From Place to PlaceCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
General
From Place to Place
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
Fiction; Short stories
"Did you say Maxwell?" asked Cassidy, shooting out his syllables hard
and straight.
"No, no--I said Morrison." The man looked as though he were going to
collapse then and there.
"One name's as good as another, I guess, ain't it?" went on the
detective. "Well, what's your business?"
"My business?" He was parrying as though seeking time to collect his
scattered wits. "Oh, I haven't any business--I've been sick lately."
"Oh, you've been sick lately--well, you look sick right now." Cassidy
shoved his hands in his pockets and with a bullying, hectoring air
pushed his face, with the lower jaw undershot, into the suspect's face.
"Say, was it because you felt sick that you came out of that there
moving-picture show so sudden?"
Just as he had calculated, the other jumped at the suggestion.
"Yes--yes," he nodded nervously. "That was it--the heat in there made me
faint." He braced himself tauter. "Say," he said, and tried to put
force into his tones, "what business have you men got spying on me and
asking me these things? I'm a free American citizen----"
"Well now, young fellow, that all depends," broke in Cassidy, "that all
depends." He sank his voice almost to a whisper, speaking deliberately.
"Now tell us why you didn't feel real sick until you seen your dead
uncle's face looking at you----"
"Look out!" screamed the prisoner. He flinched back, pointing with one
arm wildly, and flinging up the other across his face as though to shut
out a sight of danger. There was a rattle of wheels behind them.
Judson Green pivoted on his heel, with the thought of runaways springing
up to his mind. But Mr. Cassidy, wiser in the tricks of the hunter and
the hunted, made a darting grab with both hands for the shoulder which
he had released. His greedy fingers closed on space. The suspect, with a
desperate and unexpected agility, had given his body a backward nimble
fling that carried him sprawling through a gap between the ornamental
bushes fringing the park sward. Instantly he was up and, with never a
backward glance, was running across the lower, narrower verge of Indian
Field, making for the trees which edged it thickly upon the east. He
could run fast, too. Nor were there men in front to hinder him, since
because of the rain, coming down in a thin drizzle, the wide, sloped
stretch of turf was for this once bare of ball-players and cricket
teams.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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