The Wolf Point herald. (Wolf Point, Mont.) 1913-1940, 1925-05-14

u BtuSSICSS3 ihbi-tiNt PATTERN
A crisis came on one of those warm
evenings which descend suddenly upoa
the chill Of the winter and tell of an
impatient, hasty, headlong spring,
which has crept up through the open
country and IN at dusk to the gates
of the cities. Some musical perform
ance, long since forgotten by Brena.
took the pair out until nearly eleven
and Parmalee wanted to walk home
through the moonlight. A sleepy ele-
vator man took them up in a chaste,
white and gold car to their apartment
door.
Goodnight" said Brena. Good
night, Compton. You seemed tonight
more like Yourself"
He laughed and waved to her as she
went down the corridor to her cham
bers. She switched on the wall lights
of her dressing room, bedroom and
bath, and undressed ~leisurely before
the long mirror, looking about her as
her memory tool her back to the hot
room under the roof at Mrs. Wilkes
with its yellow vanished woodwork
and its plaster walls, stained a hideous
thermic orange, its little red ants thai
no eradicator ever e%radicated and the
screams of the baby coming out of a
window in the next house. Nothing
in the luxurious quarters she now oc-
cupied could remind one of Mrs. Will
kie's unless it were the picture of the
A0rnnO1;< That ho6 h01On god tn
Brena's father, still in its battered
frame and hanging above her bed.
And yet she stopped braiding her red
bronze hair as one of those strange
calls of wistful longing for the past,
even for the tragic or the sordid past,
that m to all of us, came to her.
No one would credit her with re-
%membering some few years afterward
the exact contents of her thoughts at
this moment, were it not a fact that
the thought itself had been interrupted
and therefore engraved by three quick
successive pistol shots.
They came and went as revolver
cracks do behind heavy closed doors
with a muffled %thudding she knew
what they were. They were followed
by a little crash as Of a vase falling.
Her first thought was that Parmalee
had killed himself. Perhaps If her
mind had been less active she would
have screamed, flung open the door
and rushed out, expecting the horrors
of a suicide; she remembered, how
ever, that there had been three shots,
more than the number usually fired by
one who seeks destruction. Brena
concluded that whatever the menace
her husband had feared, it now had
proved its reality. She has said since
that, for the moment, she at least be-
lieved, and even in her startled breath
ing she formed the words, 1T is some
fault of mine.'
The turning out of her own lights
disclosed the fact that the corridor be-
yond the crack under her w door
was dark also. From it came no
sound. except for the distant purr of
the elevator taking up some yawn-
ing after-theater homecomers. Brena
could only hear her own heart.
Without the dangerous background
of light behind her, she opened the
door cautiously and the moons rays
on the carpet beneath her feet went
forward across the carpet in the cor
ridor like sliding fingers.
"Stand back, Brena. Don't get be-
tween me and him. He's at the end
of the hall" 1t was the voice of her
husband. look out. Pm going to
turn on the lights!"
A sudden rush of illumination filled
the corridor.
you are a fool !" said Brena.
~"
"You have shot the glass out of this
picture.9 She pointed to the large
Photographic print of 1.-The Man With
the Glove" that had been the one we'd
ding present sent after them from
Dallas by a Jewish cotton broker, once
one of Parmalee's bitter rivals. 1t
had been the subject of Brena's com
ment that the donor gave it in cele-
bration of Parmalee's retirement from
and she, disliking pictures on general
principles, a hung IT where 1t would
be seen the least.
II thought it was him." said Parma
lee, coming forward with the revolver
still in his hand.
"Him?" asked Brena. "Who, thenY'
"NNhy, a burglar" he said, still quiv-
ering with excitement.
"You saw only your wv moving re-
Election on the glass mixed into this
figure which you've decorated with
three bullet holes,' she said.
A knocking and ringing had begun
at the elevator door of the apartment.
Anything wrong, sir?' asked a
voice outside.
mo, no." Parmalee answered, feel
ing his way back till he could lean