The Searchlight (Cushing, Okla.), Vol. 1, No. 48, Ed. 1 Wednesday, October 26, 1910 Page: 7 of 8
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THE SSARCIILIGH T, CUSHING, CKLA.
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1>K MART KODERIf fflNEHART
Xvtjuo*^ or THE CIRCULAR JTAIRCAfB I
MUSTRATlONf *y MT- ®-
(^OpyRTOITT A^V"
vealing haze, dotted here and there
with fire. It was unlovely, tremen-
dous. Whistler might have painted it
with its pathos, its majesty, but he
would have missed what made it in-
finitely suggestive—the rattle and
WtU
He Went Over the Four Notes Meth-
odically, Examining Each Carefully.
roar of iron on iron, the rumble of
wheels, the throbbing beat, against
the ears, of fire and heat and brawn
welding prosperity.
Something of this I voiced to the
grim old millionaire who was respon-
sible for at least part of it. He was
propr'-d up in bed in his East end
home, listening to the market reports
read by a nurse, and he smiled a little
at my enthusiasm.
"1 can't see much beauty in it my-
self," he said. "But it's our badge of
prosperity. The full dinner pail here
means a nose that looks like a flue.
Pittsburg without smoke wouldn't be
Pittsburg, any more than New York
prohibition would be New York. 3it
down for a few minutes, Mr. Blakeley.
Now, Miss Gardner, Westinghouse
Electric."
The nurse resumed her reading is
a monotonous voice. She read liter-
ally and without understanding, using
initial and abbreviations as they came.
But the shrewd old man followed her
easily. Once, however, he stoppei
her- . .
"D-o is ditto*" he said gently, not
As the nurse droned along, 1 found
myseli looking curiously at a P11®1-®"
graph in a silver frame on the bed-
side table. It was the picture of a
girl in white, with her hands clasped
loosely before her. Against the dark
background her figure stood out slim
and young. Perhaps it was the rather
grim environment, possibly it was my
moo.l. but although as a general thing
pho'rsi'nphs of young girls make no
appeal to me, this one did. 1 found
my eyes straying back to it. By a
little finesse 1 oven made out the
name written across the corner. "All-
son."
Mr. Gi'irore lay back among nis
pillows pnl lis'f. ' to the nurses
listless voice Hut h>< was watching
me from under Ms heavy eyebrows,
for win n the re:..': "j was ovei. tuu
we we- ilr.-- « ^'i*ed tl.o r
ture with a li
"I keep it the.e to remind myself
that I am an old man," he said. "That
is my granddaughter, Alison West."
I expressed the customary polite
surprise, at which, finding me respon-
sive, he told me his age with a chuc-
kle of pride. More surprise, this time
genuine. From that we went to what
he ate for breakfast and did not eat
for luncheon, and then to his reserve
power, which at 65 became a matter
for thought. And so, in a wide circle,
back to where we started, the picture.
"Father was a rascal," John Gil- j
more said, picking up the frame. "The
happiest day of my life was when I j
knew he was safely dead in bed and |
not banged. If the child had looked
like him, I—well, she doesn't. She's
a Gilmore, every inch. Supposed to
look like me."
"Very noticeably," I agreed soberly.
I had produced the notes by that
time, and replacing the picture Mr.
Gilmore gathered his spectacles front
beside it. He went over the four notes
methodically, examining each care-
fully and putting it down before
he picked up the next. Then he
leaned back and took off his glasse
"They're not so bad," he said
thoughtfully. "Not so bad. But I
never saw them before. That s my
unofficial signature. I am inclined to
think"—he was speaking partly to
limself—"to think that he has got
>^o!d of a letter of mine, probably to
Xlison. Bronson was a friend of her
rapscallion of a father."
I took Mr. Giimore's deposition and
put It into my traveling bag with the
forged notes. When T saw them again,
almost three weeks later, they were
unrecognizable, a mass of charred .pa-
per on a copper ash tray. In the in
terval other and bigger things had
happened: The Bronson forgery case
had shrunk beside the greater and
more imminent mystery of the man in
lower ten. And Alison West had come
into the story and into my life.
