Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 4, 1925 — page 163: what you’re looking at

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

By JOSEPH GOLLOMB I IFE, like a spider, often joins with its web the most unrelated things. In a Meig’s City side street, for instance, lay the crumpled figure of a man in la- borer'’s overalls, shot from ambush. In a glass-inclosed sun porch fitted up as a bio- logical laboratory a fragile, scholarly man, Professor Darwin Goldie, was peering hap- pily through a magnifying glass at an ant hill of myrmica rubra imported from Eng- land. What thread could join these two since neither man had ever heard of the other? Then again, in the immaculate kitchen of their cottage in Faculty Row at Meig’s University Professor Goldie’s wife was pre- paring a light lunch her husband could ab- sorb without looking up from his ants. What pattern of events could connect this daughter of a long line of professors with the burly figure of Chief Quinn of the Meig’s City police? Yet, spiderlike, life was spinning its intricate web and, laying a thread between these two, sent a current of electricity through it and thrilled a spell. Mrs. Goldie, with characteristic confi- dence in her ability to deal with the unex- pected, answered the telephone promptly. But after five minutes’ talk with Chief Quinn over the wire she was still in doubt as to whether she and her husband wished to have anything to do with the other two figures in the incipient tangle of web. Un- like her usual self she decided to let her hus- band say ves or no. She put the receiver down on the table and went to the door of the sun porch. “Chief Quinn of the police would like to speak to you, Harry,” she said. He looked more closely at a little red- headed ant who was, as he could see through his high-power lens, waving a tiny tentacle or something. “I don’t see how Professor Ernie could possibly be right about the petilate abdomi- nal segment of myrmica rubra,’ he mur- mured. *¢ Shall I tell Chief Quinn you will speak to him?” his wife asked firmly. Professor Goldie looked up helplessly over the tops of his glasses. “Eh? Oh! Er—what does he want? Could you perhaps do it, my dear?” 953 MAICDOO