The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

- JAWA DAILY TIMES, THURSDAY. NOVEMBER 17, 1927 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (By Agatha Christie) COLDS THAT CHAPTER XII Mune Louse Qual That eve, at Poirot's request, 1 went 'over to lus house after dimmer. Caroline saw me depart with visible reluctance. 1 think she would have hiseu tv nave accompan.ed me. "Poirot greeted me hospitably. He hau p.aceu -a boitle of Insh whiskey (which I detest) on a vmall table, win a soda water siphon ana a giass. he himseli was eagaged nn brewmg hot chocolate. age of hs, | discovered lated. He inquired politely after my sister, it whom he diclared to be a most muer- | esting woman. "I'm afraid you've been giving her a swelled head," I said dryly. "What about Sunday afternoon?" He laughed and twinkled. "I always! like to employ the expert," he remarked obscurely, but he reius- ed to explain the remark. "You got all the local gossip any- way," I remarked. "True and untrue." "And a great deal of valuable infor- mation," he added quietly. "Such as--?" He shook his head. i "Why not have told me the truth?" he countered. "In a place like this, all Ralph Paton's doings were bound to be known. If your sister had not happened to pass through the wood that day somebody else would have done so." : "1 suppose they would," 1 said grumpily. "What about this interest of yours in my patients?" Again he twinkled, "Only one of them, doctor. Only one of them." "The last?" 1 hazarded. "I find Miss Russell a study of the most interesting," he said evasively. "Do you agree with my sister and Mrs. Ackroyd that there is something fishy about her?" I asked. i "Eh? What do you say--fishy?"" 1 explained to the best of my ability. "And they say that, do they? "Didn't my sister convey as mufch to you yesterday afternoon?" "C'est possible." "For no reason whatever," I declar- d. : . Les femmes," generalised Poirot. "They are marvellous! They invent haphazard--and by miracle they are right. Not that it is that, réally. Wo- men observe subconsciously a thousand little details, without knowing that they are doing so, Their subconsciou mind adds these little things together --and they call the result intuition. Me, I am very skilled in psychology. 1 know these things." 3 He swelled his chest out importan®- ly, looking so ridiculous, that I found it difficult not to burst out laughing. Then he took a small sip of his cho- colate and carefully wiped his mous- e. ah wish you'd tell me," I burst out, #what you really think of it all? He put down his cup. "You wish that?" "] do "You have seen what I have seen. Shou! not our ideas be the same?" "I'm afraid you're laughing at me, I said stiffly. "Of course, I've no ex- perience of matters of this kind. Poirot smiled at me indulgently. "You are like the little child who wants to know the way the engine works. You wish to see the affair, not as the family doctor sces it, but with the eye of a detective who knows Trouble Signs For Those Past 40 Weakness, Nervousness, Headaches, t Painful, Scanty Urination, Getting -up-Nights : T embarrassing annoyance and genuine LL of iadder Weakness, often brings "discomforts of old age" to those who really ought to be in the very prime of life. : Countless thousands, perhaps seven out ol ten, of folks near middle life are pitiful vie- tims of Headaches, Nervousness, Pains in back and down through groins, frequently but scanty and painful urination--Getting-up- 8. : n " 2 hie serious, if neglected--it is ordinarily a simple matter to relieve these troubles by the pleasant home use of Dr. Southworth's URATABS, which have been victorious in thousands of cases, after other treatments have fajled, matter how serious or of how, long standin, our condition may be, you | i TR the value of URATABS with, out risk of cost fey any good Mruggist wi suppl ou on an absolute guarante f satis- iss yo money back, If URATABS bring vou quick and certain comfort, you will De greatly pleased. 1f they do not full satis vy, their use will cost you nothing. . Try URA- TABS today, and see what a ifference they make, Bladder F It was a favourwe vever- | to suspicion." " "You put it very well," I said, "So 1 give you, then, a little lec- ture. The first thing is to get a clear | history of what happened that evening ' --always bearing in mind that the per- son who speaks may be lying." I" raised my eyebrows. "Rather a suspicious attitude." "But nece. ary--I assure you, neces- sary. Now first--Dr. Sheppard leaves he house at ten minutes to nine. How do I know that?" "Because I told you so." "But you might not be speaking the truth--or the watch you went by might be wrong. But Parker also says that you left. the house at ten minutes to nine. So we accept that statement and pass on. At nine o'clock you run into a man--and here we come to what we will call the Romance of the Myster- ious Stranger--just outside the Park gates. How do I know that that is "I told you so," I began