CHAPTER II.
A Torn Teleflram.
I lunched alone at the Gilmore
house, and went back to the city at
l once. The sun had lifted the mists,
I and a fresh summer wind had cleared
Hway the smoke pall. The boulevard
was full of cars flying countryward
for the Saturday half-holiday, toward
golf and tennis, green fields and bab-
bling girls. I gritted my teeth and
thought of McKnight at Richmond. ,
And then, for the first time. 1 associ-
ated John Giimore's granddaughter
with the "West" that McKnight had j
irritably flung at me.
1 still carried my traveling bag, for j
McKnight's vision at the window of j
the empty house had not been without
effect. I did not transfer the notes to
my pocket, and, if I had, it would
not have altered the situation later.
Only the other day McKnight put
this very thing up to me.
"I warned you," he reminded me.
"I told you there were queer things
coming, and to be on your guard. You
ought to have taken your revolver."
"It would have been of exactly as
much use as a bucket of snow in
Africa," I retorted. "If I had never
closed my eyes, or if I had kept my
finger on the trigger of a aix-shooter
. ijssMirarajaB
(which is nov Usque for revolver),
the result would have been the same.
Vnd the next time you want a little
rxciteirent with every variety of thrll'
thrown in, I can put you by way of it
You br gin by getting the wrong berth
in a Pullman car, and end—"
"Oh, I know how it ends," he fin-
ished shortly. "Don't you suppose the
whole thing's written on my spinal
marrow?"
But I am wandering again. That is
the difficulty with the unprofessional
story-teller: He yaws back and forth
and can't keep in the wind; he drops
his characters overboard when he
hasn't any further use for them and
drowns them; he forgets the coffee
pot and the frying pan and all the
other small essentials, and, if he car-
ries a love affair, he mutters a fer-
vent "Allah be praised" when be
lands them, drenefced with adventures
at the matrimonial dock at the end of
the flo.il chapter.
I put in a thoroughly unsatisfacto;#
afternoon. Time dr.'.gged eternally. I
dropped into a summer vaudeville, and
bought some ties at a haberdasher's
I was bored but unexpectant; 1 had
no preitonition of what was to come
Nothing unusual had ever happened
to me; friends of mine had some-
times sai'ed the :,high seas of adven-
ture or skirted the coasts of chance,
but all of the shipwrecks had occurred
after a woman passenger had been
taken on. "Ergo, I had always said
"no women!" I repeated it to my-
self that evening almost savagely,
when I found my thoughts straying
back to the picture of John Giimore's
granddaughter. I even argued as 1
ate my solitary dinner at a downtown
restaurant.
"Haven't you troubles enough," I
reflected, "without looking for more?
Hasn't Bad News gone lame, with a
matinee race booked for next- week?
Otherwise aren't you comlortable?
Isn't your house in order? Do you
want to sell a pony in order to have
the library done over in mission or
the drawing room in gold? Do you
want somebody to count the empty
cigarette boxes lying around every
morning?"
Lay it to the long idle afternoon, to
the new environment, to anything you
like, but I began to think that per-
haps I did. I was confoundedly lone-
ly. For the first time in my life its
even course began to waver. The
needle registered warning marks on
the matrimonial seismograph, lines
vague enough, but lines.
My alligator bag lay at my feet,
still locked. While I waited for my
cofTee I leaned back and surveyed the
people incuriously. There were the
usual couples intent on each other;
my new state of mind made me re-
gard them with tolerance. But at the
next table, where a man and woman
dined together, a different atmosphere
prevailed. My attention was first
caught by the woman's face. She had
been speaking earnestly across the
table, her profile turned to me.. I had
| noticed casually her earnest manner,
! her somber clothes, and the great
mass of odd, bronze-colored hair on
I her no-k. But suddenly she glanced
! towarc.* .lie and the utter hopelessness
j —almost tragedy—of her expression
! struck me with a shock. She half
! closed her eyes and drew a long
| breath, then she turned again to the
| man across the table.
