The bulletin. (Irwinton, Wilkinson County, Ga.) 191?-19??, July 24, 1936, Image 5

The bulletin., July 24, 1936, Image 5

About The bulletin. (Irwinton, Wilkinson County, Ga.) 191?-19?? | View Entire Issue (July 24, 1936)

Page of 14

Prev Issue Next Issue

Text PDF JP2 (2.0 MB) Clip/Print Image

Page of 14

Prev Issue Next Issue

Return to Top

Newspaper Page TextDRAGONS DRIVE YOU L By EDWIN BALMER Copyright by Edwin Balmer WNU Service SYNOPSIS Jeb Braddon, young and fantasti cally successful broker of Chicago, Is infatuated with Agnes Gleneith, beautiful daughter of a retired man ufacturer. Rodney, a doctor, in love with Agnes, visits his brother, Jeb. Rod plans work at Rochester. Jeb suggests that he make a try for Agnes before leaving. In Rod there is a deeper, obstinate decency than in Jeb. Agnes believes to be happy, a girl must bind herself entirely to a man and have adorable babies. Rod visits Agnes and tells her of his great desire but realizes it can never be fulfilled. Agnes’ mother is at tempting to regain her husband's love. Agnes has disturbing doubts as to what attracts her father in New York. Jeb tells Agnes he is going to marry her, and together they view an apartment in Chicago. Jeb asks Agnes to set an early date, but she tells him she cannot marry him. When the agent, Mr. Colver, offers to show them a furnished apartment, Jeb asks Agnes to see it alone, saying he must return to his office. Agnes consents and Jeb leaves. A radio is blaring terrifically from one of the apartments. Colver raps upon the door, which is opened by a scantily clad girl, who draws Agnes into the room. Colver finds her hus band, Charles Lorrie, fatally shot. He calls the police. Myrtle Lorrie asks Agnes to phone Cathal O'Mara, a lawyer, to come at once. Agnes does. The police take charge. O'Mara ar rives. The officers are antagonistic to him. Agnes sides with O’Mara. Agnes is to be a witness at the com ing trial. Cathal’s grandfather and father had lost their lives in the line of duty as city firemen, and his grandmother, Winnie, has built her all around Cathal, who, being am bitious, had worked his way through law school and, heeding the appeal of the desperate, and the despised cause, has committed himself to the defense of criminal cases. Thoughts of Agnes disturb Cathal. Mr. Lorrie had cast off the wife who had borne nim his daughter to marry Myrtle, and after two years of wedded lite she had killed him. The coroner's jury holds Myrtle to the grand jury. Agnes promises O’Mara to review the case with him. When Cathal calls Mrs. Gleneith asks questions regarding marital problems, in the hope that she might get a solution to her own problem. CHAPTER V—Continued —7— “In my room.” And she arose. “I’ll be right back.” In her room she bent before her desk, and pulled out the drawer containing her own Intimate, senti mental miscellany. She remembered now, when she had started to tuck in with this medley the record of her meeting with Myrtle Lorrie, she had stopped, restrained by the feeling that this memorandum was utterly alien and contaminating to the other contents of the drawer. But she had no safer repository; and so she had thrust it under the other things. She withdrew it with no such ex aggerated offense at its utter strangeness. Myrtle, into whose life Agnes Gleneith had stumbled, was no woman apart. This evening, in New York, might her father be seeking some counterpart of Myrtle? And what of Jeb twenty years from now, or sixteen years or much less, if he exhausted his happiness with her sooner? How, actually, had Jeb offered himself? He’d give her all; and she’d give him all. Together, while their cup contented them, they’d tip it up and drain it to the last drop of mutual emotion. And then he would turn to some other woman? And what would she de? “I don’t know Glen; and neither do you. And I don't care—nor do you—if we first have everything from each other.” But she did care. She. shifted in the drawer one of Jeb’s Impetuous, exciting letters; ami she touched for an instant, and almost with a caress, the envelope which Rod had addressed to her; and her mind clung to its quieter yet strangely stirring contents. She closed the drawer and tooa downstairs the paper which pre served her Impressions of that apartment wherein Myrtle had seized upon her. Cathal arose to receive from Ag nes the paper she had brought him; and he remained standing In the center of the room as he read. Agnes had dated the paper, and at the top had written why she was recording, at that time, exactly what she had seen and heard and done; and why she had done what she had. Cathal could catch its importance to his client and at the same time look through this writing deep Into the revelation of the nature of the girl who was watching him read. How impossible to dissemble when one writes upon a page! Cathal had not seen Agnes’ writ ing before; and he looked up from this page she had written, and real ized as he had not, her naivete. It multiplied in him the most powerful of a man's instincts —most powerful in some men—to protect a woman in her Innocence. To pro tect? To possess her, that was. “God help you, Cathal!” Winnie