Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

816 that. Look at the way he treated us! He was polite and friendly enough, and never once could you have laid your finger on a word or a look from him that was haugh- ty or arrogant like the most of them act over here when the police get snooping around, even them that trace their ancestry back to that ark they call the Mayflower, and yet didn’t you kind of feel as though you were talking to a royal duke at the least? It’s just the grand manner of him, that he don’t even know he’s got.” ‘A fine gentleman, Mr. Orbit,” Dennis agreed. “‘ We’ve found out nothing, though, about what Hughes was doing down in Mike Taggart’s precinct, nor why he ran like that till he dropped, and likely we’ll not find it here between these two gates.” “There’s something more than that on your mind, Mac!” the inspector declared shrewdly. ‘“‘ You’d never have insisted on questioning Orbit’s friends if you hadn’t some idea of what caused Hughes’s seizure, and that it led back here! What did you see before he died that you’re keeping to yourself?” “Tell you to-morrow, inspector, if you will drop in when you’ve nothing better to do, or phone Denny and me the word to come down town to you,” replied Mc- Carty hurriedly in a lowered tone, for they had almost reached the gate and the watch- man was advancing to meet them. ‘ Den- ny’s off duty, and I’m taking him home with me to-night, though I misdoubt he'll keep me wp till dawn with his wild theories as to what desperate crime took Hughes down to the water front; Thanks be, the rain has stopped, and he’ll not be wanting to ride home in state!” But it was McCarty himself who hailed a prowling taxi when they had taken leave of the inspector and discreetly rounded a corner. He had no time on the homeward way to glance at the meter, being engaged in mollifying his outraged companion. “Will you never learn, you simpleton, when I’m talking about you for the benefit of somebody else?” he demanded in exas- peration when Dennis with bitter resent- ment had spurned his hospitality. “ Twas to put off the inspector I dropped that hint about being wishful for my sleep, or he ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. would have trailed along with us to find out what I’d got up my sleeve; and well you know ’tis nothing but the expression on a dying man’s face and the way he tried to speak but couldn’t! He’ll have the laugh on the both of us to-morrow if the medical examiner says ’twas ‘natural causes,’ and he'll forget all about this night’s doings, but I won’t. I’m going to find out why Hughes ran the breath from his body and what it was he tried so hard to say.” “Some day,” Dennis began darkly but with a telltale softening in his tones— ‘some day you'll broadcast through me once too often, and this radio station will shut down on you! The inspector was right, though; I can see that now. What- ever made Hughes throw that fit, you think it happened back in that society fire line, or you’d not have listened to the fat, bald little man, nor yet the old he-gossip and his son. I misdoubt but some night we'll be putting a scaling ladder against that iron fence and chloroforming the watchman, so you can put that butler next door through the third degree!” Back in McCarty’s rooms once more, Dennis dried his rain-soaked boots com- fortably before the little coal fire in the erate and watched with a quizzical light in his eyes while his host stowed his newly acquired library carefully away in a closet and then proceeded to clear out the accu- mulated litter of several days’ bachelor housekeeping, but he said no word until the task was accomplished. Then he _ ob- served: “When you’re working on a case, Mac, you use your head, and the eyes and ears of you, but to-night another of your senses was asleep at the switch. Not that it had anything to do with Hughes, of course, but no more did anything else we learned except his name! You overlooked one little bet!” “Oh, I did, did I!” McCarty retorted, stung but wary. “ And what sense of mine was it that was not working?” “Smell.” The reply was succint. ‘“ Un- less you’re holding out on me, your nose was not on the job.” McCarty stared. “What was there to smell?” he demand- | Ee COME OOOKS (CO)