Adventure, July 1, 1928 — page 37: what you’re looking at

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

THE DUKE AND THE DUCATS 31° hand right then. Ivers might realize, from the result of the game, that his share in the plot was known. For a second Daly hesitated. Outside the noise had died away somewhat. The battle seemed to have shifted down the street. There were shots from a distance now. Daly lifted the telephone. First he’d get the Laredo flight in action. The bandits were riding, doubtless, and they had fifteen miles to go. They could be cut off at the river. “No use of that,” Ivers wheezed. “Somebody—Jed Conklin, I guess—cut the lines between here and Laredo.” The silent Daly speedily verified that information. “So long,” he said evenly. going.” “Wait a minute!” Ivers said in alarm. ‘What are you going to—”’ “Get after Tex, of course.” Daly was standing at the door, seem- ingly utterly composed. “You can’t do that! They’d kill Tex perhaps. What can you do to interfere?” “T can fly after ’em.” Daly’s shadowed eyes were on the heavy jowled face, and perhaps some- thing in them gavé his thoughts away. If final proof were needed of Ivers’ par- ticipation in the scheme, he had it then. “I won’t let you do it, for the sake of Tex and Bill,”’ Ivers told him, and a new note had crept into his voice. His hand, apparently casually, strayed toward a desk drawer. In a split second Daly’s mind was made up. Time was precious, but Ivers had an excuse to hold him there. He could pretend it was for the best interests of MacDowell. Daly’s gun was out in a second. “The hell you will,” he said icily. “Ivers, I’m going and gomg’now. [ll tie you up so you can’t interfere, on any pretext whatever. Don’t move.” Inwardly he was thinking: “If my ship was already out of com- mission he’d let me go out there. Those guards of his weren’t instructed to monkey with it unless it was necessary.” For a few seconds Ivers sat there, like a “Pm huge Buddha. He seemed eyeless, and there was a sudden effect of utter coldness in him. It was as though the flesh were petrified, but the spirit within radiating vitality. “Before you make a move, Daly,” he said slowly, his lips barely moving, “I’m telling you you’d better not. You’ve got the drop on me, but you’d better not.” “He’s thoroughly scared at the idea of me getting into the air,” Daly thought with controlled exultation. “Why not?” he asked aloud. “T’ll go to any lengths, for MacDowell’s sake, to keep you from interfering. Even to the extent of telling you that if you do this crazy thing there’ll be a certain young man arrested immediately for the murder of one Jim Fitzpatrick, within a few miles of this place, several years ago.”’ Something seemed to snap inside Daly. He knew that what he had been dreading, subconsciously, all along had happened. He could see the headlines now: “Government Agent Accused of Murder in Border Barroom.” S HE stood there in the barren office, with the noise of Verona washing up through the windows, there were a few seconds in which he saw the structure he had built for himself crashing around him. The past would be spread for the country to read. Professional gambler, murderer—now a Government agent. Disgraced,.he would drop out of the niche he had worked so hard to carve for himself. That the murder had been self-defense would make no difference. He had nothing to fear from the law, except exposure. He faced the fact that he would be an outcast, a branded crook. And the hateful, terrible days when he had been forced to live a life he loathed with people whom he despised, would come back. The height to which he had lifted himself by his bootstraps through ten years of effort would be lost in one plunge. As he raised his eyes to those lines of light in Ivers’ face there was something in them which made Ivers say hastily: comnlicloooks.com