All Story Magazine, December 1913 — page 71: what you’re looking at

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

A THIEVES’ earnest about this T’ll accompany Margaret to the ferry—the New York side—and meet you there. After that I refuse to be responsible for any- thing.” “Thank you. That will do very nicely, provided, of course, that my partner is agreeable.” Blushing furiously, Margaret looked up for a second, and a wan little smile of acquiescence parted her lips. The fear had gone out of her eyes. Yet Alice seemed to envy her. In the succeeding few minutes, while Margaret looked as if she would like to run off somewhere and cry or dance —I was not sure which — Alice be- came quieter and quieter, trifling ab- sently with a locket, and once or twice I thought her lip quivered. When I left them, telling Alice that I should expect her to recommend me to any one who needed a chauffeur, she smiled and said: “What's the use? stay a week.” You wouldn’t CHAP TRIG xr THE START. THE evening papers, telling me again of our losses, failed to hurt as they might have done had that meet- ing in the park not taken place. Apparently the fifty thousand shares sold at two hundred and fifty were by no means mythical. They had ar- rived in New York about midnight on Tuesday by special train from San Francisco. : Of the twenty-five thousand that had smashed the price to smithereens, fifteen thousand had been acquired in Cleveland alone, while the balance had been collected from other Western points. So far did the brokers who handled the stock go with their stories and no farther; but it was enough.to let me guess that the large stockholder in San Francisco had learned of the proposed elevation of Rand Island and had de- COMEDY. 781 liberately set about to checkmate Rol- lins and his friend. Rollins’s name was not mentioned in any of the reports. Bailey, the big man with the staccato voice, and with, apparently, little or no reputation to lose, got all the publicity and all the blame, so I imagined that Rollins was bearing the brunt of the cash losses of the combination. He certainly looked as if he were at dinner that evening. His cheeks were the color of parchment; his smile like that of a death’s head, and his hand so shaky that he could scarcely carry the soup-spoon to his mouth without spilling some of the contents. : Occasionally I saw in his eyes the black shadow of his heart; and then he was grinning horribly and chatter- ing on about something far removed from Wall Street. He almost blubbered when he spoke, and most of what he said was an in- coherent jumble that began in Eng- land and ended in Hell’s Kitchen. Of course I was blind to everything, and with the sweets I inquired duti- fully about his daughter’s health. A spoonful of meringue, halted in mid air. He looked over it at me as if he were questioning whether he had heard aright. “She is much better. Much better. She was out to-day in the park. Beau- tiful in the park now, you know.’’, ‘There was a light in his eyes I did not understand; something akin to tri- umphant cruelty. We took a taxi to Ninth Avenue and Fifty-Ninth Street, Rollins in- forming me that it would be so much more interesting if we walked the re- mainder of the way. In spite of our having dined at Rol- lins’s club, we were not in evening clothes. Lounge suits, autumn over- coats, and soft hats did not make us in the least conspicuous, and we came to the car-barns at the corner of Fifty- Fourth Street and Tenth Avenue without incident. comicloooks.com