The Project Gutenberg EBook of 32 Caliber, by Donald McGibeny

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Title: 32 Caliber

Author: Donald McGibeny

Illustrator: Hugh Mackey

Release Date: September 27, 2007 [EBook #22781]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 32 CALIBER ***

Produced by Al Haines

32 CALIBER

by

Donald McGibeny

Frontispiece by

HUGH MACKEY

[Transcriber's note: frontispiece missing from book]

INDIANAPOLIS

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT 1920

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I BRING JIM HERE II TWO MEN AND A WOMAN III I COULD KILL HIM IV THE WORST HAPPENS V ACCIDENT OR MURDER VI A CLUE AND A VERDICT VII I TURN DETECTIVE VIII IT LOOKS BAD FOR HELEN IX LOOK OUT, JIM X I ACCUSE ZALNITCH XI A DOUBLE INDICTMENT XII WHO AM I XIII WE PLAN THE DEFENSE XIV BULLET PROOF XV THE ANSWER XVI THE MECHANICIAN XVII RED CAPITULATES XVIII I LISTEN TO MY FOREBEARS

32 CALIBER

CHAPTER ONE

BRING JIM HERE

I was in the locker-room of the country-club, getting dressed after the best afternoon of golf I had ever had. I had just beaten Paisley "one-up" in eighteen holes of the hardest kind of sledding.

If you knew Paisley you'd understand just why I was so glad to beat him. He is a most insufferably conceited ass about his golf, for a man who plays as badly as he does; in addition to which he usually beats me. It's not that Paisley plays a better game, but he has a way of making me pull my drive or over-approach just by his confounded manner of looking at me when I am getting ready to play.

We usually trot along about even until we come to the seventh hole—in fact, I'm usually ahead at the seventh—and then conversation does me in. You see, the seventh hole can be played two ways. There's a small clay bank that abuts the green and you can either play around or over it to the hole, which lies directly behind. The real golfers play over with a good mashie shot that lands them dead on the green, but dubs, like Paisley, play around with two easy mid-iron shots. When we get to the place where the choice must be made, Paisley suggests that I go around, which makes me grip my mashie firmly, recall all the things I have read in the little book about how to play a mashie shot, and let drive with all my force, which usually lands me somewhere near the top of the clay bank, where it would take a mountain goat to play the next shot. After that, Paisley and I exchange a few hectic observations and my temperature and score mount to the highest known altitude.

Of course, every now and then, I forget my stance and Paisley long enough to send the ball in a beautiful parabola right on to the green, and when I do—oh, brother!—the things I say to Paisley put him in such a frame of mind that I could play the rest of the course with a paddle and a basket-ball and still beat him. This particular afternoon he had tried to play the seventh hole as it should be played, and though we had both foozled, I had won the hole and romped triumphantly home with the side of pig.

I was gaily humming to myself as I put on my clothes when James Felderson came in. His face was drawn and his mouth was set in a way that was utterly foreign to Jim, whose smile has done more to keep peace in committee meetings and to placate irate members than all other harmonizing agencies in the club put together. There was something unnatural, too, about his eyes, as though he had been drinking.

"Have you seen Helen?" he demanded in a thick voice.

"No. Not to-day," I answered. "What's the matter, Jim? Anything wrong?"

Felderson has been my law partner ever since he married my sister Helen. I had left him at the office just before lunch and he had seemed then as cheerful and unperturbed as usual.

"Helen has gone with Frank Woods!" he burst out, his voice breaking as he spoke.

It took a second for me to grasp the meaning of what he said, then I grabbed him by the shoulder.

"Jim, Jim, what are you saying?"

My sister—left her husband—run off with another man! I had read of such things in stories, but never had I believed that real people, in real life and of real social position, ever so disgraced themselves. Every one knew that Frank Woods had been seeing a lot of Helen, and several close friends had asked me if Jim knew the man's reputation. I had even spoken to Helen, only to be laughed at, and assured that it was the idle gossip of scandal-mongers. That she should have left Jim, darling old Jim, for Frank Woods, or any other man, was unthinkable. Jim sank on a bench and turned a face to me that had grown utterly haggard.

"It's true, Bupps! I found this on the table when I went home to lunch."

He held out a crumpled note written in Helen's rather mannish back-hand.

"Jim,

"It is now ten-thirty. Frank is coming for me at eleven. He has made me realize that, loving him the way I do, I would be doing you a horrible injustice to keep up the wretched pretense of being your wife.

"Had you left any other way open, I would have taken it, but you refused a divorce. I hate to hurt you the way I must, but try to understand and forgive me.

"Helen."

I turned toward Jim. His chin was sunk in his hands. Two men came in from the tennis-courts and nodded as they went by.

"What have you done?" I asked.

He raised his head, and on his face was written incalculable misery.

"Nothing!" he answered, dropping his hands hopelessly. "What can I do, except let them go and get a divorce as soon as possible? It's my fault. After we—quarreled the other night, she asked me to divorce her, and I refused. God, Bupps! If you only knew how much I love her and how hard I've tried to make her love me. And she did love me till Woods came along."

I hurried up my dressing, turning over in my mind the details of Jim's married life. In the light of the latest developments, I realized the painful fact that I was partly to blame myself. Helen hadn't really loved Jim when she married him. Oh, she'd loved him in the same way she'd loved a lot of other men whom she'd been more or less engaged to at one time or another. She had married Jim, because it had been the thing to do that year, to get married; and she realized that Jim loved her more and could give her more than any of the others. Where I came in was that I had urged her to marry Jim because he was the best man in the world and because I wanted him for my brother-in-law.

I remembered now how cold Helen had been, even during their