Life — September 30, 1915 — page 17: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

you. I want to get away, I was forced to do it.” “ Forced!" “We were starving. I'm married, the same as you are. Wouldn't your hus- band steal for you?” He stopped short and listened. Loud Knocking sounded somewhere below. “All I want you to do is to let me out the front door; and don’t tell. Say you didn't see me.” Already he had shuffled through the dining-room, Delia following him, into the narrow, short, dark hall. “T£ anyone knocks don’t answer,” he whispered. “ Don't light any lights.” He opened the front door cautiously. “They'll think no one’s here.” He turned and looked at her, “It'll give me a chance—just a chance is all I want. You'll never be sorry.” He closed the door softly behind him. Delia stood listening, breathless, Voices questioned and answered on the porch below, but she could not distin- guish the words. She felt as if she herself were guilty of some crime. Suddenly the telephone bell on the wall beside her rang with startling abruptness. She did not move. Heavy feet were mounting the stairs to the back porch. Again the telephone rang out against the stillness in the little apartment. She dared hot move, but stood pressed against the wall, Through the darkness she could see the doorway into the lighter kitchen like a black frame. The telephone rang again, long and insistently. Heavy knocking shook the back door, but it got no response from Delia, There was a pause of silence and then a voice cried out with the rapidity of excitement: “No one’s home, Jim. He couldn't get through here.” This was what she had been listen- ing for. The noise of descending footsteps died away. Delia sprang to the telephone and waited eagerly. But the bell did not ring again. see e “Any trace of him, Jim?” asked the desk sergeant, as the big patrolman en- tered the police station. “Naw. Anybody identify the body?” “He had cards on him that gave his name and address, The poor guy never knew what hit him. He didn't get the chance to give up his dough ; some white- livered sneak croaked him from behind with a piece of lead pipe. We called up his home, but couldn’t raise anybody.” “HERE, TOWSER!"” Withheld By Ella B. Argo Ey time he had tried to propose to her they had been interrupted. There was the moonlight night on the beach when a sudden storm sent them scurrying to shelter. Once it was in her mother’s drawing room and callers were announced. He had almost reached the interrogation point while dancing when a colliding couple made them slip, and for weeks a broken ankle made her inac- cessible. He might have put the mo- mentous question in writing, but that did not appeal to his sense of fitness. Lately she felt like Evangeline, since business always took him out of New York the day before she arrived, and twice illness called her home when he was to have met her at some resort. The Evangeline feeling was strong to-night, because he had inexplicably failed to keep his Miami appointment to accompany her mother and herself home, and at the last moment they had decided to come by sea. Then suddenly off Norfolk she came face to face with him on the deck. She was excitedly responsive to his white- faced, trembling-voiced rapture at seeing her, and they both forgot to make ex- planations. It was late, but they paced the deck for an hour, and every moment of that hour she expected him to speak, although one passenger walked discon- certingly near them. His love had-taken on a new humility, for where once he had been masterful, impetuous, he now seemed afraid and looked at her adoringly but despairingly, as though at some inaccessible heaven. She fought between modesty and a de- sire to encourage him, The hours flew, and he had not even sought a secluded corner. She sent away the maid who came with her mother’s summons and lingered another moment for the words she felt were trembling on the lips be- neath the love-agonized eyes. He ac- cepted her proud good-night without remonstrance, although he clung to her hand as though he would never let it go. “This must be good-bye,” he said. “The ship will dock before you are up, and I have to make a dash for the train.” No word of future meeting. Almost all the passengers had landed and her mother and the maid were far ahead in the crowd when she remembered a silver cup she had left in the stateroom. Her way back was barred first by a laughing and weeping reunited Cuban family, and then by a group of men excitedly discussing the quick capture of a murderer who had claimed self-defense in a political quarrel but had run. It seemed the man was prominent, and it sounded interesting, but her mother would worry if she stopped. The emotional Cuban family was again in her way. The cup was knocked from her hand, and it rolled down the deck. She picked it up and turned to see him framed in a door opened by the restless passenger of the night before. Then her sun went down in eternal blackness. He was handcuffed. comicbooks.com