Indianapolis Times, Volume 35, Number 243, Indianapolis, Marion County, 19 February 1923 — Page 8

8

ALICE ADAMS by BOOTH TARKINGTON Second novel in The Times series by Indiana writers. Copyright, 1021, by Doublcday, Page & Cos.

fTTT TELL, Adams,” he said, \ \ / in his husky, cheerful yy voice, “how’s your glue works?" Adams uttered an inarticulate sound, and lifted the hand that held his hat as if to make a protestive gesture, but failed to carry it out; and his arm sank limp at his side. The foreman, however, seemed to feel that something ought to be said. “Our glue-works, hell!” he remarked. “I guess we won’t have no glue-works over here —not very long, if we got to compete with the sized thing you got over there!’’ Lamb chuckled. “I kind of had some such notion,” he said. “You see. Virgil. I couldn't exactly let you walk off with it like swallering a pat o’ butter, now, could I? It didn t look exactly reasonable to expect me to let go like that, now, did it?” Adams found a half-choked voice somewhere in his throat. “Do you —would you step into my office a minute, Mr. Lamb?” “Why, certainly I’m willing to have a little talk with you," the old gentle man said, as he followed his former employee Indoors, and he added. “I feel a lot more like it than I did before I got that up, over yonder, Virgil!” Adams threw open the door of the rough room he called his office, having as justification for this title little more than the fact that he had a telephone there and a deal table that served as a desk. “Just step into the office, please,” he said. Lamb glanced at the desk, at the kitchen chair before it, at the tele phone, and at the partition walls built of old boards, some covered with ancient paint and some merely weath-er-beaten, the salvage of a house wrecker; and he smiled broadly. bo these are your offices, are they?" he asked. “You expect to do quite a business here, I guess, don t you, \ irgil?” Adams turned upon him a stricken and tortured face. “Have you seen Charley Lohr since last night, Mr. Lamb?” “No; I haven’t seen Charley.” “IVell, I told him to tell you.” Adams began;—“l told him I’d pay you " “Pay me what you expect to make out o’ glue, you mean, Virgil?” “No," Adams said, swallowing, “l mean what my boy owes you. T hat s what I told Charley to tell you. I told him to tell you I’d pay you every last ” “Well, well!” the old gentleman in terrupted. testily. “I don’t know any thing about that.” “I’m expecting to pay you.” Adams went on, swallowing again, painfully. “I was expecting to do it out of a loan I thought I could get on my glue works." The old gentleman lifted his frosted eyebrows. “Oh, out o’ the glue works? You expected to raise money on the glue works, did you?” . „ At that, Adams’s agitation increased prodigious I '-. “How’d '-iu think I expected to pay you?” he said. “Did you think I expected to get money on my own old bones?” He slapped himself harshly upon the chest and legs. “Do you think a bank’ll lend money on a man’s ribs and his broken-down old knee-bones? They won’t do it! You got to have some business prospects to'show ’em, if 'you haven’t got any property nor securities; and what business pros pects have I got now, with that sign of yours up over yonder? Why, you don’t need to make an ounce o’ glue: your sign's fixed me without your doing another lick! That’s al! you had had to do; just put your sign up! Ybu needn’t to ” “Just let me tell you something, Virgil Adams,” the old man interrupted, harshly. “I got just one right Important thing to tell you before we talk any further business, and that’s this: There’s some few men in this town made their money in off-color ways, but there aren’t many; and those there are have had to be a darn sight slicker than you know how to be, or ever will know how to be! Yes, sir, and they none of them had the little gumption to try to make it out of a man that had the spirit not to let 'em. and the strength not to let ’em I know what you thought. ‘Here,’ you said to yourself, ‘here’s this ole fool J. A. Lamb: he's kind of worn out and in hi3 second childhood like; I can put It over on him. without his ever—' “I did not!” Adams shouted. “A great deal you know about my feelings and all what I said to myself! There’s one thing I want to tell you. and that’s what I’m saying to myself now, and what my feelings are this minute!” BEWARETHE COUGH OR COLO 1M HANGS ON Chronic coughs and persistent colds lead to serious trouble*You can stop them now with Creomulsion, an emulsified creosote that is pleasant to take. Creomulsion is anew medical discovery with twofold action; it soothes and heals the inflamed membranes and kills the germ. Os all known drugs, creosote is recognized by the medical fraternity as the greatest healing agency for the treatment of chronic coughs and colds and other forms of throat troubles. 