Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 12, 1927 — page 95: what you’re looking at

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

ty —_ ae ere Ft Se aah be e ‘at aw “~ <- Gd Piety tal et ee — A MYSTERY TALE By KENNETH PERKINS Author of ‘* Wild Paradiee,’’ ‘‘ The Canon of Light,’’ ete. WHAT HAS OCCURRED IN PARTS I and Il OE BOSTWICK has the habit of writing whenever he is nervous. When he becomes involved in the uncanny Judge Scudder murder mystery his nerves become so frayed that he turns out a manuscript as long as a book. The sheriff hands it to the district attorney as testimony in the case. Bostwick’s report tells of his arrival at the Scudder manse near the Sabine River as escort to Miss Shirley Scudder, the judge’s stepdaughter; and how he, his friend, Tim Cronk, the eccentric photographer; the coroner, Dr. Zobel; a deputy sheriff; and an old negro soothsayer stay at the lonely manse witb Miss Shirley Scudder, Maizie, the octoroon housekeeper, and Pasqual, the old Mexican hostler. Judge Scudder had been entombed three weeks before. However, on the second night footsteps resembling the judge’s are heard, and a body is dropped down a three-story staircase. When lights are lit, the body has disappeared; and the deputy sheriff and the soothsayer are missing. CHAPTER XI (Continued ). “ The judge may have murdered a vic- tim purely because he was possessed of a devil, and was liberated from the bonds of RONK_ answered characteristically. the grave to commit an act, no matter how Uncertain, bewildered, obsessed with gruesome, and purposeless. The dead need his claptrap of spiritualism, he could no motives in the sense that we use that not carry his theories out of the realm of re- term.” ligious fervor into the domain of logic: The doctor and I, needless to say, would This story began in the Argoay-Alistory Weekly for January 29. + --O8 > THE VANISHED VICTIM.