Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 94: what you’re looking at

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

884 ‘I decided to go for that emerald, also. And in that, of course, I took the step which wrecked me. Otherwise, I should have got safely away. You notice that I make no excuses. Yes, it was robbery. But I looked on the other jewels as little more than interest on the Sheik. However, that is past. I have lost. I don’t pretend to ask you to believe my yarn or give me the Sheik. I only ask that you keep your word and let me escape scot free. Is that agreed?” “T have given my word. That is enough,” said Hugh Dascom. ‘ And that is the end of the story?” ‘The end of it?” said Logan, and a sin- gular light came into his face. ‘“ By no means. That is the end of only a part of it. And there is another part which I wish to have you know. It will interest you all, T hope. But first, come closer!” They swarmed nearer to the bed with audible breathing. “In the first place,” said Logan, ‘‘ his name is—”’ A gun boomed with deafening loudness. Logan jerked to an erect sitting posture, his head back, his arms thrown out wide as he gasped for breath. There was a tinkle of falling glass from the shattered window pane through which the gun had been fired. Then Logan fell back upon the bed. He strove terribly to speak, but there was only a pink froth bubbling at his lips, for he had been shot through the throat. Yet his lips went through the horrible gib- berish of framing silent words. In his wild struggles for breath and for the speech which would name his murderer, he fell from the bed and to his knees. But death was close to him now, and he knew it. With his last strength he dabbled his hand in his own blood—he trailed across the spread of the bed the letters ‘“‘ H-o-d—” . “It’s Hodge!”’ screamed Olivetta to the confused mass of people who had broken open the door and run into the room, some showing weapons, all alarmed, some climb- ing out through the window and onto the balcony from which the shot had been fired. “Tt’s John Hodge who has killed him.” A tawny form sprang through the crowd and kneeled at the side of dead Samuel ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. Logan. It was Louis Kern, half naked, and with his long black hair standing on end. He gathered the bloody head of the dead man in his arms. CHAPTER XVI. A RECKLESS RETURN. HAT cry had come from her in an ecstasy of grief and anger and terror as she saw for the first time, so it seemed to Olivetta, the true John Hodge. And, indeed, that was he as he had been from the first, assured, sinister, cunning, all the devil in him peering out not when he frowned, as in other men, but when he smiled! She scorned herself, she hated herself for the strange fascination with which he had gathered her in, actually hypnotized her. All of those emotions were tearing her when she cried out the accusation. But others had seen the scrawled writing. At the first tracing of the H, indeed, Hugh Dascom had looked around, but John Hodge was gone. He had disappeared during a crisis of the narrative of Logan. Now he was neither in the room nor in the hall beyond. But Hugh Dascom, standing in the center of the room and folding his arms, was organizing the pursuit, shouting instructions in a ring- ing voice while he himself remained perfect- ly cool, perfectly self-contained. But there was little that could be done. They scoured the grounds about the house. But there was no sign of him. They went to the garage and there they found that, strangely enough, he had dared to go direct- ly there after the murder and, opening the garage, had taken out the same car in which he had driven into the place. He had trusted rightly enough to the momentary flurry of excitement after the killing to cover his flight, and by the time the search- ers arrived he was out of sight, beyond the grounds. He had entered the highroad by the Dascom gate, and from this he might have turned into any of a dozen byways. Olivetta had joined in the scurry of the searchers, but only in a dilatory fashion, for she was too busy keeping one hand over the ComicwIooks CO)