Argosy All-Story Weekly, November 13, 1920 — page 117: what you’re looking at

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

WHAT WAS THAT? New York; had arrived there; but the fol- lowing day she had been back. Connec- tions were bad, a train could not have brought her. so quickly; it was thought some one motored her back. Had she friends? Gustave was cited as the only one gen- erally known. How had Gustave come into possession of the strip of pink-checked gingham which had done so much to harm his chances of being proved innocent? Gustave did not know. But—people were around there who had no business there. Some one had crept in the night that a cat had had a fit all over the place. This was described. 3 Why had the judge written the note to Gloria Vernon that had turned suspicion upon him? Why had he written: “ Unless you leave quickly something will happen to you!” The judge answered, because Miss Vernon had taken an intense, almost insane dislike to Miss April Barry, and meant to do her harm if possible. He was trying to protect her, he asserted. How did the judge know of this dislike? The judge hemmed and hawed, and then he said that he ‘“ had been up to see the Beasley man, who was sick—the fellow who farms—out past Greyson’s hill; they had been talking—”’ “Who is ‘they ’?” lawyer. The judge spluttered. “Miss Vernon and myself,” he shouted. No one believed him. “Why not ‘we’?” asked the lawyer. ‘T erred; I refer to Mrs. Beasley, and Miss Vernon,” wheezed the judge. Mrs. Beasley then testified she had never been in the room with Miss Vernon while the judge called. ‘ Yes, sir, he come often,” she answered in reply to a question. “I asked Gustave’s don’t recollect that him and my husband ever spoke afore. He says he done it fer sympathy.” “ Beautiful thing, sympathy!” said Gus- tave’s lawyer dryly. There was a ripple of mirth. “Why,” went on Mr. Beagle, who spoke nervously, and in his way affected his lis- teners quite as much as the heavy and- 395 more restrained tones of the judge’s lawyer —‘‘ why did you buy strychnin from Jason Humphrie’s drug-store the night before the Beasley’s dog was poisoned?” The judge did not answer promptly; finally he said: ‘‘ Rats ”’—his voice weak and close to failing. ‘Where. did you put it?”’ ‘“TIn—in the cellar.”’ Mrs. Harkins, called upon to testify, was asked: ‘“‘ Does the judge go down cellar often?” “Very,” she replied. There was a posi- tive hurricane of nervously pitched laugh- ter. “ Silence!” boomed the judge of the district. Then Gustave’s lawyer suggested that perhaps the judge went down to drink something himself—something that was not poison—for rats. He paused before his reason for the material that the judge had bought. And then he went on, speaking more quietly than was his wont. The Beasley dog, it seemed, had been poisoned with strychnin. There was counter-question about this; couldn’t the dog, in wandering, have come across some of the poison left out in the judge’s yard? ‘‘ Why didn’t his.own dog come across it, too?’’. asked Mr. Beagle. This seemed unanswerable. ‘“‘ No, he went on. ‘The judge was there that evening, and that evening the dog was killed; killed for some reason—killed so that some one could come and go to the Beasley house without being troubled —so that some one could ruthlessly murder a. girl—a girl who had given her life to soothing the sick and—” a great deal more of the same,.and then the court adjourned. I walked home between Billy and Dick Codman. The rest, with the exception of Gustave, trailed behind. Gustave was boarding at the jail. He had actually been sport enough to joke with us about it as we said good-by to him that day. ‘“ The beds aren’t much,” he said to me, ‘‘ but the food is better than I’m used to.”’ And then, the warden drawing near with a huge key and an expression that meant “ go,” we with- drew. Jane had not spoken to Gustave, but she had gone with us, and somehow I know that both of them really saw no one else. 700 com cS (e{0) ma