would have cried with dread and fear for him, could she have seen him look up, from Agnes’ memo randum, to Agnes. Agnes’ mother did see him; but in her mind there lay between her daughter and this lawyer an un bridgable chasm which she could not imagine him, even in fancy, at tempting to cross. Indeed, she left WkAmER * « \ mA. “You Will Make a Good Witness,” Said Cathal. them alone a few minutes after Cathal began to review, in his clear, competent way, the items of evi dence. The fellow —Beatrice Glen eith decided—was not offensive; on the contrary, he had a knack of dealing with most delicate subjects impersonally. “You will make a good witness,” Cathal said. “For her?” said Agnes. “For whom else?” asked Cathal. “You’ll get her off!” Agnes real ized aloud, as she looked at him. She liked him; she had liked him from the instant she saw him enter Myrtle’s apartment, where the po lice already were. The people in the court-room would like him; the jury , would like him. He had very nice hair; and he had better hands, In strength and shape, than any other man she knew —except Rod. His eyes were as blue as Agnes knew her own to be. This lawyer had eyes that could be cool, competent, practical; and then you could catch him look ing away like a dreamer, a poet “I’ll copy this; then that’s all I’ll need of you, now,” he said. THE BULLETIN “How did. you get Into your busi ness?” Agnes suddenly asked him. “The law?” “I mean defending women like Myrtle Lorrie." Finally he said; “I was offered what you would call a good start in a law-firm, after I was admitted to the bar, Miss Gleneith,” he said. “It was with a firm you’d highly approve—knowing nothing but the name of the part ners and the clients they serve. You know some of them—the cli ents' daughters and sons. Some live along this lake shore, making their money—the men —in the city. Your father’d know many of them. I’d done well enough In law-school, and made an acquaintance that got me the offer of the job; but it wasn’t entirely me they wanted. It was more my connections.” “Connections?” said Agnes. “Mine, such as they were, which made me friends with some who had influence In fixing what others must pay to the support of the state and the city—in taxes. I could be useful, I found, in seeing real-estate assessments adjusted and taxes re duced to make properties more prof itable for those owning them. I was to be used in the tax-cheating that was cutting the heart out of Chi cago.” “I don’t understand,” said Agnes, watching him. “How would you? Don’t think me putting rayself above them that were asked to do what I wouldn’t. You see, I was stopped by a stake of my own which I have in the city.” “You mean property?” asked Ag nes, wondering at his feeling. He shook his head. “No, not prop erty. Nothing I own; merely a—a memory. At least, it made me thank them that offered me that job, and turned me to criminal law —taking the case of the Myrtle Lorries. Shooting’s cleaner.” “Than what?” He was striking back, Agnes felt: but not at her. It was at others whom he felt in some way associat ed with her —and how closely, she wondered. “Than much that is done in a city,” he replied to her. “Where do you live?" Agnes ask ed him, with sudden directness. “What am I, you mean—besides a criminal lawyer? I live now near Milwaukee avenue In the city; but I was born on Archer, as was my father." “Your father, too?” Cathal smiled. “I know why you ask. You wonder why I speak so, when it was my grandfather that came over, and he a lad. His father brought him in the steerage; and on another ship at sea at the time, was the girl the lad was to meet on Archer road and marry.” “Your grandmother?” “The same. You’ll see her at- the trial. She comes to all I’m defend ing.” "Does your father too?" “He’s gone," said Cathal. “He was a city fireman, and his father before him. He —my grandfather— was one of the twenty that went to the top of the tower of the Cold Storage building, at the World’s Fair, when it burned.” “He was one of them that died that day, as each of them did in line of duty, Miss Gleneith,” said Cathal proudly. "And his son,' my father, died like him, in line of duty for Chicago. That’s my stake In the city, I mentioned. Who can have more? Would I sell it out by fix ing taxes for clients for my living? I’ll take the defense of Myrtle Lor rie, as I’ve taken others. . . . But it’s my speech that still surprises you. It wouldn’t, if you knew Win nie.” “Winnie?" asked Agnes. “The grandmother I mentioned. She might have come over sixty hours instead of sixty years ago. ... Do you know Padrlc Colum, the Irish poet and writer, who was over here on tour a few years ago?” “I went to hear him speak,” said Agnes, wondering what now was coming. “So did I,” said Cathal. “For they told me he’d been going through Ireland having repeated to him the last of the old Celtic tales that had never seen print He was col lecting them to write them all down. I told him he’d been wasting his time traveling. He should have come straight to Chicago, and he’d have heard them all—from Winnie. And I found, in fact, she had one he'd never heard from any other. The strange