Page:Argosy All-story Weekly v123 n03 (1920-07-24).djvu/174

456 protested. "It was my own brother—I never meant to tell—I was weak—selfish—blind!"

"You're here now—" began Brent.

"Do you know why?" she asked, her eyes misty. "It's because, as I came into court this morning—passing a little room just down the hall—I heard that parrot scolding: "Elsie! Where are you Elsie!"

"I couldn't forget it," gasped Peggy. "Where was I? Where was the little girl who used to hide herself away in the most amazing places to read—whose mother used to call for her until the parrot took it up? Sometimes, atfirst, I pretended not to hear so the parrot would call. I had strayed a long way—a very long way. Everything had changed. I was a different person, I had grown up into a new world—then that parrot, and its words—I was a little girl again—that's why I'm here."

The girl sobbed.

Some one was opening the door from the court-room. There were rapid steps, then the door at the nearer end of the passage-way opened to admit the judge.

But Brent and the girl never told their stories, for before they had a chance to speak the judge exclaimed: "Dr. Brent! Just the man we want!”

ENROE'S throat was dry as he heard Pendleton's terrific arraignment of Madden. The prosecutor condemned him not alone to the death that the law exacts, but down into hell itself. Genroe ached from the long continued constraint in which he had been standing at the transom. The vial had been emptied of its powdered contents.

Now Baldridge was making his last stand in a lost cause. Baldridge was at his best in summing up, but Pendleton had delivered himself with tremendous effect. Genroe knew what was going to happen to Madden. Still, the fascination of it held the man who listened at the transom.

Counsel for the defense was working up his final plea when the trial of "Shufflin' Joe" Madden was swept from an orderly proceeding into a wild storm.

Breathless and tense at the transom, Bob Genroe, who believed he was alone in the darkened room, heard a shrill voice behind him cry: "Elsie, Elsie, where are you, Elsie?"

Like the slash of a knife those words came from the darkness—from the past.

With a scream Genroe straightened up, lost his balance, pitched to the floor.

At that cry of terror every sound in the court-room was silenced. The thud of Genroe's body and the crash of the overturned chair were plainly heard, and above them the parrot's high-pitched complaint: "What's the matter! What's the matter!"

The first to reach the room found Genroe rolling on the floor, moaning: "I didn't kill her! I didn’t kill her!"

The judge had immediately ordered the court-room cleared, then, with the prosecutor, Baldridge, Madden, and the jurymen, had crowded into the anteroom with the parrot shrieking its endless cries.

But after his first protests of innocence, Genroe only kept groaning: "I'll die. Get a doctor! I'm going to die. A doctor!"

Among others the judge had gone off to telephone—and found Brent.

"We've got to keep him alive. He knows something," said the judge excitedly, as Brent and he hurried to the room where Genroe lay, leaving Peggy where Brent had found her.

Brent was still in the dark as to whom the judge was speaking of, and was until, in brushing past Madden, he heard the man whispering hoarsely over and over: "It's him! It's Genroe! It’s him!"

Brent's first glance told him the man stretched on the floor was in a bad way. Internal injuries, and, probably, from the way he breathed, a lung punctured by a rib. Perhaps other and more serious hurts. An examination would tell. He asked the others to withdraw.

No sooner were they alone than Genroe asked jerkily: "You're Brent, aren't you?"

Brent nodded.

"And—you know—Elsie?"

"Yes," said Brent, continuing his swift examination.