Argosy All-Story Weekly, November 13, 1920 — page 130: what you’re looking at

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

408 “No one will ever know about that,” said Dick. ‘‘ Not unless Joseph is found, which I doubt. What is known is the fact that he got away.” ““ How?” asked Midgette. ‘“ And why were Gloria Vernon and Frank Lethridge killed? You do explain things so won- derfully, Dick—so wonderfully!” CHAPTER XXVIL. THE SORDID STORY. the woods,” said Dick, ‘“‘ the one that Gloria Vernon knew and used. Some- how, he escaped detection. The small town police force were flustered by the affair, and he slipped off before the bigger and more capable men arrived.” “ How?” asked Midgette, in her softest voice. : ‘Nathan hid him in a load of spruce- trees he had just cut. These he took over to Bridgeport, which is forty miles away, Here, Joseph, who is small, masquerading as a shawl-wrapped country woman, took the train for New York, where he was sup- posed to be all the while.” ‘“Didn’t the judge’s wife—” began some one. ‘““She’d gone to visit relatives in Ver- mont the night before the murder. Only Harry Greenleaf, Nathan, and the judge knew where Joseph Harkins had and had not been in the interim. The judge had taken his wife to her home, and then, re- turning, had changed his hotel. That made that purely unconscious action of his another shield. ‘However, precaution really. wasn’t necessary. Joseph encountered no suspi- J OSEPH hid in the attic of his cabin in cion. Harry Greenleat’s innocence was es- ~ tablished by his own capable handling of the situation; for, on leaving Joseph, he had immediately gone to the doctor’s, asking him to come out to see, old Nathan, who had what the boy thoughé a cold. “<TLucky if you aren’t sick after your walk to town,’ said the local M. D. ‘ How long did it take you to make it, young man?’ Harry thought about an hour anda half, he wasn’t quite sure. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. “* Plucky!’ said the doctor, and then he loaded him up with Scotch, told him to get warm before he started, after which they drove off toward the country. Now, that walk in the driving snow made Harry Greenleaf a little hero. People liked his devotion to old Nathan, prattled of his taking care of him during Nathan’s attack of pleurisy and pneumonia which developed that night. ‘““ Harry saw in this attitude and his un- cle’s reputation for gentleness a screen for an enterprise which he wished to establish in silence, an enterprise which was to level ranks, wipe out hurts and injustices, by— fear and death! “Well, you can see the rest: the old woodsman’s unwillingness to comply; the glib persuasions of the younger man; the hurt in the old man that had made him think much money and sin were synony- mous; finally you can see him coming around, and how, once converted, his un- sophisticated yet cunning brain would never waver. : ‘It was his sort who made the early Christians—I mean the sort who could be so filled and dominated by an idea or an ideal that they would suffer anything, suf- fer anything to be, for the great and ulti- mate good. : ‘Nathan at first only protected the bomb-maker, but soon he was _ helping. Seems strange to think of that old man do- ing that, perhaps after he’d been tramping in the woods and there had spent half an hour trying to get a baby bird to cling to a high branch that meant safety.” Then he leaned over to the table, picked up a sheet of paper, and drew scrawls and meaningless lines as he went on, his narra- tive growing short-clipped, staccato. ‘The judge knew,” he said as his pencil moved jerkily, “ but for obvious reasons he couldn’t blow on the gang. Frank Leth- ridge thought Nathan a moonshiner, went to poking in the creek in spite of the warn- ings the judge gave him. He was caught in the trap, put on top of the box that held tools, by Harry Greenleaf. ‘ This was tied on a rope which ran down in deep water, and there through a heavy root. The rope then hid itself in Gomichoo S (E©)