Argosy and Railroad Man's Magazine, Vol. 107 No. 3 — page 56: what you’re looking at

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

398 not glass, as he had hoped it might be, and the individual did not seem in any hurry to come out of where he was before Jimmy followed Vivian Baldwin out of her office door, which she promptly locked. ‘““[’m afraid,” said she, withdrawing the key and putting it in her bag with the let- ter, ‘“‘ that you have the blues ‘worse than . J had them before you came in. You're my only customer to-day, and you brought me a little luck in other ways—at least it followed you in. That letter that came while you were dictating was from my brother. I haven’t heard from him in some time. Do you ever go to the movies?” “I’m rather fed up on them,” said he, with a slight shudder which she did not see. He had a little difficulty in adding: “Do you?” “‘T play the piano, evenings, in the thea- ter behind the Mansion House. That’s our best hotel, you know.” ‘“‘I’m registered there as James Stuart. Since you mentioned blues, Ill go right | back and insert Indigo between the two halves of my name. May I ask yours?” She told him while they tripped down the stairs to the echo of her laugh. At the foot she paused with sisterly camaraderie. ‘Norman, my brother, has a sense of humor, too. Since you gave me business and brought me luck, I’d like to return the last, since you seem to have lost yours. If you care to drop in to the theater this eve- ning, I’ll bring down some special music and play for you. No one will know the difference, for we don’t play cue music as they do in city theaters. I’ve played since a young girl.” “In that event,” smiled Jimmy reckless- ly, “‘ have the local Belasco hold out one for me in the baldest spot in the bald- headed row, and I'll hold down that spot and listen to you. And nobody but you will know the difference.” He glanced up the dark stairway irreso- lutely after she had tripped away. The drizzle of the afternoon had dwin- dled to a mist. ‘“‘T wonder,” muttered Jimmy, “if a rooster that wears such big shoes as I saw behind that case sleeps in ’em—like a horse?” ARGOSY AND RAILROAD MAN’S MAGAZINE, Jimmy quickly decided that it was none of his business how the intruder slept. He had seen the young lady out of her office because, with a man hiding in it, it had seemed no more than fair. If the chap behind that case had ways of getting in there surreptitiously, he also had ways of getting out. If he were not a simpleton, he would get out after such a pointed reference as Jim- my had made on pausing in front of the case ere leaving the room with the girl. After all, Jimmy’s interest was not, pri- marily, for that chap. Unless he had happened to be Norman Baldwin, Miss Vivian’s brother, who had written her. Norman, according to his sister, ‘‘ hadn’t been heard from for a long time.” James Stuart knew a man by that same name, and he had known him before com- ing to Coalport at all—to his sorrow. The man giving that name had treated him very, very shabbily indeed, and it was the coin- cidence of the surname which had inter- rupted Jimmy’s otherwise rather roseate moments which the arrival of the letter caused. It was so utterly unexpected and so sin- gularly sinister—all things considered. But on the whole, the discovery, bald and bru- tal as it was, comported rather well with the way a man of that name had treated him. before coming to Coalport. In the eyes of the world, the fellow’s ac- tions were those of a downright scoundrel. The added brutality was due to learning that the chap was the brother of a girl who looked like a Greek nymph, in spite of a cheap serge dress—a_ girl who was evident- ly well bred, yet not too formal to be hu- man and sympathetic. He decided not to linger and invite a possible brawl with this other individual who had been skulking ‘behind the book- case, but to go straight back to the hotel. If his presence, as seemed probable, had kept the skulker from doing. little save shift his weight from one foot to the other, it ought not to delay a supper which he “felt fairly well qualified to eat, in spite of the cavalier way he had been treated as to business. — COMICEDOO S (C(O) inn