Produced by Suzanne Shell, Walt Farrell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) THE BANDBOX BY LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE The Bandbox Cynthia-of-the-Minute No Man's Land The Fortune Hunter The Pool of Flame The Bronze Bell The Black Bag The Brass Bowl The Private War Terence O'Rourke [Illustration: "Now, sir!" she exclaimed, turning FRONTISPIECE. _See Page 83_] The Bandbox BY LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE Author of "The Brass Bowl," "The Bronze Bell," "Cynthia-of-the-Minute," etc. With Four Illustrations By ARTHUR I. KELLER A. L. BURT COMPANY Publishers New York _Copyright, 1911, 1912,_ By Louis Joseph Vance. _All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian_ Published, April, 1912 Reprinted, April, 1912 (three times) TO LEWIS BUDDY III CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I INTRODUCING MR. IFF 1 II THE BANDBOX 14 III TWINS 26 IV QUEENSTOWN 43 V ISMAY? 65 VI IFF? 87 VII STOLE AWAY! 109 VIII THE WRONG BOX 128 IX A LIKELY STORY 158 X DEAD O' NIGHT 177 XI THE COLD GREY DAWN 194 XII WON'T YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOUR? 216 XIII WRECK ISLAND 233 XIV THE STRONG-BOX 254 XV THE ENEMY'S HAND 275 XVI NINETY MINUTES 295 XVII HOLOCAUST 312 THE BANDBOX I INTRODUCING MR. IFF At half-past two of a sunny, sultry afternoon late in the month of August, Mr. Benjamin Staff sat at table in the dining-room of the Authors' Club, moodily munching a morsel of cheese and a segment of cast-iron biscuit and wondering what he must do to be saved from the death-in-life of sheer ennui. A long, lank gentleman, surprisingly thin, of a slightly saturnine cast: he was not only unhappy, he looked it. He was alone and he was lonely; he was an American and a man of sentiment (though he didn't look _that_) and he wanted to go home; to sum up, he found himself in love and in London at one and the same time, and felt precisely as ill at ease in the one as in the other of these, to him, exotic circumstances.