Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 5, 1921 — page 90: what you’re looking at

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

376 door she threw out her arms after him and tried to speak, but the sound choked in her throat, and at the soft clicking of the door as it shut she slipped back into her chair. “What is it?” she muttered to herself. “God knows what I’ve done; but he looked happy when I told him about the queer. What is it?” Something hot and wet splashed on her hand, and she looked down at it in amaze- ment. “A leak?” she murmured, but even as she spoke another hot drop fell. She ran to the mirror and there a suffused face looked out at her, and great drops trickled from beneath the wet eyelids. Since her very infancy she could not remember a time when she had wept, and the sight ter- nied her. “Tears!” she gasped. ‘‘ Where did they come from?”’ ————— CHAPTER XXVI. CASTE. T was known that old Whitey could not | see people before ten in the morning, for as Lew McGuire explained to the reverent Tangle, the old fellow needed a long night of quiet rest. Usually by six every evening he was left alone, undisturbed even by Lew, for his door was latched, and after that hour there was rarely a sound in old Whitey’s chamber. For that matter, the partition was so thick and the door so closely fitted that only a loud voice could be heard from Whitey’s room through the wall, but for fully sixteen hours every evening, night, and "morning, he remained there alone recruiting his strength for the labors of the day. And those labors were of a trying nature. Sharply at ten the room which Lew Mc- Guire occupied began to fill up with women and old men and luckless youths out of work, with cripples, invalids, cheats, and Impostors all seeking to gain a few coins from the liberal hand of Whitey. To be sure, few of the impostors deluded him, for the keen eyes peered out from beneath that brush of white eyebrows and pierced de- ception to the heart. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. For the others there was always help given wisely, and sometimes the agile hands of the old man spelled out advice more precious than gold. Mary Dover went up- stairs a few minutes before ten, this morn- ing, and already she found Lew’s room crowded. But they gave way to her by right of precedence. There was some doubt as to whether ‘the invalid would see even Mary before the accustomed hour, but after Lew had communicated with him through a system of knocks at the door, the latch clicked, and Mary was admitted. She found him in his unvarying position. propped up a little by pillows, his carefully combed beard streaming across his breast in a tide of silver, and the semicircle of cards arranged before him on the coverlet. It al- ways gave her the impression that he spent every moment of the night in this same oc- cupation. She took the chair by the bed and peered into the shadow which always partially obscured his face, and as usual there was a glitter in his eyes as he recog- nized her, and the strangely youthful hand reached out and touched the back of hers. She forgot her own troubles as she looked at that ancient face, and the length of the man in the bed; once he must have been a giant of strength, and even now an impos- ing breadth of shoulders pressed upon the pillows. Perhaps he had memories of long years of activity to make this present help- lessness more terrible, and yet he was never known to make a sign of weariness or dis- content. It seemed to Mary that a saint lay there before her in the flesh, and her eyes misted. Dhnscontent? No, there was even an habitual smile to be guessed at under the cloud of white beard and mus- tache! ‘‘ Whitey,” she said as her trouble poured back upon her mind. ‘ He’s back—the Tiger!” A gesture of assent. ‘You knew? Well, he's back, and I'm in trouble—terrible trouble, Whitey. I don’t know what it all.means, but I’ll tell you word for word what happened.” And she described faithfully every sylla- ble that had passed between her and thé Tiger the night before. He heard her to the end, his hands cabnly-fcldisotegetheres