The Red Button. Illustrated by Max J. Spero.

Octavo, red cloth (hardcover), gilt letters, 370 pp. Good, with dampstaining to lower cover and page edges (not impacting text). "Regarding the events of that rainy autumn evening at Mrs. Moore's boarding-house in the afar West Twenties of New York, accounts differ somewhat -- although not enough, after all, but that we may piece together a connected story. Until the great event, they were trivial. It was the reflected light of the tragedy which gave them their importance. Most of the boarders remained indoors, since it was too wet in the early evening for faring out-of-doors with comfort. After dinner, Miss Harding and Miss Jones, stenographers, who shared a room-and-alcove on the second floor, entertained "company" in the parlor on the ground floor -- two young office-mates figure but dimly in this tale. These callers came at eight o'clock. A few minutes later Professor Noll joined the. Professor Noll was a diet delusionist, the assistant editor of a health-food magazine. He lived on the third floor, across the hall from Captain Hanska, in a room furnished (as the Captain himself remarked during one of his genial moments) with all the horrors of home. Literature, Fiction, Murder Mystery, New York. xslic.…