Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 105: what you’re looking at

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

i. -* waitir g 10 . LO ‘he remembered only his ti teen hours. It was up to him, and up to him darn soon or she would carry out her Bins ooms were in a remodeled building on Twelfth Street, and after break fasting with the photograph propped up against the sugar bowl, he walked down the stairs to find the postman sticking some letters into the little brass boxes at the left of the door. The United States mail service was being maintained for the express purpose of car- rying letters from Constance to himself, so he ran down the last few steps and peered ‘nto his box as the postman went out of the door. Ah! As expected! He could see the let- ter through the little glass door. He fum- bled with a key, reached inside and, to his dismay, drew out a somewhat rumpled pos- tal card addressed to him in lead pencil. Turning it over and moving to the light, he made out the following inscription: Buy M. Q. Oil. Sell at twenty-four. “Huh!” Sam muttered. “ Why M. Q. Oil?” He turned the postal over and once more inspected the address. There was no clew to the sender, but he decided that a woman had written it, and probably an old wo- man, because the writing was more or less irregular and cramped. “Now who the deuce—” he began, and again dropped his perplexed gaze to the card. It had been posted down town, for it bore the imprint of the Hudson Terminal Station, but that was a large order and it told him nothing. “Now who the deuce—” he repeated, and got no further. Somehow, though he could not tell why, he vaguely associated the card with a wo- man he had bumped into the day before. He had been crossing Church Street under the Sixth Avenue Elevated tracks and had attempted to get out of an old lady’s way as she scampered across the street. In that _— of probation was up by something like six- "a Glad cou ] Now, as he ste through the little pi door, he tried to recall her m distinctly remembered that sne a bonnet, tied under her chin with | ribbons, and her eyes, he decided, were of “ soulful-looking eyes.” » “ That’s ridiculous!’ he exclaimed aloud shoving the card into his coat pocket and opening the door. “ Perfectly absurd! She doesn’t know me from- didn’t even ask my name! Besides, what in the world would that old lady know about M. Q. Oil? Fool- ishness—forget it!” But he didn’t forget it. He reached the corner of Sixth Avenue, bought a paper and the first thing he looked for was the stock quotations. M. Q. Oil, the night be- fore, had closed at twelve and an eighth. Probably it hadn’t moved far away from the figure for the past six months. Sam laughed scornfully and tore the postal into little pieces as he walked down to the station at Eighth Street. There were two or three places Sam had made up his mind to get in if he could, and one of them was Borden & Borden, brokers. Joe Borden, the son, had roomed across the hall at New Haven. Sam turned out of Broad Street into a building, and an elevator whisked him up to an office where a lot of men were sitting in armchairs before a big blackboard on which a boy was changing little cards that he took from a belt around his waist. Sam didn’t see Joe at first, so he found a seat at the back of the room and fell to a study of the board. He knew it by heart already and was on familiar terms with most of the offerings. While he watched the boy advance Steel an eighth, and then a quarter, and then, walking to the other end of the board, he stuck a new card under M. Q. Oil. For those who had that particular stock for sale, the little numbers proclaimed that they could find buyers, and a. =i comi ebooks.cor