Argosy, Vol. 118, No. 4 — page 140: what you’re looking at

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

610 the painted lady really reeled for an in- stant. She caught the arm of a chair and steadied herself. then, and suddenly, with a little cry of her own, she buried her decorated countenance in her tinted hands and wept violently. Out in the foyer, a frightened smile flut- tered over George’s lips. He glanced back at the room. He glanced at the door. “Gerry,” he said, with surpassing hon- esty, “‘ I want to go home!”’ ‘““Do you, George?” murmured his wife. “Yes, and I want to go home now! There isn’t anything we can—I can—do for them, in there.” ‘There couldn’t be, George,” Geraldine said, and it did not escape George that her recent great animosity toward him had dwindled astonishingly. “Listen, Gerry. I’m not fooling!” he said quickly. ‘Look at it any way you like, we’re better out of this house than in it—and they’ll be better off, too. If we move fast enough, we can get out before this last explosion quiets down, and I know ‘about where the cars are hidden and the name of the man who has ’em! Come!”’ “Isn’t it cowardly to run like that when—” 7 ‘“‘ Honestly, I don’t know whether it is or not, but I’m inclined to think that I couldn’t do anything kinder than to disappear! And I never felt so much like driving a car as I do at this minute,” George whispered. “‘Let’s get out, and—’’ Perhaps the wisdom of the thing ap- pealed to Geraldine. It may have been that she was past resisting suggestion, for that dreadful scream of Angela’s had shaken Geraldine to the core. At all events, it is a fact that she hurried after George to the door of Aunt Amanda’s home. A fearful smile, terror, doubt and elation mingling, split his countenance for a moment. Soft- ly, George turned the knob—and stepped back, and stepped back still further and threw up his hands. He had timed the opening of that door to the very second! The heavily built, gray- haired man with the hard gray eyes and the raincoat—whether he had materialized from thin air or had just been crossing the veranda, the gray-haired man was onthe She settled limply in it,. THE ARGOSY. point of entering just then. More than this, he was no chance traveler; he was a man with a mighty stride and a fixed purpose. One long step took him across the threshold as George faltered: “That—that—he’s the man I pulled the chair away from—he’s the man who sat on the floor, Gerry! Gerry! Do you see him, too? Do you—” The elder man stopped and peered. He also scowled in astonishment. “Dare?” he muttered. ‘ Dare? the devil are you doing here?”’ ‘‘ I—you see, I—”’ “ That’s confoundedly queer!” the other stated. ‘‘ Are you mixed up in this affair, too?” ‘“T—yes, I am mixed up in a way!” George confessed dizzily. understand—” “The fact that you’re here tells me enough!” the stranger rapped out, very crisply. ‘‘ I can’t guess the connection off- hand, and it isn’t necessary. I can deal with you in short order!” <4 Eh?” “Oh, yes! I can’t conceive how you tangled yourself into my family affairs. It seems incredible that a man can be such an ass, but I presume it’s in retaliation for some of the things I said to you to-day when you tried to kill me,” pursued the latest arrival, who was plainly the queerest of them all! ‘All right, then! You didn’t know that I’d bought your firm—lock, stock and barrel, did you?” ‘No, I—I didn’t know that,” George said, from a distance. “Well, I have, and you're fired! What Get that? fired! Now, where’s your wom- an?” ‘““ My woman?’’ ‘““The woman, then!” snarled the gen- tleman who had just wrecked George’s career. ‘‘ The one who asked me to come to dinner? Jane Woodbury!” : ‘“ Dinner—I don’t know!” George mum- bled. ‘‘ Miss—er—Woodbury—here she is!” She had indeed arrived. She was in the living-room doorway now, apparently trying to say something. Tears had done their Streaking worst with the artificial layer “But you don’t. JOO (C(O) S (C(O)