Argosy All-Story Weekly, January 13, 1923 — page 62: what you’re looking at

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

days before, and had talked long with Mrs. Brown of the brave thing Steve was doing. “ They think you sincerely mean to work _ the mine for them. They have no idea of selling.” “When they see half a million dollars they will sell quick enough.” ~ Her silence told him what he had known in his heart all along. She had no approval to give to such a course as he had taken. She was disappointed in him. “You are old-fashioned, like the Fraz- ers,” he told her. ‘‘ You don’t understand modern advertising methods.” “T don’t understand gambling with other people’s property,” she replied. He rose from the steps, stretched his long arms, kissed his mother good night, and went indoors to bed. He had to be up early to drive his capitalists in to—South Canon. But he did not sleep until long after he heard his mother come in. He lay -awake arguing with his conscience. What was there in his scheme that was wrong? Nothing—except that he had not told the _Frazers. Well, he would see them to-morrow. CHAPTER IX, GOOD SAMARITANS. AYORS of the right sort do more than preside at council meetings and respond to toasts at civic banquets. They know a little of whatever goes on ae within their town, and take a fatherly inter- est in the affairs of their constituents. Such a mayor was Dr. John Hamilton, the big- gest and jolliest man of medicine in Colo- rado, now serving his fifth term as chief executive of Boulton. Early in the year of our story, Dr. Ham- ilton received a letter from one Arthur Laird, of the Lutwell Mining Syndicate, New York and London, inquiring into the health and worldly condition of Daniel Frazer. It was a courteous letter, and he replied in the same spirit. Daniel Frazer, he said, was his most in- teresting patient and one of his best friends. A tragedy, the death of his wife, had left him badly broken up, and the passage of ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. the years had not healed the effects of his blow. -Sensitive, intellectual, ridden by a New England conscience, he believed he had been to blame for his wife’s death; and though sound enough in brain and body, he suffered from a state of mind from which Dr. Hamilton, with all his curative arts, had been unable to recall him. “His trouble,” the physician wrote, “might be classed as a mild form of shell shock.” In June two strangers called upon the doctor. The younger was Arthur Laird; the elder, a fussy little man of evident im- portance, was H. H. B. Lutwell.. They de- sired to learn more about Daniel Frazer, whom they expected to visit in the hills next day. It was soon apparent to the good-natured mayor that the strangers had the friendliest intentions toward his oddly afflicted patient. “He saved me a fortune once,” Lutwell declared, ‘“‘ in a mine-salting case, the slick- est trap I ever walked into.” “We both owe him a lot,” Laird added. “And now that my carborundum-hearted associate here begins to grow soft and phil- anthropic in his old age—” “To blazes with you,” snapped Lutwell. “Am I soft when I go after a mountain of platinum ore worth a hundred dollars a ton?” Dr. Hamilton rejoiced in the good news. Intimately as he knew the Frazers, he had not heard of their mineral find. “Mr. Lutwell has looked forward for yeais,” said Laird, ‘‘ to. the pleasure of do- ing good with his money. Thus far he has been deterred from his purpose by his chronic dread of acquiring a reputation as an easy mark.” “And who will blame me?” Lutwell de- manded. ‘‘ Look at the poor Rockefellers —a thousand begging letters a day!” “This seems to be the chance he has waited for,’ Laird continued. ‘“ He will emulate the good Samaritan of Holy Writ, and, like that excellent man, he will go a long way from home to perform his charita- ble act. The Samaritan was traveling in Judea at the time, if you recall, on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.” Mr. Lutwell writhed under this exposure COMiIcboOoks.com