All Story Magazine, December 1913 — page 90: what you’re looking at

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

800 freedom, and the smile came back into Margaret's eyes as I glanced at my watch and found I had an hour to spare. At once the car swung out from the curb and away from the sordid at- mosphere of criminality. Two squares later I protested hurriedly. “T say, I can’t ‘go home with you. I have an important engage—" “Not to-day, Lim afraid,’’ Camp- bell interrupted, and the sparkle de- parted from his eyes. “ Margaret will be unable to keep her appointment. She met with a slight accident last eve- ning and—” “What?” “Rollins claims that she tripped over a rug in the library and struck her head against a sharp corner of the mantel. But the slight wound is at the back of the head, and there is a blue- black mark over the left temple, such as might have been made by the blow of a clenched fist.” I stared at him in horror. ‘“ You—you don’t mean to he—”’ “Exactly.” His jaws snapped on the word like a trap, and for a moment L felt limp. Then resentinent, like a river in flood, swept over me. I saw red and Rollins’s ashen face across the table in say the club the previous evening. I un- derstood, with a hideous desire to wipe out his leering smile, why he had been so extremely nervous when I mentioned Margaret’s name. “Don’t look so murderous,’ Camp- bell said quietly, after a while. “ One might believe the delay annoyed you! sg “What the deuce do you mean? “ Wheesht, man, it’s all right. I’m glad it does. I found Margaret in my rooms this morning, and she told me all about it. She ran away and came to the only place she could trust. But I took her home again. ‘She told me several coniplimen- tary things about you, and I’m begin- ning to think they weren't altogether too inflated, but I’m afraid you don’t THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE. realize what matrimony on twenty- five-a-week means? ” Into Broadway we went, but the bustle of life there did not make me feel any more cheerful. We were going up-town when I thought we ought to be going down to the ferry. “ What the dickens have you got to- do with it?’’ I asked after a minute or so, and have to confess that I was a little jealous of his air of authority over Margaret's actions. “ I’ve played my part in your affairs, and I think you're going to have enough to do keeping out of jail without bothering about my matrimonial intentions.”’ He only grinned. ‘ Margaret wouldn’t marry you if [ said ‘ No.’” “The deuce she wouldn’t! You might as well say that she only agreed to do so simply because you put her up to it!” “ Pretty nearly that.” This put a clamp on my tongue and made me dull and heavy. Campbell looked up at a great electric sign and remarked with beastly irrevelance: “Looks gaunt and ugly in the day- light, doesn’t it?”’ But I did not speak again until we had reached his rooms. After I had washed and made a pre- tense of tackling breakfast—the while Campbell hung about the window quite a lot—I asked pointblank, with a men- tal vision of the blue-black mark on Margaret’s forehead before me: “Has Rollins really gone to Bos- ton?” Campbell turned his head. ‘Not exactly. At present I believe he. is recovering from the effects of a harmless but necessary drug in my th Street house.” * Good: Lord!” “ Interesting, isn’t it? nothing to be alarmed Let's go inside and smoke. telephone several people.” I rose and followed him into an ad- joining room, feeling my nether limbs a little uncertain. But there is about—yet. I want to comicloooks.com