Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 18, 1925 — page 42: what you’re looking at

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

192 beams of a spring sun, tinted with the first blush of a moss-rose, while her level gaze held the blue of violet. ‘““? do not know. I heard Mrs. Meredith roaning and I just this instant ran down from my room and got this glass of water. I think she has fainted.” O’Brien turned to Mordaunt. else is here, among servants?” “TI think the housekeeper and maid have gone to the movies. Mr. Fitch was here at dinner, for I drove him up from town in his limousine.” The woman on the couch moaned and opened her eyes. Then she took a sip from the glass held to her lips and sat more erect. As she caught sight of O’Brien’s uniform and shield, she gestured and whis- pered: ‘*‘ In the library.” Then she sank back again, utterly over- come. “Stay here with the ladies until I get back,” said O’Brien to Mordaunt. “Very well, sir.” O’Brien gave a hitch to his blouse that brought his service pistol handy, stepped along the hall a few feet to where it ran into a larger one at right angles, turned to the right and walked noiselessly to the library entrance. He paused before the heavy portiéres masking it. They hung from a mahogany rod, with gleaming rings and caps at the ends, and they seemed to cling edge to edge as if seeking to mask what was behind them. O’Brien paused and sniffed. The acrid odor of powder smoke was slightly discernible, even before he cau- tiously parted the curtains and peered within, where it was very much stronger. At the left Claude Cutler Fitch was sit- ting in a chair, attired in semi-formal even- ing clothes, immaculate save for a slight bulge to his shirt-front. His eyes met the officer’s with a languid, impersonal look. Mr. Fitch did not speak. But he was alive, apparently unharmed, and O’Brien’s gaze roved to the space be- yond. At the right of his point of view from the curtains was a massive mahogany library table. On the rug beyond it pro- truded a pair of legs. One of them was * Who ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. | projected straight on the floor covering, the other bent upward, and as the policeman’s eye caught it, it twitched nervously, then sageed down beside its fellow and moved no more. The two legs were all he could see from where he was. CHAPTER II. THE STRANGE LOOK. "BRIEN’S next glance again took in Mr. Fitch, whose expression puzzled him no less than his eccentric behav- ior under such circumstances. At first he thought that the master of the house, as well as the owner of the legs, had been in- jured. But he appeared much the same as usual, and yet strangely different. He was a young man, anywhere between twenty-four and twenty-eight, smooth-shaven, with slightly waving brown hair and eyes and an aquiline nose. Standing erect Mr. Fitch was just under six feet and possessed a compact and muscular body. O’Brien had seen him often from boy- hood. He had seen him fall heir to the fam- ous Fitch Steel mills on the south side, where the polyglot population bred pests like push-cart men. But never before had he seen him quite as now. Ordinarily, Mr. Fitch was courte- ous, and his rather ingenuous face was slightly tempered by a hint of proud re- serve. To-night the hint of proud reserve stepped completely out of the background and deepened into an inflexible disdain. It was the most curious and baffling ex- pression O’Brien had ever met up with in twenty-odd years’ police duty in Downing- ton. Mr. Fitch seemed not only imperturba- ble, but without speech. O’Brien looked elsewhere. A sinister glimmer shot up from the rug in the space midway between Mr. Fitch in his chair and the two legs protruding from beyond the heavy library table. It seemed to heliograph: “ Here I am!”’ O’Brien looked down at it. The light 2A = €Comicbooks 7GOl . w “ ~~ > ‘ — SS SS ae ee ee ee et ae. ee = “ = |