Indianapolis Times, Volume 41, Number 52, Indianapolis, Marion County, 11 July 1929 — Page 10

PAGE 10

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CHAPTER XLVTTI I? •’•as Sunday evening, the fourth d?.v of Curtis' almost fatal nines* Nan rose from a chair in the front hall and faced Dr. Black, who had just com p downstairs from his usual early-morning visit to the little patient The mother and father were still with Curtis: now was Nan's opportunity, but her voice was so choked with agitation that at first the doctor could not undermind what she was trying to say to him. "Yes. ve- child! The boy's going to be all ntrht." Dr. Black assured her, taking the girl's writhing hands and forcibly separating them. ' You mustn’t let yourself go like this. Nan, or you’ll be my next patient." ‘‘l said—'’ Nan easpcri. struggling to her hands, “that if Curtis is going to get well, then I’m— \ I’m not needed any more, and I con go—” "Go?" Dr Black interrupted with j Harp astonishment. Go where, child? Are you crazy?" ' I believe I am!’’ Nan moaned, j “If I am not now, I will be. unless j I get away! I tell you. I can’t, stand It any longer, Dr. Black!" “So—you're a quitter. Nan?” the i old doctor asked gently. "Yes. a quitter, if you want to 1 call me that!” Nan agreed passionately. “I can" Hand it any longer —the three of us. John, Iris and I. j

tinder the same roof. There are tome thmgs too hard for human endurance. Dr. Black—* "Nan. why did you marry John Curtis Morgan?" the doctor interrupted gravely. You know! Because he and Curtis needed me." Nan flung up her head and glared at her former champion. ’ You didn't love him?" Dr. Black insisted gently. "That not fair! You know/ I loved him—love him now with all my heart.” Nan cried. But, I married him because he needed me—he and Curtis." "And you’re willing to quit now, because you believe you are no longer needed?" the doctor prodded. "They have—her!” Nan reminded him vehemently. "They both seem to want her—more than me " "Listen. Nan; I'm telling you, in all seriousness, that they never needed you more . . . No, wait! Listen to me! Have you thought

what would happen to John Curtis Morgan if you desert him now? You would be leaving him at the mercy of every scandalmonger in the town. His fair reputation, w'hich no one has guarded more jealously than you have, would be ruined. Iris Morgan is not his wife. As it is, with you here as a chaperon " tt u a A WILD, hysterical laugh ripped out of Nan's throat. “That's—good!” she gasped. “I'm needed as a sop to convention! My sole functions now are to be a servant to Iris Morgan and a chaperon—oh! Delicious irony!” And she laughed again—a dreadful sound. “Stop it. Nan!” the doctor commanded, almost roughly. “I know it’s purgatory for you, child, but you've got to stick it until Curtis is well enough for me to send that woman packing. I can't do it now, with the boy still as sick as he is. But I give you my word. Nan, that I'll send her back across the street as soon as Curtis is unquestionably out of danger of a relapse . . . You've borne a great deal, child. Can't you do this one thing more for the man you love?” Nan stared at him a long minute, her eyes tragic, beaten. Then, “I suppose so,” she said drearily. And so, for another week, she endured the thousand and one humiliations which Iris’ cruel ingenuity contrived for her. Like a servant, she waited upon the nurse, the child, and the woman who had taken possession of the home as If she were its legal mistress. During that week of waiting for release, which seemed like a year. Nan's only comfort was in the child. It. was an exquisite joy to watch life and health slowly flowing back into his wasted little body, to see his black eyes widen and glow with welcoming love when she paid her brief, surruptitious visits to the sick room. Every vestige of his temporary 7 hostility to her. engendered and cruelly fostered by his mother, had

THE NEW SaintSinnor ByJlnneJlustjii

The managing editor, Horton, indeed. had wanted to ‘ extra” on Sandy Ross’ fake-of? for Nicaragua. And Colin Grant had been quite right when he prophesied that Crystal Hathaway would be asked to do the lead feature story on the sensational flight. A wild-eyed man. whom she hardly recognized as the cold, calm managing editor of whom she had only yesterday stood in awe, snapped at her upon her breathless arrival with Grant in the city room. ■ Blaine says you're a friend of Ross’ and the Tarvel girl. Know all about him. eh? . . . Shoot us a column—personal stuff; by line. Make ’em read it and weep!" And for an hour after that an amazing activity had the city room room of the Press in its grip, with Crystal as an important nucleus around which city editor, copy boys and • reporters eddied in a mad whirl. As fast as the typed half sheets were torn from her typewriter a cops* boy snatched them up and rushed to Harry Blaine's desk with them. And as fast as Harry Blaine could wield his black-leaded pencil, numbering them, changing a word here and there, cutting a line and tying up the remains, they were shot to the composing room, where an imperturbable linotype operator converted them into hot metal slugs. At half past ten Colin Grant, black hair wilder than ever, but a happy light in his usual!} furious black eyes, slouched across the city

