Adventure, August 3, 1919 — page 131: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ie S _ receive-attention from other men: it would be perilous for her and for the men. Lania _ had first worn those earrings a year and more before and the eldest son of a lord had fallen in love with her. Lania and Paul DuBeque fled. The lord was notified by letter that reached to his English manor house that his son and heir had been hauled under by sharks. Gilbert Lang did not notice how she was watching him. He, too, was listening to DuBeque and looking again and again at Willerby. “He’s trying to make trouble. Look at the way the natives act! And pearling on your grounds! Here is the chance to catch that pirate. He—” indicating Gilbert— “can give you the details,” DuBeque con- cluded. Willerby’s fingers opened and shut writh- ingly on the arms of the chair, and his face grew red and more red with apoplectic rage. He looked Gilbert up and down and through him, too. Willerby was something of a judge of men. He sometimes said that none were to be trusted, which is a common opinion among men of large financial affairs, but still he had had to pick his traders, his agents and managers. He knew something of men, and he was trying to comprehend what that frail boy with the refined, not quite matured, face was doing with Williams. “So you're in with him, are you?” Willerby said hoarsely, menacingly. “No,” said Gilbert Lang; “I took pas- sage with him out of the Carolines. I know nothing about his business. He said he was an outlaw, and he has influence with the natives, and he is pearl-fishing. That is about all I know of him.” Now Gilbert Lang spoke the truth, and he was glad that he could say that and know it was true. He had no love for Williams, though a certain exasperating admiration— much like the charm of Uala—rose from time to time. But just at that moment, or rather afternoon and evening, he was glad to be able to say that they were not closely associated, scarcely acquaintances, certainly notfriends. = = . . A heavy guttural grunt rolled up from the chest of Jackson, who had been standing = ” ~~ " hile a 4. » 4 f &e pat . mat , ip + oe. - me : ” 121] with Jackson, angry with himself, angry with Williams. The huge sailor seemed silently expressing contempt for one who denied his friend. Now Gilbert Lang did not consider Williams his friend. He said so. He said so to Willerby, but it was for Jackson that hespoke. And every second Lania’s steady dark eyes, peering alertly from under slumbrous lids, were on him. “I’m glad to know that. Glad to know that, boy,” said Willerby, who believed him Willerby spoke not in a hospitable man- ner but rather as a judge who has dis- covered that the suspected person is inno- cent of everything but bad company. “But what are you doin’ down here? Tell me that.” Gilbert Lang was impaled by that ques- tion. Willerby required an answer. He assumed: the right to know the wherefore and why of every man’s presence if there was the remote chance of it interfering with the Willerby interests. Gilbert Lang could no more tell his story than he could have been gratuitously insulting. The rebuke that Williams had given him when he had ventured to mention the tragedy back of his request had left a scar deep within him, and, besides, here were many ears, none of them sympathetic. But Gilbert Lang could not pose as a trader or a scien- tist or any of those things. “Mr. Willerby,” he said, “I came down to the South Seas to rather look around, and I didn’t have the faintest idea that it was nearly as large as it is. I wouldn’t want to call myself an ‘adventurer’, but that is about the nearest to it.” “Has Williams been gettin’ pearls?” “Not that I know of.” “He’s got that gang of niggers with him, hasn’t he?” “Samoans and Tongans.” “By —— T'll get him and get him to- night!’ Willerby cried, springing up and not wholly unconscious of the dramatic value of his words and manner. _He was angry, but he was not too beside’ himself to note the admiring murmurs and eyes of his guests—if such a parasitical lot — could be called by that ancient and honor- - i « wi ~<y " Gilbert La cdl " Jacks 2 ablename. — _ __ ‘Gilbert Lang glancedathim. Jacksonsaid = “We'll steal a march on him,” Willerby — ys eS merely looked back at Gilbert Went on, interrupting the statement of ee a ee jut the look made the boy angry intentions at this point to curse the soul ol) 41> . ' - . - ; 7 _ impassively near-by. i “4 7 } - * 7 f “ <The pa” sand ud > = a . *, ~ - ae , > — 7; N a » t- 7 books.com a" Me o) * om * = ‘com Kl