Argosy All-Story Weekly, May 17, 1924 — page 27: what you’re looking at

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

TARRAPIN TOES. During the recital the girl had wept a little, but her indignation flared up at the miserable fiasco of love’s dream, and she concluded the story with the statement: * And now, daddy, it is all over between us. I hate that imbecile child. I will never have another thing to do with him as long as I live.” “Do you mean that, Lois?” Roone asked quietly. ‘‘T mean it,’’ she said, and Roone could feel her body become tense with feeling like the body of a cat, as she spoke. “ If I had him here I could kill him.” In quieter moments, if Roone was in a reflective mood, he could easily have re- called other litthe annoyances in the girl’s career when her words had been just as bitter toward other people and other things. She had threatened to kill girl chums, and had been seen the next day with her arms around their necks. She had threatened to burn up automobiles which refused to do her bidding, and then had ridden in them for many thousand miles with a fire ex- tinguisher at her feet. She had expressed the utmost hate for young men whom she subsequently danced a hundred miles with to the sound of sweet music. Lois Roone’s moods were as variable as the shifting clouds of the spring day. Hers was the gift of youth and beauty and love- liness. All was as pliant as a willow, as in- tangible as quicksilver, as fluid as the cool mountain ,stream. Nothing about her sweet loveliness had hardened into a mold. What she felt at the time she uttered, and all her feelings flamed with the fires of youth. Just now she hated Manse with an ever- lasting hatred. | Feeling thus, she went to bed and slept in perfect peace. In the meantime, Manse, released from custody, went to his father’s law office and let himself in. He sat there in solitude, smoking one cigarette after another, with no light in the room except the glow of his smoke. He reviewed the events of the night from every angle, but could make nothing out of the mystery. Hours passed and he was unconscious of the flight of time. In that hour, darkest just before the 2A LU7 dawn, he found that he had consumed his supply of cigarettes and he arose to go home. Opening the door quietly, he let himself out upon the street. At that mo- ment the door of the Roone store opened and a man emerged, carrying a heavy sack. There was poor street illumination from a- small electric globe in front of the court- house half a block away, and the man with the sack seemed not the least afraid of dis- covery and arrest. Manse stepped quickly back into the office and lifted from the corner of the room a double-barreled gun loaded with squirrel shot. Raising this to his shoulder, he fired twice. The man fell face down, ward in the middle of the street, uttering no sound as he stumbled. Then he sprang up and ran, leaving his sack behind. Reloading his gun, Manse advanced cau- tiously to the sack. He found it filled with groceries, mostly food of various kinds. Carrying the burden back to the door of the Roone store, he tried to open the door and place the sack inside. The door had a spring lock and could not be opened from the outside without a key. Manse carried the sack to his father’s office, placed it in a corner beside the shotgun, and went home and to bed. The next morning he slept late. The robbery of the Roone store was discovered. The bag of stolen articles was discovered in the Verdell office. The room reeked with cigarette smoke, several empty .boxes of the brand of cigarettes smoked by Manse were strewn around, and the floor was littered with the stub ends of his smokes. - At noon, Manse awoke to find himself devoid of reputation in his own home town. He was distinctly an undesirable citizen. One man, accounting for this startling event, blamed it on the world war.. “That feller must have been shell- shocked or something like that. I’ve heard tell of such.” “Naw! He’s a darn crook!” an unsym- pathizing hearer replied. Out in the jungle, the Swamp Cat grinned. Manse Verdell, after a day of annoyance in Tickfall, during which he had tried to explain certain events to his teasing friends Gomichbooks €om) » e ym. «