I disappeared. He clung to Nan with weak, demanding little hands, which i she sometimes had to remove forcibly when Iris—her eyes blazing with jealousy—entered the room. By the time aiiother Sunday arrived, the child was so definitely : convalescent that Nan was sure her j hour of release was almost upon her. Her heart heavy with the pain of parting, Nan watched for her opportunity to pay what might he her last visit to little Curtis Morgan. It came at 4 o'clock that Sunday afternoon. Iris and John Morgan had been with him for a while after lunch, but were now in the drawing room together. The nurse tapped at Nan's oedroom door. "Could you sit with Curtis a while, Mrs. Morgan? I really must get out for a breath of fresh air, and Dr. Black told me to trust no one but you with giving hi mhis medicine. It’s rjady on the bureau. He's to have iwo ounces of cereal at halfpast 4, too.” “I’ll be very careful,” Nan promised. "Please don’t hurry back. I want to be with him as long as possible today.” n u u 'T'HE nurse gave her a long, measuring glance, full of "sympathy and shrewd speculation. Nan turned sharply away, toward Curtis’ door for betraying tears were welling into

her eyes. "How do you feel, darling?” she asked Curtis, as she stopped to kiss his thin whie cheek. ‘ I feel normal,” the little boy told her, proud of his new word. “My pulse is normal and my tempa-ture is normal. I guess I’m about the normallest boy they is.” “I know what you are!” Nan cried, her voice breaking. “You're the most adorable boy ‘they is,’ and I love you to distraction.” “What’s distraction?” he demanded. interestedly. “‘I love you, too. Nan. I love you to distraction. But what is distraction. Nan?” It was a happy hour, in spite of the hard ache of pain in the girl’s heart. Dr. Black found them both laughing joyously over a bit of Curtis’ impish nonsense when he invaded the room at 5 o’clock, followed by iris and John Curtis Morgan. “Well, this looks something like!” the doctor applauded. “He says he feeels ‘normal,’ doctor.” Nan laughed, shakily. “I’ll leave you with your patient now—” “No, young lady, you stay right here!” the doctor ordered, briskly. “Let's look into this ‘normal” business. Hand me his chart, please. . . . Umm! Splendid! No temperature _for three days. Pulse strong and regular . . . Appetite good . . . Well, well! Looks like you can’t pull this invalid stuff much longer, young man!” “Can I go back to school?” Curtis asked eagerly. “Can I, Dr. Black?” “Pretty soon,” the doctor evaded. “Well. Iris,” he turned to the woman who stood, with narrowed eyes and flaring nostrils, at the foot of "he bed. “You may go home this evening. No need — “Home?” Iris shrilled. “This is my home! . . . Jack!” She turned to her former husband, stretching out her beautiful hands. “You won’t send me away from —from my baby, will you?” The man did not answer, but Nan saw that his eyelids and mouth quivered and tightened with pain. “Answer me, Jack!” Iris insisted, her voice rising hysterically, as she flung herself upon his breast. ‘ Oh, Jack! I love you so! You can’t send me away now! I’ve paid so dearly—”

As the man’s arms lifted, slowdy, Nan waited to see and hear no more. With a choked cry she ran from the room. In the sanctuary of her own room she stood for a moment against the closed door, panting, dashing the tears from her eyes. Then, resolutely. she ran to her little escritoire. seated herself, pressed her fingers to her temples for a minute, then began to write furiously. “Dear John—” she wrote. “I’m going away. I suppose Iris will have to go. free, for a while, until I can give you your legal freedom. But Curtis is doing so well now that the nurses and the servants can take care of both of you. Forgive me if I am causing you inconvenience, but I know you will be glad that * have taken this step. Please don’t think I blame you—”

