The Native Son

" A man told me that once early in the morning he was walking through Chinatown. There was nobody else on the street except, a little distance ahead, a child carrying a small bundle. Suddenly just as she passed, a panel in one of the houses slid open ... a hand came out . . . the child slipped the bundle into the hand . . . the hand disappeared . . . the wall panel closed up. The child trotted on as though nothing had happened . . . disappeared around the corner. When my friend reached the house, it was impossible to locate the panel. A reporter I know was leaving his home one morning when there came a ring at his telephone' "There is something wrong in apartment number blank, house number blank, on your street,'' said Central. '' Will you please go over there at once?" He went. Somehow he got into the house. Nobody answered his ring at the apartment; he had to break the door open. Inside a very beautiful girl in a gay negligee was lying dead on a couch, a bottle of poison on the floor beside her. He investigated the case. The dead girl had been in the habit of calling a certain number, and she always used a curious identifying code-phrase. The reporter investigated that number. The rest of the story is long and thrilling, but finally he ran down a group of lawbreakers who had been selling the dead girl drugs, were indirectly responsible for her suicide. Do you suppose such a ripe story could have dropped straightfrom the Tree of Life into the hand of a reporte...