Argosy All-Story Weekly, June 13, 1925 — page 129: what you’re looking at

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

HONEST FOOL. The night of the first day of December was still and star-lit and just frosty enough to keep the world’s enveloping robe of snow dry and light. By ten o’clock the Skellogs were in bed and the only windows showing so much as a chink of light were those of the sitting-room; and the chunky sticks of rock-maple on the old fire-dogs had sub- sided and broken to a great mound of red embers across the wide hearth; and Lem and Jules were deep in their third game. The shaded lamp, which stood on a stand of its own beside the chess-table, did little more than illuminate the embattled rooks and knights and pawns. The mass of em- bers on the hearth sent a wavering glow up the walls. Jules put out his right hand to play his queen, only to withdraw it and turn his head slightly without moving his glance fron) the ivory pieces. “What is zat?” he asked. “ What?” returned Lem, glancing across at him. The sitting-room had an outer door as well as an inner. Jules twisted his head all the way around now and looked at the door behind him. Lem, looking straight to his front across the little table, also stared at the door. They both saw the brass knob turn this way and then that way. But the deor was locked. “Now who the devil would that be?” queried Lem, in a thin voice. Jules jumped to the door and turned the key and pulled the door wide open, stepping swiftly backward and aside with it. There on the threshold stood a woman, swaying. So for a few seconds, and then she swayed forward into the room and crumpled grace- fully to the floor, letting fall a suit case as she subsided. Jules shut the door and stood, silent, with his back to it. For one heart-tearing moment he had boped, he had even thought, that this was Marcel. <A second glance had disillusioned him. Lem continued to stare wide-eyed, speechless and motionless. The unexpected visitor lay broken but graceful, crushed and yet as alluring as pitirul to the eye. She lay on a slender hin, and yet with her breast on the carpet and her face on an upflung forearm. Even Lem could see that she was not of that 601 couniryside. The style and material of her wraps and small hat told him so, as did the perfection of her shoes and gaiters and the rounded sheen of sheer silk above the tops of the gaiters. Her slender shoulders moved softly, and a sound of half-stifled sobs, expressive of both grief and exhaus- tion, came from her hidden lips. A sudden Suspicion came to Jules, and he raised his glance. Lem looked up at the same moment, the glances of the friends met, the suspicion aroused passed from one to the other, and Lem’s cheeks paled and his eyes narrowed. Jules stepped forward, stooped, slipped his hands about the girl’s waist and lifted her easily in his arms. He moved over to a low, soft old chair and lowered her gently into it. And now he saw her face and her tear-dimmed eyes. But tears had washed nothing of the pure azure from those eyes, nor had anything flawed or hardened them. It was Dora. Jules moved aside, hesitated, looked help- lessly at Lem and sat down in the nearest chair. Lem remained motionless and silent, staring at the limp figure in the old chair. Dora covered her eyes with her small gloved hands. ‘They could see her lips and small chin. Her lips, pink now instead of artfully scarlet, and slightly parted, quivered childishly. (Perhaps there was more art in that innocent natural pink than there had ever been in the applied scar- let.) Lem shifted his glance to Jules’s calm face, twitched his shoulders, scowled at Jules, then got slowly to his feet. He stood glaring at Jules. “ What ails you?” he asked. ‘' Can’t you say something?” Jules smiled at him somewhat wanly. “But certainly,” he said. ‘If zis were my "house, I would ask the lady to remove ’er ’at and take a little refreshment. I would make a cup of tea. [ would be ’ospitable.”’ Lem turned his back on Jules and his scowl upon the girl. ‘“ Have you come back alone?” he asked, in a harsh voice. Her answer was a slight inclination of the head and a piteous sob. ‘Had enough of him already, hey?” he asked, with sneering bitterness. She spoke then for the first time, still cComiclbooks CO