Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 18, 1925 — page 64: what you’re looking at

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

214 sons which Hank was already putting down in sequence with other stray facts in his notebook. - He skimmed the fringe of the throng, left the building, and sped to the garage where his motor cycle was kept. He mounted it, rode to the jail, composed himself before he entered the sheriff’s office and lounged in, as casually as he could. “May I have a word with Mr. Fitch?” he asked civilly enough, presenting his po- lice pass and his credentials from the Times to Sheriff Butts. “What do you want to see him about?” “A certain phase of his case.” “ Not on your life you can’t.” “But, why not, sheriff?” “Go and get an order from Mr. Myers. The Times panned me from hell to Hack- ney during the last campaign. I don’t owe you fellows nothing.”’ “T didn’t pan you. I’ve only been work- ing here a short time.” “Get out!” Hank went to Mr. Myers’s office. Myers was frosty. “ You seem to think Fitch is being abused from the way you write,” said he. “ T think there may be a mistake.” iz 4 Why?” “Td rather not state.” “‘ Suppose I subpeena you to tell the grand jury?” Hank grinned like a cornered rat. “ I'll write my testimony in one word. without your subpeena,” said he. He scribbled it and tossed it across the desk. Myers read: “ Conjecture!” “T won’t let you see Fitch,” said he. “Vou might find your conjecture mutually contagious,” ‘May I use that in my story to-mor- row?” asked Hank. Myers did not reply in words. His look sufficed to say that he could not control a reporter, but he would be in office for some time and he had a good memory. “Tt’s now all on the knees of whatever gods worship Persian figured silk um- brellas,” Hank told himself as he ambled, drearily, back to work. ‘“ What’s new?” asked the chief. “The whole blooming yarn breaks wide ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, open to-morrow, with trimmings, and I’ve been tommyhawked twice—by the sheriff and by Myers, trying to get to see Mr. Fitch.” / ‘Write it, and hold to the policy,” said the other. Hank sat down to his machine. Next morning readers of the Times were regaled if not edified. Hank told how both sides were lining up for the trial, he created a “‘no-man-knows-land ” so portentous that it bristled with verbal pitfalls, legal machine gun nests, and latent lethal devices of dim but no less ominous shape. He hated every line of it. Also, for reasons of his own, no less than the broad hint of Attorney Howard, he en- sconced himself about eight o’clock next morning in a “strategic position ” behind an old elm, and with his trusty motor cycle hidden behind a hedge. A squalid pushcart man labored up the hill. He had a villainous face, but Hank lounged over and bought of his wares, and gave him a quarter for good luck, thereby unconsciously purchasing a bullet proof life insurance policy. * T’anks, bo. Dis is not me reg’lar line,”’ averred the squalid one. “I’m in hard lines myself,” drawled Hank. ‘“ This world ain’t a bed of roses for a reporter in a millionaire murder case. So long,” he waved and skirted the hedge without referring to the fellow’s carelessness the day before. From his vantage he watched the sheriff’s office. At just nine o’clock the Fitch limousine drew up and disgorged three men besides Attorney Howard, one wearing a white beard and a top hat. Mordaunt was driving and parked close to the curb directly in front of the steps leading into the office. Ten minutes passed. Then, with a chorus of confused shouts from the interior of the old fort’s annex, accommpanying his ap- pearance, a figure in a sleeveless gray army undershirt, with bare head topped by thin, sandy hair, catapulted through the entrance door into space in a leap that disdained steps. In two more bounds the man was on the Fitch machine, and as he reached it, his COMIC OO KS (E@