Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 189: what you’re looking at

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

BEWARE OF Bill, perchance, was enjoying a faint of his own back there. Well, Thomas would rouse him. “ Bill, you poor dub!” he called. “ Pull yourself together and come out. I want to talk to you!”’ Still Bill gave no evidence of his pres- ence. “ Say, William! Mary, your wife, is . hiding, too, not more than forty feet from you! There, dog-gone you! I guess that that will.bring you out!” The guess, however, was wholly incor- rect. Not so much as the scrape of a foot betrayed the presence of William. Thomas ' flushed quite angrily; any one may be scared for a while, of course, but—Thomas halted his march toward the curtains and listened. It was his very clear impression that the Noble door across the hall had opened. Ah, yes, it had, for he caught Saily’s voice: “All right! Il believe that when I “hear it from Mary herself, Peter. No— never mind Tom’s story. I'll hear Mary—” The elevator gate rattled. With a click the door across the hall seemed to close again as Sally, and doubtless Peter as well, retreated. Thomas, with his ear against his own door, suspected that he had found the reason in the voice that sounded from down the corridor—indubitably Hayes’s voice this time: _ “Very well, my dear! We'll find that out from Mary herself, then. Yes, I insist on that. Even in justice to Thomas, I in- sist on that. Mary will clear him or con- demn him.” Dolly spoke hastily, although Thomas could not catch the words. Her father’s voice came again. , “Well, that is what Mary Emeract must and will settle for us!” he said very flatly. Thomas choked. That — that was his life’s happiness, turned into a couple of short sentences, and with its fate hanging upon matters which only Mary could veri- fy. Thomas straightened up and then started anew; while he might possibly be in error, he would have staked his last dol- lar that this latest voice was Henry Bond’s —cold and angry, but still well controlled. (The THE BRIDE. 563 “Not prepared to start this warfare again definitely, Hayes, until F am certain that it has not been stirred up by a de- ‘liberate plot. Henning and the Lawson girl and her husband, if they are really in- volved, will between them—” Thomas heard no more. Thomas was speeding across his- living-room, to haul them out bodily, appearances or no appear- ances. He has estimated, so far as he had estimated the thing at all, that William and Mary would have an hour or so in which to struggle back to the old affection- ate understanding of one another. But the whole proposition of Mary’s vital assistance, instead of postponing it- self until to-morrow, was about to rattle down around Thomas’s ears inside of five minutes — and the reconciliation of Wil- liam and Mary would have tobe about the swiftest affair of the kind on record. These things settled, Thomas collided with the heavy table in the living-room and stopped quite suddenly. He recovered him- self, breathing rapidly; as loudly as be dared, he shouted: “Say! Buiul—Mary! Both of you! Come out here quick! I need you both and—”’ His eyes, which had dropped to the ta- ble, squinted strangely at the little mem- orandum pad. It had been blank at his last sight of the thing, but two or three lines were scrawled across it now in a bold, square hand he remembered even from the old schooldays. Gasping, Thomas stooped and read: Mary and I havé made up. Gone now. Everything O. K. Never try a thing hke that again. See you in about a year. BILL. “ Huh—what? Gone now! Gone— well, say!” gulped Thomas, as he clutched tfle little sheet. ‘‘ Here, —I—won’t stand for that! I—can’t do this thing all alone! J—hey!”’ He glared at the silent curtains. His vision seemed to penetrate them and the walls beyond, revealing only terrific, utter emptiness. At the door, as had happened before that evening, some one knocked sharply! end.) GORGE OOO Colin