Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 189, No. 4 — page 28: what you’re looking at

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

Ge hist aoa { ¢ wes fi ‘ By LORING BRENT Author of “‘ Bringing the Boom to Vingo,’’ etc. A NOVELETTE—COMPLETE IN THIS ISSUE like young women for the customary reasons. Most young men who free- ly and frankly avow that the ladies leave them cold are not woman haters at all; the trouble with them is that they are endowed too generously with the quality which causes a violet to shrink. The young man who really hates girls with all his heart and soul is the unfortunate who does not attract them. He may be lacking in personal magnetism, which is another name for that engaging and com- mendable trait known as “ It”; or he may be too short, too bald, or too fat. In any event, there is about him some- thing that fails to awaken a warm response in feminine hearts, and in him you find pride being assuaged and vanity salved by a hearty hatred of—to use his own bitter, cynical words—the unfair sex. Yet none of these reasons accounted for Teddy Armbister’s aversion to young wom- en. He was not a quaking coward in their presence; in fact, he was always gracefully at his ease, and he was neither short, bald, T ites ARMBISTER did not dis- nor fat, but tall, slim and singularly good looking, with a fine mop of thick, curly hair. Teddy Armbister hated women because he liked them too much; hated them because he was putty in their lovely hands; be- cause he was reasonably sure that, one of these fine days, some charming girl was go- ing to trap him in her web, and he would, for the rest of his life, eat his breakfast across from the same sweet face and, night after night, kiss the same mouth on his re- turn from the office. One of these days, to be sure, he would marry and settle down, but when that time came he wanted to be the one to decide who his breakfast partner was going to be. He often wondered if most men were as waxlike in the hands of the girl they hap- pened to be with as was he, and he had the greatest admiration and respect, not un- mixed with honest envy, for those rare bluff fellows who treated them rough and told them nothing; who loved ’em and left ’em. Teddy Armbister, at the moment when our story opens, was devoting considerably 498 Gomichbooks a (E@)