Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 3, 1924 — page 123: what you’re looking at

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

THE. HANDWRITING ON THE WALL. run back from the Hudson. He didn’t even know Al’s last name, much less his sister’s, but the village was apparently a small one and any shopkeeper would be able to tell him who among the inhabitants took boarders. He reached it at last—a dead-alive little hamlet with a single, straggling village street in a cluster of small, unpretentious cottages and outlying farms, and he made his way to the post office. “Tm trying to find a lady somewhere in Brookfield who takes people to board,” he explained with an engaging smile to the tired looking postmistress. ‘“ They’re gen- tlemen, mostly, who come to her, only a few, and they stay just a short time. She has a brother in New York—” “T guess you mean Mrs. Dobson,” the woman interrupted with a smile. “ She’s got a little farm out on the road to Spring- ville and folks go there for a rest; men mostly, as you say. Other people around here take summer boarders, .but she has them all the year through.” “Dobson!” Cliff thanked his informant mechanically, inquired the road to Spring- ville, and departed in a daze of surprised thought. The private detective, Wicks, had told George and Phil of Lucy Regnier’s past con- nection with the famous Dobson gang so lately broken up; could Al’s sister be the wife of its ringleader, who was now “ up the river’ on a long term sentence? The name was not such a common one that this could be a mere coincidence, and it would explain many things. A farmer plowing in a field about a mile out directed him easily to the Dobson farm. It was a lonely, somewhat weather-beaten little house set in spreading meadows with a dark, stagnant looking pond back of it, and a patch of thick, desolate woods across the road. It looked dreary and forbidding and the middle-aged woman who came to the door in answer to his knock did not lighten the impression. She was thin and hard visaged, as coarsely florid as Al himself, and the likeness between them was unmistakable. Cliff came to a quick de- cision. “Mrs. Dobson?” He stepped quickly in ~ SA 913 without waiting for an invitation and the look he cast over his shoulder was a master- ly gesture of furtive apprehension. “TI knew your husband—up there. When I got out two months ago he told me to come to you if I wanted to lay low for a while. He spoke of your brother Al, too, but I don’t. know him. I’ve been sticking to my own crowd and we're getting out some new paper. But I can’t start shoving the queer for a while till the bulls let up trailing me because of past performances. I’m giving it to you straight, for I wouldn’t make any trouble for you if yeu took me in for a few days.” : The woman eyed him for a minute with shrewd speculation, and then asked in a voice as harsh as a man’s: ‘‘ What’s your name? I don’t know what you're talking about, for I’m a widow, but I take boarders now and then, and I mind my business while they mind theirs.” ‘ That’s all right!” Cliff winked broad- ly. ‘Of course you’ve got to know who you're getting in your house. My moniker is Clem Norton and my picture is over in Brooklyn if you want to verify it, worse luck. I didn’t sport this mustache and the glasses then, but you'll recognize me all right! That was for a check I was careless in autographing—you see, I’m coming clean! I’m tired and I want a chance to turn around without the dicks at my heels. I’m flush and I'll make it anything you say for a room and three squares.” The old alias had fallen haltingly from his lips, but Mrs. Dobson was sharp enough to recognize the truth in his tone and she . vouchsafed him a wintry smile. “Tl take a chance on you; I’ve heard of ‘ Highbrow Clem,’ I think, and there’s nobody else stopping with me just now. You're travelin’ light, but twenty-five a week is all right with me.” Cliff produced a well filled wallet and paid her on the spot for a fortnight in ad- vance, then followed her up the matting covered stairs to a small and not overclean room at the rear. After filling the pitcher on the washstand and placing two thin towels on the rack she left him. She lied about being a widow, of course. Had she lied also about having no one else comniiclsaoo! (©