Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 12, 1927 — page 109: what you’re looking at

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

THE MARK OF ‘slightest suspicion of the octoroon. She is a savage sort of thing, but like anything savage she is childlike. I don’t believe she is treacherous. When she speaks she tears herself into tatters over any trivial problem that an- noys her. If she were treacherous she would be calmer. “7 don’t know what’s happened to the judge. But you think I know. You get behind closed doors and discuss me, and point out everything I do as if I was crazy. Well, maybe I am. Mon Dieu, who wouldn’t be in this house? But I don’t know anything, I tell you. I’m innocent. Before the saints, before the Mother of God!” I suggested that we had not yet said any- thing to her that could be taken in the light of an accusation, “ Oh, you haven’t?” she retorted. “ May- be not you, m’sieu’, You’re quality. T’m not talking about you,” It was quite evident whom she was talk- ing about. ‘ Last night, as soon as you saw me,”’ she said, turning upon Miss Shir- ley as if to rend her to pieces, “ you gave me a look I’ll never forget. And you told me to call the mozo. “The mozo, eh? What about him? What should I know about him? Think I’ve any dealings with that little Mex breed. Par foi! A likely idea! He’s too queer in the way he acts for me to go with- in ten feet of him-—” “ How do you mean queer?” I asked. “ Listen to this,” she snapped. “ Didn’t the mozo cook the judge’s food?” We did not deny it. Miss Shirley should have known that. “ Didn’t he make the judge his coffee every few hours when the judge was ailing, and had that headache in the back of his skull which he was complaining of so much?” I looked to Shirley. She nodded. Cronk was preoccupied with a problem of his own. I saw his hand go to the back of his head. He had that morning complained that his headache would not leave him, “ Didn’t the judge complain about that a. se peeanaalio® Well, THE MOCCASIN, 103 The judge said there was too much chicory. You remember that, perhaps? Or maybe you don’t want to remember.” Miss Shirley seemed to overlook the con- tinual suggestion of aspersion in her house- keeper’s words. She was beginning to be interested in just what Maizie was saying. “T remember Maizie,” she said quietly. ** But it is not enough to make an accusa- tion of murder. You must have reasons.” “Oh, youll ask me for more reasons, will you? For the first time you ask me for reasons, instead of talking about me. Bien! I'll meet you halfway. I'll unravel this mystery that’s been making you all crazy. Maybe you’d like to know why it was that the judge came back and counted his money —like he always did before going to bed? Well, Vil tell you.” She addressed herself now to me. “Tt wasn’t the judge,” Cronk grunted. The mere supposition that it wasn’t the judge, after all the proof we had had, seemed to amuse him. What fools we must have been in his sight! “It was the mozo,” the octoroon woman said assuredly. “ I’ve spied on him before. He got his money from the bank, the money the judge left him; you know that.” Shirley admitted it. Pasqual had taken his check to the bank immediately, and had it changed into silver. The amount ‘made a very good hoard that must have been dear to his bleary old eye. ‘** T’ve watched him,” Maizie went on ex- citedly. “He hid it. Then I found where he went at night to get it out. It was in a hole underneath the feed rack in the barn. - “T joked with him about it; so he hid it again; and this time he hid it where he knew I wouldn’t go to find it: in there in the judge’s room, which was locked up. “No one dared go in that room—he thought. And I reckon he was right. No one went there. But I saw him go in by a back door which he had a key to. And he went often—after midnight.” ““ How is it no one ever heard him count the money?” I asked skeptically. “ Perhaps he never counted it till last night,” Maizie said. * fad soe ei Comicbooke com 5 ry OA Pre ®