Who Was Guilty? Two Dime Novels (2005) by Philip S. Warne Howard W. Macy

Author:Philip S. Warne, Howard W. Macy [Philip S. Warne, Howard W. Macy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781932009262
Publisher: Crippen & Landru
Published: 2017-06-04T21:00:00+00:00

MURDER WILL OUT

Narrated by Abel Harkness

Being the Confession of a Man Whom Avarice Drove to Crime

The Harknesses have always been a bad lot. My gentle sister Angela was so different from the rest that I have heard my father, half in bitterness, half in tenderness, call her a changeling. Her daughter Gertrude inherited the Harkness temper, but was free from all taint of its meaner vices. In Arthur, on the other hand, there was a nearer return to the old worthlessness. He was vain and petty and mean, and everything else that grows out of thorough selfishness.

I appealed to that selfishness, that vanity, and he joined me in opposition to Morton Coverly; for, from the very start, I conceived the purpose of marrying Jack to Gertrude’s fortune. Do not think that I was disinterestedly making provision for his worthlessness. On the contrary, I expected to be recompensed for my labors in dollars and cents. Again, do you suppose that I trusted to his generosity after he had come into the fortune for which I had schemed? I knew him better! Our arrangements were more business-like than that. I had his acknowledgment of indebtedness in writing!

I feel no delicacy about making public this which the world will call infamous. What I have yet to tell will so far overshadow it that, ere I am done, it will have been forgotten in the greater infamy!

Jack had not the stamina to prosecute this scheme. He would not sacrifice a moment of present pleasure for the uncertainty of a whole lifetime of ease in the possible future. I had many a wordy contest with him; but it ended in his throwing the whole thing up, and yawning in my face. The Harknesses were never filial!

After this defeat I cast about for some device by which I could secure a competence for my declining years. All the early part of my life had been a pitiful sham—real, sordid poverty beneath a mask of wealth. I resolved that my brother-in-law’s half million should not slip through my fingers, without an effort to improve the opportunities it offered.

Then, in an evil moment, I yielded to the fascinations of speculation! That delusive siren had kept me on the “ragged edge” of disappointment all my life; and, on assuming the guardianship of my brother’s wealth 1 had registered a vow never again to so much as look upon the Chicago grain-market—that maelstrom which had swallowed up all the money I ever possessed.

“But,” said the tempter, “all your life you have been so wretchedly cramped. Your means have always failed just when you were on the eve of success. Look at that time, two years ago, when a half per cent—a pitiful five hundred dollars! —would have bridged over a single day of depression, and netted you a profit of nearly ten thousand! Although you might have raised the sum by hook or by crook, you dared not risk sinking it with all the rest, because it would leave you

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