Argosy All-Story Weekly, January 21, 1922 — page 73: what you’re looking at

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

SHELBY’S HEAD-ON CRASH. 63 excuse for doing that. The girl walked briskly over to the curb. Shelby followed more slowly. The girl turned into a side street. Shelby followed after. He decided to see the thing through. There was a street lamp half a dozen houses away, and he made up his mind to speak~to her when they came within the light of the lamp. As she neared it he quickened his foot- steps. He was only a few paces behind her. He was about to speak to her when she suddenly stopped and turned toward him. Shelby came to a dead halt, rooted there in amazement. The girl stood looking at him. Then she moved toward him. “Well,” she demanded, ‘‘ what is it you wish?” “ [—I—,” Shelby stammered and then he stopped. He perceived that whatever else the girl lacked she did not Jack self-possession. The gray eyes were quite cold. Her voice had been perfectly steady. Shelby suffered an agony of embarrassment. He felt as a cheap masher must feel when he is sud- denly turned upon. Nevertheless, he had a flash of intuition about the girl. He saw that her present attitude was in line with her going alone to Thornton’s boarding-house. Unquestion- ably she was associated with Thornton somehow. She seemed, in some strange way, to lack girlishness. She was full of a hard hostility as she stood there. “ What do you want?” she demanded anew. “ You were following me.” “*J wondered what you wanted to see Thornton about,” Shelby said. ‘““How did you know I wanted to see Thornton?” Her question gave him courage. Certain- ly she knew Thornton. If she had not known him, her first question would have been as to his identity. “ Because you went to his house and found him away. You went inside to wait for him. Then you changed your mind and left.” “How did you know he was away?” “‘ Because I had just asked for him my- self.” A change came over the girl. The cold- ness in her gray eyes was replaced by a look of shrewdness. She took a step to- ward Shelby. “You are a friend of his and of Osborne’s, are you?”’ she asked. It seemed to Shelby that her tone inti- mated that she was not a friend of either of those two. He took his cue from that. ‘I’m not a friend of theirs,” he declared. ‘¢ Just the opposite. My name is Shelby.” ‘* Shelby?” she said. ‘“ Oh!’’’ She had undergone another change. Shel- by felt that she was her real self now. The coldness and the shrewdness were both gone from her eyes. They were only wide with eagerness. “You know who I am?” he asked. She nodded. “You know, then, that I am in trouble on the road. I saw you go to Thornton’s boarding-house and I hoped you might know something about him—about that order that caused my discharge. Of course that sounds kind of foolish, but I thought If you knew Thornton you might have talked to him about the order. He might have said more to you than he would to any one else. I—I—well, that’s how it is.” The girl did not smile. She continued to look at him with her wide, lovely eyes. “Yes, I had heard about ‘the order,” she said at last. ‘‘ But it was not that that was taking me to see Thornton, of course. It was something else.”’ She took her breath quickly between her parted lips. The eagerness in her eyes in- creased till they glowed with it. ** Is it true that Thornton was responsible for the wreck?” she asked. ‘“ He was responsible,” Shelby replied. ‘“‘He never sent the order to me—or to any one else. Perhaps you don’t under- stand how the thing could happen. I—” “But, I do,” she interrupted. ‘“ My father was trainmaster on the road till he died, a year ago. I know something about railroading.” ‘‘ Sutherland was your father?” Shelby asked. 6é Yes.”’ Shelby stood looking at her. Suther- land’s death had been almost coincident with his advent on the road. He had never met Sutherland, but now in the dim re- comicloool C©