Argosy All-Story Weekly, December 2, 1922 — page 93: what you’re looking at

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

THE ADVENTURES OF PEABODY SMITH. ‘Caldwell, and it proved to be a case of love at first sight. Caldwell, with one or two successes to his credit, was anxious to give her a vehicle that would serve her peculiar ability. They met frequently, and during that time Harper had been more than usually persistent in pressing his at- tentions on the girl. Caldwell was furious, and on one particular night, in the presence of witnesses, he had taken an oath that if Harper did not keep away from Miss Kayne he would be sorry. “Don’t misunderstand me,” he cried in his quiet and yet passionate way. “If you put a finger on that girl I’ll kill you!” Even without his confession this evidence would have been fatal to Barry Caldwell, and Peabody Smith learned of it with a sinking heart. The one thing in favor of the dramatist was what the detective had gleaned from Patrolman Kelly. Through his evidence it would be possible to prove that Caldwell had not been in the room when the fatal shot was fired. But if Cald- well were innocent, what about the girl? The thought made Smith shudder. He hes- itated to make use of his knowledge. For the time being, at least, he would keep it to himself. In the privacy of his room he made a careful examination of the revolver that had been handed him by the dramatist. As Caldwell had said, one shot had been fired from the weapon. In the meantime the physician of the coroner made an au- topsy on the body of Howard Harper and located the bullet. His official report had been filed, and one afternoon the. detective made it his business to read it. One sen- tence in this document gave him a new thrill. Dr. Forbes testified that the shot which killed Harper had been fired from a twenty- eight caliber revolver; and the bullet was there to prove what he said. That would have been comparatively uninteresting if it had not been for one most important fact. The revolver which Barry Caldwell passed to the detective—the weapon with which he said he had committed the deed —~was a thirty-two caliber. When fais bit of information sank into the mind of the de- tective he sat down in order to recover the girl. ar a ee 563 from his astonishment. With this evidence and the testimony of Patrolman Kelly he had it in his power to secure the release of the young dramatist. His first impulse was to go and lay the facts before Caldwell. But what would be the result? How would it be possible to tell him that his story was a fabrication? In the end he did go to see Caldwell in his cell; but he did not tell him all he knew. Instead he skirted around the facts in the effort to have some new light thrown on the situation. “ Barry,” he said gently, “don’t you think that in your excitement you might have been mistaken in what you told me?” Caldwell looked at him out of his cold gray eyes. There was a trace of anger in his face as he replied: ‘“ Peabody, if you are a friend of mine you will accept my story and not try to dispute it. I was not in the least excited. I knew exactly what I was saying. I'll tell you something further for your own infor- mation: I bought that revolver for the express purpose of killing Howard Harper. He was a beast, and I was firmly convinced that the world would be better off with him out of it. I had warned him time and again not to annoy Miss Kayne. He paid no attention to my warnings. “That afternoon I learned that he was going to her apartment, and I knew that he was going for no good purpose. He had been drinking heavily, and he told sev- eral persons that he was infatuated with He said that he was going to compel her to love him, and that if she refused that he would get her anyhow. When I heard that, things went red with me. I put the revolver in my pocket, jumped into a taxicab, and hurried to her apartment. I saw a light in her room from the street, and the elevator boy told me that Harper had just gone up and had been admitted by her. I don’t know how I got there. I remember nothing except that he was there. Some one said they had heard screams coming from the room. She was crying hysterically when I broke in. The rest you know.” ‘““Why didn’t you tell me this before?” asked the detective sharply. Gomichbooks.com