Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 30: what you’re looking at

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

404 | ‘““ Know her?” asked Artie with sudden, sharp interest. Leila shook her head. ‘“T never saw her before.”’ “Then what the—what’s it got to do with you where she is?”’ ‘Only that I felt sorry for her.” “You did!” Artie showed his white teeth in a sneer- ing, Meaning grin. A tinge of red deepened the tone of the woman’s rouged cheeks. Her fingers, laced in her lap, clenched. “You were talking to Sid just now,” she went on in a level monotone. “Sure. Priv’te business. Any more questions ?”’ ‘Are you going to see that girl again? Bring her to this place?” ¢ § Why?” ‘* Because she doesn’t belong . here. She’s different to—to the rest of us.’ “You bet she is,” Artie laughed with coarse, comprehensive significance. Leila sighed heavily. She was accus- tomed, tamed in a sense, to the expectation of crude rottenness of manner and speech in Mog mankind. And still she persisted in endeavoring to carry out the purpose that had brought her to Artie’s table. She was fumbling in the slime for a grain of gold. She tried a new tack. “Would you bring a sister of yours here?” she asked. “ Ain’t got ane,” retorted Artie, delighted to be literal. “You had one woman in your life that you respected,” said Leila with intense ‘feeling. . “Wrong again. me s’far as the respect fake goes. wise.” ‘“ But—your mother?” Artie lifted his glass. The watching wo- man saw that his hand wavered ever so lit- tle. His face .seemed paler. Had she touched the right chord? Had she found that grain of hidden gold? Would she be able to go home that night with the com- forting knowledge that in all her years of submission to the precarious life of a chat- tel, she had been able to help toward the fulfilment of one good deed. Could the girl They all look alike to I’m ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. be saved from the slaughter? decade she had shrugged her shoulders at circumstances. Her whole personality had hardened, toughened with long repression to the Leila that had been ten years ago. To-night she had found that the other Le- ila was not dead, she had been buried alive. Now she stirred again in the self-debased Leila of the Mog café. Why this sudden disinterment? This exhumation of but a faintly breathing identity? Just because the sight of Julie had reversed the binocular view of memory. | - Up until the moment when the girl had passed her table, earlier in the evening, Leila had kept her mind clamped to the present. She had cultivated callousness. When, on rare occasions, she had fearfully viewed the happy, past days of girlhood, she had reduced the images and forced the scenes to misted distances. Julie in her youth, her stamp, her hall-mark of maiden purity, had caught Leila off her guard. The worm-builded coral of protectiveness to re- morse and regret had disintegrated. She stood amid the ruins of the painted, smiling woman, and saw in Julie herself again. For half a- Clean, foolish, trusting and venturesome. | Does one hesitate to snatch a child from the fire? The answer is: Leila sat at Ar- tie’s table. Leila was right, Artie had quailed. There was in him a tiny oasis where the all- enduring love of a true mother had found sanctuary. Unknown to him it had re- mained, cramped, buried ‘in the riff-raff and garbage of fungoid growths of vileness. While he raised his glass he saw his mother’s face, he heard her voice. Through the lurid, miasmic vapors of his aura, through the tainted Mog, her sweetness came to him and— In years, the total of which is really of significance only in the fullness of them, Artie was young; but he had nurtured an old, old beast; a thing of turgid octopian stealth and strength. It had been nour- ished on the healthy vitals of his character. The suckers of selfishness had drained him of charity, the tentacles of dishonor had bound his will. The thing had spawned the Artie who now cursed and ground the assassin heel of obliteration on the revealed wa fl (GO) (C OOOLK (CO