The Argosy, Vol. 82, No. 3 — page 108: what you’re looking at

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

482 Jimmy Darton, twitching something out of his side pocket, glanced at it, found that it was another one hundred dollar note and extended it with a care-free speed that chimed very nicely with the ten-million- dollar legend. “Tf it’s less than that send the change with the last thousand; if it is more, send the bill,” he said. “Only stop talking and set em to work if you can do it.” The clerk drew a long, deep breath. “This is an emergency job, Mr.—er— Darton?” Vag -?2 “Well, I'll see it through for you, sir, whatever arrangements have to be made.” “Send a boy out with me to get the paper,” concluded the author, as he started for the door again. “But—one moment, please!” the other pleaded. “Aren’t you going to have an ad- dress on the plate, Mr. Darton?” The first halt in his mad career came while Jimmy Darton stared at the other in blank astonishment; it was a very brief halt, however, lasting no more than two or three seconds. Then he was moving out- ward again, and the clerk trotting at his side heard: “You start ’em to work on the rest of it and I’ll telephone in the address inside of an hour. I haven’t—er—decided on which suite of offices I want, but I’m going down- town now to settle the matter. This is the paper: Leave the narrow boxes; those are the envelopes, and they’re going with me. “Got ’em all?” concluded Mr. Darton as, pushing his old friend ahead, he entered the cab and sat down with a thud. ‘All right. Cirrus Building, driver! Make as good time as you can!” There was authority in his tone; the taxi was in motion even as he ceased speak- ing. ‘“Jimmy!’’ said Thomas Morely, quite firmly this time. Mr. Darton looked at him absently. “What the devil zs all this nonsense?”’ Morely hurried on. ‘Have you lost your wits completely because a movie was turned down? I’ve always thought you were pretty steady, but it does seem that real money in your pocket and _ a little two-cent disappointment that most men would take with a grin after the first five minutes have sent you so far off—” “TI should say about the forty-fifth floor,”” murmured Darton. THE ARGOSY. ‘What on earth?” “Because that’s well up in the air and quiet. Yes, I’ll get that if I can, or the next thing to it. It may just be that Park will turn up and start something, and I cannot visualize anything pleasanter than throwing him out of a forty-fifth-story win- dow.” “Quite so,” assented Mr. ‘“Who’s your family doctor, Jim? trust to Bill Kerrigan?” Jimmy Darton half-started from his own meditations. “Did you—ah—speak to me, Tom?” he queried. “Well, shut up, will you? I want to put this thing through right and I want to think it out as I go along. You see, I want to shoot the whole affair over like a high-power cyclone, and if I have to—er— stop anywhere along the—the line, as it were—” His voice drifted off in the smoke of a fresh cigar and Tom Morely sat back with an amazed grunt. The boy was demented, of course, but he didn’t talk like a crazy man; except for the insane glitter in Jimmy’s eye, a stranger might well have fancied him a gingery young captain of industry, worth the mil- lions he had conjured out of thin air and bent on doubling them before sundown. There, with the cigar in his mouth and this new, compelling, razor-edged authority sticking out all over him eae Morely blinked several times at the phe- nomenon and concluded that a noisy taxi- cab was no place for the inculcating of reason through the medium of soft words. The sfarter of the gigantic Cirrus Build- ing, when the human tornado slowed down at his side and fired a question at his head, gave the information that the renting agent’s office was on the twentieth floor, second bank of elevators, and then stood back and caught his breath. The half of it was still uncaptured when Jimmy Darton and his bewildered friend shot past the tenth story on the way up. Frequently Thomas Morely had read of the maniac’s characteristic cunning in feign- ing complete calm when, as a mattér of fact, his whole brain-machine is turning hand springs, but now he really understood the gruesome phase for the first time. Leaning there on the plate-glass counter, studying the ground plan of the tower which lay beneath the glass, Jimmy Darton might have been perfectly sane. His ques- Morely. Still COPMICGLOOOKS (C@)