Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 59: what you’re looking at

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

THE MAN WITHOUT HANDS. 4S trusted banks since, and he always kept his money and his valuable papers—stocks and bonds—hidden away or on his person. More than once he carried over a hundred thousand dollars with him in large bills, to my knowledge. I guess he always had many thousands of dollars with him. ‘Well, as I say, he recouped. He al- ways loved horses, so I suppose it was per- fectly natural to go in for them as a busi- ness. At one time it was said that he had the largest blooded stable in America. A few months before he died he turned it all into cash, keeping only the Virginia estate, and retired from the business. I did not see him at his death—I was traveling in Eu- rope with a companion, and he died sud- denly from a stroke of apoplexy, lapsing into unconsciousness and regaining con- sciousness only a few seconds before he died. Ignace Teck was with him. He—” “JTenace Teck?” queried Val. ‘‘ Who is he?” “VYou’ve seen him—the man who called at my place yesterday when you were there. He—” “The man without hands?” She nodded. ‘“ The man without hands. I didn’t know you saw that. He usually -keeps his hands in his pockets when stran- gers are present.” She was silent for a moment, unaccount- ably. So was Val. He was wondering who this Ignace Teck was—with his hard, sin- ister countenance, and his small, cruelly calculating eyes. She played with a crumb on the table, the long lashes fringing her eyes like willow at the edge of a pond; but he noticed that her slender hand trembled just a little as her fingers continued their aimless playing. Evidently there was a great deal about this man for one to know, thought Val. Ignace Teck! The very name sounded ominous. He broke the silence at last. “ Just who is this man?” he asked, mak- ing his voice as careless as_ possible. ‘“‘ Where does he come into this thing, any- way?” Her hands ceased their playing with the bread crumbs, and her eyes, no longer shaded by the lashes, looked directly into his for a brief instant. Then, slowly, in a 4A voice as hard as flint and as dry as a coun- try road, she answered him briefly. ‘He is my fiancé,” she said. CHAPTER XII. A DISTURBING NOTE. AL lived an eternity or two in Purga- tory in the instant or two that fol- lowed. He simply sat there and watched th room go round and round, the while he fought for his breath. Through the haze that was in front of his eyes he heard her voice, and suddenly he was sitting quietly in front of Jessica Pomeroy in the restau- rant, and he was cold and calm. It had lasted but an instant, but he had learned what it was to suffer as he had never suffered in the trenches. When love hits a man of Val’s type, the poor, naked little kid has a haymaker in either mitt— and he had landed fair and square on Val. ‘“ Does that surprise you?” she was say- ing calmly. A shade of feeling flickered through her expressive eyes before she shaded them again with her silken lashes; he was sure of that. Ah, well, she wasn’t married yet. That was something. | “Well, a little, of course—from what J know of him—” he began. ‘You mean from what you suspect of him,” she corrected him, and he thought her tone was a trifle stiff and cold; unnec- essarily so, it seemed to him. “Well, suspect, then,” he admitted. “‘ How did he lose his hands?” he asked. “He saved my life when I was a six- year-old child,” she answered. “I had fallen in front of a runaway horse dragging a heavy, loaded truck. He jumped in and threw me aside, but lost his balance before he could quite jump aside himself. He fell —both hands in front of him. The horse missed him, but the terribly heavy wheels of the truck went over his hands, crushing them. They had to be amputated.” She was silent again, and he did not speak, let- ting this sink in. There was more to this than he had thought. He had thought for a moment that per- oO CORNIC OOKS .eCO