Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 25, 1924 — page 36: what you’re looking at

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

26 ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. Vingo; and apparently they might settle anywhere, on the flip of a coin. Criminals enough came to Vingo without giving them engraved invitations! The elder brother caught Suzanne Pome- roy’s eye and slightly, significantly, lowered his thick black brows. Something was go- ing to happen now. It did. The girl gave me a queer, hard little smile, then plunged her hand down inside the bosom of her khaki shirt. A pearl- handled revolver leveled squarely at my heart would not have surprised me. Well, they would have to torture me before | would tell them where that money was cached; and it was easy to imagine the dark brother in the role of torturer. Her hand reappeared with a black cot- ton sock, a man’s sock. The leg was knotted and the foot was a fat lump. Suzanne untied the knot and slid .her hand into the sock, removing the lump. I gazed blankly at more money than I had ever seen outside a paying teller’s window; a plump roll of green and yellow bills. “We want you to keep it for us over- night, as an evidence of our good faith,” she said. ‘‘ We know we look like pretty desperate characters; but we’ve been on the road for days. We don’t blame you for being suspicious.”” She put the money into my limp hands. ‘Count it,” the €onvict whispered. I mechanically counted it, but my mind was on other things. The recent derelic- tions of Mack Saunders, alias Jerry Stin- son and of Samuel K. Tilliston, alias Ken- neth R. Ransom, alias George P. Nagle, alias John P. Ashley had made me stranger- shy. I wondered if I hadn’t been oversus- picious of the Pomeroys from the very be- ginning, yet even now I suspected a trick or a trap. Was this, I wanted to know, only a clever disarming gesture, the first step in a dark plan, or simply the naively ingenuous act of three honest New Eng- Janders anxious to correct my impression of them—to put me at ease? Where had all this money come from? “ Three thousand—even,” I announced. The three Pomeroys nodded. I started to return the money to the girl, but she waved it back. “We want you to keep it for us. It will be a relief to have it keep somebody else awake for a change.” I looked from her pretty, flushed young face to the pale face of the convict and then at the dark older brother with his stubborn jaw and compressed red lips. “Tl lock it up,’ I promised, thinking of the flour barrel. ““Y guess you don’t get many burglars through here,” said the convict with an- other grim smile. “Nor much of anybody else,” his brother snorted. oa “No,” I affirmed. ‘“ Vingo is a sort of pocket, a blind alley. Strangers are rare.” Again the brothers exchanged intelligence with their intense black eyes. ‘““ Of course, we have several trains a day —and the mail,” I added, to let them see that I knew what was going on behind the scenes. “That makes it handy,” said the convict indifferently. “ But it’s so far off the beaten track that you ain’t likely to be bothered by people buttin’ in on you,” his brother added. | “Yes,” I agreed, “ if that’s the kind of life a person wants. It gets pretty lonesome here, with trains going through all the time and nobody getting on or off.” ‘“‘T should think that would make it less lonesome,” Suzanne put in. “ Trains go- ing by make you feel that something’s going on. They really don’t bother you.” “TY like lonesome places,” her dark brother backed her up earnestly. ‘I like to be where every Tom, Dick and Harry won’t come buttin’ in and pesterin’ me. I like to be off by myself. That was the trouble with the farm we just sold. Too much pesterin’. The first lonesome kind of place we find we’re goin’ to buy, if the price ain’t too steep and the soil’s likely. The lonesomer the better.” He shot a sul- len look at me from heavy hanging lids, and declared with sudden passion: ‘TI hate people!” I cleared my throat uncomfortably. The convict was staring blankly at the floor. Suzanne was stealthily regarding me. Said she: COMMICLOOOKS (C@