St. Charles to a dim _chambre garnie_ in Bienville Street. And there,
looking down from my attic window from time to time at the old, yellow,
absinthe house across the street, I wrote this story to buy my bread and
butter.

"Can thim that helps others help thimselves?"



[Illustration: "Can the horse run?" (cartoon from _The Rolling Stone_)]




THE MARIONETTES


[Originally published in _The Black Cat_ for April, 1902,
The Short Story Publishing Co.]


The policeman was standing at the corner of Twenty-fourth Street and a
prodigiously dark alley near where the elevated railroad crosses the
street. The time was two o'clock in the morning; the outlook a stretch
of cold, drizzling, unsociable blackness until the dawn.

A man, wearing a long overcoat, with his hat tilted down in front, and
carrying something in one hand, walked softly but rapidly out of the
black alley. The policeman accosted him civilly, but with the assured
air that is linked with conscious authority. The hour, the alley's musty