Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

392 shadows; but the soft mobility of the girl’s lips, the all but babyish dimples at the cor- ners of her mouth, sufficed to reassure him. Still, he sought for oral confirmation that — her “ thinking” was not at variance with his own sweet pleasure. “You were thinking?” he prompted. ‘About something a friend told me. What you said made me remember it. again.”’ “What I said? What was that?” ' Artie began to wonder if he had made.a slip, but was soon reassured. ‘“‘ About life being too short,” explained Julie. “What about it? ’S’right, ain’t it? That is, if you want to have a good time you have to go out and get it on the hop. That’s what I say.” “ That’s what she said, only in other words.” “What was they?” “When youw’re dead, you’re dead. So—”’ “So—get all the fun you can while you’re young,” finished Artie. “ Sure. That’s the dope. Your friend was all to the mustard.”’ ‘“T think so, too,”’ agresd Julie. “ Funny you and her should both say the same in a different way.” “Oh, I dunno,” said Artie, stifling a yawn. “I reckon she’s a girl of sense. Knows a thing or two. Same as yours truly. Leave it te me, though, I’m the boy to show you more’n she can tell you. They put the lid on in this old town, but they couldn’t get us all in the pot. The Mog don’t advertise, but it’s sure some slap-up ho-tel. They put up over a hundred thou- sand on the café fixings alone. You know that.”’ This was sheer, blatant bluff-flattery of Julie, but she took it for granted that her sprightly companion meant his implication that she was a girl of wide and varied ex- perience.” “ Oh, go on!” she exclaimed. “I’m only a poor stenog. I ain’t been nowhere. Not much, that is.” ‘All right, blue eyes,” retorted Artie with a pleasing suggestion of disbelief. We won't fall out about it.” When the taxi turned off Broadway, and ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. stopped in a quiet, respectable-appearing side street, only.the fact that Julie stood silent kept her from openly betraying her ignorance of the Mogolia. There was neth- ing in sight that suggested their proximity to an ho-tel with a hundred-thousand-dol- lar café. Artie made no spoken observation on the transparent truth of the matter. It suited him to allow Julie to believe she had really convinced him she was accustomed to high life and its attendant freedom frem restraint. ‘‘ The more she kids herself she’s got me going, the more she’s got to play up to,” he thought with the facile reasoning of gutter-bred parasites. It was early when Julie and Artie en- tered the Mogolia Café, and the freely cash-spending parties of transient pilgrims to this place of unpleasantness but to all seeming, toothsome contrast to decently conducted hotels, had not yet arrived. Taking the rough with the smooth, the flower with the thorn, the world is a mighty good place to stand upon. Its natural beauties are legion, its plague spots rare, and notwithstanding some mulish persis- tence in the ways that are a clog in the wheel of progress, civilization is on the up- grade. But it is peculiar that man will take the trouble to build a fine city and allow to be planked down there a million-dollar house of septic pestilence. The supposi- tional answer is that a rascal’s meney- has to make money in rascally ways. The Mogolia was an instance. Owned by a rogue and run by rogues, it was sup- ported with the money of rogues and fools. They provided the interest on the boss ras- cal’s investment. Tainted money calls to its kind. Artie had money. A lot of it. Ill-gotten and thereby, evil. Julie was a simpleton, nice enough to look at, but shert on furnishings in the Chamber of Common Sense. Heaps of girls and boys, light- hearted, bubble-brained babes of seventeen, up to the getting old and passing young grades, are that way, and some of them never do start in to collect any of Old Man Experience’s curios. . Not even on the hire system. As for Julie, she is so very young that she may, one day, know the fear that angels have. COLL (CO 7" OOOLK