Argosy All-Story Weekly, June 13, 1925 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

VLIGHT TO The girl glanced up quickly. The gray- green of her fine eyes flashed abruptly and her too brightly painted hps curled. ‘“ \’d half guessed that,” she said shortly. “ But I didn’t stop guessing there. There was a part in this thing I could have eaten up and I asked for it. Did I get it? I did not. Maybe, since you know so much, you know why I didn’t get it.” ‘Perhaps, dearie,”” he answered easily, ‘jit was because the casting director didn’t realize, as well as you did, your transcen- dent fitness for a bigger role.”’ ‘‘ Perhaps—and perhaps not,” she flared out at him. ‘‘ No, when you told vour friend Wolf to do this much for me—when you came around doing the Santa Claus act with your cheap little candy cane, you saw to it that he shouldn’t put anything better in my stocking.” Cynthia drew her breath between her teeth in a quick and furious little gasp. ‘“You knew,” she went hotly on, ‘ that if I got a chance—a real chance—I’d make good. You know I have the looks and the ability. You know I’m willing to work. You knew, too, that if I got a real chance, I'd tie a can to you—and you saw to it that this gang of pirates just teased me along.” “Such is gratitude,” sighed the well groomed man with the handsome but some- what dissipated face, who walked at her side. ‘“ Scorn for the little boost because it wasn’t a ready-to-wear career. A fine young hate on me because I didn’t get you starred. Wolf has his own ideas when he hires his people. I call it damned decent of him to do what he could.”’ ‘““T could have eaten up that other part,” she repeated stubbornly. ‘ And it would have made me. Maybe vou knew that, too. I suppose you read the continuity?” “ Perhaps.” “Yes, and vou headed me off. You black-balled me, didn’t you? It’s your old game. I know your rotten mind inside-out. ‘“ You think if you keep me dangling long enough—if you can break my heart with discouragement before I make good, I'll give up and drop off the tree-~and when I drop you'll be there with your little basket to catch me.”’ JHE HIiLLs. A87 She stopped dead still on the sidewalk, and for a moment the man whose outward seeming, except for the fact that he was walking with a too-flashy woman, was con- servative, experienced: an apprehensive pang. She appeared on the verge of making a public scene. He knew the storm signal of that mounting temper of old, and he dreaded it. Cynthia clenched her small fists and her eray-green eyes blazed. Her red head of bobbed hair seemed to blaze, too, and for an instant her anger was the uncensored fury of the gutter-child. ‘ You—you damned low-life!” claimed. ‘“And when you drop—and I catch you in my basket,’ announced the man with deliberate and insulting softness, “ there won’t be any change in you except that youll be doing physically what you’ve always done mentally. You'll merely be playing the game out instead of teasing and quitting, that’s all. You'll be giving some- thing for something, instead of just graft- ing—and now since we’ve exchanged com- pliments, let’s go somewhere and have a cup of tea.” “No, thank you. I don’t want tea, and if I were perishing for it, I’d rather die than have it with you.” ‘** Rags are royal raiment ’—eh?” The man stood looking down on her, and if there was a dawning of anger in his mood, it was only for the circumstance that her fury here on the sidewalk threatened him with an unpleasant conspicuousness. ‘“ What’s the idea of pulling the affronted virtue stuff. Cynthia? There are no illusions between us. I’d never have known vou if I hadn’t practically picked you up, would I? ‘You complain that yvou’ve never had your real chance, but vou wouldn’t have had even as much as you have if I hadn’t looked after you, would you? I’ve staked you and I’ve never made any pretense of doing it out of fatherly charity. Sooner or later you'll drop off the tree all right, little Bright-Eyes, and I might as well catch you as anyone else. “After all, I like you—and I’ve got a couple of flasks in my room. Come on and she ex- tear my hair in a less public place. You COMIC ©okKS.COM