again, but Poirot interrupted me with a gesture of impatience. "Ah! but it is that you are a little studid tonight, my friend. You know that it is so--but how am I to know? Eh bien, I am able to tell you that the Mysterious Stranger was not a hallu- cination on your part, because the maid of a Miss Ganett met him a few minutes before you did, and of her too he inquired the way to Fernly Park. We accept his presence, therefore, and we can be fairly sure of two things about him--that he was a stranger to the neighborhood, and that whatever his object in going to Fernly, there he twice asked the way there." "Yes," I said, "I see that." "Now I have made it my business to find out more about this man. He had a drink at the Three Boars, 1 learn, and the barmaid there says that he spoke with an American accent and mentioned having just come over from the States. Did it strike you that he had an American accent?" "Yes, I think he had," I said, after a minute or two, during which I cast my mind back; "but a very slight one." "Precisément, There is also this, which, you will remember, I picked up in the summer-house?" He held out to*me the little quill, I looked at it curiously. Then a mem- ory of something I had read stirred in me. Poirot, who had been watching my face, nodded. "Yes, heroin 'snow.' Drug-takers carry it like this, and sniff it up the nose." "Diamorphine hydrochloride," I mur- mured mechanically. "This methdd of taking the drug is very common on the other side. An- other proof, if we wanted one, that the man came from Canada or the . States." ; "What first attracted your attention to that suinmer-house?" I asked curi- ously. 3 "My friend, the inspector, took it for granted that any one using that path did so as a short cut to the house, but as soon as I saw the summer- house, I realised that the same path would be taken by any one: using the summer-house as a rendezvous. Now it seems fairly certain that the stran- ger came neither to the front nor tc the back door. Then did some one from the house go out and meet him? If 'so, what could be a more conven- ient place than that little summer- house? I searched it with the hope that I might find some clue inside, found two, the scrap of cambric and the quill" "Aand the scrap of cambric?" I ask- ed curiously, "What about that?" Poirot raised his eyebrows.. "You do not use your little gray cells," he remarked dryly. - The scrap of starched cambric should be obvi- ous." "Not very obvious to me." I chang- ed the subject. "Anyway," I said, "this man went to the summer-house to meet somebody, What was that some- body?" ; 3 "Exactly the question," said Poirot. "You will remember that Mrs, Ack- rod, and her daughter came over from Canada to live here?" "Is thut what you meant today when you accused them of hiding the truth "Perhaps. No -wanother point. What did you sthink of the parlourmaid's story?" "What story?" STORAGE SPACE FOR RENT About 12,000 ft. of good dry storage space, conveniently locat- ed, with Canadian National siding, for rent either in whole or in part. Low rental. CHARLES M. MUNDY c/o Mundy, Printing Company, Limited Telephone 35 or 312 and cars for no one--to whom they are all strangers and all equally lable was no great secrecy about it, since ® known to do that -- act guiltily when B --which he feared might get to his J 8 | "Dear ' j against him." DEVELOP INTO _ "The story of her dismissal. Does it take half an hour to dismiss a ser- vant? Was the story of those import- ant papers a likely one? And remem- ber, though she says she was in her bedroom from nine-thirty until ten o'clock, there no one confirm her statément." "You bewilder me," 1 said. "To me it grows clearer. But tell me now vour own ideas and theories." I drew a piece of paper from my pocket, X "I just scribbled cown a few sug- i gestions," I said apologetically. | "But excellent -- you have method. Let us hear them." I read out' in a somewmat embar- rassed voice. "To begin with ¢ think; lokically----" "Just what my poor Hastings used to say," interrupted Poirot, "but alas he never did so." "Point No. 1. -- Mr. Ackroyh was heard talking to some one at half-past nine, ; "Point No. 2--At some time during the evening Ralph Paton must have come in through the window, as ewnr- denced by the prints of his shoes. "Point No. 3. -- Mr. Ackroyd was nervous that evening, and would only have admitted some one he knew. "Point No. 4--The person with Mr, Ackroyd at nine-thirty was asking for money. We know Ralph Paton was |in a scrape, "These four points go to show that the person with Mr. Ackroyd at nine- thirty was Ralph Paton. But we know that Mr. Ackroyd was alive at a quar- ter to ten, therefore it was not Ralph who killed him. Ralph left the win- dow open. Afterwards the murderer came in that way." "And who was the murderer?' quired Poirot, "The American stranger. He may | have been in league with Parker, and in possibly in Parker we have the man who blackmailed Mrs, Ferrars. If