Argosy All-Story Weekly, December 2, 1922 — page 90: what you’re looking at

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

560 veteran detective was nonplused. His men- tal faculties were frozen. He knew Barry Caldwell intimately. He was a young and promising dramatist who led a most whole- some life, and the thought of his being con- cerned in a real tragedy seemed preposter- ous. When the dazed mind of the listener began to work he thought his friend might be trying to have some sport at his ex- pense, but the tone of the voice rather than the words convinced Peabody that this was an actual call for help. He wasted no time in foolish questions. He merely glanced at his watch and replied: “ V’'ll be there within a half hour.” Josh Billings was tossed aside, and the detective managed to get into his street clothes in double-quick time. At the door of his apartment he was lucky enough to catch a cab, and the bribe he placed in the driver’s hand was an invitation to violate all the traffic laws. On the way to Eighty-Seventh Street Peabody Smith tried to prepare himself for what was to come, but his imagination for once was not equal to the task. He made one guess after another, but each in turn was cast aside as inadequate. He knew that the Baldwin was a quiet family hotel, and he had a faint recollection that Barry Caldwell lived in that neighborhood, but why he should murder any one was beyond his power of comprehension. Young Caldwell was a man of good habits. If he drank at all it was sparingly. He was gifted and he was industrious. His latest play was in the midst of a successful run at one of the Broadway houses, and if any man had a future in his chosen pro- fession that man was Barry Caldwell. He was a bachelor, and, so far as Peabody Smith was aware, did not have any love affairs. He had known him for several years, in the early days of his struggling authorship, and on more than one occasion they had sat up together thinking out the probability of plots. And now this thing came like a weird moving picture show. The sudden stopping of the taxicab by the side of the curb reminded him that he had reached his destination. He jumped out of the vehicle lightly and started toward the entrance to the Baldwin. Everything ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, seemed normal and placid there, but when the detective got into the hallway he found an excited little group around the elevator. The operator seemed to recognize him, for he waved him aside and said: “They are all waiting for you on the third floor.” Once there the detective hurried to a lighted apartment near the end of the corri- dor. Some one passed him in the hall and ran downstairs. Without any preliminaries Peabody Smith turned the knob and walked into the room. The scene which presented itself was dramatic in the extreme. Prostrate on the floor, with his glazed eyes staring upward, lay the dead body of a man. A few feet away, looking fixedly at the corpse, stood Barry Caldwell, white as a sheet, but self- composed. In a corner, rocking herself to and iro, in a paroxysm of grief was a young woman. Next to the door, angry and sullen looking, stood a policeman. The faintest shadow of a smile hovered about the lips of the young dramatist as the detective ap- peared. He waved his hand gently in the direction of the young woman. “T’m glad you are here, Peabody,” he said easily. ‘ This is Miss Kayne—we are in her apartment.” Smith recognized the young woman as a popular moving picture star. The screen and the billboards had made her face so fa- miliar that practically everybody knew Miss Mary Kayne. “The dead man on the floor,” continued Caldwell in the same matter-of-fact tone, “you will probably remember as Howard Harper.” The detective did recall him easily as a well-known man about town. Nearly every- body on Broadway knew him as one of the idle butterflies of fashion—a man with a superabundance of wealth and very little brains. In the last year he had had several escapades, and very few of them were to his credit. He had no scruples, and his whole object in life was amusement. He had his private yacht, his cars and all of the things that are supposed to make existence endurable. And now he lay here on the floor of this modest apartment, stark in death. 5 A Gomichbooks.com