Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 21: what you’re looking at

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

A STRANGER iN TOWN. promise your bunch the merriest little dam- age suit for illegal arrest you’ve met in a million years.” “Yes, you will. You’ll play hades won’t ~youe” The sergeant took the directory from him and flung it back on the desk. His manner was one of a rising irritation and there was a tinge of unwonted color on his heavy features. “Go on, Bill,” he prompted. “ We’ve had enough of his chatter. Take him in- side and give him a chance to cool off.” From his demeanor, one might have reached the conclusion that antagonism is an emotion to be evoked on more than one side of a case. CHAPTER Iii, “NOT IN A THOUSAND YEARS!” r AD all the way through he was, Har- M mon began to realize the truth after - he was in a cell. He had been a fool, he told himself—a fool. There wasn’t anything in the cell to hold his attention, even providing it had been less centered on himself. He heard the grating clang shut and sank down on the edge of the cot. He—Edward Harmon—was in jail! It was an unassailable fact. There had been a dull finality about the clanging of that door. He was in jail, charged with counter- feiting, saddled with another man’s name! And he had prefaced his incarceration by antagonizing the police—by threatening in inane fashion the very men who seem- ingly held his destiny in their hands. For a moment he experienced something like a mental chill, and then he began an effort to think calmly, to cool off even as the sergeant had suggested that he should. After all, he told himself, he had done nothing really. He was innocent and he had told the truth. Swiftly he reviewed each event of the afternoon, since he had sallied forth from the Fairview, content in the belief that his.time was his own to do with as he pleased. Well, for a man who could do as he pleased, he was in a strange position, and the sequence of occurrences by which he had arrived in that position was weird. It was as crazy as a comic movie. 651 Eddie turned and glared at the restraining bars of his cell out of clouded eyes. The last thing they suggested was the surround- ings of a man who could do as he pleased. But—once more he crushed down a gust ° of rage—it was all a mistake. It was all the result of a blunder on the part of the chuckle-headed Jenkins. If he had ac- cepted his story—and right there Eddie paused. He reviewed that story as he had been reviewing all else. In the stress of crowding events, fresh from its enacting, it had seemed true enough to him. But now that he was alone, he found its verity less convincing. A man had rushed up to him on the street and slapped his face and thrust a hundred dollars into his hand and dis- appeared. He recalled how his account had been received by the officers who heard it, with questioning glances and! stares and covert smiles. He even began to imagine how the thing must have sounded to Jen- kins’s incredulous ears. Jenkins had been chasing a man he didn’t know by sight, and he had run down a man rushing madly along the street—a man of the same build and wearing the same gen- eral sort of clothes as the man he was after—and that man had given as an ex- cuse for his haste that he was himself in pursuit of some one who had run up and slapped him. Suddenly, Eddie’s face burned even as when Blumefeldt had struck it. The story was certainly wild. But—he wasn’t Blumefeldt—and the whole thing would be straightened out when Captain Salles arrived. He would know he wasn’t Blumefeldt, at a glance. Alf at once Eddie paused again in his train of thought and swore at himself. In his disturbed mental condition he had for- gotten all about his hotel. And he had a room there—his money and railroad tickets were in the safe. He could have demanded that his captors inspect those proofs of his contention that he wasn’t Blumefeldt. And he had overlooked that bet! Instead he had given way to the “ rattles ” and told a most remarkable story and ended up the entire performance by a demand for an attorney, backed up by a definite threat. As a matter of fact, as he sat there, Eddie was none too proud of himself. EOMIGdoOoks: Go