room with two damp “extras’ in his hand. “Blaine says your yam is a wow. Congratulations!" he greeted the tired, excited girl. For perhaps ten seconds Crystal’s proud eyes clung to the magic words, “By Crystal Hathaway.” But she did not take the time to read her own story. The completeness of the Press's triumph seemed a miraculous thing to her. Less than an hour and a half ago she had been waving goodby to Sandy Ross, yet here in her hands was the whole story, such a prodigal layout of pictures as she had never seen before. There was Sandy’s plane—" Number One"—and beside it a shrinking little old woman with the ecstasy of hope in her eyes. And beside her. very tall and lean and slouching a little, was Sandy Ross. A picture of Bill Purvis, too. secured in some mysterious way known to newspaper men. A round-cheeked, snub-nosed, grinning boy, in the uniform of the marines, his cap cocked rakishly over his right eye. A boy who was dying of typhus now. and to whom his mother was flying. . . “Bet The Star crowd's feeling sick," Colin chuckled. "Listen to the newsboys howj! We've beat ’em to the street by at least half an hour, and to say nothing of these pictures. . V Well, ready for a bite to celebrate.'~Cry\tai?'’ (To BI \

LtfAnn^Austiri dulhorof jkfilaekpitfeon/i

SHE was so absorbed in her letter, and her heart was pounding so j furiously, that Nan did not hear the | opening of the door leading into the I bathroom between her and her husI band’s room. She heard nothing, !had no intimation of her husband’s presence until his voice, directly above her head, crashed through her intense preoccupation with grief and renunciation: “What are you doing, Nan?” She dropped her pen, turned in her chair and raised tragic, startled brown eyes to his face. The fact that he was smiling faintly seemed to her the most terrible of all the dreadful things which had happened to her. “Writing to you,” she managed to answer. Then she seized her almost finished letter, thrust it into his hand. He read it at a glance; then, to her amazement, his long fingers tore it deliberately across, doubled the fragments and tore them again. The bits fluttered into the wastebasket beside the little desk. “We mustn’t have that—to remind us,” he said huskily. “But—butr—” Nan stammered, slowly rising from her chair. Her husband stretched out his arms, then dropped them' slowly. “There is just one question, Nan, before I—throw myself on your mercy: Do you want to be free—to marry Willis Todd?” The question was so absurd, so unexpected, that Nan stared at him blankly before she could gather her wits to answer: "Willis Todd? Are you crazy, John? Or—are you just trying to save my—pride ” “Then— I why were you going to leave me?” Anger at the man’s stupidity flared in her brown eyes and clenched her small fists. “If you will make me say it—l’m leaving you because I love you so terribly I want you to have anything you want—even Iris!” she cried furiously. His arms reached out again, and this time they did not drop; they closed about her rigid, angry little body so fiercely that she gasped for breath. ‘Darling, blind little Nan!” Morgan whispered huskily, his lips against her tossed, short brown hair. “Don’t you know I don’t want any one but you?” After an interlude in which words had no place, Nan lifted her tearwet face from his breast. “I don’t think I'm such a blind little fool as you say,” she insisted tremulously. “That night—our asked you how you would feel toward Iris if you ever saw her again, and you said you didn't know —” “It was trying to be truthful,” he answered soberly. “I really didn’t know. But I soon found out, darling. I felt sorry for her, a sort of pitying affection. No man can feel wholy indifferent to a woman who has been his wife for eight years. But I knew that I loved you more than ever. The contrast was—illuminating. But I was deeply shocked—for all of us—when Iris came back as she did, not knowing she was divorced Then, w'hen I wanted to talk it all out with you, you shut me out of your heart and your room—” “I thought you loved her.” Nan told him “I didn’t want you to come to me out of a sense of duty, with Iris in your heart—” “Poor Iris! I don’t know what is. to become of her, but she must not come between us again—” “Poor Iris!’” a mocking voice cried from the door which Morgan had left open. “If you’re really interested, Jack, read this! Read it and laugh at what a fool I almost made of myself! Read it!” she repeated, almost hysterical with triumphant joy. a a a

MORGAN’S arm did not release Nan, so she was obliged to advance with him toward the woman in the doorway. “It just came!” Iris’ excited voice went on, as she extended an opened telegram toward her husband’s unwilling hand. “The boy took it to my house across the street, and I wasn’t there. Wasn’t it lucky that one of the neighbors saw him and sent him over here with it? What a joke on me if it had come too late, too late! Read that, Jack, and don’t worry about ‘Poor Iris’ again!” Morgan held the telegram so that both he and Nan could read its message. It was a day latter; filed in Los Angeles: “Just received your letters forwarded to me here. Missed you terribly. Ashamed of the way I treated you. Please forgive me. Delighted to hear of your divorce. Can you join me here immediately? Os course we will be married. Stopping at Biltmore. Lining up new proposition. All my love. Bert.”

