Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 137: what you’re looking at

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

LIBERATION. Yet might it not be also that he feared through her instrumentality the case might he reopened and the truth discovered at last? She could well understand his re- peated offer-to help get the fugitive out of the country; flight would admit the guilt he had always denied, and when King first ‘came there to the studio he had tried with all his plausibility to make George Lorrin see how hopeless his case was. What had he said to Lorrin alone that night to make him begin to suspect the truth? As this thought flashed across her mind Mary dropped her hands and straightened. Then she started, quivering, her eyes fixed wide and dark upon the door, for it was opening slowly, deliberately, a hand clutch- ing the latch and a shoulder silhouetted between moonlight and lamp’s glow. There was something so_ incredibly stealthy and affrighting about the silent, cautious advent of the intruder that Mary involuntarily opened her lips to scream, but no sound issued from them and she could only wait, tense yet erect, while the door continued to move inch by inch, until after endless ages a face appeared. Convulsed now with the fear that had been latent in it at their first meeting Mary nevertheless knew it and her own terror fell from her even as the recognition became mutual. ~ “Come in, Mr. Hill!” she said with a little flutter in her breath. ‘‘ Did your wife give you my message?” He nodded sullenly, then leaped in and whipped the door shut behind him, standing with his back to it to stare in abject fear about the studio and then into her face. “IT knew it!” he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper. ‘I knéw when my wife told me about you that you were the girl who came to the office yesterday. I might have been wise then that it was all up.” “You told her after Mrs. Lorrin left last night that you were being framed, but you didn’t mean by poor George Lorrin or his friends!” Mary remarked. It seemed to her that miraculously her brain had cleared and was functioning without her volition, as under the spell of another’s personality; that the words issuing from her own lips with the calmness of certainty were directed 771 by something quite apart from her con- sciousness, ‘‘ You meant that some one else would frame you if he could in order to save himself now that the truth was coming out. Why didn’t you speak first and save yourself from the whole brunt of that forg- ery? Why did you run away?” ‘Because, I was afraid,” gasped the visitor. “I’ve always been afraid of him, he was too slick for me, and I’m afraid now. He isn’t here?” “No.” Mary’s lip curled. ‘“ Did you think I told your wife to send you into a trap?” He came slowly forward into the full aura of the lamp, a pitiable figure despite his jaunty clothing, his round face sagging and putty-colored, his eyes bloodshot and shift- ing desperately, his full lips twitching and slavering. “J didn’t know what to think, before God!” he exclaimed. “I’m almost crazy. I came here because it was my last chance. You told my wife you knew I didn’t com- mit that forgery, but the main guy who framed George Lorrin first would try to get me now. You said you’d see it didn’t hap- pen if I’d come to you, and that’s why I’m here” “I said I’d see that you weren’t unjustly accused, but I can’t help you unless you tell me the whole truth,” “Mary responded. ** Sit down here and try to compose yourself. We're quite alone and you needn’t be afraid to tell me everything from the beginning. The man who committed that forgery was Wesley King, wasn’t he?” She forced the utterance of the name and ‘in spite of her conviction found herself waiting in forlorn suspense for the answer. If she had been wrong, after all? If George Lorrin might possibly have been mistaken, and the man to whose life she had linked hers were not a criminal? But if subconsciously that hope had ex- isted, it died quickly for Hill nodded and a visible shudder shook him. “Yes! I swear I hadn’t anything to do with it, I swear I didn’t know what he wanted those notes and receipts for. I didn’t even guess till it was all over—till Lorrin was pinched, I mean. I suffered hell waiting for the trial for fear some new oO CORNICGLOOOKS CO