Argosy All-Story Weekly, June 27, 1925 — page 158: what you’re looking at

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

$32 between his eves, he placed the bit of cloth wirter the lens of his most powerful micro- soe. His wife sat down on a chair pre- sumably to wait. But he knew she was really there to see that his attention did nat adie of from the murder mystery to wevreaca rubra. Soon he began to jot down notes of what the lens was telling him about the shred of meckband. He made so many notes but kept so silent that his wife possessed her soul with patience only at the expense of so much will power. But when he finally turned away from the microscope and sat down to puzzle something out she blew up, figuratively speaking. “Harry!” she expostulated. He started and realized that he had a wife in the room. “Why, Alice, I am extremely puzzled,” he said. ‘' Here is a piece of cloth which the microscope shows is cotton. Yet adher- ing to it are unmistakably wool particles. What is more, they are particles of two different colors, blue and red. What is still more these particles are arranged in an orderly manner—a stretch of blue particles of wool, say, half an inch wide. Then a very narrow stretch of red wool fticles running vertically through the lué, for say a twentieth of an inch. Then blue again for half an inch; then again a narrow stretch of red—”’ “ Well, wool rubs off on to other things, doesn't it?” Mrs. Goldie demanded. He rubbed his chin perplexedly. “ Yes, of course. They might very well be particles of wool thread rubbed off by fric- tion on to the cotton. But they seem to rub off in such an orderly fashion. Whereas if one rubbed one texture against another with sufficient force to fray off particles like these there would be a mixed smear of them mstead of this—this—” ‘‘ Pattern?” his wife suggested. “‘ Pattern is what you wanted to say, Harry, isn’t it?” “Yes” he brightened. like a pattern—”’ “ Are these wool particles on the right side of the cloth or the wrong?” “On the side meant to be seen, I be- lieve.” “It would look ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. “Of course!”? She handed him a few colored pencils from a tumbler where he kept the drawing material he used in mak- ing diagrams of nervous tracts in tiny ants. ‘‘ Just draw a diagram of how these wool particles are arranged, each in its own color, Harry.” | He did so. She looked at the neat color pattern he sketched. Then her eyes glanced off into memory. “IT should say this might be the pattern which a blue suit with a red thread through it would leave on the collar of an over- shirt,’ she said ruminating. ‘‘ Seems to me I saw such a suit somewhere—some time. O4, bother!” It was his tum to be curious. It was so seldom that his wife let him see her in such obvious defeat. ‘ You seem to be disappointed, Alice,” he ventured. “Tam. I remember now where I saw that suit. It was on your new assistant, Dr. Bransted. He wore that suit when he came here that first day from Harvard when you appointed him to help you. I remem- ber that suit because I looked at it first thing he came into the house. I was curious to know why an instructor at.Har- vard should want to accept a place on the faculty of such a small college as ours. If it was a matter of money I could tell that by his clothes at once. But his suit was a nice one—a blue with a thin red thread. So I was—and am—just as much at sea about his coming here as ever. But I do remember that suit. “ And of course it does us no good know- ing that this pattern you’ve drawn would correspond to a suit worn by Dr. Bransted. He doesn’t look the kind to go parading on our campus in the dead of night murdering unknown men with blunt instruments. But you can never tell about these high-strung, silent men. I still don’t know what brought him here from Harvard and what has sent him to bed with a nervous break- down three weeks after he came here. I don’t like it—” “ Alice, may I remind you that Dr. Bran- sted has been ill in bed for the last three days and that I have been taking charge of his classes. It isn’t logical, therefore, to speculate on his being the murderer, is it?” GOMmilGooo () SS Co