Argosy All-Story Weekly, June 13, 1925 — page 127: what you’re looking at

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

HONEST FOOL. Jeff gave two more days to vain inquiries and haphazard searching and dull sitting around and futile cursing, and, ali the while, dark suspicions of the two men who had called upon him in connection with Dora’s disappearance sprouted and grew in his mind. He suspected them of being deep and subtie liars in word and act and ap- pearance; and these suspicions gathered and shaped at last into the belief that one or both of them knew all about Dora’s flight and present whereabouts, and that the bawlings-out and darkling brows had been fine bits of play-acting. In the meantime Jeff had sold his gold watch and chain and written a desperate letter to Jules. Now he bethought himself of the immi- nence of Wednesday, and of his distrustful landlord demanding a week’s rent of the snug little furnished flat. A milkman and a baker would also make demands on that day. A laundryman and a gas bill were also to be considered. Every little helps, he reflected. He could find a room for his lonely and humiliated self somewhere in another part of the town for a quarter of the rental of this snug little flat. So he packed and departed at ten o’clock on Tuesday night. Jeff drank a quantity of hard liquor, met and beat up one of those smooth gentlemen of whom he disapproved and, under normal conditions, stood in awe, and went to jail for fifteen days. What of Mr. Mumphy in the meantime? Mr. Mumphy sought the village of Ste. Jeanne and his lost Jules. He journeyed here and there along secondary railroads, 1ocked from side to side, jolted up and Gown, jerked fore and aft. Sometimes he was stuck in a snowdrift for hours, hunched in Jeff’s fur-lined overcoat while the inade- quate train crew shovelled lke grave- diggers in front of the cow-catcher. Some- times he was stuck in comfortless backwoods hotels, on a diet of doughnuts and fried ham and boiled tea, for days and nights on end. He lost weight; and he learned that the great Province of Quebec is thickly spat- tered with places named Ste. Jeanne—Ste. 599 Jeanne This and That and T’other. He cursed himself for not having tricked more particular information out of the befuddled Jeff. He visited four wrong Ste. Jeannes, where nothing was known of any Jules @Ance or any Stalvart, before he crept wearily into the right one. Mr. Mumphy’s_ collars, numbered twenty, were by this time two sizes too large for him, and his bulging lower front was nothing but a sensation of discomfort; and his liver felt Hke a stale doughnut. Without hope, having hoped in vain so often before, he made his way to the saw- mill, and from there, after inquiry, to the boarding-house. The smell alone of that house, as it met him at the door, caused his head to swim and his stomach to quake and added an ounce of dead and bitter weight to that poor thing that had been his liver. He staggered to his room and lay flat on the bed until the supper bell rang. He was in no hurry to inquire for Jules, for he felt a horror of again learning that this was not the right Ste. Jeanne; but, after a supper of unsweetened coffee, without any milk in it, he felt strong enough 1o put the question to the proprietor. ‘* Jules d’Ance?” retumed the proprietor. ‘There was a Jules—what was his name? —Perdu, that was it. Worked on Little Musquash for Lem Stalvart. But Perdu was his name. Ain't that right, Louis?” The man thus addressed nodded his head, He stood at Mumphy’s elbow. He was a big fellow, with a fur cap pulled down about his ears, and a four days’ growth of black beard veiling all of his face except his blunt nose and quick black eyes. He nudged Mr. Mumphy. “Friend o’ yers, dat lad Jules?” he asked. The mention of the name Stalvart had satisfied Mumphy that he was on the right track at last. He turned and met the fixed regard of Louis and saw danger there. \ ‘That’s as may be,” he replied. “‘ Jules d’Ance was the name of the man I was askin’ about.” “This here Jules was a strong man an’ done some strong things—ain’t that so, Louis?” said the proprietor. comiclbool CO