Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 18, 1925 — page 71: what you’re looking at

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

THE DUKE OF mentary. You couldn’t find it in your port folio. I shall get it to-night. If you play fair, remember. If you don’t—well, that’s your bloodhound reputation—not mine. Meanwhile, to show you I am playing fair, suppose you call up Mr. Bertrand Vail at his New York address, which you'll find in the phone book, and tell him who you are, and that you’ve been chatting with me. Tell him to please come up, on the first train in the morning, with a certain detailed analy- sis he made at my request. Don’t ask him what it is or anything. Just use my name —and he’ll come. You will need him to follow me into the grand jury room.” Myers glowered. “ You told me yesterday,” he began bel- ligerently, “‘ that all your testimony before the grand jury could be summed up in one word—conjecture. You tell me _ to-night that you can hand me—” “A lemon,” cut in Hank coldly, “ if you like lemonade. And by that I stand or fall. What I told you was true. Conjecture since became reality. To hook it up into legal evidence I need only one link. On that link your real case against the murderer of Mar- shall stands or falls. I guesss you know from which side your reputation gets its name, don’t you? I’m no _ reputation- buster. I’m a bread-and-butter boy, who, now that he has made up his mind to as- sume the responsibilities of a family—” “You know, of course, that I can hold you overnight in jail as an important but recalcitrant withess? And then, if you don’t talk, I can have you committed in- definitely, for contempt of court?” Hank lighted a stogy and gazed over at _ the baffled prosecutor with a glance that Claude Cutler Fitch would have envied, had he seen it. Mr. Fitch, unfortunately, was not there to see it. He was speeding Maineward on the Bar Harbor Limited—with a ferocious joy gnawing at his heart; and, sitting op- posite him, in a berth whose green tint framed her high color, was a golden girl with violet eyes. Hank’s smile was not feigned. He had glimpsed Mr. Fitch on the same through train, as he waved good-by to Dorothy Dale, and his fiendish smile was bred of DISDAIN. 221 what Myers would think, if he knew the humiliating truth as to ‘ Jane Doe’s ’ where- abouts. It deepened and deepened, until his gaunt features seemed etched with the most powerful corrosive that human thought can supply, as he also reflected that Dorothy had no inkling whatever of the menace which Myers was ready to wield—and, which he was powerless to invoke because Hank had outguessed him from the mo- ment Tommy had read the story by James Montgomery Hardy in the Express extra, Disdain lent Hank Thomas a ducal air, which even Fitch could never achieve. curious thing was that Hank had no idea how he looked. He was no longer even thinking of Myers. He was back in Maine among “‘just folks.” Public thinking might move in a vicious circle and ignore “ just folks,” but, just now, Hank ignored everything else. All of this prosecutor’s contemptible puerility fell away. Hank was looking at the vanished Dorothy Dale, with a rapt look on her face holding an infant in her arms to add a last ineffable touch to the exquisite heritage of her youth and beauty. Then and there Hank suspended the con- cealed dictagraph stenographer over an abyss of official horror by falling sound asleep and snoring lustily. CHAPTER XIV. THE DUKE HIMSELF. EN o’clock came in the Times office. Hank Thomas had not returned. The chief fretted. “Wonder if Myers took umbrage at his attitude? Call him up, Joe, and ask him if he knows where Hank Thomas is, and why he is there if he is not footloose.” Joe got no replies to repeated telephoning. Ten thirty arrived. Hank Thomas was still among the missing. Joe called the jail. Mrs. Avery said there had been no new prisoners admitted and the sheriff had not returned with the posse. She thought the district attorney was in communication with the sheriff, for Mr. Butts had called EOMICLOOOKS The — (E(0)