Argosy All-Story Weekly, June 13, 1925 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

AQ2 operated illicit stills far back in the laurel tangles. They guarded their rights jealous- ly with long-barreled rifles; they engaged in feudal warfare, and disliked the law. Now she must throw herself on the inercy of those rude, fierce folk, who held no brief for police or juries. The story had said that while they set an appallingly cheap price on human life, while they retorted with a rifle shot to inquisitiveness treading too close upon their secrets, yet for the trav- eler who refrained from such trespass their hospitality was openhanded. The same authority gave assurance that as the mountaineers answered few ques- tions, so they asked few, and that through the hardihood of the race ran a shag- barked conception of chivalry that safe- guarded women in places where men found peril. She hoped thgt picture was true, because to its frail warranty she was about to trust her life. Fugitive from a civilization which, to her disordered wildness of thought, was a human system dominated by a hangman, she was plunging for sanctuary into the utterly unknown. She was turning to a life of which she had one portrayal——a de- piction contained in a novel whose author, in writing it, had kept one eye fixed on moving picture possibilities and concepts, and no eye at all fixed upon the verities. It is as well that Cynthia did not know upon what a superficial authority she was depending. But to get into those hills! She was now at the center of the town, and between this spot and the hinterland lay successive zones of suburb and private estate, of metaled highways where motor traffic swept in seemingly endless current—of ragged and nondescript border country. Soon the search would start. As soon as the body was discovered, that search would swing into its full and irresistible headway with forces gathering and multiplying at its back——and she would be its victim. She would be the victim because she would, at first glance, fit logically into an assump- tion of guilt. The inquiry would then pause —the trail grow cold—and the prosecutors would hold on to her, esteeming one de- fendant in the hand worth two in the bush. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, ~ She had read of people being “‘ framed ” because the enforcers of the law must make a substantial showing of success. She must be away from here at once—before, in the sense of its modern equivalent, the gates of the city closed and the drawbridges swung up. Cynthia Meade was in a mania of ter- ror. Irenzy was paralyzing a mind which, for all its shallowness, in normal conditions was shrewdly keen. She was driven by fu- ries of nightmare horror, and all her per- ceptions, thoughts, instincts, came back to the hammering reiteration of one refrain— ‘ flight to the hills—flight to the hills!” To-morrow morning, when the company came together to start on location, even so unimportant a member as herself would be missed. Then, even if the links had not before been drawn together, Wolf, the picture producer, who had appeared to be unaware of her existence when she sought to emphasize it, would find her immensely im- portant. He would know, as others did not, that this girl had been a protégée of the dead man’s; that they had been together; that one was dead and the other gone. It be- hooved her to be far away before that dis- covery was made, before questions were asked. This was all the sheer folly of disordered fright, and even Cynthia would have known it in a saner mood. The one circumstance that could link her perilously to the crime was this very flight she was undertaking. Had she stayed and stoutly asserted the facts, she would have thrown the burden elsewhere. Had she even stayed and held her tongue, it is doubtful if any one could have testified that she had gone with Har- rison to his room. But this phase of the matter she could not consider, or could consider only to reject it. It seemed to her that every one in Haywood Street must have seen the two of them walking to- gether—must have seen her stop on the sidewalk and clench her fists and call the man an ugly name. | Except for casual acquaintances in the cast, some of whom had already evinced a catty dislike of her, she knew not a soul NOOK