Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 2 — page 98: what you’re looking at

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

by Raymond Le slie Goldman. PRECEDING CHAPTERS BRIEFLY RETOLD C*st off by his father with twenty thousand dollars, and robbed of fifteen thousand of this in exchange for an empty hotel by one Ellis Turner, Bertram Bancroft Boom arrived in Selma, Arkansas, outfaced Turner at a political rally; was Patterson, newspaper proprietor; and found a fread in in David Hodge, station-master, and village oracle. He had earned, however, the antagonism of Ruth, daughter of Sheriff Warren, one of Turner's men, and following the election, when, due to Boom’s efforts, Turner’s men, Spigot and Warren, had been nearly defeated, at a slurring remark of Turner’s, Bert slapped the boss across the mouth. But Turner, a physical coward, declined the issue; later, in his seething rage, hiring a powerful tramp, -“ Paprika ” Blake, to whip Boom. Bert, meanwhile, diagnosing Ruth’s hostility as sheer stubbornness, succeeded in interesting her in spite of herself, and later, with the aid of Fred Patterson, hit upon an idea for exploiting the white elephant which he owned: namely: Quiet. He would advertise the hotel as an original rest-cure. Then, on the day of a dance at the high school Turner gave Paprika his fmal instructions, having previously sent Bert an invitation. to the dance. Paprika was to insult him, and then “beat him up.” But Amos, Hodge's assistant, eavesdropping, brought Hodge the news, who, inveigling Bert into his buggy, took him ten miles out of town. At the dance time passed, and Turner’s impatience grew as Bert failed to appear. Then, noticing the avid look in Blake’s eyes as he gazed at Ruth, he admonished him to look elsewhere. But in his abstraction he did not notice that his companion was staring straight ahead, lips loosely parted, his hot breath sweeping through them, and his black, beady eyes fixed with burning intensity upon the averted profile of Ruth Warren. christened “ Bing, Bang, Boom” by Fred CHAPTER XII. PERIL. URNER and Paprika separated in front of the high school, Turner driving up to Oakland Avenue to the home of Mrs. Miller, with whom he boarded. | ‘“Get a room at the Palace,” were his parting instructions to Paprika, ‘‘ and be at my office at nine to-morrow morning.” Left alone, Paprika took his stand on the sidewalk before the building, interest- ing himself in watching the people who emerged, passing in unknown review before him as they hurried homeward. He inspected them now with emotions that were totally different from any he had ever experienced. Yesterday, when he had entered Selma, he had been a tramp— dirty, ragged, an outcast from all that was respectable. Then, he had looked upon _these very people with the leering scorn in which he had always held the virtuous, the law-abiding, and the God-fearing. But now there was no scorn in his eyes; instead, a wistfulness that was a reflection of the vague longing that had so strangely This story began in the Argosy-Allstory Weekly for July 31. 280 CORA book (CO Ul