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He struck the table a great blow with his thin flst, and shook the damaged knuckles in the air. “I just want to tell you, whatever I did feel, I don’t feel mean any more; not today, I don’t. There's a meaner man in this world than I am, Mr. Lamb!” “Oh, so you feel better about yourself today, do you, Virgil?” “You bet I do! You worked till you got me where you want me; and I wouldn’t do that to another man, no matter what he did to me! I wouldn’t —” “What you talkin’ about! How’ve I ‘got you where I want you?” “Ain't it plain enough?” Adams cried. "You even got me where 1 can’t raise the money to pay back what my boy owes you! Do you suppose anybody’s fool enough to let me have a cent on this business after one look at what you got over there across the road?” “No, I don’t.” 1 „ “No, you don’t,” Adams echoed, hoarsely. “What’s more, you knew my house was mortgaged, and my—” “I did not,” Lamb interrupted, angrily. “What do I care about your house?” “What’s the use your talking like that?” Adams cried. “You got me where I can’t even raise the money to pay what my boy owes the company, so’t I can’t show any reason to stop the prosecution and keep him out the penitentiary. That’s where you worked till you got me!” “What!” Lamb shouted. “You accuse me of—” “ ‘Accuse you?’ What am I telling you? Do you think I got no eyes?” And Adams hammered the table again. Why, you knew the boy was weak—■” “I did not!” "Listen: you kept him there after you got mad at my leaving the way I did You kept him there after you suspected him; and you had him watched; you let him go on; just waited to catch him and ruin him!” “You're crazy!” the old man bellowed. “I didn’t know there was anything against the boy till last ntght. You’re crazy, I say!” Adams looked it. With his hair disordered over his haggard forehead ~nd bloodshot eyes; with his bruised hands pounding the table and flying n a hundred wild and absurd gestures, while his feet shuffled constantly to preserve his balance upon -taggering legs, he was the picture of a man with a mind gone to rags. “Maybe I am crazy!” he cried, his voice breaking and quavering. “Maybe I am, but I wouldn’t stand there and taunt a man with it if I'd done *o him what you’ve done to me! Just !ook at .me: I worked all my life for vou, and what I did when I quit never harmed you—it didn’t make 2 cents' worth o’ difference in your' life and it looked like it’d mean all the difference in the world to my family—and row look what you’ve done to me for it! I tell you, Mr. Lamb, there never was a man looked up to anether man the way I looked up to you the whole o’ my life, but I don’t 'ook up to you any more! You think vou got a fine day of It now, riding tp in your automobile to look at that sign—and then over here at my poor tittle works that you’ve ruined But Hsten to me just this one last time!” The cracking voice broke into falsetto, and the gesticulating hands fluttered uncontrollably. "Just you listen!” he I, anted. “You think I did you a bad turn, and now you got me ruined fur it, and you got my works ruined, and my family ruined, and if anybody’s ’a’ tojd me this time last year T and ever say such a thing to you I’d railed him a dang liar, hut I do say it- I say you’ve acted toward me like —like a—a doggone mean—man!” His voice, exhausted, like his body, was just able to do him this final ervice: then he sank, crumpled, into he chair by the table, his chin down hard upon his chest. “I tell you, you’re crazy!” Lamo “■aid again. “I never in the world —” but he checked himself, staring in -udden perplexity at his accuser. •Look here!” he said. “What’s the latter of you? Have you got anther of those ?” He put his r.nd upon Adams’s shoulder, which erked feebly under the touch. The old man went to the door and ailed to the foreman. “Here!” he said. “Run and tell my hauffeur to bring my car over here, “ell him to drive right up over the idewalk and across the lot. Tell ’”'m to hurry!” So, it happened, the great J. A. amb a second time brought his formr clerk home, stricken and almost nanimate. CHAPTER XXIV * BOUT 5 o’clock that afternoon, the old gentleman came back *■ to Adams’ house; and when Alice opened the door, he nodded, walked into the “living room” without -peaking; then stood frowning as if lie hesitated to decide some perplexing [uestion. “Well, how is he now?” he asked, inally. “The doctor was here again a little while ago; he thinks papa’s coming through it. He's pretty sure he will.” “Something like the way It was last spring?” “Yes.” “Not a bit of sense to it!” Lamb said, gruffly. “When he was getting well the other time the doctor told me It wasn’t a regular stroke, so to speak—this ‘cerebral effusion’ thing. Said there wasn’t any particular reason for your father to expect he’d ever have another attack, if he'd take a little care of himself. Said he could consider himself well as anybody else long as he did that.” “Yes. But he didn’t do it!” Lamb nodded, sighed aloud, and crossed the room to a cahir. “I guess not,” he said, as he sat down. “Bustin' his health up over his glue works, I expect.” “Yes.” “I guess so; I guess so.” Then he looked up at her with a glimmer of anxiety in his eyes. “Has he came to yet?” “Yes. He’s talked a little. His mind’s clear; he spoke to mama fnd me—and to Miss Perry.” Alice laughed sadly. “We were lucky enough t > get her back,- but papa didn’t seem to think it was lucky. When he recognized her he said. ‘Oh, my goodness, ’tisn’t you, is it!’ ” “Well, that’s a good sign, if he’s getting a little cross. Did he—did he

