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14        THE VOICE 

Robert King, Amateur Detective 
By MARGARET KING 

"What is the matter, Bob?" inquired a silvery voice as Robert King stopped his car.
 
It was a beautiful moonlight night in June. Bob and his sister, Alice had motored to the country that morning to take their parents who were spending a few weeks there out of the grime and dust of the city of Saint Louis. They were very wealthy people with only two 
children upon whom to lavish their wealth and affections. 

Alice was a delicate, graceful, slip of a girl, nineteen years old. She was dressed completely in white, with only a blue scarf over her shoulders to give her the least amount of color. It just matched her blue eyes and golden hair. Her gentle, musical voice was pleasant and soothing to the ear. She was the idol of the entire family, mostly because she was the baby and partly because of her delicate health. 

Her brother would appear to the casual observer as a fine college athlete, which he was. His well groomed figure noble forehead, and gentle manners depicked those of a wealthy scion as well as a true gentleman. His sole thought was that of his sister on whose account he was having trouble with the car which seemed to refuse to work. 

"I heard a knock in this car and I don't know what it is," he replied. 

"Father told you let John come, but no, you must show your knowledge" Alice gently rebuked him. 

"I know how to drive a car but this one seems bewitched,' he laughingly said 

"Oh, you don't believe in witches, ghosts, goblins, and fairies, do you, Bob?"

"Probably not, but one hears of some very peculiar incidents once in a while," he replied getting back into the car. 

"You talk as though you were about fifty years old; superstition is out of place now." 

"Yes, but this is a lonely road and a lonely night. I don't suppose you ever heard of William Madden and his wife, Lucretia: you were probably too young to remember it, but fifteen years ago, they were the terrors of this place for miles around." 

"What did they do, Bob." 

"They were robbers and defied the police and detectives to catch them. They swore that they would never go to jail and they didn't. In their last big holdup they stole about $100,000 worth of jewelry and were chased by the police and mortally wounded, but escaped. They went to their home and when men were sent to capture them, such horrible, weird noises were heard that nothing could induce the men to enter the house. Later on, a large reward was offered for anyone who would go to the house and find out if there were any occupants, but as soon as such investigators would enter the grounds of the grand old house, they would turn pale and their hair would stand straight up. The phase was abandoned and has been almost completely forgotten." 

"What a weird story," Alice exclaimed, getting closer to her brother as though she could see the robbers and hear the unearthly utterances. 

"I hope we get home tonight because I feel rather creepy," she continued, "this place seems as though it would have such a history." 

Suddenly the car stopped right in the middle of the road. Both of the young people looked at each other in consternation. "What do you suppose is the matter, brother?" Alice asked nervously. 

"I'll have to see," Bob answered, somewhat annoyed at the car's actions. Bob gave a startled exclamation.
 
"What is it, Bob?" 

"There ...... There is no gas; we ....... we are out of gas," he stammered

(Continued on Page 29)

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APRIL, 1926    15

A POLITICAL PRIMER 
By Geo. B. Vashon 

Lesson Three––A Review

From Lessons One and Two the pupil has learned that, of the one hundred and ten million denizens of the United States there are twelve million who have proven so incompetent to wield the weapon of the ballot that they are today pariahs and serfs, ridiculed and held in contempt, barely tolerated as they pitiably masquerade in what they seem to believe is the panoply of American Citizenship.

And the pupil has learned that all these Helots are of whole, or partial, African descent. 

And the pupil has learned that any colored American who speaks of the low estate of himself and follows in these quoted words, speaks unalloyed truth: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings." 

And the pupil has read the Theorems of Lesson Two and knows that these Theorems are not only, "self evident truths," but that they have never failed as bases of strategy to those whose liberties are threatened with restraint in the United States of America.
 
But there is that not yet revealed and that will, perhaps, remain a mystery until the end of time. This riddle of America is why, with advancements in every other way distinguishing Negro American life, this division of our population yet remains the variest tyros on whom the privilege of suffrage could be wasted. This tragic failure does not arise from blindness to the fact that the ballot is the weapon of freemen. Why, every Negro in the country is a politician, or a 
"politicianer," if you let him tell it. At the infliction of every fresh bestrayal of Negro citizen rights, one can hear on every side the swelling Darktown Chorus: "We'll meet 'em at the polls." Elections come and go with lawful regularity and, like cavalry-horses at bugle call, every colored voter goes through the same damned slave paces as when, in 1870, he surged sweating to the polls, first blatant with vociferations of "our friends" and "our enemies." 

Do you think that the prescriptions for Negro American emancipation laid down in lesson two of this Primer is the initial instruction along this line? Those prescriptions are a bunch of hoary "chestnuts" now. For 56 years they have fallen from the lips of tested and proven champions of Negro freedom on insensate Negro ears. 

For 40 years, Horace Greeley, through his great paper, The New York Tribune, plead for "immediate and universal emancipation and enfranchisement." For this, he was hated, hounded, mobbed and spat upon. When secession took place, this great man said, "Let the wayward go in peace; do not lay a straw in the path of the slaveholder taking himself out of our republic. The confederate states will make the Ohio River take the place of the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes and our prairie states will be an easily reached Canada." Was Horace Greeley true to liberty? 

Well, the war, emancipation and enfranchisement of the "contraband" came. On the ratification of the XVth Amendment (1870), Horace Greeley spoke the Theorems of our Lesson Two of this Primer as this Primer can not speak them. In an editorial of the Tribune that was captioned, "Root, Hog, Or Die,"––an eternal classic of truth––he told the Negro that, when the Negro was bound in lash enforced slavery, white compassion had plead his cause and fought his fight until he had become endowed with the freedom and the ballot of the white man; and that the Negro was to ask and expect that compassion to do no more; that, no matter what lying promises politicians might whisper into his ear; what assurances of reward for "party loyalty" 
should be bonded to him by the frail pledges of office desperate candidates, he could not preserve the liberties given 

(Continued on Page 24)