Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 123, No. 3 — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

292 aperture and behind him the wide marble staircase and rug-hung gallery of an impos- ing rotunda. “Come in,” he invited laconically. “I switched on these hall lights myself, but there were some already going in this room back here; come and see what I found.” He led the way across the marble hall, rich in the mellow, subdued colorings of the rugs and draperies under the soft lights, but funereal with the huge, carved chairs ranged in mathematical precision against the walls, and McCarty followed with the - lagging, handcuffed youth in tow. The door of a room beside the staircase was open, and as they reached it all three paused for a moment on the threshold. It was spacious in itself, although small in _comparison with the vastness of the hall and was furnished as a study, with two davenports facing each other projecting from either side of the fireplace and a long Jacobean refectory table between. Book- cases lined the walls, a massive writing table stood between two windows at the rear and deeply upholstered- chairs were scat- tered here and there each with a smoking- stand beside it, but McCarty’s eyes took in the details with a mere glance. His attention was riveted on the long figure clad in the perfection of dinner clothes which lay stretched upon the floor. The feet in their glistening pumps were upturned and a gleam of white showed where waistcoat and shirt front met, but all the upper part of the aia was stained crimson. Clancy’s face was white, and inured as he was to sights as hideous as this, Mc- Carty felt a wave of nausea sweep over him, while their captive put his manacled hands. over his eyes and moaned. “Ts it Creveling himself, do you think?” McCarty asked in a lowered tone. For reply Clancy knelt beside the body and slipping his hand in the stained waist- coat pocket pulled out a platinum cigarette case as thin as a knife blade, the top of which, barely protruding, had caught his eye. He held it up for McCarty to see, and the latter plainly read the initials upon it: “ E. C. C.” y Google ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. ‘““T remember now,” he observed sober- ly. “I saw the name in the papers often enough, years past, to bring it back to me; Eugene Christopher Creveling.” Clancy replaced the cigarette case care- ‘fully and pointed to something which lay beside the body. It was a huge army pistol and it lay within touch of the finger-tips of that limp, nerveless right hand. “TU have a word with you, Clancy.” McCarty turned and shoved his captive into the nearest chair. ‘ Sit there, and if you stir I’ll blow the head off you!” But there was plainly no thought of either resistance or flight left in the boy; he half turned and resting his arms upon the wide-spreading ones of the chair, he buried his face in them. McCarty drew his confrére to the other | end of the room and with an ever-watchful eye upon the thief he whispered: “* He never had a hand in it, Clancy. I saw he was up to some mischief and I trailed him for four or five blocks, as I told you. I wasn’t more than a block away when he skinned in that window and I - didn’t lose any time reaching the outside of it. There was no shot fired in the mean- time and I’d hardly got here when he came squirming out again. I grabbed him and dragged him over to the light of that street- lamp and I saw that he was scaréd clean through; he looked as though he had seen a ghost! He’s telling the truth, all right: that rat wouldn’t have the nerve to stick up a kid coming home from the grocery on an errand for its mother! ”’ “ Did you frisk him?” asked Clancy. “I did, and found a gat on him that’s like a toy cap-pistol compared to that gun lying there. Here it is.” - _He produced the keys, pistol and black- jack which he had taken from the thief, and after one look at them Clancy an- nounced: - ‘* We'll send for the wagon and have him held as a material witness; that junk he was carrying will send aire up for a stretch, anyway.” After some search they located a desk telephone on the writing table, concealed and the policeman called up his precinct station-house and had the satisfaction of NOOO Orig | — inal from G S (SF CO HE OHIO S TATE INAS fTERSIT