Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 17, 1924 — page 145: what you’re looking at

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

-A STRANGER IN TOWN. —to draw them together—in which their two souls had run a gamut of emotions, close crowded into a few hours, yet as vital, as surcharged with intimate results as are sometimes embraced in the course of an entire life. The cab stopped. Marvin opened the door. They got down and went back inside the station, to the door of that room where he had talked with them before. He opened it, and they passed through it. A man was sitting there before them. He rose. He was tall, lank, as he turned toward them. It was Blumefeldt! Eddie Harmon stared. It was Blume- feldt there, very much at ease and smiling! Blumefeldt—who Marvin had said had got away. Blumefeldt here in the station! It couldn’t be Blumefeldt! But it was. And once more Eddie’s head began going round and round. He glanced at Portia. He won- - Gered if she saw Blumefeldt, too—or if—if Welter’s blow had affected his brain. Be- cause the thing didn’t make sense at all unless—unless—Eddie Harmon had a most remarkable thought. “ Blumefeldt—are you a crook—or— what?” he gasped. It wasn’t either a very elegant or a very comprehensive sort of question. But Blumefeldt seemed to understand. “Was a crook, let us say, Mr. Harmon,” he responded. “Thanks to to-night’s events, I’m cured. So far as I’m concerned —never again. I’ve waked up to the real- ization that being crooked never pays.” “ But—I thought you’d escaped. Mar- vin said so.” Eddie turned to their com- panion of the cab. “J did, Mr. Harmon. I escaped and came right over here. Mr. Marvin knew I would be here. I suspect that is why he brought you over. When we were talk- ing earlier this evening I told him I was sorry to have got you mixed up in my trou- ble—and as for Miss Elton, I deeply regret the annoyance I was instrumental in caus- ing her.” ““ When—when—you were talking with him—this evening?” Eddie faltered. Blumefeldt was a crook, or had been. He had just admitted it—and yet he had been 295 talking things over with Marvin this eve- ning—with Marvin who had said he didn’t know where to find him when Mildred Elton and Harmon had been here in this room before. And yet now he said they had talked it over—and Marvin had known he would be here when they arrived, had brought them here to meet him. The thing was utterly crazy! He glanced at Portia— and once more he surprised that inscrut- able expression they had held when she had sat on the bed in that other room. A feeling of wholly baffled understanding came upon him. He turned a bewildered face to Marvin and back to Blumefeldt. “Tm afraid,” he said in a rather uncer- tain tone, “ that I don’t understand.” “Tell him the whole works, Carl,” Mar- vin urged. “TI think it’s due them both.” “So do I, Andy,” Blumefeldt smiled. “Sit down, won’t you, Miss Elton, and you, Harmon, while I tell you something not overly much to my credit, that will make things plain.” CHAPTER XII. THREADS UNTANGLE, DDIE waited until Mildred had taken a chair and found one for himself. He felt a trifle like a person coming out of a daze. He watched Marvin and Blumefeldt take seats. And then Blumefeldt began: “ Mr. Har- mon just asked me if I was a crook, and I replied in the past tense that I was. That’s the literal truth as it happens. I made my slip and I’ve taken my medicine, and now as Marvin assures me, I’m in the clear again. I’m a chemist. For quite a number of years I’ve been in government employ. My natural bent for chemistry gave me my first start in the wrong direc- tion. I was employed in the Washington district. I got a chance to investigate the methods of handling government papers. “Curiosity at first got the better of me. I tackled the secret of bleaching India ink, known only to the department, and worked it out. It’s the truth when I say it was only curiosity prompted my investigations at first. But I’ve always been a man in COMmMiICLoooks (C@