The Argosy, Vol. 83 No. 1 — page 155: what you’re looking at

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

THE MAN IN 419. “T give up,” he answered. “It’s too much for me. I can usually bring back the man I go after—but not when a mir- acle’s rung in on me. And that is what this amounts to. ‘The scamp has beaten me, some way. I guess I’ll have to kiss that reward-money good-by. I wanted it, too; it was what brought me all the way from New York, and the small but live private detective agency I run there. But I'll have to go back without it. “You say there’s no train out of here till to-morrow morning?” he went on, mov- ing over to the door. “But I can hire a rig, can’t I, to drive me over to the near- est town where a train does stop, and that I can connect with to take me back home?” “Yes, you can drive over to Farmington, eight miles from here,” I assured him. “I'll step around to the livery stable and make the arrangements for you.” I shot down-stairs and out of the hotel, bareheaded, and without stopping to put on my overcoat. It wasn’t to the livery stable that I went, though; and when I came back I wasn’t alone. The lean, sharp-nosed man in the brown derby started across the lobby toward the door as he saw me come in. : “Well, so-long—” he began in that crisp way of his. “Stop!” I cried out, my voice jumping with excitement, as I beckoned for Sim Willetts, the town constable, who’d come in at my heels, to step forward. “I wouldn’t be in a hurry to leave here just yet, if I were you,” I added to the man who wore the detective’s badge—“Mr. Robert J. Sheldon!” He gave a kind of quick gasp and retreated a step, his cheeks the color of ashes. “A pretty slick trick you were working!” My finger was leveled accusingly at his face. ‘A brand-new one, too, I guess. A runaway thief, pretending to be a detec- tive on his own trail! When the man he was supposed to be following gave him the slip, nobody’d ever suspect him of being IO A 145 the crook when he gave up the chase and walked away. “You thought you’d leave your trail broken off right here, and cold, when the real detectives came along didn’t you? Oh, yes, it was a clever scheme you hit on —of coming in here with your face bun- dled up, and even your voice disguised by the muffler around your mouth, with that heavy overcoat up-stairs on over the one you're wearing now, which made you look all of sixty pounds heavier than you really are, and that derby in the bag which you put on instead of the soft felt hat up in the room. Then you stepped out and locked the door and put the key in your pocket. Afterward, when I left you alone in the room, you dropped the key on the floor where you pointed it out to me— Grab him, Sim!” I broke off. The thief had darted his hand into the pocket of that gray overcoat, where I knew the revolver was lying. The con- stable had his arms pinned down to his sides, in a bearlike hug, in another minute. “Vou were clever,’ I went on to the sharp-nosed man, when he’d ceased strug- gling, “but you weren’t quite clever enough. Like all criminals, you made one mistake—that of overlooking the fact of a hotel clerk’s being likely to notice lit- tle things about people, by force of habit. I noticed something about you, not five minutes ago up-stairs in that room. It’s those two little red marks on either side of your nose, close to your eyes. That, and your habit of squinting. ‘““A bookkeeper, who’d been adding up figures for fourteen years, might wear glasses and be near-sighted without them. But a detective—well, he wouldn’t have anything the matter with his eyes, the principal asset in his trade! That’s how I got on to you, my friend, the marks from your glasses, and it’s why you’re where you are now.” Sim’s handcuffs snapped around the ab- sconding bookkeeper’s wrists. And as they did so, I knew that I’d soon be giv- ing up my job as a clerk for something better—the place of proprietor. COMMUC DOOKS: (E@)