Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 25: what you’re looking at

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

TUNE If nothing else, it was a step in the right direction. “Well, at least we could consider our- selves engaged,” she said. And there the engagement stood. It was a clandestine and quite passionless ai- fair. A union, as Ramier explained it to Billy, of kindred minds. Drusilla _consid- ered it advisable to keep it a secret until after the great experiment should have taken place, lest her father get wind of their work and put an elaborate and speedy end to it. Duveen was not only a man with good, honest, homely, old-fashioned ideas about women, and about the home, but was proud of it. His confidence in his daughter’s abil- ity to take care of herself was almost too great to be flattering. Where it was she went gadding in her car every day was no concern of his, provided she showed up promptly on time for eight o’clock dinner or produced some vigorous excuse for being late. If so much as an inkling were to come to him that his offspring was not alone dabbling, but up to her neck in new- fangled contraptions of science, an explo- sion would take place before which D OUT. 815 Ramier’s best efforts would seem languish- ing and faint. Drusilla well knew all this, and had de- cided that it would be better not to an- nounce their engagement to her father until after she and Ramier were married. At the outset Ramier would not hear of Drusilla being his assistant for the great experiment. Billy had been selected and had promised to fulfill the part. But Dru- silla overruled him. Tears again, I believe, played an important part in her attack. She also pointed out, quite correctly too, that both her training and her natural apti- tude were keener than Billy’s, and that the experiment was much more likely to be a success if she rather than he were at the helm. Ramier murmured something quite magnificently grandiloquent about an “ im- molation of themselves upon the altar of science,” and capitulated. The hour for the experiment was set for nine o’clock of an August morning. Although none of the three admitted to being influenced by superstition, it came as a shock when the calendar disclosed that the chosen date fell upon a Friday the thirteenth. TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK U U U TO YOUR EYES H, lying eyes That sm Again; ile on me and lie Oh, lying eyes, I know not why The pain Goes by, The pain of To feel your life, and all its weariness eyes’ false, lying soft caress. Oh, lying eyes! I ask you only this, Oh, lying eye S That droop beneath my kiss, Oh, lying eyes Who think that you deceive Believe that I believe! Ah, no. I know you lie! Grant but this plea: Lie not to other men! Keep all your lies for me! For me! Mary Carolyu Davies [AOO comic <SHGO