Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 2 — page 149: what you’re looking at

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

HOW MANY CARDS? his teeth, and keen, inscrutable gray eyes smiling down at him. “ You’re Mr. Nicholas Cutter, sir?” he asked when he could find his voice, and then at the other’s nod he added: “ You’ve been waiting for me? I don’t get you—”’ ‘Your former colleague, or—er—com- petitor, Mr. Wade Terhune, has already paid me a call, and he told me that I might expect you shortly.” Mr. Cutter dropped indolently into a chair and stretched out his long, slim legs luxuriously. “ I’m quite ready to tell you anything I can about our late friend, Eugene Creveling.” So Terhune had been before him, and left that ironic warning, knowing that it would be repeated! McCarty stifled a profane observation, and his own honest blue eyes traveled in swift appraisal: over his~companion. He saw a man in the late forties, with a dark, lean, almost ascetic face, and hair just graying at the temples; a man who bore himself with the cordial but unconsciously aloof air of an aristocrat, and yet about whom there appeared to be an alert tensity as of one habitually on guard. There seemed to McCarty to be something vaguely familiar about that ex- pression; upon whose face had he encoun- tered it before? “ You'll excuse me for intruding on you, sir, but we’ve hardly any clues to work on, and ’tis only through Mr. Creveling’s friends and associates that we can hope to get a line on him,” McCarty began at last. “We're trying to find out what motive he could have had for killing himself.”’ Mr. Cutter’s eyebrows went up, and he put the tips of his long, slender, tapering fingers together. : ‘‘So? The authorities have come to the conclusion that it was suicide? That was not the impression I gathered from Mr. Terhune.” _ “ Mr. Terhune is a private detective, sir; ‘ @ scientific criminalist, he calls himself, and a wonder he is in some respects with his little recording machines and such, but I’m a special deputy on the police force, and one of the old school. Suicide, the assistant medical examiner names it, and as a suicide I’m investigating the case.” McCarty’s tone was that of one harnessed 351 to routine, but there was a speculative gleam in the gaze he bestowed upon his host. Mr. Cutter shook his head. ‘‘ Of course you know your business, Mr. McCarty, .and your medical expert’s diag- nosis ought to be conclusive, but isn’t there room for doubt? I’m not actually insinu- ating that some one broke in and shot Mr. Creveling, but have you looked at the case from all sides?”’ “If there was room for doubt that it was suicide what else are you thinking of but murder, Mr. Cutter?” McCarty de- manded. The other shrugged. ‘““T have formed no opinion, personally. I can no more conceive of Mr. Creveling killing himself than I can of any one wish- ing to take his life, yet the fact remains that he is dead from the shot of a pistol fired by his hand or that of another. If the authorities are satisfied that it is a case of suicide that is one step on the way to its solution.” *You’ve known timer” " | ‘Since he left the university, but only casually in those earlier years. He was having his fling in the bright lights, and my tastes drew me in quite another direc- tion; it was only after his marriage and through a mutual friend that I really came into contact with him and discovered that we had an interest in common which ren- dered us congenial.” | ‘“‘ And what was that interest, Mr. Cut- ter?” McCarty asked quickly. “A love of the beautiful in al] things: textiles, books, paintings, porcelains, sculp- ture. It had lain dormant in him, but with me it was innate, the passion of a lifetime; he had the acquisitive zeal of a collector Mr. Creveling a long and I the appreciation of an hereditary possessor, but I was naturally interested in finding a kindred spirit where I had least thought to discover one. If you were a connoisseur, Mr. McCarty, you would un- derstand what a pleasure it was to me to instruct and advise him in his choice. He made many mistakes, but he was learning —he was learning. What a pity!” Yes, sir.” COM McCarty agreed gravely. ElOOO (CO wo