the cable was in the code used in the love letters. Messiter’s former wife, his brothers and sisters were found in different parts of Eng- land. They had not heard from Vivian Mes- siter for many months; nor had they a single clue to offer, eager though they were to help run down the murderer. Which brought the Southampton police face to face with defeat in the Messiter case. In the circumstances they called upon Scotland Yard to take charge of the case. Lord Byng had just been appointed head of the famous organization, and it was the first substantial challenge to Scotland Yard under him to show what it could do where other police had failed. To Southampton came a squad of Scot- land Yard men. The fiction version of what has made Scotland Yard celebrated would indicate that it possesses some diabolical cleverness in dealing with criminals and their works; a more true conception would ascribe much of the success of Scotland Yard to an infi- nite capacity for taking pains. The Scotland Yard people went over the same ground as the Southampton police. One squad went to work on the hammer with which the death blow had undoubtedly been dealt. Every hardware store in South- ampton, every manufacturer of hammers THE SHOULDER STRAP