Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 16, 1921 — page 110: what you’re looking at

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

THE TEMPTING TANGLE, Her first impulse was to appeal.to some one else for help and guidance. Then she realized that her mother would reprove her, that she could not appeal to Glory Adair, and that she did not want to summon Tripp —and Captain Grant was, apparently, not within call. | She used the telephone then. There was a train eastbound leaving at once. Per- haps it had left. Glory Adair was evident- ly calculating to take the train on the other line, some twenty minutes later, and—here came a taxicab, honking at the curb. She telephoned. The earlier of the two trains was ten minutes late. She could make it. She ran briskly down the winding walk, and got into the taxicab, calling her directions to the chauffeur. ‘“ But,” protested the chauffeur, ‘I was to meet the other train.” “Hurry, I tell you.” Thus imperious Ruth made a quick getaway, unconscious of Glory Adair’s amazement. She had time, in the two hours’ train ride, for a good deal of thought upon the foolish venture she had undertaken: ‘‘ Why did I do it?” she asked herself. And an- swered in a moment: ‘“ Because you are you, Ruth Ferintosh. Because you have al- ways done whatever you wanted to do, and bought whatever your fancy demanded, on the impulse of the moment. Because you take life for granted—that is why. And that,” she told herself, “is why you have not worried over your father’s absence. You take him, too, for granted. He has always come back. He always will.” Her thoughts reproached her, thus. She saw a field of three-pole derricks as the train whirled toward Bothwell. They were gone before she knew .them for der- ricks at all. Glory Adair had asked her -questions about Bothwell, and had told her something of her father in the Bothwell days, and of this man Tom Fagg, and of gipsies. As she stared across the country she could see in ghostly memory the gipsy van coming up that road of twenty-five years ago. Back there somewhere among the trees the boy Peter Cassill—or Cassilis —had found the charred and blood-stained relics of luckless Tom Fagg. The hotel mentioned in the letter from 101 Cassilis stood within a stone’s throw, al- most, of the London railroad terminal. Here, Ruth felt more at home. She was accustomed to travel; and knew how to . impress an obsequious hotel clerk with a fine air of ladylike hauteur. Yet she had a touch of misgiving when she heard the boy in buttons paging “ Mr. _Cassilis!: Mr. Cassilis!” in his droning voice; and she shivered when a tall man rose from a settee at the farther end of the big lounging room and beckoned the young- ster. He had seemed tall, rather, at first glance; but, confronting her, he was just of middle height. Straight as an arrow, though. He smiled and held out his hand. She took it mechanically. She was fairly frightened now, but hid the fect very well. The man, she reflected, had nice, brown eyes. He was sun-tanned and brown and —yes, very straight. Afterward she could recall no word she said; but she found and handed him his letter—the letter she had taken from Miss- Adair’s dresser. He looked at her again. ‘““Oh, yes,” he said. “I got your tele- gram. -You are Miss Adair, of course?” She grew red and white by turns. Here, indeed, was a pretty pickle. CHAPTER XIX, PALMS DOWN. T was a moment or more before Ruth’s. nerves steadied themselves. Glory Adair would not be here for hours now, having missed her train. By that time Ruth Fer- intosh would be on her way back to Caris- ford. She could rely on Glory’s nimble brain to save the situation, when it came to a show-down. Still,-she made no answer to the man’s last question. Luckily, he overlooked the omission. “Perhaps,” he suggested, “we could talk better at lunch. You will of course do me the honor to—” She accepted his invitation. Her color came and went very prettily. A few min- utes later she was seated opposite him at COMMICLOO S (©