Argosy, Vol. 147, No. 1 — page 31: what you’re looking at

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

j 4 A WAS cs rE TER FATHE! ay fas Sei " What—what right have : you to to talk bg cmd Trieris that way? ‘What t, ee elderly face was turned toward the pretty young one. “ What right?” he repeated wonderingly. “Why, every right! To begin with, I’m your father. You haven’t any mother, haven’t had one since you were knee- high— ” “Tf I had,” she retorted bitterly, iit J might have a chance to be somebody; get somewhere—” « And, skipping a lot of other reasons,” Pierre Marshall continued, speaking through her interruption, “ and going from beginning to ending: there’s one of the final rights I have to speak. Look it over.” From a drawer he had unlocked, he drew out a sheet of paper, which he handed her. It was typed under the letterhead of a well- known detective agency. It was a report turned in by one signing himself: ‘‘ Opera- tive 288’: and it concerned a certain “ Robert Cushing Benham.” * That’s the gentleman I so unceremoni- ously ejected to-night before you could get down to see him again,” commented her father in the same grim tone. ‘ Not that there was any argument about the ejection. I simply asked him to glance over that sheet of paper as I’m asking you to. It seemed to be convincing. You heard what I said to him as you came down the stairs?” “Yes,” was her tearful response, “ you told him if you ever caught him on your property again you’d have him arrested for trespassing. How can you make me look - so ridiculous; how can you? ‘ Have him ar- rested for trespassing "—” “It’s nothing to the way he’d have made you look if he’d ever had any authority over you. Read his record, my girl. Can’t you see from what it says that the man is nothing but a wastrel living on his family’s reputation and his only prospect in life is marrying some silly little fool like you—” “ Thank you!” she interpolated with icy mien. “You're pecme, I’m sure. Read on in and you'll see his specialty seems oe do £ wast you would call ‘ robbing “whore 11 BH how h that little seventeen-yez arid se c ing her out in that hired < enough gasoline to get them te : nile nowhere when, naturally, it s sto ge! e “And he hoped, the scoundrel, that having kept her out until daybreak— that before he got her home, thanks J ot ing his way ’ several times on unfrequent country roads—he’d have her eor le scared of her reputation they’d let he er m ry him and settle something hand we them. But her father had so thank heaven, and kicked him out. ? difference between him and me, J kick cked him out before he could get you into al compromjsing position—” a % “How do you know it wasn’t an acci- dent?” responded Corinne hotly. ‘“ These detectives make their living turning in re- ports like this—” ag “Yes, and if they couldn’t prove they said they’d find themselves insi de a a penitentiary for criminal libel,” returned he father wearily. “ But to satisfy your mir nd, ae the head of this agency used to hold hie rank in the secret service. And th in on this case was one of his most t stale government assistants. The same man in- ~ vestigated your other four friends. i his reports on them.” Be. He brought a manila envelope out of th same drawer, and drew from it a num of thin, tough sheets of closely typed ps each headed with the name of the form rm Secret Service chief. ‘I never meant to tell you about it he said sternly. “I chose to let you thi the other four had simply quit Sac! UL their own free will. of them investigated, and when the r ; turned out to be bad—as I expected frot the looks of those particular gentlem t just called each one in, in turn, and an e him off. Race-track gamblers, spongers 0 their friends, eyesores to their families—” “Oh! Oh!” she broke out ner think of having my friends shado ye, detectives! How could you hs thing?” “To save you from nee & of, instead of a ns until Be he replied ue