ALIAS RED RYAN



  On the boards there near the centre of the space
lay an automatic pistol, and though it burned smoke-
less powder the acrid stench of nitrate came freshly
sharp to the nostrils.
  Of the two living men, one sat in a chair, collapsed
and tousled-perhaps wounded or perhaps exhausted
with struggle, and the other stood looking on, a tall,
thin, elderly man with a pistol still clenched in his
fist.
  As Mahaffey took in these details brother officers
came through the door and he heard the clang of
an arriving patrol wagon, and a curt order outside,
"Don't any of you people go away. Some of you'll
be wanted to tell what you know."
  It is a cardinal rule of narrative that the story
should start at its beginning, pursue its course di-
rectly, and arrive concisely at its conclusion. That
rule is in general axiomatically correct, yet there are
-times when a story does not begin at the seeming
beginning, but runs forward and back from a centre.
This is one of those stories, for the scene that had
broken with such startling suddenness on the eyes
of Patrolman Mahaffey was in reality a thing whose
root and development lay back, some years back, in
a soil entirely different, and into that anterior phase
one must go to follow it with understanding.
  The start of the trail upon which the policeman
came that night was a happening in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and its time was before the war.



4