thing, it was always my favorite.” “You knew it?" “Knew it? Wasn't I rocked and reared on them? And this I could never hear enough—the Green Bear of Babbletree.” He was holding Agnes’ memoran dum of what Myrtle Lorrie had said and done, after having shot her husband; and suddenly aware of it he contrasted it to the matter in his mind, and smiled. “The women, Miss Gleneith, used to be much more enduring,” he said. “They certainly put up with more in those days.” “What days?” “Os the old tales. Take her that loved the Green'Bear of Babbletree. The Green Bear was, of course, rightly a prince, her true love,” Ca thal continued, "but hideously be witched. But though he was in his horrible guise, she must recognize the soul of him, and seven long years must she follow him over the fiery mountain, though he might never so much as turn to look at her once. If she perseveres through the seven years, she breaks the spell; he’s her prince; and she has him." “Does she?” said Agnes. "She does, through everything.” He repeated: "Green Bear of Babbletree, Turn, thou, and look to me: Seven long years I’ve followed thee, Over the fiery mountain.” He had gone. Agnes was lying with eyes closed on the chaise longue in her bedroom, when she heard her sister’s voice. Then Bee came into her room. She had thrown a lounging robe loosely over her. Agnes arose as she entered. It was six o'clock. “Your friend Myrtle’s lawyer,” said Bee, “seems to have queerlj affected Mother.” “What did she say to you?" “That perhaps we’d misunder stood your murderous little friend Myrtle. He certainly has done something else to Mother, too.” “Yes." “What it is, Agnes?” “I think she came to see some what differently why Father’s doing —what he’s probably doing, Bee.” The dark head looked away. "All right, if he helped her. . . ." The Dark One wandered to the window. “Who's that? Jeb?” “Might be,” said Agnes. Jeb had had an exceptionally profitable day; and on no day, with in recent memory, had business been bad. The market for stocks — rails, Industrial, utilities, oils, amusements —was soaring. Today it had been almost a runaway. Bankers, merchants, clerks, bar bers, bootblacks, shopgirls, dentists’ assistants, hair-dressers, manicur ists, elevator boys, street-sweepers— everybody young or old, enlightened or illiterate, capable or stupid, with millions or with a scraped-up dollar or two was playing the market. Jeb was exultant. He had never been so right. He had made money not only for himself but every client for whom he traded and whom he advised. He had lived in a chorus of acclaim and gain all day. He ran halfway upstairs to meet Agnes coming down. “Glen, what a day! We can do anything we like —anything, when you say the word!” He caught her up on the landing. “Now yoall say it? Why not? Oh, you little fool, why not? . . . That damned trial! We’ll marry and come back for it. Or I’ll get you out of It!" “You can’t, Jeb.” “Was that Irish shyster here?" “Jeb!” ’Did you see the papers this aft ernoon? I’ve left them in the car. »» They were downstairs together. “Sweet-scented situation O’Mara's trying to profit on. Lorrie, it seems, was insured for two hundred thou sand dollars —fifty of which he had left in the name of his first wife as beneficiary; but dear little Myrtle had seen that he had her written Ml a hII mMm Ol Hr /1 r rl ISfc Illi IB SI "All Right, if He Helped Her." in as beneficiary for one hundred and fifty thousand. “The companies paid today the fifty thousand to the first wife whom he divorced; but they’re holding up payment of the hundred and fifty to sweet little Myrtle. If she’s clear ed, by O’Mara, Myrtle gets the hun dred and fifty thousand insurance as an additional reward for the shooting.” CHAPTER VI DAVIS AYREFORTH lay awake in the dark, with his vise asleep in the bed beside his. He was not happy; and he was trying to figure out what he could do dif ferently in order to make Bee ad mire him. She still loved him, he believed; for her let it be a proof of love that his wife physically did nothing. In respect to another man, to which he could take exception, and that Bee continued without complaint — in deed, only too compiaisantly—to be his wife. So Davis said to himself: ‘She loves me; she loves me. . . . But she admires Jeb more. . . She doesn’t admire me at all. “It’s because Jeb is making so much money,” Davis argued with himself. “Money is all Jeb has that I haven’t got “It’s not more money she wants for herself, or for me or for the boys. But she wants me to make more money. . . . I’ve got to make more money—a lot of money, as much as Jeb Braddon. I can do it! He has nothing on me!” Jeb, as every one knew, had made millions for himself. To such a star, Davis hitched the weak wagon of his abilities as he wrestled in the dark with his disappointments. Davis' business waS canning—a good business in Chicago, safe and steady, though never spectacular, and well suited to Davis, who was by nature a safe, steady person, though he tried not to appear so. He was thirty-two, a cheerful, healthy, stocky man of medium height, thoughtful of others and tireless when he set out to do any thing. (TO BE COSUMEU)