Picture Play Magazine (Oct-Nov 1915)

PICTURE-PLAY WEEKLY 13 some one else ! I don't believe a word of what he has written about his eyesight !" But, the attorney pointed out to her, there was the fact of his having spoken to the men at his club about Doctor Hitchcock's diagnosis of his case. That oculist had really told Jimmie that his sight was going to leave hirri — for Adams had already seen him and found out that Jimmie had called there. Everything pointed to the fact that he had written Jeanne the truth. Still she persisted in her belief that he had not given the real motive for his suicide. "I am to blame !" she sobbed. "I am his murderer — and I shall never, never forgive myself !" Three weeks later, when Maddox called, Jeanne's first impulse was to refuse to see him. The very mention of the man's name filled her with revulsion. He had led her into causing Jimmie's death, she felt. And she never wanted to set eyes on him again. But so that he would understand that everything was over between them forever. Jeanne went downstairs tc tell him so in no uncertain language herself. "You share my guilt with me !" she scathed the man who would have betrayed her, as he had betrayed Jimmie's trust in him before. "The guilt for his death — we drove him to jump off that steamer between us. Now, please, go ! And never let me see you again !" If Jimmie, in his squalid room on the West Side, could have known what was happening in his home — how quickly he would have returned to it to claim his wife, whose love for him had returned in redoubled measure! At the end of two more months, Adams called on Jeanne again. "We can't find Jimmie's will anywhere," he informed her. "You'll only get your widow's third of his estate, unless the document is turned up. I can't understand what he could have done with it, after he took it from me at my office the day I finished drawing it up. It must have been stolen from him, that's all. There's only one way that we may be able to discover its whereabouts — and that's to advertise a reward in all the papers to the thief if he'll return it." The advertisement was accordingly inserted. And — Jimmie saw it. He knew right where the will was. It was in one of the books on the shelves in his library. He even knew exactly what book it was in. But — nobody else did. For an hour Jimmie paced the floor, trying to think of some way whereby he could inform Jeanne of the document's whereabouts without disclosing himself. "I've got it !" he exclaimed at last. He hastily consulted the same advertising columns of the newspaper in which he had seen the offer of the reward to any one who would reveal the location of James Blagwin's missing will. Jotting down the address of a fortuneteller, Jimmie hurried out and paid him a call. "I used to be Mr. Blagwin's valet," he informed the clairvoyant. "I know valet, who had undoubtedly stolen things of value belonging to that gentleman, was in his office, and could be captured there. He excused himself to Jimmie, and went into his anteroom to telephone police headquarters. Jimmie heard the message he sent over the wire, and he fled from the house. "There's only one thing for me to do," he confided ruefully to himself, "and that's to go out and burglarize my own house in the dead of night. I'll take the will out of the book and place it on the library table, where Jeanne will be sure to find it the first thing in the morning." And so Jimmie Blagwin returned to "Jimmie!" cried Jeanne, "oh— Jimmie!" And she lifted his head tenderly in her arms. where he put this will, before — before he went away and took his life. But I can't go back and fell his wife, because there were some things missing when I left the house, and I'm under suspicion of having stolen them. But I'll tell you where the paper is. And then you can inform Mrs. Blagwin, and claim the reward when the will's found right where you tell her you saw it in a dream." But the clairvoyant, believing Jimmie's story, thought there would be more of a reward in it for him if he were to inform the police that Mr. Blagwin's his country home, and — though he had no suspicion of that — to the wife who loved him. But he was not kept long in the dark regarding that. Jimmie, moving about his library in the dark, knocked over a chair. Mrs. Blagwin heard it, and hastily got out of bed and put on a wrapper, arming herself with a revolver, and came downstairs. She snapped on the light, and confronted the "burglar." Jimmie's beard, which he had let grow, did not fool her for even a moment. Dropping the pistol, with a glad