Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 108: what you’re looking at

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

734 ticketed as one of the partisans of the chief miscreant. If slip nooses or tar and feathers, or any other of those playful little favors of the mob, were to be distributed, he was certainly billed for his share. Already he saw darkly hostile glances being directed toward him from various quarters, and heard his name being passed about from lip to lip. It did not seem an especially safe place to stay, there in that open field, with the crowd milling around and apt to start some- thing at the slightest opportunity; so, seek- ing to attract as little attention as possible, he edged his way out and returned up- town, Back on Main Street once more, where everything seemed moving along in a nor- mal, conservative fashion with the usual line of traveling men tilted back in cane- seated chairs in front of the hotel, the usual group of small-town sports about the front of the cigar store, the usual romantic cou- ples strolling across the plaza, and the usual family parties passing to the movies, his panic subsided to a considerable extent, but not his sense of defeat and resentment. Nor did it lessen his grouch, when he came scowling into the office, to find Van Carpen leaning back with his feet up on his desk, smoking a cigarette and acting as if he had not a care in the world. “You seem to be taking things blamed easy,” he growled with an irate glance at his partner, “Sorry I can’t say the same for you, old dear,” airily responded Van Carpen. “ The trouble with you, J. P., is that you regard conditions from the wrong angle. Remember, as Shakespeare says, ‘ There’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.’ Smooth the wrinkles from your brow; be glad; and you’ll soon find that everything is all for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” “You pull any more of that Pollyanna stuff on me, and I’ll murder you,” snarled J. P. “This is no time to be kidding. Things are breaking blamed bad for us, and the sooner we face the facts of the situation the better for us.” But Van Carpen only grinned. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. “All right; let’s face the facts.” He lighted another cigarette. “ Trot them out, old raven, in all their grisly,horror.” J. P. seemed to fmd a sort of somber pleasure in complying. On the financial side, as he pointed out, they were ‘about at the end of their re- sources, with all their available cash sewed up, and their only chance of getting out whole the very slim one of annexing Bob Moore’s seventy-five thousand dollars. “They say there’s a special Providence that protects children and fools,” he said bitterly; “ and I’m beginning to believe it. Twice to-day that shine has been on the edge of signing up, and twice he’s been stopped by some crazy thing you’d never count on. It ‘ll be the same way every time we go after him.” But, J. P. continued, that wasn’t all. There was a personal danger that menaced them. He was pessimistically convinced that Guadaljara City was about to start a frenzied uprising, and that, being now defi- nitely catalogued as friends of Moore’s, they might expect the same treatment. “Tf they give him a necktie party,” he prophesied, “make no mistake about it, we'll be second on the list.” Van Carpen laughed at his croaking. “‘ So that’s what you call the facts, is it?” he commented satirically. “ Pretty desper- ate outlook, what?” “Well, where do you see any silver linings?” demanded J. P. “I suppose you’re banking on Bob Moore’s signing up that paper when he gets back from his air trip, eh?” “No ’—Van Carpen blew a smoke ring and watched it break——“ that is just what I am not counting on.” “ Then tell me how the dickens—” “Wait a minute. Suppose Moore does not come back?” “ You mean, if he has an accident, breaks his fool neck?” | “Put it that way if you choose. Sup- pose, then, there is an accident; how do we stand?” “Tf he is killed? Why, you fool, it sinks us. Until that paper is signed, his indorse- ment on those notes don’t count for—” ‘Who said anything about the paper not : COmicloooks (C@