Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 4, 1922 — page 164: what you’re looking at

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

474 asked the confiding and puzzled Mr. Powell. Will Agnew rubbed the back of his head and then critically studied his cigar, which had got frayed at the end and gone out. An unattractive smoke. He pitched it at the fireplace. ‘Frankly, I don’t know,” he confessed. “Do you think it means that Mrs. Tremlett has—er—unwittingly committed bigamy ?”’ “Most likely it was another ‘ Mar- shall.’ ? ‘Ah, yes, yes!. I had thought of that.” Mr. Powell was immensely relieved. He had been waiting for a confirmation of his ewn private theory. ‘I’m rather glad I told you. Of course it was another man.” “And the ghost story?” Agnew asked. “That is nothing, if there’s no truth in the other.” “You don’t believe in ghosts, Powell?”’ “ Well, no—not exactly. I mean to say, in these days, we have perhaps lost the spiritual vision.” “T don’t believe in ’em, either—but I believe in live ones,” Agnew said cryptic- ally. | Long after Mr. Powell had bowed him- self out with the heartened feeling that pos- sibly all was well in this world, even in the spot known as Witcham, Will Agnew sat on at his untidy desk. He lit another cigar and dropped into heavy thought. Could he possibly spare two or three days away from Witcham at this precise period of his career? : The Dundas will case would require all of his activities from now onward. But suppose—as an instance of immediate ne- cessity—his delicate and widowed mother was very ill in London, reported te be at death’s door? Actually his mother was neither. delicate nor widowed, and her home was in Witcham, not a stone’s throw from Will’s office. The point that he wished te make with himself, however, was that there are occasions so important that they must overshadow everything else. A mat- ter of life or death, let us say—or the pos- sible furthering of a career to which ambi- tion sets no limits. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. He rummaged about and found a time- table and then painfully figured out his bank balance. Office expenses were heavy, and he was a light-hearted spender, but still there was a comfortable margin to take him first to Quentin Prison and then to London. Fortunately he had nothing coming up in the courts for a week. The Tremletts and the disappointed guardians must await his return. It would enhance his importance to be called away so suddenly on business which simply could not wait. His plan of action was quite simple. The Governor of Quentin once more would be questioned regarding the prisoner Marshall, who had been falsely reported dead, and if there were reason to believe that this Mar- shall was one and the same with Mrs. Tremlett’s first husband, then Will Agnew meant to go straight as the crow flies—or as railway runs—to London, and look up this young doctor who had taken such an inter- est in the discharged prisoner and his do- mestic affairs. -- CHAPTER XXXV. SIMON PROPOSES. MY MARSHALL returned to London from her hurried trip to Witcham, with the dazed feeling of one treading the mazes of a difficult dream. She had reached a point now where nothing seemed real to her. It was unreal that people should know her as Loraine Drew; unreal that she was a chorus-girl earning her living on the Lon- don stage; that Dick had come to life again and presumably was wandering the world as lonely and forlorn as she knew herself to be. But startling realities would occasionally emerge from the mists. Simon Punter, the hooked-nose little man who, quite unknown to himself, had taught her everything -she knew in a professional sense, was suddenly made a widower. He had been a more faithful spouse than most people would have believed; but love for that weird crea- ture, Loraine Drew, had lured his heart away, and now—if anything—he was more deeply in love with the woman he supposed COmiclbooks.Gom