Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 189, No. 4 — page 56: what you’re looking at

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

520 that would have raised too sore a subject. te contented himself with: “It’s a bad time to sell, isn’t it? Prices are still at the bottom and people are still scared of real estate down here.” “I’m willing to take a loss,” said the firm young voice. ‘“ If you’re in the market, maybe we can talk business. I’m only ask- ing thirty thousand.” “T’ll think it over,” Teddy promised. He hung up the receiver feeling sick all over. With Georgia Woodstock gone, it suddenly occurred to him that he didn’t want to stay in Florida. He knew that he had been kidding him- self. He hadn’t been fixing his place up be- cause he wanted a showplace; he hadn’t been dreaming of his own packing houses and his own canning plant because he was so uniquely ambitious; he had simply want- ed to prove to Georgia Woodstock that he could make good; had been driven by the goad which has egged men on to achieve- ment since time immemorial—an attempt to please some woman! It would be a wrench to give up this fine farm and the future he had planned for it, but if Georgia was going away, he was going away, too. He’d put his place on the market and go back to New York. He didn’t want to go back to New York ‘and its noise and dirt and aimless hurry, but he’d go anyway. No object in stay- ing down here any longer, to grow rich and old and sour. He would go on October 1. He would simply place his property in the hands of a good agent, go north and get a job. What a damned fool he had been ever to dream of happiness with a girl as selfish and cold as Georgia Michigan Woodstock! He would, he knew with certainty, never look at another woman with anything but contempt. That night when she had got him out of bed to fight the freeze had spoiled him for other women. If they could only have gone on, in the natural way, from there! To think that he had been fatuous enough to suppose that a crisis could ever arise in which he could help her! But a few mornings later, hours before sunup, the opportunity for which he had ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. been so hopefully, so fatuously waiting, ar- rived. And it was a blessing thoroughly disguised. Teddy Armbister was startled out of deep ~ sleep by a long scream half-animal, half- human—a scream of torture beyond eh- durance; such a scream as earliest man might have listened to—and buried his face in leaves to escape! XI. It brought Teddy to a sitting position in bed with ears straining, eyes staring. His first impression was that, somewhere near at hand, a fire siren was shrieking; but common sense promptly rejected this: there weren’t any fire sirens in this neigh- borhood to shriek. His next and more near- ly correct impression was that the world had gone howling mad. The house was shaking under blasts of a wind mightier than he had ever known. A weird saffron glow seemed to emanate from the sky. A deep thundering was rising to equal the intensity of the wind’s persistent scream, and this deep, approaching note he knew must be rain. Some heavy object banged against the side of the house as he started out of the room. Somewhere downstairs, a door banged with the explosive violence of a bomb going off. He was positive that the very floor rose and fell under the balloon- ing force of one blast. He hastened downstairs with a flash light in his hand, and as he reached the lower floor rain struck the northwest wall of the house in a thudding, annihilating impact. Water, a cataract of it, came surging in over the sill of the breakfast porch. He had left the glass doors open. Now he attempted to close them. He could close them part way, when the force of wind and flying water struck at him with the weight of cold flowing metal. He tried closing one door at a time. Rain in great clots slapped his face and dripping body with the force of flying shot. But he succeeded in forcing the first door shut against that solid blast; he made fast the catches at top and bottom and then ad- dressed himself to the other door. His feet were inches deep in streaming, (E) AMG DOOKS, (E@)