Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 7, 1928 — page 117: what you’re looking at

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

NOW WE’RE RICH. Henry did control himself to some extent. “They didn’t go to a dinner dance to-night, Laura. From what Burtis has been discovering, they haven’t been going to any of these affairs and stay- ing there until all hours of the night. Now do you get it?” “No! What have they been do- _ ing?” “ That's what I’m trying not to think about, because I want to keep hold of myself till I can get my hands on Ger- ald!” said Henry. ‘‘ They haven't been going to picture shows, because those houses close at eleven. I'll swear they haven’t been sitting around dark roads, spooning in the car; that would be much too tame for that speedy air. : They haven’t been here decently, as they should have been, and they cer- tainly haven’t been at Burtis’s house. What have they been doing until one and half past, every morning, then?” “Harry! Laura cried, and her cheeks flamed. ‘ That’s beastly of you!” “Probably. I may be all wrong. Heaven knows nothing could make me happier than to know I was all wrong, Laura. Be a mighty different proposi- tion if Gerald was just some kid work- ing for a living. But I’ve seen too much of that sort of thing in my time—a rich boy playing around with a pretty little girl like Margey, in moderate circum- stances. Hell! It’s human nature to do anything you can get away with, isn’t it?” Henry snarled. ‘‘ A boy with a millionaire father feels perfectly safe.” “I—I don’t helieve whimpered. “No, and I don’t, either, and in spite of not having been asked for an opinion, I'll say you’re raving crazy, Hank,” said Brantree. “ Marge sim- ply isn’t that kind of a kid.” ‘““Margey is a child, too young to know what she’s about, and she is in- fatuated with that young hound!” 8 A tT. Laura 257 “ Bunk, Henry! They’re wiser now- adays at fifteen than you were at twenty-five.” Laura’s brother laughed. “Sit down there! Bite the end off an- other cigar, take a couple of puffs and then come down to earth!” He thrust Mr. Morrow into a chair with some force and stood over him, while Henry breathed heavily and stared up blackly. “ You've been fussing a good deal lately—I’ve helped with that, I sup- pose—and you're all shot up, too, Hank. “Just because Marge isn’t in bed by nine o'clock, she’s not necessarily coming home some evening with a shawl over her head and the child in her arms! ‘They all stay out late these days, all the kids, and I question very much whether they’re any worse than they ever were. Now, wild man! Ex- actly what did Burtis say to start all this °” Henry told them. Brantree laughed again and more genuinely, when he had asked a few questions. Laura failed to join his merriment. Laura was sniffing and Henry would have liked to comfort her, but there was that in Laura’s eye when it wandered in his direction which made it seem an inop- portune time for comforting of that sort. | Well, perhaps he was ashamed of himself and of his dark suspicions; pretty rotten for a man to find himself forced to think such things! But isn’t it just the people who scout so indig- nantly similar possibilities in their own young ones, who find the children in the very worst messes? Margey was just a baby, and that damned Burtis boy, with his football shoulders and his picture-hero profile, was the very type to turn her giddy little head. Moreover, as Henry had learned from smoking-car gossip, things had been happening around here of which Laura was blissfully unaware. Two weeks ago they had raided the Twin EOPMICLOOOKS (E@)