Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 5, 1921 — page 4: what you’re looking at

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

290 ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. his perch, and stood for a moment survey- ing the three gilded balls that hung over the dingy doorway, and the Jettering— “ Paul Veniza. Pawnbroker ’”—that show- ed on the dully-lighted windows which con- fronted him. He drew his hand across his eves; then, reaching suddenly inside the cab, lifted a bundle in his arms, and entered the shop. A man behind the counter stared at him, and uttered a quick ejaculation. The cab- man went on into a rear room. The man from behind the counter followed. Here, a woman rose from a table where she had been sewing, and took the bundle quickly from the cabman’s arms, as it emitted a querulous little cry. The cabman spoke for the first time. ‘ She’s dead,” he said heavily. The woman, buxom, middle-aged. stared at him, white-faced. her eves filling sud- denly with tears. “She died an hour ago.” said the cab- man, in the same monotonous voice. ‘“ I thought mabbe you'd look after the baby girl for a bit, Mrs. Veniza--- vou and Paul.”’ “Of course!” said the woman in a choked voice. ‘‘ I wanted to before. but but your wife wouldn’t let the wee mite out of her sight.”’ ‘‘She’s dead now. ‘An hour ago.” Paul Veniza, the pawnbroker, crossed to the cabman’s side, and, placing his hands on the other’s shoulders, dre vy the man down into a chair. “Hawkins,” he said slowly, ‘‘ we're get- ting on in years, fifty each of us, and we’ve known each other for a good many of those fifty.” He cleared his throat. ‘ You’ve made a mess of things, Hawkins.” The woman, holding the haby, started suddenly forward, a red flush dveing her cheeks. “Paul!” she cried out sharply. “ How can you be so cruel at such an hour as this?” The pawnbroker shook his head. He had moved to the back of the cabman’s chair. Tall, slight, grave and _ kindly- faced, with high forehead and the dark hair beginning to silver at the temples, vy said the cabman. there seemed something almost esthetic about the man, “It is the hour,” he said deliberately; ‘the one hour in which I must speak plainly to my old friend, the one hour that has come into his life which may mean everything to him.” His right hand slipped from the cabman’s shoulder and started, tentatively, hesitantly, toward a bulge in the cabman’s coat pocket—but was drawn back again, and found its place once more on the cabman’s shoulder. “TI was afraid, Hawkins, when you married the young wife. I was afraid of vour curse.’’ The cabman’s elbows were on the table: he had sunk his chin in his hands. His blue eyes, out of a wrinkled face of wind- beaten tan, roved around the little room. and rested finally on the bundle in the woman’s arms. ‘That’s finished now,” he said dully. “T pray God it is,” said Paul Veniza earnestly; “but you said that before—- when you married the young wife.” “It’s finished now—so help me, God!”’ The cabman’s lips scarcely moved. He stared straight in front of him. ; There was silence in the little, plainly furnished room for a moment: then the pawnbroker spoke again: “IT was born here in New York. you know, after my parents came from Italy. There was no money, nothing—only mis- ery. | remember. It is like that, Haw- kins, isn’t it, where you have just come from, and where you have left the voung wife?” “ Paul!" his wife cried out again. “ How can you sav such things? It-—it is not like you!” Her ltps quivered. She burst into tears, and buried her face in the little bundle she snuggled to her breast. The cabman seemed curiously unmoved ---as though dazed, almost detached from his immediate surroundings. He said noth- ing. . The pawnbroker’s hands still rested on the cabman’s shoulders, a strange gentle- ness in his touch that sought somehow, it seemed, to offer svmpathy for his own merciless words.