Evening Star Newspaper, September 29, 1936, Page 16

THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1936. From Now on Jeff’s Gonna Do More Seeing and Less Reading! —By BUD FISHER. [ AW, WHAT THE HECK! OH, THIS IS AWFUL! | I'LL FIND OUT N T LooKS LIKE | SAP, You'VE BUT WHY | BECAUSE THEYRE| AND FURTHERMORE THE I GUESS I READ ENOUSH I CAN'T READ g’ WHATS WRONG | s! LOCATED IN ! DOCTORSAID SIX MONTHS AGO ANYTHING! 1 § TR WesT ::3;'-0 ’;‘ SUGH A VERY | IF YoU DON'T GET GLASSES SERIALLS = TOLRI Suct | weAK PLACE! fautEBecout 5o IN FRONT OF KATHARINE VERY WEAK b HEPBURN! /}:J’/ VINCENT STARRETT M INSTALLMENT XVIL !way. when he had reached it, was $ HAT had brought him at H this hour, and in this fash- | ion, to the apartment of | the murdered Rita Wing- | fleld Blackwood groped to the bed and sat down upon its edge to answer his | own question. Vaguely he felt that| the case was beginning to take shape. | In this very room, now lost.in dark- ness, Janice Hume had furiously searched for something of importance. But had she found it? When Zelda had told her that her search was known, she had gone hysterical. In| the circumstances, was it not prob-| able that Janice had failed to find the thing she sought? And surely it must be something, he reflected, that Janice feared would identify her with the crime. Some piece of wearing apparel, possibiy? He had quite certainly seen her searching in the closet. Almost more important, he realized, | was the question’s corolary: Who had | 1t been—if it had been anybody—who had alded Janice in her search? In brief. who the devil had been with Janice in this very room? He was groping for the light switch when he heard a sound that struck him rigid. It was a light cough, somewhere in the apartment itself. “The murderer!” The words rushed through his mind with such force and clarity that he almost believed they had been shouted aloud. But it was a mad idea. The mur- derer, if he—or she—had sense now full man ya mile away, estab- lishing a glorious alibi Blackwood breathed more freely. Nevertheless, he rather wished that he had slipped a pistol into his pocket before going to the theater. It was at this moment. with ears cocked apprehensively for further sounds, that a new and paralyzing thought occurred to him. If Percy Jones were in hiding. either 8s murderer or suspect, innocent or guilty, what safer place for him to hide—now that it was empty—than | in the Wingfield apartment? The daring of it would be enormous, but it was quite the last place any one would think to search. The place was closed ~—locked—by police order—until such time as some executor of the mur- dered woman might appear to take it over. The inquest—continued—had been held that afternoon. “What a notion! Percy! With Janice close at hand to feed him and keep him posted! It was & brilliant flight of fancy, and so hard did it seize hold on him that for a moment he almost knew that it was so. What it did to his various other theories he did not stop to consider. He put away his spectacles, and tip- toed to the inner door. He ventured further and stepped into the Kitchen. Softly he slipped along the passage leading to the dining room and put his head around the corner. There was a faint light in the bed room off the living room—the room in which the murder had been com- | mitted. A little light that glowed and dimmed and vanished and re- appeared like foxfire on a marsh; a miniature torchlight, he supposed. Small sounds of occupancy were tele- graphed across the rooms that lay between. He stepped into the dining room— | and a loose board creaked benenhi his foot. He shuddered and stood stiff. Listening, the light had van-| ished. There was no sound whatever from the murder chamber. The dark- ness lay in visible layers around him. It advanced upon him and receded | hoiselessly. | Then he was aware that something was moving in the room beyond. Something half-felt, half-seen, that floated ghostlike between him and the farthest patch of blackness. He stepped back recklessly against the! wall and ran his fingers over it, | groping for the light switch. But he | had lost his bearings in the darkness, | and it was some moments before he had found the button. It was close beside the door through which he had | Just entered. | A faint perfume, intangible as the darkness itself, yet vaguely alluring and familiar, drifted to him across the chamber; and quite suddenly he knew that the intruder was a woman. | His finger pressed the switch. | At the same instant he heard the | front door softly open and softly close. The visitor had gone. | For a moment he stood blinking, | blinded by the sudden dazzle of light; | then he was hastening in pursuit, | with all the chairs of Grand Rapids, | Mich., it seemed, across his path. He | flung into the entry and snatched | open the door. | Nothing! | The passage was bare from end to end. No sense of recent occupancy | pervaded it. There was no sound of elevators in either shaft. The stair- | If you live in Northwest Washington: CONSIDER THIS... Silver Spring Station is now a regular suburban stop for B&O trains to and from the West. That means a saving of time—an easy drive over