Plentywood herald. [volume] (Plentywood, Mont.) 1908-current, 1930-01-23

be worth touching?"
"~Blackmail-a mugs game for our
sort" snarled the other. Forget it,
you fool. A man who's done murder
is an unhealthy Teller for you an me
to tackle"
"Well-what about the other, over
in Santa Orca? He'd pay good money
to clear himself and get back to the
Manor"
YES" said the other, furiously, an
you'll feel fine standin' up before a
court giving evidence on his behalf.
Anxious to have your record mauled
over by the police, hey?"
"Cripes, mol" quavered the other.
But it might be done cunning"
ut can't be, you bonehead. How
will the chap clear himself unless he
brings in Slick Sam? An then Samll
drag me in, and I'll drag you. They'll
we want forgotten, an as accessories,
too. You know how the police deal
with us? I'm not anxious to go back
to stir, an l don't suppose you want
to, either. Thought not-then you keep
your trap shut. / don't know that l
haven't been a darn fool talking, as it
is. Who knows who is on the other
side of the partition listening?"
Husky voice uttered an oath and
sprang up, and Owen Sayce, who knew
enough of the theory of adventure, at
least, to know when to make himself
scarce, slipped silently out of the saloon
bar into the misty street. The crooks
never saw him-and he never saw them.
Owen Sayce was a clerk. He had
been a clerk from the day when his
fathers death and bankruptcy had
ended his school days and put him
into the care of an aunt. She was
a most genteel kind of aunt. She it
was who had decided that both the sea
and the colonies were far too trough"
for anything bearing the name Of
Sayce, and had got her lawyer to find
Owen a position in the Domestic In
surance corporation, a firm celebrated
for the tone" Of its employees.
owen was a good clerk; it was GER
tain that at the age of fifty he would
be at the head Of quite a responsible
department in the office. To Owen the
prospect seemed like a form of slow
death. Queer, that, for when his aunt
heard of it through her lawyer she
said she felt she could die happy.
1t was an additional bitterness to
Owen that he looked exactly what he
was. He was tall and thin, he stopped
a trifle, and he was pale. He was
also very quiet and retiring because
he was absurdly sensitive. Because of
all this he was passed over by his
more robust fellow clerks, male and
female, as a spiritless and bookish fell
low. Owen Sayce rather agreed with
them.
They would have been more than
perturbed had they known that, after
his aunt's death, he went straight to
his lodgings each evening, put on old
clothes and wandered off into neigh
borhoods full of aliens and the oaths
of seamen in the hope of satisfying the
urgent craving within him.
But nothing had ever happened to
him; nothing ave this chance heard
tale of murder. And he'd rather that
hadn't. 1t made him Uneasy and
wretched rather than thrilled him.
He had heard the true facts of a
murder. Since he was a decent and
honorable man, and since another man
and more, a brave WOman-Were out
cast and suffering because of this mis-
carriage Of justice, there was nothing
else to do but to go to the police
whether his s~ensitiveness loathed the
idea or not.
When he realized that though he had
heard much, he knew next to nothing
at all about the murder, his difident
heart thought the thing heayen-sent.
1t was q fact. He knew nothing worth
while.
All he had wa a string OF unrelated
names. some of them merely nick