Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 145: what you’re looking at

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

A PORTRAIT OF HOPE. head like he was trying to think up some- thing and couldn’t get it across. In fair- ness to Hooch, I tells the doc that though the guy’s traveling with a mob, I don’t think he’s no real yegg, though he dees take to the rough-stuff pretty good. The doc says Hooch won’t do no more rubbing of the head, artd the chances are he won’t take no more interest. in yegging, for a part of the trouble the blood clot causes is a “suspension of moral faculties.” That ain’t my patter—I’m just a telling what he pulled on mé, and it means, so the doc says, that Hooch didn’t “have no clear idea of right from wrong. I tells the doc I ain’t got no blood clot, and I’m out for anything, and he says the trouble with me is that I’m a chump, and no operation will do my kind any good. I kind of think the guy’s right at, that. _ As I said, all I’ve got to go on is the photegrapher’s name, and which might be a favorite one for map-makers all over the country. If I was looking fer a Boston _ Store, or a New York store, I’d look for it ‘in the middle west, but this picture prepo- sition had me guessing right. But Hooch’s home being‘ near Chi, as he says,. there ought to be a chance of locating the. pheto- erapher near there. 7 | The card the picture’s mounted on has a funny kind of a border to it, so 1 goes to _ some of the studios in Denver and describes it, so they’re able to tell me what dealer ‘turns’ ’em out. The name on the card is “ Carson ” so I wires the card people, ask- ing for the address of their customer of that _ name. | Pretty soon the wire comes back saying ‘they have two customers named Carson; one in some town in North Carolina, and the other in Seattle. I takes a chance on the Seattle man and wires him, asking if he’d had a young lady customer with the first name of ‘‘ Hope ”’ in the past year, and says to telegraph the answer. No answer for about a week, then I gets a letter saying he thinks he had a customer named Hope somebody, but he can’t re- member the last name, but she was frem Milwaukee. He says he’s had a fire lately, and all his records are gone, but he remem- | bers the name, or a part of it, at least. 519 I guess this was bad, eh? Things was coming my way pretty good. But still has to locate a girl named Hope in a burg | like Milwaukee, which may not be no easy job after all. But I figures maybe Mil- waukee’s the place where Hoech comes from, and ence there I can get all thé depe, so I tells Tommy and Slim to watch out for our friend as I has to go east on a little deal, and I takes the next train out. I sure hates te pay out good money to a railroad company just for the privilege of riding, but sometimes it saves time, so I takes to the cushions for the first time in many years. In Milwaukee I goes to the newspaper offices and gets into their files, and it ain’t no time before I gets the whole story. Later I goes out to the cemetary and in- spects the swell-looking stone they puts up ‘Te the memory of William L. Winston,” who “died on” such and such a date. And I also finds out who the Hope girl is, she being the daughter of a Dr. Seymour. He’s eut of tewn, as I finds out when I. calls up the house, and I’m dead sure it was Miss Hepe who answers the telephone. But ef course, I don’t say nothing to her about the case. | In the papers I finds out who it was who itentified Hooch so thoroughly when they finds the body in the railroad yards. He’s a banker, named Derner, and him and Hooch was great pals when everything was going good. It was in his bank that Hooch has aH the money being kept until he gets to be thirty years old. Now I likes, and dislikes, banks. I likes em because they gather up all the loose Change in the neighborhood and make it easy for a guy to clean up right if he once gets to the box. But I dislikes ’em equally much, because they make it so darn hard for a guy to get to the bundles, and they raise such a fuss if you-do happen to con- nect. | I ain’t none too cheerful about going to the place. It’s hard for a professional man to keep his mind off his graft, and the el- bows round a bank can usually spot a guy who looks in a certain way at a bale of coin. I’d never been mugged in the burg, and I was kind ‘of well-known pretty much ail GORGE OOO Colin