Even then. Nan tried to spare her husband. When she realized that the telegram was from Bert Crawford. and that the ugly secret from which she had protected the man she loved must now come to light, she tried to cover up the signature, but John Curtis Morgan gently lifted her head, and held it against his heart as he finished reading. “May I congratulate you. Iris?’’ he said, with curious gentleness, as he gave back the yellow sheet. “I hardly dared hope that Crawford would ” As he hestitated. Iris finished his sentence for him: “Would do right by our Nell?" She laughed hysterically. Then. “Well, to tell you the truth. Jack. I didn't either, or I should never have tried to make vou take me back! Well—thank heaven for that quixotic sense of honor of yours, Jack! You two ought to be very happy, you’re both so damnably good! . . I’ve got to run now. and pack! If I hurry. I’ll just have time to make the eighteen for Los Angeles. When she had gone forever, leaving a ripple of excited laughter and invisible wreaths of perfume behind her. Nan turned puzzled, incredulous eyes upon her husband. “You—knew about Bert Crawford and Iris?” "Yes," he agreed, without explanation. "Otherwise I should have waited much longer to get a divorce. Judge Haskell knew, too, i but he agreed to my keeping the | charge of—infidelity out of the divorce petition. ... But—let’s try

THE mUAXAPOLIS TIMES

OUT OUR WAY

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BOOTS AND HER BUDDIES

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FRECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS

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WASHINGTON TUBBS II

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SALESMAN SAM

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MON ’N POP

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to forget it all now, and be happy. There's a very important subject to be considered—our belated honeymoon. Would you very much mind, darling, if a certain little convalescent joined us?" THE END. HOLT SIGNS CITY BONDS Bonds totaling $420,000 were signed Wednesday by Sterling R. Holt for the payment of water and light bills hanging over from 1928. The bonds were voted July 1, 1929, and will be retired by 1934. This year’s water and light bills have.been paid on time, Holt said. “This administration pays its current bills as it goes.”

Questions and Answers

You can get an answer to any answerab'e Question of fact or information by writing to Frederick M. Ker'oy. Question Editor Tile Indianapolis Times’ Washington Bureau. '322 New York avenue Washington. D. C.. inclosing 2 cents in stamps for replv. Medical and legal advice can not be given nor can extended research be made. All other Questions will receive a Dersonal reply Unsigned reauests car not be answered. All letters are confidential. You are cordially invited to make use of this service When was the bicycle .invented and by whom? - The forerunner of the bicycle was the drasine, invented by Baron von Drais, a German, about the year 1816. In 1855 one M. -Michaus o i

—By Williams

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Paris invented a machine having cranks and pedals fitted to the front wheels. Pierre Lallement, in 1865, secured a patent on a two-wheeled velocipede, propelled directly by loose pedals and surmounted by a wooden perch. In 1873 James Starley of Coventry, England, produced the first machine embodying most of the features of the ordinary highwheel machine. Succeeding changes reduced the size of the front wheel. An Englishman named H. T. Lawson invented a rear driving safety in 1876. The prototype of the mod-

OUR BOARDING HOUSE

ern bicycle was brought out by James Starling in 1884. This type was first known as “rover," but this term was replaced by the more comprehensive one of “safety.” The Pope Company of Boston appears to have been the first manufacturers of the safety bicycle in the United States. Are the Duncan sisters, Rosetta and Vivian, twins? No. Rosetta is several years older than Viv}an. How many states require health certificates r examination as a prerequisite to the issuance of a marriage license? A recent compilation of state

JULY 11, 5D29

—By Martin

laws on the subject shows the fol* lowing states requiring health cer* tificates from male, female or both Alabama, Indiana, Louisiana, Mich* igan, Nebraska, New York, Nortfc Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin. What is a civit cat? A species of weasel that is native to North America. Its under hat ;is short, thick and dark; the toj 1 hair is silky and black with whit/ ! stripes or patches covering the en, tire back and flanks. It is mon correctly called little striped skunk For what is blvd. an abbreviation Boulevard. _

3v Ahern

By Bloasei*

By Crana

By Small

By Cowart