Chapter I: May Add That a Guarantee Goes with Each Car--Provisional,

NATURALLY--

AND WE WILL PROVISIONALLY UNDERTAKE TO INFORM YOU OF ANY PROVISIONAL ALTERATIONS--

THAT WE MAY MAKE IN OUR PROVISIONAL DESIGNS IF YOU APPLY TO OUR PROVISIONAL WORKS--

--PROVIDED----NO, SIR, I CANNOT TELL YOU WHERE YOU CAN HIRE A PUSH-BIKE!!!"]

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"THE MYSTERY OF THE YELLOW ROOM."

Gentlemen of the Press having been tactfully requested not to give away this awesome mystery, I am barred by the fastidious sense of honour which distinguishes our profession from spoiling your pleasure in this matter--a course which otherwise I should naturally have preferred.

Not that I have any too clear idea of what it was all about or why an innocent gentleman should be apparently going to be guillotined for it. For there was no question of anyone having been murdered, the only tangible crime before the Court that I could see being the abstraction of some scientific papers. However don't imagine that this vagueness will deprive you of the pleasures of shock. Only don't go thinking about it. Remember _Rosamund_ and her Purple Jar.

I think I am free to tell you that a young journalist possessing (characteristically) "fantastic humour and exuberant gaiety," a famous amateur detective to boot, outwits all the official police, robs the law of its prey and finds a long-lost mother for himself.

If this doesn't excite you sufficiently you can extract fun from subsidiary details. It is always diverting to the unspoilt soul when the principal lady goes to turn up one lamp and the other promptly glows instead; or when, a particularly obvious and commonplace knock assaulting the ear, she exclaims in tragic accents, "There's someone at the door;" or when the detective drags from the bottom of the lake a pair of the driest of dry old boots.

Or, if you are superior to this kind of thing, you can amuse yourself by deducing from the practice before you the famous _Rules for Revolvers_, which, _mutatis mutandis_, are as old as the Aristotelian unities and, for all I (or, probably, you) know to the contrary, were laid down at the same time by the same hand.

_Rule 1._ "All Innocent Characters expecting murderous assault from Particularly Desperate Villains will provide themselves with revolvers. Before retiring for the tragic night they will, grasping the revolver firmly in the right hand, place it carefully (as Professor LEACOCK would direct) on the revolver-stand. The P.D.V. will then know what to do about it. (_Note_: P.D.V.'s do not carry revolvers. They don't need to.)

_Rule 2._ "I.C.'s actually attacking P.D.V.'s will on no account fire, but, advancing stealthily, will offer their pistol-wrist to the enemy, who will at once lock it in a deathly grip. After a brief struggle, swaying this way and that, the P.D.V. will, on the word 'Four,' put on another beard and have the I.C. thrown into prison." And so forth.

I have no serious fault to find with these tactics. On the contrary. But I rather think that in the first Act an incident was introduced (no doubt in the spirit of the little girl's explanation _a propos_ of her riddle, "That was just put in to make it more difficult"), which was not quite cricket as it is played by the best people in these stage shockers.

But I am on dangerous grounds. Let me say that Mr. HANNAFORD BENNETT has been distinctly ingenious in his adaptation from M. GASTON LEROUX'S hectic feuilleton; that Miss SYBIL THORNDIKE put in a much finer quality of work than is usually supplied with this kind of heroine; that Miss DAISY MARKHAM as her friend played very gaily and prettily as long as the situation allowed it, and that Messrs. FRANKLIN DYALL, LEWIS CASSON, NICHOLAS HANNEN, ARTHUR PUSEY, MAJOR JONES, COLSTON MANSELL and the Prompter all did notable work.

T.

* * * * *

* * * * *

Our Erudite Contemporaries.

"No doubt the inhabitants of the seaside resorts are duly
grateful as they turn their faces to the trippers and the sun.
Like Niobe, they are all smiles."--_Provincial Paper._

* * * * *

"It certainly was a heavy swell, but the good ship 'Onward'
had, so to speak, got its sea legs, and so had the party
aboard; and although we rolled, it was a long steady roll
which in time became almost most enjoyable."

_Isle of Man Weekly Times._

It is on occasions like these that the Manxman finds his third leg so useful.

* * * * *

CUTCHERY CATS.

[In order to check the depredations of mice and rats the
Government of India have directed the maintenance of cats in
every public office ("Cutchery"). Rations do not err on the
side of over-abundance, and the cats in consequence are not
always the most favourable specimens.]

What time five notes on the cutchery gong
The aged orderly rings,
And he who calleth the waiting throng
Striketh his work and sings,
There cometh a man with broken meats,
Cheerily calling, and him there greets
With wailing of souls that are tried too long,
A bevy of Fearsome Things.

