Adventure, August 3, 1919 — page 78: what you’re looking at

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

' ; I. 68 | Adventure . Maxon’s breathing quickened, while I— Well, I held in my almost literally the key to the unexpected, and m tism was pleasantly stirred. yee Maxon came out of the library, now with a quickened movement and on tiptoe. He passed our door, bent over, fleeing. We heard something. Was it a bolt that ree been drawn? John Maxon stopped ort, ‘ A door was flung violently open. It was the door behind which Hardridge, up to a scanty thirty seconds before, had been confined. And instantly I stepped out into the hall behind Maxon, In fact, I stepped out and Hardridge burst out at the same minute. The effect was that we faced each other in the well-lighted hall with Maxon midway between us. Hardridge looked—well, to exaggerate but slightly, like a devil’s nightmare come alive, crouching for the spring. For, of course, he mstantly thought of me, whom he’d got into the habit of trying to kill. But he saw Maxon in the hall instead and then me over Maxon’s shoulder, and ‘ bewilderment flashed into his’ face and matched his rage. The doubt I’d tried to suggest to him, suddenly reinforced, checked his rush. I had intended, when I'd shaped matters so far, to put that doubt fairly in the form of a question, but John Maxon himself made it unnecessary, had answered that question before it was asked in a gesture of self-betrayal. He staggered back— threw up his hands. “Hardridge!” he croaked, Something in his right-hand left a streak of light behind it, like a shooting star, And Hardridge, arriving at the truth too quickly for memory or logic, recognizing his enemy by a species of instinct, would have leaped in dreadful silence at Maxon’s throat. But I jerked my revolver up and covered them both, “One minute,” I said. ‘Well, Maxon. Yes, I'm the man. I'm the man your tool, Osborne, picked to take your place here. Keep back, Hardridge. No, there’ll be no killing here—not till I find out what it’s all about, anyway. “Speak up, Hardridge,”’ I ordered, turn- ing from Maxon’s twitching features to Hardridge’s inflamed and deadly face, “What have you against this man?” “That, —— him!” exploded Hardridge.. “That traitor and thief! He money that would have saved me from formers—— “He has a license to talk, he has,” quavered Maxon, standing sidéwise in the hall, alternately glancing apprchensively at Hardridge and i at me. Unhappy, indeed, was his situation, his only hope of life being in me, whom he'd planned to dupe to the same death that now threatened him. “Come “Who was he?” I asked Maxon. to the point, quick.” “He! He was a dirty gambling-house keeper and dive-keeper and worse. Ki of crookdom through his pull in the City Hall. And the money he says I stole was a slush fund to keep the politician crooks in office. Because the other side won and he went to San Quentin where he belonged, he blamed me——” “You whining sneak,” cried Hardri “you were thick enough with us while going was good,” ‘That'll do, the pair of you,” Isaid. “I quite understand.” I did, wellenough. Details were missing, ~ but they were unessential. These two were part of the ring that had in the old days debauched the city government of San Francisco. To me that crime con- stitutes one of the baser forms of treason, and I admit my finger twitched to shoot them both. Then I thought of the sapphire. I'd formed no definite plan as to acquiring it once John Maxon had taken it out of its hiding-place. Circumstances must guide me, and—here were the circumstances. I SUPPOSE in a way I was re- oe sponsible for what followed. I sup- pose that my apparent indecision encouraged Hardridge, and I may. even have stepped a little to one side. But I know I didn’t plan the thing or even foresee it. I did have a peculiar flashing vision of that dark cation at the rear of the house, that sake ae Sejees smooth, steep, narrowing sides and its dipping ever more rapidly toward the jumping-off place at the end. Anyway, all of a sudden Hardridge ~ comicbooks.com — a S| Ue