Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 123, No. 4 — page 51: what you’re looking at

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

HOW MANY CARDS? names of any of the gentlemen who’d been present. He said they just ate and drank and smoked and chinned, with never a little game to while away the hour; that Crevel- ing hadn’t touched a card in years.” ‘Then how did that nine of diamonds come to be there on the table?”” demanded Dennis. There was a pause, and then McCarty replied slowly: “T don’t know, unless it was a part some way of the grim game that was played out to a finish between the two of them in the study after supper.”’ ‘A game of life and death, with Crevel- ing losing the odd trick.’ Dennis nodded. “Tf you did not find the rest of the pack lying around, maybe the one card was brought by the man that killed him as a sign or a reminder. Oh, you needn’t be looking at me like that, Mac! Stranger things than that are going on behind those white-marble fronts, for all you know! But what was that high blank wall built for at the back?” “That’s one of the questions I’ve been _ asking myself, like I told you.” McCarty cocked his ear at a newsboy’s shrill call down the street and shook his head. “ No. It ’ll be too early for the papers to get hold of it yet. - It’s funny how they were all so sure, even his wife, that Creveling had been murdered, .and him with the pistol lying beside him. It was only when Mrs. Creveling spoke of calling in Terhune that her uncle backslid:- and pretended that he thought it might have been suicide, after all.” “Terhune!” Dennis exclaimed. ‘“ For the love of the saints, is he in on this, too?” “With both feet, and I misdoubt a couple of his little scientific recording ma- chines up his sleeve,” McCarty chuckled. “’*T would have done you more good than a drop of the best to have seen his face when I came back after talking to the cook and butler and found him in the hall!” “So ’twas Mrs. Creveling called him in, and her uncle didn’t want him.” Dennis was slowly digesting the facts. “ Do you think this Alexander and the valet were in cahoots? It looks as though the both of ‘head once more. aay f them were trying to shield somebody, all right.” “IT ‘don’t understand the attitude of the whole lot of them.” McCarty shook his “From the minute Mrs. Creveling put her foot in the house there seemed to be a kind of a silent battle going on between her and her uncle: you could feel it in the air. He was trying to run the whole affair to suit himself, and she was defying him, and getting her own way, too, in the end. Say, Denny, there was a fire in the neighborhood last night, wasn’t there?” Dennis stared. “ Sure, what night isn’t there, with the people packed in flats like sardines in a box? But what are you getting at, Mac?” “When was the fire, and where?”’ ‘‘ Along about two, on the next block,” Dennis replied. ‘‘ An upset kerosene stove started it in a dressmaker’s place on the ground floor, where she was working late, and it spread to the basement before we could get it under control, but it didn’t get up-stairs, though the tenants were pretty well smoked out. How did you know about it?” ‘“‘ That’s where the butler’s sister, Mrs. Carroll, lives; where he and his wife spent the night.” McCarty drew a cigar from his pocket and chewed the end ruminative- ly. “ They’re queer birds. The cook would have talked, I’m thinking, but her. husband shut her up—though, at that, I caught them in one lie. “ Before Sarah got sight of me standing behind Hill, she said to him that she wished Mr. Creveling would have his parties some- where else and leave them in peace, but when I told them Creveling had been shot the butler denied that either of them knew he expected any one last night. In the next breath after Sarah learned that Mrs. Creveling had already come home she be- wailed that the rooms were not in order and she had all the lobster and stuff from the caterer’s to clean up. ‘“‘ How did she know there’d been lobster for supper if she hadn’t heard the order given? Of course, all this‘has nothing to do with the murder itself, but knowing so much, it wouldn’t surprise me if they knew THE OHIO S TAT EUR NTN CO