Argosy All-Story Weekly, November 13, 1920 — page 145: what you’re looking at

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

TIM. name of some third party leader we-haven’t heard of yet.” ‘Oh, horrors, he’s got you, too!” o@x- claimed Rosalie cryptically under her breath. She grasped her aunt’s elbow, and steered her gently up the avenue. “T find, Aunt Ellen, I must go on to- morrow instead of waiting until next week. Oh, I really must! It’s so cold here in Washington, and Gertrude has wired that she is expecting me. Really, I must.” How that hypothetical old grouch would have laughed to hear her. But you and I, more learned in the devious ways of love, would have laughed, too—at the grouch. In Los Angeles, five days later, Rosalie paced the floor of her friend Gertrude’s apartment, and drew long breaths of exul- tation. “And so we broke it off,” she informed the lacy figure stretched at length on the divan. ‘ Don’t speak to me about him, Trudy, for I’ve vowed never to hear his name again.” ‘“ But poor old Tim! intentional, and he couldn’t help the motor’s breaking down!” a “There you go! It’s Tim, Tim, wher- ever I turn! And the worst of it I haven’t come to yet! He’s trying to annoy me psychically, Trudy! He’s persecuting me with occult manifestations!” ‘‘ What! Psychic phenomena! Why, I’m thrilled, Rosalie! Tell me all!” " When we quarreled he threatened that even though I wouldn’t let any one mention his name to me, and wouldn’t read it signed to his letters, I couldn’t get away from it— that I’d seen it written in letters of fire.” ‘But of course you didn’t.” “ But I did! Once in New York as I was passing through, and again in Wash- ington! Oh, I didn’t dream I was psychic -~—I never could do anything with the ouija board! But twice that mystic bully has been able to project his horrid name through my subconsciousness, and make me think I saw Tim in bright letters six feet high!” “Fancy! We'll go to the next meeting of the Amateur Mediums’ Club and make them green with jealousy!” His absence wasn’t | 423 ‘But I'll get the better of him yet, no matter what sneaky, sublimated methods he resorts to,” Rosalie vowed. “ Ill bet his control can’t touch me here! It’s too far!” With a gesture indicative of freedom tri- umphant she swept aside the heavy window curtains, and looked out over the fog- wrapped city. For a moment she. stood transfixed before the three letters that seemed to stare her in the face, then fell backward in a faint. Gertrude sprang to her feet, and blinked before her window. After one long glance at the baleful letters throwing their ,beams straight into her apartment she looked down at the limp form at her feet, and chuckled: “Coincidences run in series,” she mur- mured, bending over her friend. ‘ And if it’s happened once, I guess it’s happened before.” “It’s no good fighting your fate, is it, Trudy?” Rosalie inquired an hour later, sitting up in bed, and sipping the hot tea her hostess brought her. ‘“ Besides, Tim must be thinking of me terribly hard to send thought waves all across the conti- nent.” | ‘“T should imagine that would take con- siderable concentration,” agreed Gertrude, turning abruptly from the bed. ‘“ And if he thinks of me as hard as that perhaps he didn’t have any attention to spare for that other girl. Maybe it was an accident, as he said.” ‘It seems probable.” “And perhaps it was somewhat my fault about the quarrel.” Gertrude said nothing. “And I think I'll go to sleep now. I'll have to get up early to catch that train back East.” “The little goose fancied herself the heroine of a psychic wooing,” the cynic would have explained. ‘ She imagined that her fellow, through the power of love, made her see his name in big, flaming letters in three different cities! Now, any fool knows there’s a Times newspaper, and a Times building in half the cities in the United States. “Now, in New York, coming down Broadway, she happened to catch sight of the electric sign on the Times Building at Eomichbooks (E(@)