Argosy, Vol. 117, No. 3 — page 61: what you’re looking at

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

THE ager not to make public the facts, prom- ising his assistance in locating the missing girl. Young George was wisely mindful of the criticism that gossip might direct at him should it become known that he had been unduly intimate with a woman of ques- tionable character. For the first time young George denied vehemently any closer bond than friend- ship between him and Polly Morgan. Max Weisbaum followed another clue to the office of Dr. Benton, and as he went he stooped and sniffed much like a trailing bloodhound. CHAPTER IX. THE SONG OF THE SWAN. fF ROM a dingy room in a cheap Chicago boarding-house Polly Morgan looked through unwashed panes at the drabbled, sordid street below her. A ragged, jauntily impertinent girl passed along the sidewalk, ogling male passers-by and flaunting her ill-hanging skirts. Across the street a garish electric sign labeled a café, whence came sounds of devil-may-care rag-time. Polly’s eyes were dry, drained of what tears they had held; and they were cold, hard, and impassively staring. She spoke, and her voice was strange, like the voices of men in delirium: “Right back where I started from! Oh, God! I can’t start all over again!” The little yellow mongrel, roused from his slumbers on the bed by the sound of her voice, leaped down’ and hastened to his mistress. He made violent licks at her hands and intruded his chilly nose into her palms in efforts to comfort her distress. . Polly petted the dog, and while his de- voted puppy eyes looked wistfully into hers, spoke to him: “You may be yellow, Sulfur; but you’re a damned sight whiter ’n most men I’ve known.” Then in a white-hot blaze of rage, furi- ously defiant and again overwhelmed by a strange contradiction of emotions, she shook a fist at the murky streets and cursed them and excoriated them: SONG OF THE SWAN. ol “To hell with you and your bright: lights! You won’t get me again!” Back to the whining, puzzled puppy again she turned: “Oh, Sulfur, it ain’t right! It ain’t right! I been good always, an’ I was tryin’ so hard back there! An’ I can sing! It ain’t right! They all told me. God give me beauty for some good purpose, an’ now just look at me! It ain’t right! It ain’t right!” Polly laughed hysterically. Her impotent rebellion had rode and worn her for two days. Her railings at fate had been varied with torrents of tears, morose repinings, and violent curses, and now she was near the point where her decision must be made. She buried her head in the dog’s yellow fur and wept again, helplessly. She was baffled, defeated, victimized. Then she chattered insanely: ‘They was only two things I ever wanted to do real bad, Sulfur. One was to keep clean and bring up a baby right, an’ the other was to sing. I can sing, Sulfur. I can sing! Listen!” With a new intensity of fervor, throb- bing, sobbing, and pulsating in the narrow little room, rang out the Voice with a Cry in It: “Her brow is like the snaw-drift, Her throat is like the swan; Her face it is the fairest That e’er the sun shone on. That, e’er the sun shone on, And dark blue is her e’e, And for bonnie Annie Laurie I'd lay me down and dee. “‘ Ain’t that good, Sulfur! is like the swan”! like @ swan once. ‘Her throat They told me I was Well} they say when a _ swan comes to die it sings one song. I know how it feels, Sulfur. After waitin’ all y’r life and wishin’ and wishin’ y’ could sing, then when it comes time to quit y’ can sing! Ain’t it hell, Sulfur! Maybe that’s me, Sulfur! I can ‘lay me down and dee,’ Sulfur; I can ‘lay me down and dee ’!” Polly threw herself face downward on the bed in a paroxysm of tears. She did not hear the door open, and the man on the threshold cleared his throat to attract her attention. She turned to look at him with amazed, suspicious antagonism: COnnicloool< (©