The Flaming Spectacles

Chicago Ledger, September 29, 1923 This weekly fiction magazine includes three short stories. "Loretta Pardons" follows Jean Summers, a capable but overlooked secretary working in New York who takes a job with the demanding Mr. Abney. After bonding with his young son through office interactions, Jean overhears Abney's friend question whether she's really a secretary or nursemaid. Humiliated, Jean fabricates an engagement to escape. When Abney discovers her deception while recovering a letter showing she'd advertised elsewhere, he reveals he meant to call her a "wonderful wife," and the story ends with their romantic reconciliation. "Angel Face," by Ralph Cummins, concerns a notorious black horse named Angel Face with sinister red-rimmed eyes—an untamable outlaw that has injured multiple riders on the M A Ranch. The third story, "Shumway Stalks a Monster" by Edwin Baird, features newspaper reporter Waldron Shumway investigating mysterious attacks on livestock, with webbed footprints leading to Duck Lake suggesting an unknown creature that drains animals of blood.