Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 68: what you’re looking at

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

ole, I don’t know do forward, fixing the boy eave the table— Miss Olcott?” @ didn’t leave, either—until you did! You know I did, Moffie!” ested. “I came up to the ladies’ powder my nose. That’s when I y on the stairs,” she explained, turn- the others. yes—then you did,” said Fielding. plain he cared nothing for the truth; ight only of shielding Joan. 0 you realize that you are liable to n very wrong with the authorities if persist in evading the questions and iberately falsifying?” asked Garry stern. “Do you want to be held for perjury? Yr as an accessory after the fact?” He sneered. “Tm not afraid,” he said. His bravado was superb. “Don’t be foolish, Moffie! We've noth- ing to fear—either of us,” said Joan. “ Tell them whatever they want to know— frankly!” He looked at her. “Sure—if you want me to,” he said, graciously. _ “TJ do,” she assured him. _ “Well?” he said, then, turning impa- tiently to Garry. “Tire away! What is 4.9)) i “You knew Guy da Costa pretty well, didn’t you?” “ Too damned well,” he answered grimly. ‘You know that old song, don’t you‘ He ade Me What I Am To-day.’ That’s the d. I met him in the service—Royal Corps. I was just out of college, Hadn’t graduated— just quit to en- Didn't even drink, then. I had my - with him. ‘ What the hell,’ he 1] all be dead in six months! p ’er up while we’ve got the nd maybe we didn’t whoop ‘er drank, took dope! Gee, ‘in France! It ’d have .RGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. came back—well—I just didn’t want to settle down again, that’s all. Family tried to make me, but I couldn't!’ [’d got kind of used to it all, d’you see?” “I guess they never did understand him we said Joan, as Fielding halted. Any more than my family understood how to handle me. Families, you know, are to blame for a lot of things. Not that they mean to be! Not that they don’t try their damnedest! But—we’re not all alike —are we? And they don’t understand!” “It wasn’t as if I’'d been a hero,” said Moffat Fielding. ‘I just wasn’t much of anything—but a rotter—from the start!” “Did you see much of Da Costa—after you both came back?” asked Garry, then. “ Yes, I saw him all the time. I intro- duced him around some. He didn’t know many people here then. When he got him. self fixed in right, he shook me! At first, when I wanted to go back home, he used to laugh at me and say, ‘ Hell, you went to France and fought the damned Boches, didn’t you? You saved the country for them. Have a good time while you're young! ‘There’s time enough to settle down!’ My mother used to write for me to come home. She sent money regularly —still does. But I’m ashamed to go back, now!” “And while you were going about with Da Costa, you knew most of his friends, I suppose?” ‘“‘ All of them, I guess,” answered Field- ing. “ Perhaps you can help us, then, to sin- gle out one or two who might be capable of a deed like this—and who had sufficient motive?’ Moffat Fielding thought for an instant. “ Who knows what any one is capable of? I don’t know what /’m capable of mry- self. As for murder—I guess almost any one might do it—given reason enough. And nearly all of Da Costa’s friends had plenty of reason. You see, he just couldn’t play fair. Never did with any one. I was his ‘buddy’ and he didn’t with me. You're going to have a hard time finding the mur- derer that way!” ; “ It begins to look like it,” admitted Sil- vers to Garry. Aicbooks.com Se