The Argosy, Vol. 83 No. 1 — page 156: what you’re looking at

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

=. es ‘Bens eadish Author of “The Name of Martin Hoffman,” etc. The Tale of a Wild Conspiracy SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTERS ALREADY PRINTED. AMES H. DARTON, fiction writer, wins something over a hundred thousand dollars in Wall Street as the result of an investment he has allowed his cousin to make for him a year previous. His friend, Thomas Morely, is with him when he hears the good news and has the sum delivered to him in ‘cash. Almost immediately arrives Bostwick, partner of the father of Sibyl Dane, to whom Darton is engaged. Curtly he tells Darton that Sibyl has married another man in Chicago, where she has been visiting. On top of this comes the news of the turning down of a motion-picture scenario on which Darton had banked big. The two blows seem to turn his brain, and he proceeds to hire expensive offices from which he sends out letters and telegrams to thousands of writers for the movies, bidding them strike, and adding that he will pay their salaries out of a ten-million-dollar fund. The replies are to be telegraphed in at his expense on Thursday morning, but by that time he has had opportunity to become sane again. However, the thing has gone so far that there is no stopping it, apparently. The climax arrives when a man representing the amalgamation of several picture interests insists on seeing Darton, and tells him that unless he winds up his scheme between three and five that very afternoon, he, Darton, will cease to be. CHAPTER XI. AN OMINOUS OUTLOOK. HOMAS MORELY awoke quite sud- denly from his trance. Gazing up he saw the perfect stranger shrug- ging his shoulders and, rising; saw Jimmy Jimmy Darton was on his feet. “That'll do!” he cried. “I don’t know who you are, but you can’t get away with that sort of thing around here. Tommy, will you have Hammond take this man to the street and hand him over to the nearest—”’ Darton clutching the arms of his chair. “So that you have really taken my meaning, I think that my errand is done,”’ the mystery said. “Before five o’clock.”’ “One minute, Mr. Darton,” the stran- ger chuckled. ‘It is almost pathetically plain that you haven’t lately looked over the character of your visitors out there. I 146 (C@ JOO < (C@