The Argosy, Vol. 83 No. 1 — page 150: what you’re looking at

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

140 peared to be a solid citizen, weighing two hundred pounds or over. He set down the black leather valise he carried and scribbled something on the page. It wasn’t a name. At least, I’d have defied anybody to make it out as such. I couldn’t do it when I looked at the scrawl. Pulling the muffler away from his mouth, without lowering it, the burly-look- ing stranger spoke in a voice that sounded as though it was packed in cotton from behind the folds of the scarf. “My fingers are nearly frozen stiff. That’s why I made such a botch of it,” and he nodded down at the book. But he didn’t offer to translate the chicken-tracks he’d made into his name and where he hailed from. He let the muffler fall back over his mouth again. Then, as he saw me looking at it curiously, he lifted it away from his lips once more, and explained: “T’ve got a nasty toothache. Don’t want to get any more cold in it that I can help.” The muffler went back over his mouth. T hadn’t been able to get a square look at his face yet. He’d signed his name in the register—if you could call such wretched writing signing—and yet I didn’t know what it was. Even what his voice sounded like, though he’d spoken to me twice, I couldn’t tell. He was a complete mystery to me, so far. I didn’t know then what a genuine mystery he was going to turn out to be— for a while. Tapping the bell for George, who’s the boss’s nephew, and the only bellhop we’ve got, to wake up and come to the front, I gave him the key to 419 and sent him off with the man who had told me that he was keeping his face covered up because he had a toothache. And then I turned my attention to the other guests that Jerry had brought up in the depot-bus from that same train. I guess it must have been ten minutes later when, the last of them having been taken care of, I looked around from the THE ARGOSY. key-rack to find another stranger in town standing at the desk. “Good evening!” I said, taking the pen from behind my ear and dipping it in the ink, and at the same time pushing the reg- ister forward with my professional smile. The man took the cigar out of the cor- ner of his mouth and waved the pen and the book away with it. “Nope,” he said, in the quick way he had of talking. “I’m not going to stop with you—that is, if things are as I think they are. I just dropped in to get a little information, if you will oblige me.” He took the mate to that cigar out of his pocket and handed it across the desk to me. I took it, and him in, at the same time. About five feet seven or eight, he was; thin, but with the look you must have no- ticed about some lean people of being made out of steel wire. A bundle of steel wires —that was what he reminded me of. He was smooth-shaven, with a sharp nose and a pair of eyes that had a trick of squinting and unsquinting at the person he was talking with. His overcoat was of a gray mixture, and he wore a brown derby. “Sure,” I nodded at him. information you want?” He straightened up briskly from. the desk on which he’d been leaning with one arm. “First,” said he, “‘I’d like to take a look at the names of your latest arrivals in that register.” I pushed the book nearer to him. “Help yourself,” I said. His eye ran down the names of those four or five guests who’d come in on the north-bound only fifteen minutes before, from the scrawl that the man I’d sent up ‘““What’s the to 419 had dashed off first, and then back — to that illegible signature again. Z ‘“Who’s this?” he asked, with his finger on 419’s name. “Search me!’ I answered with a laugh. “T’ve seen some awful samples of hand- writing in my time, but I pass this up as too many for me! The party told me that CORMMICLOOOKS (C@