LOCAL COLOR THE WORKS OF IRVIN S. COBB LOCAL COLOR The Review of Reviews Corporation _Publishers_ New York Published by Arrangement With George H. Doran Company Copyright, 1916, By George H. Doran Company PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA COPYRIGHT, 1914, 1915 AND 1916, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY TO MY SISTERS CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I Local Color 11 II Field of Honor 47 III The Smart Aleck 91 IV Blacker than Sin 129 V The Eyes of the World 159 VI The Great Auk 204 VII First Corinthians: Chap. XIII, v. 4 246 VIII Enter the Villain 303 IX Persona au Gratin 368 X Smooth Crossing 408 LOCAL COLOR CHAPTER I LOCAL COLOR Felix Looms, the well-known author, disappeared--or, rather, he went away--on or about June fifteenth, four years ago. He told his friends, his landlady and his publisher--he had no immediate family--he felt run down and debilitated and he meant to go away for a good long stay. He might try the Orient; then again perhaps he would go to the South Seas. When he came back, which might be in a year or two years or even three, he expected to bring with him the material for a longer and better book than any he had written. Meantime he wanted to cut loose, as he put it, from everything. He intended, he said, to write no letters while he was gone and he expected to receive none. He gave a power of attorney to a lawyer with whom he had occasional dealings, left in bank a modest balance to meet any small forgotten bills that might turn up after his departure, surrendered his bachelor apartments in the Rubens Studio Building, paid off his housekeeper, said good-bye to a few persons, wrote explanatory notes to a few more; and then quietly--as he did everything in this life--he vanished. Nobody particularly missed him, for he was not a famous author or even a popular one; he was merely well known as a writer of tales dealing in the main with crime and criminals and criminology. People that liked his writings said he was a realist, who gave promise of bigger things. People that did not like his writings said he was a half-baked socialist. One somewhat overcritical reviewer, who had a bad liver and a bitter pen, once compared him to an ambitious but immature hen pullet, laying many eggs but all soft-shelled and all of them deficient in yolk.