Argosy All-Story Weekly, June 27, 1925 — page 160: what you’re looking at

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

vantage of a mere bachelor when she * Ftease du!” be murmured without look- a Nhe gave the room a housewifely exami- nation. Gradually and naturally she came to bis clothes closet and opened it. Half a dasen suits hung carefully on their wooden ~ shoulders.” She scrutinized their pat- terns carefully. The blue suit with the red thread she had seen on Dr. Bransted when he first came from Harvard was nowhere in sight. Bat on the floor in a corner of the closet, under a traveling bag placed over it, seemed to be a shabby suit of gray. Mrs. Goldie wondered at this uncharac- teristic bit of untidiness. At this moment the patient’s voice came sharply: * What are you doing there?” She turned. ‘I’m just seeing that the Cleaning woman does not neglect her work,” she answered steadily. “ Oh, I’m very sorry!” he apologized. ‘ I didn’t want you to—to—trouble about me'’’ He looked so wrought up that she turned to leave. ‘“T hope to find you much improved to- morrow,” she said. “ Good morning!” Sbe was deeply abstracted as she re- crossed the campus to her own cottage. Then on the threshold some recollection struck her with such dismay that the ex- pression of it was evident even to her hus- band as she stepped on the sun porch. ‘What have you found out, Alice?” he asked. ‘* Where Dr. Bransted’s blue suit with the red stripe went to,” she said with more un- certainty in her manner than he was ac- customed to seeing. “ It isn’t in his clothes Closet. But st is on the body of the mur- dered man!” “ Alice!” Professor Goldie exclaimed re- proachfully at such sensationalism. “Yes, it is! Because I stepped into the anatomy room and looked at the clothes on the body again. O} course I didn't ob- serve the snit before. As soon as you told me of the pattern of wool particles you found on the neckband naturally I thought of any suit on earth but the one on ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, the dead man. But there it is on the mur- dered man!” The little professor stared at his wife. “ Why, Alice, what are you implying?” ‘There may be two such suits and Dr, Branstéd may have a perfectly good ex- planation of why he threw away a perfectly good one. But it is curious that both mur- dered and murderer should wear suits of the same pattern. And it’s still more curi- ous that the suit on the murdered man should be two or three sizes too large for him—which would just about fit Dr. Bran- sted. Have you found out anything else from that neckband?” He turned to his notes. ‘Why, yes, in a way. I find a series of tiny holes in it, all edged with green. They are geometrically perfect and seem to have been made by some circular instrument of exceeding thinness. I would not have paid much attention to them except that they, too, are arranged—not exactly in a pat- tern but— Well, look at the arrangement yourself. I have indicated it by these dots in pencil on this paper. These dots stand in the same relation to each other as to position as the holes in the neckband. I can make nothing of their meaning, how- ever.” Mrs. Goldie took a look at her husband’s meticulous notation of the arrangement of the holes. She puzzled over them for a time then asked: “Would a needle make such holes as you see under the lens?” He brightened. ‘“ Why, yes, exactly!” ‘And would green cotton thread rim these holes with particles if the thread had been drawn through them and had stayed in them for some time and been washed in the laundry?” “ Alice,” he murmured with a blend of pride and humility, “your faculty for practical deductions is remarkable. Yes, green thread under the circumstances you describe would account excellently for what I see under the microscope.” “Then lend me your pencil.” Carefully she joined the penciled dots her husband had made. She did not make a mark until she had first tried it out in the air, So to say, and studied what such a line GOMIGDOOo C SS Co