“STANHOPE’S FIRST TRICK.”

Van Vernet and Richard Stanhope had been brother detectives during the entire term of their professional career.

Entering the Agency when mere striplings, they had at once formed a friendship that had been strong and lasting. Their very differences of disposition and habits made them the better fellow-workmen, and the role most difficult for one was sure to be found the easier part for the other to play.

They had been a strong combination, and the Chief of the detectives wasted some time in pondering the question: what would be the result, when their skill and courage stood arrayed against each other?

Meantime, Richard Stanhope, wasting no thought upon the matter, hastened from the presence of his Chief to his own quarters.

“It’s my last night,” he muttered, as he inserted his key in the lock, “and I’ll just take one more look at the slums. I don’t want to lose one bird from that flock.”

Half an hour later, there sallied forth from the door where Stanhope had entered, a roughly-dressed, swaggering,[53] villainous-looking fellow, who bore about with him the strongly defined odors of tobacco and bad whiskey.

[53]

This individual, armed with a black liquor flask, two revolvers, a blood-thirsty-looking dirk, a pair of brass knuckles, and a quantity of plug tobacco, took his way through the streets, avoiding the more popular and respectable thoroughfares, and gradually approaching that portion of the city almost entirely given over to the worst of the bad,—a network of short streets and narrow alleys, as intricate as the maze, and as dangerous to the unwary as an African jungle.

But the man who now entered these dismal streets walked with the manner of one familiar with their sights and sounds. Moving along with an air of stolid indifference to what was before and about him, he arrived at a rickety building, somewhat larger than those surrounding it, the entrance to which was reached by going down, instead of up, a flight of stone steps. This entrance was feebly illuminated by a lantern hung against the doorway, and by a few stray gleams of light that shone out from the rents in the ragged curtains.

Pushing open the door, our visitor found himself in a large room with sanded floor, a counter or bar, and five or six tables, about which a number of men 

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