Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 18, 1925 — page 51: what you’re looking at

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

THE DUKE ter aisle I met Mr. Marshall. He greeted me and I greeted him.” “Anything else?” “ He said: ‘ Dorothy, I’m glad to see you. I was thinking about writing you to call at my office next week. I want to talk over a certain matter with you.’” “What did you say?” “TI said I would come at any time he sent for me. He said he would write or phone to me, but did neither.’’ Myers again dove into his portfolio and if he feigned disappointment at not finding what he was after, he dissembled extremely well, so Hank Thomas thought. Hank could not make up his mind if this reiter- ated behavior of the prosecutor was genu- ine or a bit of by-play to mask his real tactics in the next questions. Miss Dale next said she could not re- call hearing the shot; she was absorbed in her book; but, afterward, when she heard Mrs. Meredith moaning, she went down to her. She explained that she heard the lat- ter, because, in turn, she had left her room and gone to Mrs. Meredith’s, found the door open and heard the moans below from the library hall. ‘‘ What made you go to her room, after she bade you good-night?” “ When I finished reading, I remembered Mrs. Meredith said it looked as if it would rain the next day. I opened my window and saw the mist. Then; as I had lost or mislaid my umbrella, the same day I met Mr. Marshall while shopping with her, and as I had asked her to make inquiry among the servants and of the chauffeur, more par- ticularly, I went to her to learn if the um- brella had been found.” “What kind of an umbrella?” asked Myers. “It had a carved ebony handle, with a silver band engraved with my initials and those of the donor, and a figured silk top.” Just here Hank Thomas experienced his first real thrill of the proceeding, aside from the appreciation of the beauty of this girl, which impressed and haunted him. ‘Who gave you that umbrella?” “Mr. Fitch, on my last birthday.” “The day you were nineteen?” eS Bir” OF DISDAIN. 201 “So, you attached a sentimental value to it as well as a pecuniary one?” “TI disliked to lose it through my own oversight. I’m sure I took it with me that morning when I went shopping, as I have said.” ‘““ How were you attired when you left your room?” “The same as when Officer O’Brien ar- rived.” “Do you usually roam through the house in negligee?”’ -“Only, as a rule, in the part reserved for Mrs. Meredith and myself. There were no other guests.” “ But, Mr. Fitch was in the library— you’d been told that,” sneered Myers. ‘‘ And he didn’t sleep there, did he?” Miss Dale’s color mounted at the coarse imputation. But her gaze was level and her reply unmoved. ‘““He occupied the second sleeping floor with a suite, including his den. I was Lot in view, had he come up the stairs, in going to Mrs. Meredith’s room.” “ But,” persisted the alleged bloodhound, ‘““you had been told he was in the library when Mrs. Meredith came to your room. That was some time previous, wasn’t it?” “That is my impression.” “The evidence shows,” went on Myers, “that Mrs. Meredith almost at once after leaving your room and reaching and enter- ing her own, barely thirty feet from yours, heard a shot; and then she must have gone down to the library floor; and thence to the servants’ floor below that, where Mordaunt who had just come in from working in the garage was getting himself some lunch; and then she wanted a policeman summoned and he suggested telephoning; and the wire was out of order and so Mrs. Mere- dith sent him in person to the police sta- tion; and after all of that she came back to the library floor, where you heard her moaning; but, Officer O’Brien also testi- fied that you told him that you had ‘ that instant’ come down, and had just got the glass of water. Now, where were you in the interim?” “In my room, reading.” “All that period of time—that long time?”’ (E©) vOOK (E@)