so, Parker may have. heard enough to realise the game was up, have told his accomplice so, and the latter did the crime with the dagger which Parker gave him." "It is a theory that," admitted Poir- ot, "Decidedly you have cells of a kind. But it leaves a good deal un- accounted for." Such as--? | "The telephone call, the pushed-out chair "Do you really think the latter im- portant?" I interrupted. "Pérhaps not," admitted my friend, "It may have been pulled out by ac- ciddut, and Raymond or Blunt may have shoved it into its place uncon- sciously under the stress of emotion, Then there is the missing forty pounds." : 1Given by Ackroyd to Ralph," 1 18 to ne must look at the , in- 11S. PREPARES FOR CHRISTMAS MAILS Will Spend $9,000,000 on Record Volume Over Holidays 'Washington, Nov. 17--The Post- office Department will spend $9.- 000,000 for handling the Christmas mails, Postmaster-General New an- nounced yesterday Preparations have been completed for handling the greatest volume of holiday mail in history, and postal employes will work Christmas Day to get out mail posted late. Ceneral New has authorized the appointment of extra clerks and car- riers at most of the 50,000 post of- fices throughout the country and has rented "temporary railway post office spaces. While every: effort will be made to deliver all mail by Christmas Day, New urged early mailings to avoid congestion. OXO LIMITED 356 St. Antoine St, Montreal CUBES Lick \Y? Soup making yy Manag oun Automatic $775 ecords Plays twelve records without attention.--Runs itself for a whole hour. No operating effort on your part.-- Just listen. HEN you turn on: the current, the turntable starts to revolve; a mech- anical "hand" takes the first record from the group of twelve and places it on the turntable; the tone-arm moves into, position; the sound-box is lowered and the music begins. At the end of the selection, the mechanical "hand" removes the record from the turn- table, slides it gently into a felt-lined concealed drawer, and "picks off' the next record from the magazine arm. These operations are repeated until the last record is played, then the mechanism stops automatically. suggested. "He may have reconsiderza his first refusal." "That still leaves one thing unex- | « plained?" "What?" "Why was Blunt so certain in his own mind that it was Raymond with Mr. Ackroyd at nine-thirty ?" "He explamed that," I said, "Yo uthink so? I will not press the point. Tell me, instead, what were Ralph Paton's reasons for disappear- ing?" "That's rather more difficult," I said slowly. "I shall have to speak as a medical man, Ralph's nerves must have gone phut! If he suddenly found out , that his uncle had been murdered with- in a few minutes of his leaving him-- after, perhaps, a rather stormy inter- view--well, he might get the wind up' and clear right out. Men have been they're perfectly innocent." "Yes, that is true," said Poirot, "But we must not lose sight of one thing." | "I know what you're going to say," I remarked: "motive. Ralph Paton :n- herits a great fortune by his uncle's death." "That is one motive," agreed Poirot. "One?" "Mais oui, Do you realise that there are three separate motives staring us m the face. Somebody certainly stole the blue envelope and its contents. That is one motive. Blackmail! Ralph Paton may have been the man who blackmailed Mrs. Farrars. Remember, as «far as Hammond knew, Ralph , Paton had not applied to his uncle for help of late. That looks as though he were being supplied with money else- where. Then there is the fact that he was in some--how do you say--serape? "uncle's ears. And finally there is the one you have just mentioned." me," I said, rather taken "The case does seem black "Does it?" said Poirot. "That is where we disagree, you and IL . Three motives--it is almost too much. I am inclined to believe that ,after all, Ralph aback. Paton is innocent." (To be continued) So magnificent an instrument demands an exterior of exceptional beauty. Victor craftsmen have designed a distinguished cabinet for the Automatic Orthophonic Viec- trola, in which every luxurious touch that ingenuity can devise has been incorporated. The price of the automatic instrument is $775. Other models of the Orthophonic Victrola Instruments are obtainable at prices ranging from $790. down to $115. Obtainable on convenient terms from "His Master's Voice" Dealerss Demonstrations now going on. If your dealer hasn't one he will order it for you. Automatic Orthoph hophonic --only if it bears the dog Trademark onic Trade Mark Reg'd - Victrola Victor Talking Machine Company of Canada, Limited, Montreal The new Automatic Orthophonic Victrola may be purchased HIS MASTERS VOICE PT right in Oshawa. It will be a pleasure for us to show you our large stock of machines -- a large stock of the newest Records always on hand. 3 King Street West - Come In"and Hear One eT id ROWN Oshawa isfetgr fie Wee JOABe J These Wonder ioeier o f Victrolas Play}For You ! ja Lid