Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

<p ANNIHILATION. ing his head before the pelting downpour and chuckling as he turned the coat collar up about his strong, muscular throat. The good lads back there would think that a few years of soft living had done for old Mac, and he was through! Yet he was not chuckling when he turned into a dingy little lunchroom a few blocks away and in the look which he bent upon his coffee cup, there was more of uneasy indecision than its steaming but doubtful contents warranted. He was through, though not in the way Terry and Taggart might be thinking. Never again would he horn in on a case that belonged to the department he had quitted! The methods had changed too much since his day, when a plainclothes bull went out and got his man or was hauled up on the carpet to explain why not; it was bad enough when headquarters began to be cluttered up with all that scientific crime detecting junk from the foreign police centers, but now they were opening up a school to teach this black art called “ criminal psychoanalysis ” to a bunch of fine lads in the detective bureau who needed nothing but the quick minds and strong arms that the Lord had given them already! It was his own secret and shamefaced perusal of what books he had been able to gather, surreptitiously and un- advised, upon this same subject which had driven him forth with a case of mental blind staggers earlier that very evening, and now let them psychoanalyze that man who car- ried the queer tag on his key-ring! And yet— It was a rare case! -McCarty’s eyes glis- ‘tened and his nostrils fairly quivered with the old eagerness as he considered its pos- sibilities. His coffee cooled and he finished it at a gulp, and then took the nearest sub- way that led to his modest rooms over the antique shop where he maintained a solitary bachelor establishment in great disorder and content. He had expected to find it empty as usual, but to his surprise he noted that a low light glowed from behind the shades at his two front windows. On opening the entrance door with his latchkey he was ereeted by a particularly malodorous stench wafted down the narrow stairway on S05 wreaths of smoke from the floor above. There wasn’t another pipe in the world that smelled quite like that one, and as he bounded upward he called: “Denny! If I hadn’t thought you were on duty at the engine house—” No reply came to him, however, and he rounded the stairs’ head and then paused on the threshold of his shabby, comfortable living room in wordless amazement. Den- nis Riordan, engine driver from the nearest fire house and his particular crony since they had landed from the old country, was for the first time totally oblivious to his presence. He sprawled in the low Morris chair with a book in his hand, and his long legs writhed while his leathery, lantern- jawed face was contorted in the agony of mental concentration. “Denny! Snap out of it!” his unheed- ed host commanded. ‘ What in the name of all that’s—” Denny “snapped.” He dropped the book and sat up with a jerk. “So you’re back,” he remarked dazedly. “Tis small wonder I’ve seen little of you these days since you’ve taken to literature! Newspapers have been your limit up till now, but here I use the latchkey you gave me, thinking to get in out of the rain whilst I’m waiting for you and I find these books. Man, they’re fair wonderful! But what do they mean?” “YT don’t know yet and I misdoubt the guys who wrote them do!”” McCarty’s tone was almost savage as he deposited his drip- ping hat tenderly on the corner of the man- tel and peeled off the sodden topcoat. “Which one had you there?” “<The Diagnostics of Penology.’” Den- ny picked up the volume once more and read the title laboriously. “I thought a ‘diagnostic’ was an unbeliever and you’d taken to religion in your declining years, but ’tis all about the different kinds of crim-_ inals. I never knew there was but one—a crook!” ““No more did [.” McCarty lighted a cigar reflectively. “There must be some- thing in it, though, for that’s the stuff the commissioner is going to get through the heads of the boys at headquarters in this new school of his.” oO COMmCcoookSs seo ea *