Adventure, November 1915 — page 25: what you’re looking at

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

The Gold Lust “They’d puzzle a long time before they struck that,” he said, ‘but I'll think up a better scheme yet.” Peggy Winton’s eyes widened at the pre- caution. “Don’t expect to be held up, old chap, do your” drawled her brother. “After Henley’s stunt at the window last night,’’ answered Addams, ‘“‘it’s best to ex- pect anything and be prepared for it. Now, I’m off. Good-by!”’ It was snowing hard and persistently. -From the front of the house the big arch- way of the Square not fifty yards away was invisible. Peggy shivered as she opened the front door for Fellowes, clad in one of Addams’s ulsters, ready to go to his room and pack and dispose of his few belongings. “Won’t you let me get you a taxi?” she asked. “Bless you, miss, no!” he declared cheer- ily. “This is nothin’ to the Arctic. In a fortnight we'll be wishing we could see some of this snow again.” She watched him plowing sturdily through the drifts, the falling snow closing him out from sight like a curtain, before she closed the door and went to find Selim. In the studio she could hear her brother singing in his light tenor: “Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil have done for the rest, Yo-ho and a bottle of r-r-rum!”’ IT WAS late afternoon before Ad- dams returned. Peggy, in the ex- ~ citement of packing, had not no- ticed the time until it grew dark at a little after four. She went into the studio where her brother was delightedly burning up blue-prints and elevations. ’“There goes that Court House compe- tition drawing, Peggy,” he said. ‘‘Watch it flare! That’s where I’ve often wanted to send the whole stack of them—to blazes. re burning my bridges, like Archer. Good luck!” “Shouldn’t he be back by now?” she queried. “And surely Mr. Fellowes ought to be here. Maybe something’s BABPERSR to him?” “‘Shucks, no, Peggy! But the old boy is late, isn’t he. If you like I’ll run over. It’s only a few blocks. Monroe Court on Mac- dougal Street, isn’t it?”’ 23 He struggled into his ulster. “Tell Selim to watch out for Henley,” he said jestingly. At the front door he met Addams. “Anything up, old chap?” he asked, sensing the gravity-of Addams’s demeanor, “Trip all off? Pirate woke up and found it all a dream?” “T wish he had,” answered Addams grim- ly, “rather than this had happened. Come into the front room, Jim. Peggy in the details.”’ Winton’s care-free features sobered. “Henley?” he asked. Addams nodded. “Looks like it,” he said. dead.” Winton gave a low whistle. “Have they got Henley?” he asked. “No—nor likely to. It may not even have been murder. They caught me at my office at three o’clock from the tenth pre- cinct police station. They had found a card of mine in Fellowes’s room. He got there about eleven o’clock this morning, directly after leaving here, I suppose. He told his landlady, who is an Italian, that he was going to pack up to go away on a sea voyage and for her to come up later, as he’d have some things to give her as keepsakes. “She heard him, off and on, singing to himself and moving about, till her young- sters came in from school and she got their meal ready for them. I imagine the chil- dren talking drowned any outside noise except that once she says she heard the sound of a man coming down-stairs—a man with a foot that dragged.” “Henley!” exclaimed Winton. “Of course. She didn’t think much of it —all kinds come and go in that kind of a lodging-house—and she didn’t open the door to look because the halls were cold. After the children had gone again she went up to the room and found Fellowes on the floor, half propped against the bed, gasping. “He managed to say, “Too late!’”? which she supposed to mean she was too late to find him. She called in the neighbors and they got him on the bed. When the ambu- lance came he was dead. Not a scratch on him, no sign of violence—heart failure. The doctor said it was a wonder he. hadn’t gone years before. The valves were rotten. ‘The drawers were all emptied, so was his sea-chest, with the contents piled up in a Gomichbooks “Fellowes is ~studio? Good. No need to tell her all the — (EO)