Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

804 ‘Well, so long as you have decided to write it—I have your word for that—we needn’t worry about getting it published until you are through.” “You haven’t my word at all. You’ve nothing but my words; and there is a big difference between the two.” “That is a quibble. I can’t tell you how greatly you have relieved my mind. I should have worried about it all during church if you hadn’t agreed, and if there is one thing that Jennie doesn’t like me to do it’s to look abstracted during the service. I'll just polish off these kidneys and then run along. If you’ve no objec- tions, I'll stop in this evening and check up on how far you’ve gone. You ought to have a couple of chapters done at least.” As I say, if I hadn’t bought the trunk and so chanced upon the document, which is amazing, I would have been spared not alone the above interview with its danger- ous potential toward indigestion, but would not be involved in writing this account. I bought the trunk because of an ir- resistible passion I have had since child- hood concerning the contents of anything that is locked. It was offered for sale at an auction held by the Warden Warehouse, where I had gone to bid on a Daghestan carpet. The trunk preceded the carpet and was going for the price of fifty cents. And the trunk was locked. It seemed little enough to satisfy my overmastering cu- riosity as to what it might contain, so I im- pulsively raised a finger and the trunk was knocked down to me for seventy-five cents. It held, among other things, the doc- ument. | The value of the document struck me at once. The facts that it dealt with were so stupendous that I knew it would be a constant menace to have the papers around; nor did I feel that I had any right to destroy them or I should have done so. I made every effort to get in touch with the document’s owner by inserting numer- ous advertisements in all the leading news- papers throughout the country, and event- ually my tireless quest was rewarded. From a certain little place in the West —the name of which I shall not disclose, as Ramier has emphatically stated that he ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. will not be bothered with reporters—came an answer in the form of a letter that was personally delivered to me by an attractive young stranger named Billy Preston. Ra- mier Bellmy, the writer of the letter, was the owner of the document and had sent Billy East to get it. Like most geniuses, Ramier is very ab- sent-minded and had been racking his brains for upwards of a year in trying to remember just what he had done with the important document. I could well under- stand this after I had met him and had come to know him better, as well as from many pertinent sidelights that Drusilla and Billy shed upon his character during the accounts they gave me of the adventure. Billy’s insistence alone would not have been enough to persuade me to tackle the job of writing it. I believe he suspected as much, for when he returned he brought Jennie with him. Jennie is Billy’s wife and, in common with Drusilla, is one of the most charming and lovely girls I know. They have been married a year, and when she saw that reason or entreaties had failed to move me from my determination not to put pen to paper she took me aside and, running a finger over my hair, which is beginning to turn gray, whispered the secret that why she really wanted me to write the story was not for its value or its interest to the world at large, but as a record for Billy Junior, or Jennie Junior—as the case might be. I kissed her for the second time in my life—the first was at her wedding—and promised that Billy Junior, or Jennie Junior, would have the account in print if I had to threaten with death every editor in the city whom I knew. All of which explains how this narrative came into being. And now to our muttons. CHAPTER Tf. CASUAL EXPLOSIONS. HAT the idea should have originated in five corks, with needles stuck through them, and a bar magnet has never failéd to strike me as being absurd, ComiclookSsS.ec© inn