Adventure, August 3, 1919 — page 79: what you’re looking at

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

started for Maxon. Maxon did the natural thing for him; he whirled and ran. I could hardly have s ats him if I had tried. He brushed me back against Miss Maxon ' and half-way through the dining-room ss door, and Hardridge tore after him without ‘a a word, > There was a chair near the end of the wall, and Maxon had sanity enough left to push 3 it before him through the window. He ; followed the chair head first, and Hardridge plunged through the opening after him. I was delayed a little in unlocking the 4 door. I stepped out into a fantastic hollow + of ragged rocks, flooded here at the ravine’s . beginning with moonlight. There was a narrow pass to the right, but Maxon had missed that pass. And he and Hardridge were leaping like shadows straight down toward Land’s End. Maxon seemed to be straining to stop. Perhaps he saw the railing and memory came to him of what was beyond it. But his pace was so great and the grade was so steep that he could not check himself all at once, and he brought up against the railing with such force that it creaked and sagged outward under the impact. But it still held. > ‘And Hardridge clutched him. But, by the time I got close enough to see clearly, Maxon had seized Hardridge’s wrists and was prying them outward and slowly loosing Hardridge’s grip on his throat. He wrenched Hardridge’s hands away, and Hardridge gripped him around the body. ; But Maxon gripped him likewise and began to bend Hardridge’s body backward, “Oh, they’ll be killed. Can’t you— Oh!” Miss Maxon had come up, frightened, sobbing. She would have run up to them | and thus put herself in danger, but I held if her back. | “My dear Miss Maxon! My ‘dear’ Miss ‘ a 8 on!”’ _ There was nothing else I could say. T turned and saw how very like an open door was the end of the cafion. Beyond that door the sky sparkled with stars, and the waters beneath the stars reflected their light. But the water at the base of the cliff must have been too unquiet to | reflect it. I could hear it roaring as it ast ae over the rocks, and I imagined it *y eg oa and hungry nee ae * e3 “4 Rogues’ End 69 thon Maxon. One more look I took at the place where the two men had struggled. Then I stepped between Miss Maxon and that place and urged her gently back toward “Can’t you stop them!” cried Miss ‘ ; 7 Cragcastle. For Hardridge, knowing him- ; self overmastered, had suddenly yielded and somehow dragged Maxon with him 4 under the railing. Maxon gripped the edge of the rock, but Hardridge tore his grip relentlessly away. And so there came an end to the bad beginning made many years before. I reflected, as I picked a way up the uneven cafion bottom, that the quivering woman whom I led would probably some day be mistress of Cragcastle, since her father was now heir to the Maxon fortune. In that case they could well afford the loss of the sapphire. ax.) WE PARTED at the base of the mountain, Miss Maxon and I. It was not late, and we could go different ways quite unnoticed into Mill Valley and thence to San Francisco. If the thing that had happened at Cragcastle were ever discovered, there was no possi- q bility that she’d be connected with it, even , in thought. Whileas for me.... . , “I’m sorry you're going back to China,” = she said. » Of course she would be, for I’d told her absolutely nothing of my errand there, unraveling the mystery of the Ko Lao Hui leadership. If she had known what was ahead of me, she would have been glad my eagerness to be at it was to be “a gratified. ‘You have been—well, fine,” she said. I murmured a few deprecating phrases. _ “And—wonderful. I’ve been trying to guess—how much of it all you had planned out ahead. The escape of Hardridge, for Instance.”’ “Well?” TI questioned noncommittedly. “You pretended it was accidental. But I found the string with which you pulled 7, back the bolt of the closet door. That was * no accident.” ~ “Maybe not,” I replied. th Frankly, it pleased me a little that she had discovered it. “And then you knew—that father moti inherit— “Miss Maxon,’ Bod sad, “there's no py ™*, ee i a pa” + f oe ~