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happen to say anything —for instance, about me?” This question, awkwardly delivered, had the effect of removing: the girl’s pallor; rosy tints came quickly upon her cheeks. "He—yes, he did,” she said. “Naturally, he’s troubled about —about ” She stopped. “About your brother, maybe?” “Yes, about making up the ” “Here, now,” Lamb said, uncomfortably. as she stopped again.

OUT OUR WAY—By WILLIAMS

THE OLD HOME TOWN —By STANLEY

“Listen, young lady; let’s don’t talk about that just yet. I want to ask you; you understand all about this glue business, ? expect, don’t you?” “I’m not sure. I only know ” “Let me tell you,” he interrupted, impatiently. “I’ll tell you all about it in two •words. The process belonged to me, and your father up and /walked off with it; there’s no getting around that much, anyhow.” “Isn’t there?”j Alice stared at him.

•THE iADIANAPOLIS TIMES

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"I think you’re mistaken, Mr. Lamb. Didn’t papa improve it so that it virtually belonged to him?” There was a spark in the old blue eyes at this, "What?” he cried. “Is that the way he got around it? Why, in all my life I never heard of such a —” But he est tlje sentence unfinished; the testiness went out of his husky voice and the anger out of his eyes. “Well, I expect maybe that was the way of it,” he said. “Anyhow,

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it’s right for you to stand up for your father; and if you think he had a right to it —” “But he did!” she cried. “I expect so,” the old man returned, pacifically. “I expect so, probably. Anyhow, it’s a question that’s neither here nor there, right now. What I was thinking of saying—well, did your father happen to let out that he and I had words this morning?” “No.”

FRECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS—By BLOSSER

OUR BOARDING HOUSE—Bv AHERN

“Well, we did.” He sighed and shook his head. “Ycur father — well, he used some pretty hard expressions toward me, young lady. They werent so, I’m glad to say, but he used ’em to me. and the worst of it was he believed ’em. Well, I been thinking it over, and I thought I’d just have a kind of little talk with you to set matters straight, so to speak.” “Yes, Mr. Lamb.” “For instance,” he said, “it’s like

MONDAY, lEB. lU,

—By ALLMAN

—ioy avL FOSTaN

this. Now, I hope you won’t think I mean any Indelicacy, but you take your brother’s case, since we got to mention it, why, your father had tne whole thing worked out in his mind about as wrong as anybody ever got anything. If I’d acted the way your father thought I did about that, why, somebody just ought to take me out and shoot me! Do you know what that man thought?" (To Be Continued.)