We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
PICTURE-PLAY WEEKLY
5
"One or two things I've got to put in the last minute," he said ; "so if you'll xuse me, I'll run along and add the iiishing touches to my brew. It's a jeat secret, but if you acclaim it I'll 11 you the recipe."
It was only a few minutes after he id left the room when the maid enjred with a letter.
"For Mr. Campbell," she explained. \. special-delivery note."
dropped a glass, shattering it, and dove for the letter. He read it with eyes like live coals. It was short, but full of meaning:
"Look out for Harry Strong. He and 'my pretty Jane' are too intimate for 'just friends.' "
The damnable thing bore no signature. Campbell did not stop to consider that an anonvmous letter should have no
men and women who a moment before had been carefree, whose faces now were blanched with a nameless fear.
It needed no criminologist to fathom this tragedy. The whole story lay plain in the letter and the fallen man and the wrathful husband, who still stood with fist outstretched, though in his eyes had come a look of blank amaze.
Jane rushed forward and clasped him in her arms.
fij; -afti,: *?a -r .-^ ?r. ?v -fs. <n rfc -tfc. a»r W7 5V ?c ■ «
m
!1 I
'»p "3P q-P ^ '3?. 'ip vsp op <sp f^.* <a? *
"The State may do what they will with me." He turned to the police officer
"I am ready."
"Harry, like a good boy, run along id find Mur," pleaded the happy Jane. Murray was a very busy man when trong came in upon him where he \ood stirring a great bowl in the antejbom :
j "Special delivery for you, old chap."
Murray hardly looked up.
"Open the doubly condemned thing 'nd tell me what's in it. Some conounded mystery that will yank me back • the skyscrapers."
Harry tore open the letter and bent is head to read it. Then a subtle "oma filled his nostrils. He felt faint, aggered, swayed to and fro like a runken man.
"Now, what in blazes " Murray
weight. His love for his wife was all powerful, and the very suggestion that any one should come between them was enough to unbalance him.
He turned on Strong, who was still swaying on his feet. Here was surely signs of guilt.
"Hang you !" he shouted ; and, doubling his fist, he shot it forward — but too late. Strong had toppled over and lay senseless, his skull fractured from its contact with a chair.
The maid stood in the doorway, horror in her eyes. The cry had been heard in the guest room, the noise of the breaking glass and the thud of Strong's body on the floor.
They came running to the scene, these
"Mur — oh, Mur, what has happened?" she gasped. "You quarreled. And you — you struck him !"
The whole horrible prospect of a trial, imprisonment, maybe the death chair, stared him in the face and his whole frame wilted in her arms, while he dropped his head on her shoulder with a dry sob.
"I didn't strike him !" he stammered. "Dear, believe me, I didn't touch him. Yet there he lies — dead." Then, in awed tones, he muttered : "An act of God ; that's what it must have been ; an act of God."
Out in the corridor the strident voice of Hamilton Ross rang out: "Fetch a policeman !"