Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 124: what you’re looking at

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

914 which should have been a thrilling moment, his thoughts roamed back to Mary Severn —her eyes, her hair, her wonderful voice, her whole wonderful selfi—Mary— Richard was amusing himself by pound- ing one clenched fist against the other palm. ‘“ Bart!” he shouted. ‘ If Armstruther shows his face, whatever else we do, I want one whack at him!” “All right,” Bartley responded wearily. ‘Where are we now?” ‘* Just went through the Narrows, boy— forty miles an hour or so. The way she’s stepping out now, we ought—what’s the en- gineer pointing at?” Young Mr. Greer squinted ahead and then stood up. “Those are the Myrma’s guess!”’ he cried. The engine ceased its ear-splitting din quite suddenly. “Do we run right alongside or do we sneak down on this boat?” the driver asked briefly and intelligently. “JT think we'll do some sneaking,” smiled Mr. Greer. “ Let’s see if there’s a ladder or a rope or anything else that ‘Il get us aboard quietly. You’d better take vour money now.” The driver took it. The Cherokee swirled on smoothly, almost soundlessly. The lights came nearer and nearer; they bobbed sharply as they caught the edge of the Myrma’s wake and Bartley stared ahead with deepest interest. Decidedly, she was the sort of craft that might be owned by a man worth fifty mil- lions—and by few less favored. Not a large vessel, she made up in lines what she lacked in size. Infinitely graceful, she was not fifty yards ahead of them now, her white hull moving smoothly as any ghost and— “Say! What do you know about that?” Mr. Greer cried, softly and delightedly, and pointed at the length of Jacob’s ladder near the stern. “ Mussy way for a private yacht captain to be leaving port,” Richard commented. “Well, let’s not criticize him,” Bartley grinned. ‘‘ Let’s regard it as a dispensa- tion. You—whatever your name is!” ‘‘ What?” said the driver. “You stick close alongside and in about lights, I ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. ten minutes, if luck’s with us, I hope to come over that side again with a lady.” ‘With two ladies,” Richard corrected. ““ Right!” said the driver. Wind whistling softly past him, young Mr. Greer reached out for the ladder and caught it. Teeth visible in a happy grin, he climbed to the Myrma’s deck level, peered about cautiously and grinned even more widely. It was passing strange; perchance it indi- cated that, more polite methods abandoned at last, fortune had decided to favor him— but the cheering fact remained that, from this point, there was not a soul in sight on the after deck. A reassuring hand beckoned to Richard Flynn, whose countenance just then was at the level of Bartley’s knees, and Mr. Greer climbed on—up to the white rail he climbed and grasped it and threw a leg over it. And there, thunderstruck, he stood stock still as Richard joined him on the Myrma’s deserted deck, and stared. A sufficiently definite plan had formed in young Mr. Greer’s head these last five minutes. He would come face to face with Prudence Severn; with a sad smile he would hear whatever initial remarks she might care to make. And then he would stay her with the news—and he did that sort of thing rather well—that her aged father, sorely tried, had been stricken down at last; that he was at the point of death and calling for his younger daughter— and that he, Bartley, had been sent to fetch her. And unless the girl chanced to be a mass of purely egotistical adamant, something like that must surely have worked—and now it was all unnecessary, for over there in the wicker armchair, not twenty-five feet from them as they stood, sat Prudence herself, reading a magazine. Her back was toward them. She wore the same hat she had worn that morning, and the same woolly sport coat Bartley had seen in the studio; legs crossed, one high- colored shoe swung up and down. What- ever the nature of her reading matter, it was claiming all of Prudence’s attention. Eyes sparkling, Bartley Greer removed his coat. He turned and nodded to Flynn. Comiclbooks.€©