The Argosy, Vol. 61, No. 4 — page 110: what you’re looking at

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

668 a bank-note of large denomination in such a peculiar way that he believed the party from whom he obtained it was its dishonest possessor. He asked for a list of the numbers of any large notes which the institutions to which he wrote had lost at the time they were robbed. And he asked that the answers might be sent to ‘'B. J. Jenks, General De- livery, Selsburg P. O.” In his letters he had stated that, once assured that the institution he wrote to had possessed the bank-note then in his hands, he would privately divulge all he knew of the possible thief and the circumstances which had placed the note in his own possession. He had written these letters with ex- treme care, and by having any answers come to him under an assumed name to the Selsburg post-office, where he was not known, Dexter believed that he would never be suspected in the matter. If he could not find the true owner of that thousand-dollar bill, he was quite as desirous as ever of keeping it. But he proposed to do all in his power to return the money first. The temptation of converting it to his own use, whether or no, he had put away from him for good and all. His single sin, he believed, had been in intentionally deceiving Harry Con- nors. He would go no deeper in the mire. And he wrote a letter to Marjorie— as he did thrice a week—and found that he could address her with fuller courage than on the previous evening. When a mah’s intentions are good—or he thinks they are—he feels no fear of the good woman whom he loves. The next day at Selsburg he spent some time in the library again, and found sev- eral other robberies recounted in the files of the newspapers that he believed should be looked up. ‘These ran back for at least six weeks. Dexter did not think that the fat man could have stolen the thousand-dollar note longer ago than that, and still have kept it in his pos- session. The following day he looked for re- plies from his first letters, and as soon ds the train was in, and he was free, he hurried over to the Selsburg post-office. It had never occurred to him to disguise THE ARGOSY. himself in any way. He was in full uniform, and proposed to call at the window of the General Delivery Bureau for anything addressed to B. J. Jenks. He had the names of the people from whom he expected answers, and believed he could satisfy the queries of the man at the window. As for being held up and examined by anybody else, that was farthest from his mind when he entered the door. He had not even considered the possibility of either of the parties he had written to conceiving the idea of having the post-office watched for the purpose of having him nabbed when he inquired for mail for the fictitious Jenks, to whom he had had it addressed. But as he came through the swinging baize-covered door into the corridor of the office his gaze chanced to be directed at the floor. Not ten feet from the door he saw a most uncompromising-looking pair of square-toed shoes, of about num- ber ten. They belonged to a pair of sturdy legs, which themselves were con- nected with a stocky trunk, ending—as his gaze mounted swiftly higher—in a thick, red neck, capped by a bullet head, the hair on which bristled like that of a shoe-brush. The face of the man was hard, red- dened by the weather, and he sported a bristly mustache, too, and a huge dia- mond scarf-pin in the shape of a whip and stirrup, lovingly entwined. Now, Alfred Dexter was just as ob- servant as the next man. Those solid underpinnings had instantly smitten him with suspicion. If the man in those boots was not a cop, he wore a cop’s shoes. Those broad, heavy-soled shoes were made for walking the pavement; and although there was no sign of a uniform about the man, Dexter was instantly convinced that he should have been in blue clothes, with white stripes down the seams of his trousers, and a couple of rows of brass buttons on his coat, with a stout baton in his belt. : He was typically the policeman in plain clothes, waiting to catch some mis- creant that he thought his uniform might scare. . And who was that miscreant? Who was he waiting for here in the post- EO OO Cc (©