The Argosy, August 1914 — page 139: what you’re looking at

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

A SMILING NEMESIS. ‘As soon as he saw Roland he blurted out: * Hotel Cecil! He lives at the Hotel Cecil! ”’ “Good!” said Roland. For the first time he looked into the card-case and smiled happily. In it were four one-hundred-pound notes—two thou- sand dollars—and two twenty-pound notes. “Hurrah!” said Roland. “What does that mean?” “That we are going to America.” “Sudden, but satisfactory,” com- mented Copernicus. “ This is the kind of adventure I like. No preliminaries, no explanations, no logic. Perfect! And, oh, by the way, young man, be- fore our acquaintance progresses any further I wish to tell you something. It had almost slipped my mind. How very careless of me.” “What is it?” “T am not crazy.” “T didn’t think you were,” said Roland politely. “Then I fear for your sanity,” ob- served his new acquaintance. . “Permit me a question,” said Ro- land — “one that you have already asked me—who are your” “Ho, ho, we grow personal! We impinge!”’ remarked Copernicus. And he shut up like an oyster. To all Roland’s further remarks he re- plied only in monosyllables or by lav- ishing praise on the weather. That night at his lodgings Roland Grelthorpe took from the card-case of Mr. Hollingsford, of Columbus, Ohio, two twenty - pound notes, and, wrap- ping up the rest very carefully, mailed it to that gentleman at the Hotel Cecil with a note, reading: Less two hundred dollars commis- sion, Needed to repatriate the finder, an American. Three days later he and Professor Copernicus shipped for the United States in the steerage of an Atlantic liner. Three weeks from the date of their 9 A 129 windfall they presented themselves at the door of the Grelthorpe domicil in New York and turned the culminating night in the fortunes of David Grel- thorpe into a night of catastrophe. CHAPTER X, AFTER A BRIDE. AND now, less than a month after they had quit Europe as steerage pas- sengers, with only a few dollars in> their pockets, Roland Grelthorpe and Professor Copernicus were first-cabin passengers on one of the most re- cherché of ocean liners. Their pockets were well lined with David Grelthorpe’s money. They seemed to look upon the world and its inhabitants with great approval. The liner was feeling her way along the approach_to Hamburg amid the myriad vessels that converge at that greatest of German seaports. The professor was leaning back in a deck- chair with his feet on the rail. No longer poorly garbed, his raiment had unquestionably gained in eccentricity. His coat was a loud check, his trousers a little louder, his waistcoat an aggressive yellow. His tie emu- lated the rainbow; his shirt shouted to: the heavens; his scarf-pin sought to drown the shirt’s voice. But, any- how, he had had a shave at most twen- ty-four hours before. Roland was seated beside him in an- other deck-chair, smoking a cigarette. The professor looked at the approach to Hamburg lazily and patronizingly. “ Youth,” he remarked after a while, ‘there are two theories as to just what the height of insouciance is. One says that it is to stand with -your fin- gers in the armholes of your waistcoat and twiddle your thumbs at your neighbors. The other—which I con- sider the correct one—has it that the height of insouciance consists in put- ‘ting your feet on the. rail of an ocean liner and twiddling your toes at the universe. What think you, my boy?” ECORMMICLOOOKS com