The Argosy, Vol. 82, No. 3 — page 136: what you’re looking at

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

510 kept by busy men, its number not listed in the directory or known,.save by a few such business intimates as his broker and the , manager of his office and the members of his household. It could be connected with the telephones branching from the house switchboard, as had been done upon Mor- ris’s arrival. It usually was not so con- nected. The central operator, a little fearful of using the wire for a recall, since she knew it had been shut off from the subscriber’s end, “‘listened in” long enough to apprehend the fact that Brink did not wish to keep on talking or to make known his identity. Wherefore she had promptly refused Helen’s request for the address with which the wire was connected, as well as the wire’s number. A manager to whom Helen had finally succeeded in complaining court- eously but firmly backed up the operator with telephone company rules. The conclusions Helen reached had failed to impress her father. Mrs. Rainsford was not sure about them. Helen had spent all of Sunday in futile efforts to get some one interested enough to do a little investigating. Quite naturally all the police to whom she had appealed had put her off without giv- ing any definite satisfaction. They were not looking for unnecessary work. The man who was missing had been heard from, ac- counted for sufficiently. What if she did think some man had said Morris Ballard had not entered the house? What if nobody had found any trace of this man? Nobody seemed to want him anyhow. And, what had the mysterious taxicab to do with it? And why worry because she hadn’t found out the rightful name of the sanatorium? He would be out in a couple of days, he had explained—what more was needed? The police hadn’t picked up the amnesia victim as the first message had stated? Well, somebody must have picked him up. Why worry so long as the man seemed safe? Really, unless they could see some better reason than now appeared for doing so, they could hardly afford time to solve all the details of a riddle for which they al- ready had the main answer. The Kearney police, since the thing had happened in their town, had taken the trouble to send a man down to the coal- yards to interview the men who had gone to Helen’s assistance. They seemed to feel ~ THE ARGOSY. that they had rather over-worked them- selves in doing that. All those men could tell was what Helen had said about a light in the window, the old man, the strange taxicab. One man, however, maintained his inter- est. He was the man who had carried the lantern through the old house. Like most people who accept a theory very strongly, he had taken as strong a hold on the opposite one when his first idea was shaken irom its foundations. Also, perhaps, his sense of justice required him to make up in a measure for having made too plain his original misjudgment of the girl. Herman Adams, he said his name was. He lived in a mean little shack a quarter of a mile from the scene of Morris’s disappear- ance. He passed the old house daily. He had spent half of Sunday afternoon piloting Helen about in a dirty row-boat from one to another of the nearest boat- clubs, to inquire if any of them had any knowledge of any craft which might have provided tramps with means for an exodus from the old Brink homestead.’ This had brought another bit of informa- tion too apparently unimportant for police consideration. A motor-boat of rather un- usual type for the river had come up it just as dusk was getting near to dark. It had shown no great speed, though of a design generally built for extreme swiflt- ness. It had not been seen this morning. Nobody was quite sure where it had stopped last night. The boating men were quite detailed in descriptions of the boat, and fairly agreed in the details. It was from thirty to thirty- five feet long, about five feet of beam, V- bottom construction of wave-collecting hy- droplane—whatever that might mean. A more significant detail was the possession of an engine of-remarkable silence and under-water exhaust. Over this Adams shook his head. Again he had his theory and was holding it. His theory was that tramps had stunned Morris with a club and thus knocked the memory from him for a while, robbed him, carried him across the river in a boat, and turned him loose on the shore. Such river runabouts as the motor-boating fraternity described cost thousands of dollars and are not for tramps. But Adams promised to keep an eye on the house in future. He agreed to telephone Helen any time anything suspicious should 7GO 0)(\6) ANIC Ss (C@)