Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 164: what you’re looking at

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

798 of hop, or been crazy all your life. Go on and do your stuff.’ Lathrop drew back the sleeve of the automatic and released it, throwing a cart- ridge into the chamber and leaving the hammer at full cock. “Go over there and write it.” “Go to hell.” Lathrop leveled the gun. “ Get up.” For a long minute Freyne sat still, star- ing, and his eyes focused way beyond the man before him. Then, “ all right,” he said dully, and got up. ‘I never have made a will. Might be a good thing.” He crossed and sat at the small desk with his back to the room. He picked up a pencil, but did not begin to write at once, crouching over the paper motionless, fingers drumming on the table. Once he glanced jerkily over his shoulder, but Lathrop was fumbling in the black hand bag, not watch- ing him. Freyne began to write, slowly. Lathrop came and stood behind him. In his hand was a length of clothes line knotted at one end in a noose. “You're taking a lot of time about it,” Lathrop said. Freyne was biting the pencil. “‘T won’t write anything,” he said, “ if you stand there. It’s rotten manners.” “Hurry up about it.” Lathrop walked to a window and looked out. In the street, children, released from Sunday dinner, were playing ball. Base hits rolled under passing cars, into cellars and open windows, pursued by the fielders as heedless of traffic and pedestrians as though the narrow pavement had been the Yankee Stadium, as they dreamed it was. On the brown stone steps women without age or figure squatted and retold the house- hold happenings of a day like every other day. Chimes were ringing from a near by church, punctuated by the cackle of a motor horn. ‘The smell of warm asphalt and gasoline and frying grease drifted up. Freyne moved in his chair. Lathrop came again and stoodsbehind him. “ Guess that’s all,” Freyne said. Lathrop read over his shoulder: Will and last testament, e’er renouncing life and this horrible risk of punishment. Know- ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. 3 ing I leave little estate devisable, my every- thing I now confer on Louis, dear brother, last of our descendants. ‘“That’s a pretty poor effort,” Lathrop remarked. Freyne wiped the palms of his hands on his shirt-sleeves. “It’s ail you get,” he said. “‘ How much of a legal document do you think your master mind could compose while some lunatic was stalking around with a gun?” “Sign it.” As Freyne finished writing his name, Lathrop dropped the noose over Freyne’s body down to the elbows, and drew it tight around the back of the chair. The chair went over backwards. Freyne threw his feet over his head like a wrestler, and the chair followed, crashing down on his legs as they struck the floor. The back of the chair rested on Freyne’s neck, and Lathrop flung his weight on it, pinning him like a bear in a dead-fall. Freyne’s voice was hoarse and panting. “What do you want to do? Break my neck?” Lathrop didn’t answer. With the remain- ing length of the rope he tied Freyne to the chair as tightly as a limb in a splint. Then he heaved it upright and stood away. “ What’s the matter with you.” Freyne swallowed hard. He could barely speak. ““Can’t you shoot a man unless he’s tied?” “T’m not going to shoot you,” Lathrop said. He went to the black satchel and took out a wad of something like brown worsted. He examined the two windows and in the cracks of the sashes he stuffed thin strips of the material. Freyne’s eyes as he watched were like those of a patient in a dentist’s chair when the doctor opens another drawer of instru- ments. Lathrop went to the doors, and around the edges he packed more of the brown strings. Freyne saw that it was oakum that ship-builders use to calk the seams of a hull, and all expression left his face. “What are you doing?” he asked. Lathrop opened a bureau drawer and ’ took a pair of silk socks and a necktie. — Going behind the chair, he jammed the — socks through Freyne’s teeth and tied them