Ribbed as railings and lank as rods,
Stark as the toddy trees,
Swarming as when from the bursting pods
Scatter the ripened peas,
Flaming pupil and naked claw,
Gaunt and desolate, maimed and raw,
Cats by courtesy, but, ye gods!
Never were cats like these.

Nay, of a verity these be souls
Such as in life were vile,
Risen again from the nethermost coals
To harry the earth a while;
Versed in wickedness, old in sin,
Never was hell could hold them in,
And back they hasten in droves and shoals
To desecrate and defile.

Here where the shadow of Ancient Lies
Falleth athwart the room,
Where the Angel of Evil Counsel plies
His chariot through the gloom,
Where the Lost Endeavours and Faded Hopes
Cluster like fruit in the mango-topes,
Here is the perfectest paradise
For the damned to work their doom.

And swear will I by the Cloven Hoof
And the name of the Manichees,
By the hair that riseth despite reproof
And the rebel veins that freeze,
That at night, when the graves give up their dead
And the thunder belloweth overhead,
You would not get me under this roof
For a lakh of the best rupees!

* * * * *

The Magistrate's risen and eke the Sub,
And bicycles homeward spin;
The clerks depart with a shrill hubbub
And the snores of the guard begin;
Ah, lock ye the strong-room sure and fast,
For the night draws down and the day is past;
Masters, I will away to the Club,
For the hour of the cats is in.

H. B.

* * * * *

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)

Although _Madeline of the Desert_ (UNWIN) is published in the First Novel series, it by no means follows that Mr. ARTHUR WEIGALL can be considered a beginner in authorship, his various activities already including some volumes on Egyptology that have made for him a wide circle of appreciative readers. You will therefore be correct in guessing that the Desert of the title is Egyptian; also that the story is one in which the setting and the local colour are treated with expert knowledge and an infectious enthusiasm. Of _Madeline_ herself I should say at once that nothing in her life, as shown here, became her like the beginning of it. Her entrance into the tale, arriving out of the desert to consult the recluse, _Father Gregory_, whose nephew she afterwards marries, does very strikingly achieve an effect of personality. _Madeline_ was a product of Port Said and, when we first meet her, an adventuress of international reputation, or lack of it. Then _Robin_ rescues, marries and educates her. It was the last process that started the trouble. _Madeline_ took to education more readily than a duck to water; and the worst of it was that she was by no means willing to keep the results and her conclusions therefrom to herself; indeed she developed the lecturing habit to an extent that almost (but not quite) ruined her charm. Mr. WEIGALL is so obviously sincere in all this that, though I cannot exonerate him from a charge of using _Madeline_ as the mouthpiece of his own sociological and religious views, I must acknowledge his good intentions, while deploring what seems to me an artistic error. But, all said, the book is very far from being ordinary; its quality in the portrayal both of place and character is of the richest promise for future stories, in which I hope the author will give us more pictures of the land he understands so well.

* * * * *

I certainly admit that the publishers of _The Strangeness of Noel Carton_ (JENKINS) have every justification for speaking of it as "a new note in a novel." Indeed that clever writer, Mr. WILLIAM CAINE, has here sounded as new, original and (for all its surface humour) horrible a note as any I have heard in fiction for some time. My trouble is that I can hardly indicate it without giving away the whole business. Very briefly the tale is of one _Noel Carton_, who has married beneath him for not quite enough money to gild a detestable union, and, being an unstable egoist and waster, presently seeks consolation (and pocket money) by writing a novel founded in part on his own position. One may note in passing that Mr. CAINE seems to have but a modest idea of the mental equipment required for such a task. Still I suppose he knows, and anyway that isn't the point. The point is that, once _Noel_ has got himself properly projected into his novel, all sorts of the queerest and most bogie coincidences begin to occur. Again to quote the puff preliminary, "as the book develops the reader has a suspicion which becomes almost a certainty, until the great and astounding climax is reached;" concerning which you may justly remark that no reader with a certainty would regard its verification as "astounding." But this takes nothing from the craft with which, on looking back, you see the climax to have been prepared. I could hardly call the tale altogether pleasant, but it is undeniably new and vastly original.

* * * * *

The good Sioux glories in his scalps, and Mr. ISAAC F. MARCOSSON, of Louisville, must surely be the Great Chief of interviewers. Interviewing, he tells us, is, after all, only a form of reporting, and so are history, poetry and romance. What, he asks, were MOMMSEN and GIBBON, WORDSWORTH and KEATS but reporters, and I can only answer, What indeed? To have been found worthy of tonsure by Mr. MARCOSSON it is necessary to be very eminent, and to win his highest praise it is essential also to be a good "imparter," though he has a kind of sneaking admiration for the paleface who insists on handing him a written statement and declines to speak. Such a one was Sir EDWARD CARSON. Hanging to Mr. MARCOSSON'S girdle are the _chevelures_ of Mr. LLOYD GEORGE, Lord HAIG, Marshal FOCH, Sir JAMES BARRIE and Mr. ROOSEVELT, to name no more. Naturally _Adventures in Interviewing_ (LANE) is full of side-lights on the recent war. How could it be otherwise when so many celebrated brains are laid bare? One quotation I cannot refrain from giving. Speaking of Lord BEAVERBROOK he says, "He had come to London a decade ago, to live 'the life of a gentleman,' but was drawn irresistibly into politics." I challenge our literature to produce a more beautiful "but."

