Argosy All-Story Weekly, November 13, 1920 — page 127: what you’re looking at

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

WHAT WAS THAT? within herself against all the loneliness and terror that’she felt was to be hers. No one slept that night, and we heard Jane pacing to and fro during all the long hours of her vigil. Laurence kept calling the court-house for a report from the jury, but there was none. Nan sat gazing miserably ahead. Dick and Billy played rum. I tried to read, but I cannot remember a word of it. And so the night passed slowly. At ten o’clock the following morning the jury gave their verdict Gustave Gerome was found guilty of manslaughter in the first degree. —-_ CHAPTER XXVI. CODMAN EXPLAINS. T five minutes past ten Dick Codman came into the court-room, followed by two officers, who had between them, handcuffed and terrified, the man whom I had seen sitting on the edge of the creek the day that Frank Lethridge was drowned. “Here,” said Dick Codman, striding up the aisle, ‘“‘ is the murderer of Frank Leth- ridge and Gloria Vernon, and the man who knows who murdered Rudolph Loucks!” Oh—the bedlam! Judge Harkins fainted, Jane began to sob deeply, brokenlty; Laurence bleated out a prayer of thanksgiving, and the court went wild. When it had somewhat silenced, Dick Codman held up a paper. “ I won’t read it,” he said; ‘““but you can. Just tell the assembled court the name of this pe- riodical.”’ “The New Yoik Joynal-Gazette,” said the man. ‘““ Gabriel!’ shouted Gus Dirks. Gabriel staggered and almost fell. Isaw Jane hurry over to Gustave, and his arms close around her. I heard Laurence’s sob —the first, of course, to arrive; Nan’s hys- terical bleating about her feeling that it would be righted; the howls of the mob; Billy’s soothing voice, the feel of his arm. Oh, that day! ‘Everything whirled, and the precipitate was a gorgeous medley of re- lief, tears, laughter, love, and pain. 405 A little funny, perhaps, to turn the cor- ner of the porch, and then to have to back out of a scene that involved Laurence and Nan; to hear Laurence in a kiss-free inter- lude loudly asserting that Nan needed a strong, courageous man to care for her. But not funny to find Jane and Gustave, his hand on a fold of her skirt, or her sleeve, and to hear his unconscious repetition of her name, half aloud, half pleadingly. It seemed as if his lacerated nerves found in that name peace and courage to go on; felt through her the breeze that brought cool promise of another land. The second night after Gustave’s release we heard the story of the start of it. Dick Codman told it in his easy, drawling voice and his very matter-of-fact manner. Even Midgette screamed only three times. After the third, Dick Codman laid his hand on hers, forgot to remove it, and she stopped. I think exhibitions of that sort are disgust- ing, and so Billy and I sat back in the shadows— But to go on. Nan said: ‘‘ Do teil us all you know, Dick. Im interested.” Dick stood up to hunt a match, poked up the fire a bit—it had been a gray, damp, cold day—and then, after sitting down and puffing at his pipe for a few moments, he began: ‘“ Hunger and fear started it. Of course you all know that hunger, hate, and fear make all the crimes. This started on money-hunger and fear, and it lived on an- archy—throve on it.” Dick leaned forward, stirred the fire anew, and then, his face well lit by the roaring blaze, told the tale. Always I will see that fire-lit room as I remember it then; the shadows and brightness of it, the tense, listening group. ‘“ Judge Harkins’s younger brother, fo- seph,” said Dick, “‘ was a dreamer, an im- practical, paint-loving, artistic, erratic dreamer. The judge, starved for love, dis- illusioned, childless, woman-nagged, fas- tened all his affection on the boy. And, in spite of the quality of his offering, the thing he gave was a pretty heavy burden for young shoulders to bear. The judge de- manded character, pine-straight character, JOOKS com im