Neither one was eating. He sat low
in his chair, his chin on his chest,
ugly folds of thick flesh protruding
over his collar. He was probably T>0,
bald, grotesque, sullen, and yet not
without a suggestion of power. But he
had been drinking; as I looked, he
raised an unsteady hand and sum-
moned a waiter with a wine list.
The young woman bent across the
table and spoke again quickly. She
I had unconsciously raised her voice.
Not beautiful, in her earnestness and
stress she rather interested *n« I
nd an liT.e 'v.. .-.a nation to rrlvise the
waiter to remove the bottled tempta-
tion from the table. 1 wonder what
.vould have happened if I had? Sup-
ose Ha rlngton had not been intox-
icated when he entered the Pullman
ar Ontario that rtght!
For they were about to make a Jour-
ney, I gathered, and the young wom-
an wished to go alone. I drank tb-ee
cups of coffee, which accounted for
my wakefulness later, and shameless-
ly watched the tableau before me. The
woman's protest evidently went for
nothing; across the table the man
grunted monosyllabic replies and grew
more and more lowering and sullen.
Once, during a brief unexpected pian-
issimo in the music, her voice came
to me sharply:
"If I could only see him in time!"
she was saying. "Oh, it's terrible!"
In spite of my interest I would have
forgotten the whole incident at once,
erased it from my mind as one does
the inessentials and clutterings of
memory, had I not met them again,
later that evening, in the Pennsylvania
station. The situation between them
had not visibly altered: The same
dogged determination showed in the
man's face, but the young woman—
daughter or wife? I wondered—hM
drawn down her veil and 1 could only
suspect what white misery lay be-
neath
I bought my berth after waiting in
a line- of some eight or ten people.
When, step by step. I had almost
reached the window, a tall woman
whom I had not noticed before spoke
to me Iroui my elbow She had a
ticket and money in her hand.
"Will you try to get me a lower
wnen you buy yours?" she asked. "I
have traveled for three nights foi up-
pers"
I consented, of course; beyond that
1 hardly noticed the woman. I had
a vague Impression of height and a
certain amount of stateMness, but the
crowd waj pushing behind me, and
some one was standing on my foot.
I got two lowers easily, and, turning
with the change and berths, held out
the tickets.
"Which will you have?" I asked.
"Lower 11 or lower 10?"
"It makes no difference," she Baid.
"Thank you very much indeed."
At random 1 gave her lower 11. and
called a porter to help her with her
luggage. I followed them leisurely to
the train shed, and ten minutes more
saw us under way.
I looked into my car, but it present-
ed the peculiarly unattractive appear-
ance common to sleepers. The berths
were made up; the center aisle was a
path between walls of dingy, breeze-
repelling curtains, while the two seats
at each end of the car were piled high
with suit cas^S and umbrellas. The
perspiring porter was trying to be in
si* places at once; somebody has said
that Pullman porters are black so
they won't show the dirt, but they
certainly show the heat.
Nine-flfteen was an outrageous hour
to go to bed, especially since I sleep
little or not at all on the train, so I
made my way to the smoker and
passed the time until nearly 11 with
cigarettes and a magazine.
The car was very close. It was a
warm night, and before turning in I
stood a short time in the vestibule.
The train had been stopping at ire-
i quent intervals, and, finding the brake-
man there. I asked the trouble.
It seemed that there was a hot-box
on the next car, and that not only
i were we late, but we were delaying
! the second section. Just behind. I was
beginning to feel pleasantly drowsy,
and the air was growing cooler as we
got Into the mountains. I said good-
night to the brakeman and went bach
to my berth. To my surprise, lower
ten was already occupied—a suit case
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Green, E. M. The Searchlight (Cushing, Okla.), Vol. 1, No. 48, Ed. 1 Wednesday, October 26, 1910, newspaper, October 26, 1910; Cushing, Oklahoma. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc285911/m1/7/: accessed April 23, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society.