* * * * *

Miss EDITH DART has grouped against her Dartmoor setting in _Sareel_ (PHILIP ALLAN) just the characters to act out the well-worn story of the mutual infatuation of a young man of birth and an ignorant country maid. But though _Sareel_, the little workhouse-reared servant at the farm, falls in love in the accepted fashion with the best-looking of the three young men who lodge there on a reading tour, and though he duly falls in love with her, the innocence of her soul keeps their passion on the highest plane. What is more, when _Alan_, as such young gentlemen in fiction generally do, changes his mind Miss DART provides a happy ending, without even a suicide to spoil it, and without inconsistency either in her own point of view or in that of her characters. I don't really believe that Devonshire people say that they like things "brave and well" quite as often as Miss DART makes hers, and I wish she had not so great a fondness for the word "such" that she must invent phrases as weird as "though he had not sought such" in order to bring it in; but apart from these trifles _Sareel_, as something like a feminine version of a book by Mr. EDEN PHILLPOTTS arranged for family reading, will certainly please a great many people.

* * * * *

If you would like to see a white lady ride on a white horse to Banbury Cross and elsewhere with a body-guard of men in tin hats, carrying _The Banner_ (COLLINS) and proclaiming the League of Youth (against war and other evils) and forcible retirement from all offices of profit or power under the Crown at the age of forty, get Mr. HUGH F. SPENDER'S new and, as it seems to me, rather ingenuous novel. Love is not neglected, for a peer's son, deaf and dumb through shell-shock, so responds to the counter-irritant of seeing this modern JOAN riding through Piccadilly that he recovers both speech and hearing and promptly uses them to put her a leading question and understand her version of "But this is so sudden. However----" There is a people's army; a rose-water revolution with the King accepting it as all in the day's dull work; a fight or rather an arming of a few last-ditchers of the old order, and much else that is not likely to happen outside Ruritania. Also candid expression of the opinions of (I take it) the "Wee Frees" concerning _Glamorgan Jones_.

* * * * *

If Mr. ALAN GRAHAM does not unsettle my conviction that it is easier to begin a story of hidden treasure than it is to finish it, I can nevertheless promise you a good day with the sleuth-hounds, should you decide to _Follow the Little Pictures_ (BLACKWOOD). For some not too lucid reason I went to the meet with a fear in my heart that the command in the title referred to the "movies," and my relief was great on discovering that it was taken from a cipher containing the key to the treasure. The scene of this hunt is laid in Scotland, and the most notable figure among its followers is a certain _Laird Tanish_. The pecuniary fortunes of the _Tanish_ clan were at a low ebb, and in his determination to improve them by winning the prize the _Laird_ broke all the rules of the game and gave way to terrific outbursts of rage in the manner of those explosive gentlemen with whom Miss ETHEL DELL has familiarised us. There is both ingenuity and originality in this story, and I should be doing the author and his readers a great disservice if I disclosed the details of the plot. Anyone with a bent for treasure-hunting will be missing a fine opportunity if he refuses to have a day (or a night) with Mr. GRAHAM'S hounds.

* * * * *

_Domestic._ "THE SAINTS FORBID, MUM!"]

* * * * *

A Sympathetic Auditor.

"Dr. R. C. Ghostley, of Edmonton, was in the city last week
and attended Sir Oliver Lodge's lecture."--_Canadian Paper._

* * * * *

"W. W. ----, the Rugby International forward, won his third
success in four days at Chesham Oddfellows' and Foresters'
sports yesterday, when he took first prize in the 10 yards
open event, with 7-1/2 yards start, in 9-2/5 sec."--_Daily
Paper._

His strong point, we gather, is not speed but staying-power.

* * * * *

_A propos_ of the DE KEYSER case:--

"Unfortunately, the Dora regulations against free speech
and printing were never taken before the High Court, and our
ancestors will wonder at our timidity."--_Daily Herald._

We understand that Sir A. CONAN DOYLE has already received several urgent messages on the subject.

* * * * *

Transcriber's Note:

p. 438: Removed extraneous "'s" from "GASTON'S" ...
[M. GASTON LEROUX'S]

p. 440: Changed "9 2-5" to "9-2/5" ...
[in 9-2/5 sec."--_Daily Paper_.]