Argosy All-Story Weekly, November 12, 1927 — page 96: what you’re looking at

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

570 “They want your photograph,” Larry shouted, and realized that the camera, as a practical instrument, had not come into the world until after the middle of the last century. “J do not understand.” Larry heard men calling his name. Re- porters, beyond the rigid wall of guards, were trying to get his attention. Beyond them were faces, faces, faces, an endless sea of upturned faces, glimmering, undulating in waves under the hot white radiance of the Kleigs. : Little balls of white fire floated up over their heads. Flashlights. The air was acrid with the fumes of burning magnesium. Larry’s knees were trembling. There was hardly enough strength in his legs to sup- port him. “ Colonel Washington—” he began. A woman he at first did not recognize broke through the guards. Her bobbed hair was disarrayed. Her white dress was torn off at one shoulder. Under his breath he groaned: “ Polly Morgan!” Another woman followed her, likewise disarrayed, wild-eyed. Not until minutes later did he identify her as the chic Mrs. Horace Glen Islington, otherwise Polly’s Aunt Sally. To Larry’s horror, Polly Morgan, stag- gering to the bewildered Washington, seized his hands and, before he could resist, pulled him down, reached up on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. His worst anticipations for her were realized in that revolting moment. She turned from Washington with the girlish fixed smile with which Larry had al- ready been made painfully familiar and gazed as sweetly as her wild condition would permit into the banks at Kleigs. Then, slow- ly, as if she had been rehearsed, she turned and walked into the house. He said hoarsely: “ Mr. Washington, if you will come into the house with me—” “We'll take him into the library,” Aunt Sally shrilly offered, but Larry still did not recognize her, so disheveled she was, with a bleeding scratch along one side of her aristocratic nose and a long smudge of dirt across her forehead. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. Placing her hand at Washington’s elbow, Mrs. Islington urged him into the house. Jason Ortola limped after her. One of his Oxfords was missing. The door closed after them. In the front line of the mob that pressed about the veranda Larry saw the faces of Grenville Brown, of the New York Sun; Riley of the Daily News; Orcutt of the Philadelphia Inquirer; Billings of the Bal- timore Sum. All were calling to him and gesticulating. Larry bent down and shouted into Brown’s ear: “What can I do? more of this!” “Let us in!” Brown shouted back. “You've framed this the way you framed it from the start!” A red-haired man behind Brown cupped large hairy hands about his mouth and called up: “Mr. Galloway, I’m in charge of the Radio Corporation’s field installation here. I can run a line to a microphone in the room you use. I'll hook up the line to loud speakers on that searchlight platform and the crowd can listen down there. Tl hook up another loud speaker at the press tents. Every broadcasting station in the country is connected on a loop from my tent over there. Jl plug in the whole works on one circuit, then everybody can hear all that Washington says.” Larry asked: ‘“‘ How long will it take?” “Not more than ten minutes,” the radio man answered. ‘“ Most of the wires I need are already up.” Larry decided without hesitation: “ Go to it! Dl open that window at the end of the house and you can pass the micro- phone in.” Brown shouted, as Larry turned away from the veranda rail: “ How about the rest of us?” “Isn’t that arrangement satisfactory?” “Like hell it is! What right have you to hog the whole works?” Jason Ortola came limping out on the veranda. “Galloway,” he said, “Washington wants He can’t stand any you.” ““Wants me?” “Ves, you. He wants to talk to you. GOMIIGE (E) .OOKS