Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 31: what you’re looking at

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

ANNIHILATION. 821 October. I—1I wish I could go with him! He’d take me, but dad won’t hear of it!” Fhe two listeners who had remained a little apart, saw now that he carried a small leather portfolio and a sketch book. ‘“ An artist, the lad is!” Dennis exclaimed beneath his breath. “ It’s out playing base- ball he should be, and getting into a good healthy fight now and then. Look at the hollow chest and spindly legs of him!” “ Poor little cuss!” McCarty murmured as Horace Goddard, with a parting word to the watchman, passed them with a mere glance of well-bred inquiry: “Say, Bill, what’s that family doing to the kid? Mak- ing him learn to paint?” The watchman had strolled up to them once more and at the question his grin broadened. ‘Make him? They can’t keep him away from it! We’re great buddies, him and me, and he’s a lonesome kind of a httle feller and talks to me every chance he gets. You heard what he said? ‘This Blaisdell guy is one of the greatest painters in the coun- try and he met the kid at Mr. Orbit’s house one day and took a fancy to him. He let Horace come to his studio and watch him work, it seems, and Horace began trying to copy him, and now he’s giving him regu- jar lessons. Going to stroll back? I take the other side of the street.” “No, we'll be looking in to see what ar- rangements Mr. Orbit has made for the fu- neral. So-long.” ‘““ See you later.” Bill nodded and turned to cross to the opposite sidewalk and his erstwhile companions started back the way they had come. “ A lot you got out of him!” Dennis re- ~ marked. “T got what I was looking for, dope on some of the families and their servants,” re- plied McCarty. “I didn’t want to crowd him too much at the first go, and besides, we’ve no more time to spend on him.” “Going to tackle that Chink agam?” asked the other innocently. “I’m going to tackle every last mother’s son of them!” McCarty set his lips firmly and his step quickened. ‘I want a talk with Orbit, too, before the inspector breaks the news.” In response to their ring at the bel] the door was presently opened by a fat little Chinese boy, whose round, diminutive yel- low face was wreathed in shy, roguish smiles. On seeing them he bowed straight forward from the waist with both short arms spread wide, and ushered them into a huge room at the left, where their sturdy footsteps rang on a bare, mosaic floor of ex- quisite design and inlay. The whole oppo- site wall was of glass, curving out in a swell- - Ing are, like a gigantic bow window. It was filled with a mass of strange, vivid flowering plants, the like of which neither of the visi- tors had ever seen before, and a delicate, elusive fragrance was in the air. On their right, at the back the myriad pipes of an enormous organ reared their slender tubes, gleaming softly in the shad- ows, and stone settles and benches were scattered about, backed by towering masses of palms and cacti, but the echoing, high- ceilinged room held no other furnishing. They seated themselves on the nearest marble bench, and McCarty mopped his forehead. “°Yis for all the world like that grand undertaker’s, where the lodge gave Corcoran his funeral!” Dennis had spoken in his normal tones, but they swiftly sank to a hoarse whisper as they reverberated. ‘“ God save us, did you hear that? It’s worse than a tunnel!” “ Wisht! The little heathen is still hang- ing around,” McCarty admonished. ‘‘ Come here, son.” The little boy who had lingered in the doorway smiled again and sidled forward silently in his soft embroidered slippers. “My name Fu Moy,” he announced. “Oh, youre the coffee boy?” McCarty remembered his talk with the butler. “Can do!” Fu Moy bobbed his head delightedly at the recognition. “And is Ching Lee your father?” Mc- Carty disregarded the dissimilarity in fam- ily names. “Ching Lee on-elee.”” He labored over the difficult word with evident anxiety to make himself understood. ‘“Unele, is he?” His questioner paused. “You know Hughes?’”’ The round face clouded. COMME NOOLKXS. EO