All-Story Weekly, March 1, 1919 — page 142: what you’re looking at

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

She walked across the room and lifted a lantern from the nail where it hung. As she lighted it Mame watched with awed eyes. “ Where you goin’?”’ she asked breath- -_lessly. “Up to the place where you were shot.” Mame gasped. ** Alone?” ** Would you like to come?” _. The daughter of the Brundage family shriddered: it was a genuine shudder. Sede | wouldn’t go up there for a million ~ dollars!” she cried. “After what hap- pened? And at night?” “ Then you stay here until I come back,” instructed Miss Dean. “I don’t believe I'll be long.” -Miss Dean walked toward the door, lan- tern in hand. “I—I’ve got to stay here alone?” asked Mame, anxiously. ~ € Unless you’d like to come.” Mame shook her head firmly. “Tl stay here,” she said. “I guess I _ ought to rest for a while, if you don’t mind.” : “ An excellent idea, Marigold. Help your- self to a book. That one on the table, at your elbow, contains a very romantic love- story.” Mame picked up the book vppihainicedly: but did not open it. She was too much overwhelmed by the brazen foolhardiness of the lady of the cottage. Swinging her lantern, Miss Dean circled until she came to the rear of the cottage and then set out briskly along the path to the spring. She did not particularly enjoy her errand, for she was not an Amazon and she made no claim to any exceptional degree of intrepidity. But she was extremely curious, and when curiosity gripped her it would have taken much to shake her determination. Mame’s narrative was too incomplete to be satis- fying. While she felt that her conjecture as to why Mame visited the spring was almost certainly correct, she had only a dim understanding of what happened afterward. _ The white birches were ghostlike in the ~Jantern light, and as the beacon moved on- _ ward their shadows marched in an opposite ’ direction. A nervous person might easily Sip es ee SSS — ed <_< Spears = _ Sg gy —— 2 have imagined that the shadows were mak- ing a stealthy détour, coming back into the path from behind, so that they could follow noiselessly and unseen. But Miss Dean was not nervous; besides, she had a definite mission and she had no eyes for shadows. She was searching for objects. She walked all the way to the spring without discovering anything that was un- familiar, and now she began to have a sus- - picion that Mame had been romancing, or perhaps, to take a more kindly view, had been the victim of a nightmare. Helping herself to a dipperful of cool water, Miss Dean drank at the spring and then began the return journey, walking more slowly this time and allowing her glance to roam from side to side, as she followed the path. _ In this manner her keen eyes presently discerned something they had missed on the outgoing trip. She stooped over and picked up the end.of a piece of twine. It had not been severed cleanly, she observed, but had — been broken, as the frayed end unmistak- ably disclosed. To follow this clue was so simple that Miss Dean did it automatically. It led her to a tree, and there she found the other end of the twine attached to a metal con- trivance that stood on a level with her head. She lifted the lantern and studied the apparatus for several seconds, then touched it gingerly. “A white, powdery substance clung to her finger-tips. Standing on tiptoe, she sniffed cautiously. There was a burnt odor, faint but unmistak- . able. Miss Dean smiled, turned away from the tree and began looking elsewhere. Her | search was a short one. Peering remorse- lessly at her over the top of a bush was the eye of a camera. She walked carefully around the machine and approached it from the rear, where she held up the lantern for better examination. It took but a moment to discover that the camera contained a plate-holder, from which the slide had been drawn. And then she discovered the slide itself, laid across the top of the box. She put down the Bee reached for com iebee se “a= > ee ee ae Se oe