"
Before I could speak, she asked hurriedly, "How often do you come to
Chicago?"
I took that to be a sort of command that I was to wait, and though
longing to have it settled then and there, I braked myself up and
answered her question. Now I see what a duffer I was--Madge told
me afterward that she asked only because she was so frightened and
confused that she felt she must stop my speaking for a moment.
I did my best till I heard the whistle the locomotive gives as it
runs into yard limits, and then rose. "Good-by, Miss Cullen," I said,
properly enough, though no death-bed farewell was ever more gloomily
spoken; and she responded, "Good-by, Mr. Gordon," with equal
propriety.
I held her hand, hating to let her go, and the first thing I knew, I
blurted out, "I wish I had the brass of Lord Ralles!"
"I don't," she laughed, "because, if you had, I shouldn't be willing
to let you--"
And what she was going to say, and why she didn't say it, is the
concern of no one but Mr. and Mrs. Richard Gordon.
THE RISEN DEAD
BY MAX PEMBERTON
CHAPTER I
The sun was setting on the second day of June, in the year 1701, when
Pietro Falier, the Captain of the Police of Venice, quitted his office
in the Piazzetta of St. Mark and set out, alone, for the Palace of
Fra Giovanni, the Capuchin friar, who lived over on the Island of the
Guidecca.
"I shall return in an hour," he said to his subordinate as he stepped
into the black gondola which every Venetian knew so well.
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