All Story Magazine, December 1913 — page 97: what you’re looking at

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

& THIEVES COMEDY. Then the color flooded back into her cheeks, and her face found refuge on my shoulder again. I looked over her head toward the hangings, and saw the tips of some one’s fingers disappear. CHAPTER XXX. ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER. My arms grew limp, all the -ardor of their embrace dying out of them as I stared at the place where the fingers had been. I thought I heard the swish of skirts as Margaret, startled by my sudden lack of enthusiasm, looked up. “What's wrong?” she whispered, drawing away from me. ‘Nothing. It’s all right. Thought I heard some one coming, that’s all.” I lec her to the chair I had occupied, and she perched herself upon the ann of it, wonderingly trying to read the riddle in my expression, “You look as if you had seen a ghost,” she told me as I[ sat down. * And you are quite as white as one.” [ put my arms about her, quite sur- prised at my temerity, and kissed her again and again just to keep her from asking questions. Of course that was not the only reason. Still, I sensed to whom those van- ishing fingers had belonged, and had no wish to create a rumpus by telling Margaret anything about them. Camp- bell had likened the maid in the Rollins household to a powder-mine; I had no desire to make the spark that would blow it up. Doubtless the peeping maid had seen what I looked like, and the situation, as she could view it was, to say the least, ~ rich,* Fortunately, Margaret accepted the kisses in full explanation. Margaret’s eyes were clear and smi- ling when I left her, and I felt that nothing mattered so long as we two understood each other and were con- tent. - But I boarded an up-town tram with 807 a sensation that I had put my foot in it the general situation, 1 mean — and | prayed that Miss Powder-Mine was as careful as she apparently was mercenary. It would not pay her to tell Ralph of my visit. He would only raise the dickens, and she would get into trouble with Campbell; but I would have much preferred that she had not seen me—like that. The thing bothered me all the way up-town, and when I left the tram I walked in a sort of brown study, try- ing to imagine the effects my disobe- dience to orders might have; and then, jumping aside to avoid a little fellow on a sinall tricycle, I saw a familiar figure, clothed in something dark and clinging, standing on the bottom step at the entrance to Della’s apartment. She was looking in the opposite di- rection toward the Elevated Railway station, and, before I had time to de- cide whether to be seen or not, she had stepped down and was walking away. Alice! At first I thought that I had made a mnmistake; it seemed preposterous that Alice should know anything about Della or the Gobbler, but as I walked toward the apartment entrance I real- ized that [ had stumbled upon one more queer twist in an affair that was already contorted sufficiently to make any one’s head buzz. I rang Della’s door- bell timidly, and the door was jerked open and Della appeared before me in the semi- darkness of the hall with a suddenness that was truly startling. “What ye want?” she rasped at ine instantly; and then, recognizing me, her voice dropped to a militant mumble. “Qh, it’s -you, is: it? I guess I gotta let you in if she says so. She's the boss.” There was a sneer mingled with her erumbling, and as I entered, thorough- ly bewildered, she closed the door be- hind me with a spiteful bang and a muttered—*“ Makes me sick!” “JT don’t understand,’ I pleaded, moving along the hall. comilicloooks.com