excellent roads—and noneed to risk the hazards and de- lays of city plenty of parking space at Silver Spring Station, too. Next time—board the B& O nearer home—at Silver Spring Station. Ask any B & O Ticket Agent for new low fares to Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cin- cinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, the West and Southwest—or, telephone: Shepherd 4343; District 3300. | solved of an unworthy suspicion. But | whose face was known to him and a soundless void. Blackwood searched his soul for oaths that might be suitable to the situation. Then a fragment of sound disturbed the impersonal stillness. Somewhere— in some distant apartment perhaps— a radio was open and an orchestra, now reaching a passage in fortissimo, was playing “Has Anybody Seen My Gal?” It seemed to Blackwood a sin- gularly appropriate inquiry. Discouraged, he returned to the door he had left open and gently closed it berind him. The impalpable odor of perfume still lingered in the living room. In the bed room it was stronger. The woman had been there for some time. He sniffed the elusive scent with appreciation—with interro- gation. Certainly somewhere he had smelled the stuff before. That the intruder had been the mysterious redhead he had no doubt whatever. Quite probably, in the light of Zelda’s narrative, he had been face to face—in darkness—with the mur- derer of Janice Hume. Was she, too, searching for the evi- dence that had worried Janice to her death? Anne Gray, thank heaven, was at the theater and probably was now what hac she been doing :ith Rollie Colbath? In the excitement of Janice’s murder he had almost forgotten Anne and Colbath. Upstairs, he supposed, Zelda was still telling her story under the June- bug eves of Dallas. And she, too. was virtually absolved—though she would probably be arrested before the night was over. He lighted a cigarette and turned his attention to the bed room in which, two nights before, the cause of all this difficulty had been shot to| death. Under a blaze of light, again he noted the funereal counterpane, the vellow window hangings and the clutter of bottles upon the dresser. The cards, however, had vanished from the table and with them the ash tray that had called forth his first pontifical utterances. With the re- volver, the handkershief and the matches, these were now in the hands of the police. But the array of photographs upon the wall remained. He reread the ex- travagant inscriptions with cynical humor and turned away. There was not one of the simpering celebrities none whose recorded name evoked the WHY, WHERE'G DR. BOUTWELL ? HEY, WHAT'RE YOU CLOSWG, THAT DOOR FOR 2 BY JOVE, THE DOCTOR 1GN'T HERE - BUT AG FOR PERCY PEYTYS REASONS FOR CLOSIN THE DOOR You'tL NOW GEBE 'EM/ THIG 16 REALLY GOING (g TO HURT YOU MORE THAW e 1T DOES ME — RIPPING, g ]/ ! / Q her breast. laying hands upon her! | A handkerchief? But it was not a photograph that | left a handkerchief on the day she had | The photo- | turned over the revolver? graphs had been there for any one to | initials, possibly worked in the cor- Janice Hume had sought. faintest shock of interest. Then— swiftly—he turned back. Something was missing from his memory picture of that wall of pho- tographs. He knew exactly what it was. Rita Wingfield herself was miss- ing! Blackwood recalled the photograph quite clearly. It had been the only portrait of Rita in the gallery, and so he had studied it. A slightly faded photograph of Rita Wingfield as she had been in earlier years—standing beneath a parasol, her head turned coyly to one side after the fashion of maidens in a studio, and wearing a costume that suggested a Methodist choir performance of “The Mikado.” This was the picture that was miss- ing, and he now saw clearly the space from which it had been removed. There was even a small chip out of the calcimine to show that the removal had been recent. In his mind ran a swift impression of a red-haired woman flinging her- self wildly down a staircase, clasping Listen to Jean Abbey Woman’'s Home Com- panion Radio Shopper Wednesday WISV THE HecHT Co. F Street at Seventh traffic. There’s | | | a small framed photograph against find. Nor was it the incriminating! ner? But the handkerchief that had|ried from the apartment. How near he had been to weapon, now locked in Dallas' desk. | been found beside the body was Rita’s | Could she have | own—wasn't it? After all, the missing photograph | the devil had been the city of her | was now the clue to work with. There | origin? It had been plainly stamped ' critic of the Morning Chronicle was | past had come the murderer. What ' annoyingly—it had eluded him On the whole, however, the He hunted diligently for half an|could be only one possible reason for upon the photograph beneath the not displeased with himself. ing Power iowin Fplace That's why With her | hour and found precisely nothing. abstracting it. It was the clue to Rita | name of the photographer. He had or later he would remember. Then, glancing at his watch, he hur-| Wingfield’s past—and out of Rita's| read it with a smile—but now— (To be continued.) 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