Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 87: what you’re looking at

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

.A HATFUL OF TROUBLE. the time I teft Schofield. He visited the professor; he probably saw me at the laboratory. | “Now, he may have been on the train with me. I didn’t-see him. But, leaving Boston at midnight, going to bed, getting up early—all that only proves he may have been in another Pullman. “ Now, I got off on impulse to see Felice. Where does that leave the little y-man? It leaves him on the train—if he was on the train, going to New York. If he was still following me—why didn’t he show up near Mr. Black’s office? I don’t remember see- ing him. “ But-he didn’t need to come there. If he was following me, when he found I was not on-the limited in New York, he had only to follow the transfer of my bag to the Hotel Romaine. Why, to be sure! He _ Must have done that. For there was ‘the tag on my bag and I had the other half of it. And the bag was in the hotel when I finally got in. So was my ee It’s there still.” The equation, absurd in inception, tenuous as a frail thread, now grew perceptibly stronger. zs 7 ‘“‘ T-didn’t go to the Hotel, until after Mr. Black hired me. Then I went there, took my bag which has since been rifled, and went straight to the laboratory! Aha! Also Eureka! Thumbs down—I’m Nero, you scalawag of an angular-faced y-man! “Mr. Black wanted secrecy. He didn’t send anyone to investigate me. He didn’t send, because he had heaps of applications. I was picked—it doesn’t matter why— motives are not in this equation, as yet. Just naked facts. I was sent for. I was scrutinized, before I knew I was sent for. Tt was fMier ed—not to the office—to the - Hotel Romaine. “T was followed again, after I was leav- ing the laboratory. I was followed by this same angular-faced, tall, unprepossessing scoundrel. He didn’t fellow me to the police station—as he would have done had he been legitimately employed. “He went straight back to the labora- tory, to steal by bag, thinking to break in, before I was released! But I was too fast for him. ~ And then -he followed me—fol- 557 lowed me up to the hotel on the palisades where I slept! I had my own bag this morning. I see where he could have gotten it—the only time he could have gotten it. “He got my bag, opened it, took out what I had and put in what Lyons found. He got it when I was telephoning to Shel- by 8900—and the chauffeur had left the car. The limousine was alone when I got back just ahead of the chauffeur.. I had the rifled bag until Foster got it, he had the same rifled bag until the police got it. “ Oh, you crafty, deep-dyed, super-sneak- ing scalawag—I just wish I knew if you were the same as the x-man that stole my unicorn. -I know you, you big, lantern- jawed, “Jong-legged, rhomboid-faced, ma- lignant—”’ ““"Whos’e all dis yere!” “ Twa-n-n-ng!”’ boomed the robust. frop. Out of the darkness loomed a great dusky shape! “ Mistah ‘Towah, Miss Felice, she done want to know if you-all is goin’ to sit out here all night, a cussing the fiddling crickets and de frovs! = It was very appropriate that the “‘ chef ” should arrive just as Arthur Tower was getting rather more than his fill of a~ banquet composed wholly of imaginary equations, with mezzo-soprano cicada and basso-profundo-batrachian accompaniment. “ Dat dare custahd is better than all dem wicked words you been using,” solemnly announced Mammy Poindexter. “ Did you evah hold fo’th at a camp-meetin’, Mistah Towah? You got Billy Sunday away Bae in de gallery—he, he he!” Arthur Tower was the kind of a chan that could appreciate a joke. Especially, when the burden of the joke was on the y-man. His face was lighted up as he followed his ‘monitor into. the house. He had not located the x-man, but tbe | ye man was accurately placed. So was his motive. And so was a certain suspicion rising like a vicious tide that swirled in and around the whole interval between the remote office of Mr. George Black and this splendid mansion, just out- side of which all this super-complexity. had — —com iecbooks:co