Adventure Magazine Cover — page 177: what you’re looking at

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

| "Crooks 4 e traveling in the Orient at the time and had had nothing at all to do with the affair. He _ was sick too, he said, and in no condition to play the fugitive, though he felt, and rightly - enough I supposed, that Steve Ellis would kill him if he got the chance. Likely enough he would make the chance. Take any sort of. strong, bold man, throw him into prison twice and he will probably comé out of it desperate, danger- ous, reckless. As nearly as I could gather _ from what I heard and what I suspected, _ Ellis had not only been jealous’ of him, but held him almost equally responsible for the things that made him, Ellis, so eager for vengeance against the brother. So it was that Daniel Cornwall disap- deared, taking Quiller with him. Quiller afterward came back to learn Cora’s address, with a view toward recovering the precious box. Joseph did not know it. He advised Quiller to come to my cousin, or to me. Quiller lurked about until he got a word with Jack, but the word Jack gave him was to go to —— where he belonged. Quiller did not approach me, perhaps for fear that he might land in the same locality with Taggart. I smiled over all that excitement about the little black box which, for all of its walue and importance, had not been, opened in years. But things happened rapidly. Shortly afterward a battered body was found on the waterfront, and by clothes, papers and purse was unquestionably identified as Daniel Cornwall’s. The police got their hands on Quiller and held him in jail because he could tell no satis- factory story, and whenever a millionaire is murdered the police insist on at least pre- tending to have the guilty party. Joseph was badly frightened and wanted to have Steve Ellis arrested, but nobody could find him. He had come to New York and he knew the Cornwall address. About the time the body was found he had tele- phoned, demanding to see Cora. He swore that he would see his daughter. Joseph wrote me that Ellis was very -angryaboutit. He said, in effect, that since Daniel was out of the way—the papers had given the tribute of headlines to the Salt Lake millionaire—he would ignore Joseph if he would “do the right thing by the girl.” Joseph, with the moneyed man’s usual viewpoint, could not understand what could a man, he wrote me plaintively, do more than he had for the girl? “T am afraid he will kill her,”’ = old man wrote. His letter was not so much to give me explanations as to beg me to come to see him, and of course that meant to protect him. He was very broken up over Cora. Did I know where she was? I did. I knew more than that. I knew what she had overheard when the Corn- walls, not suspecting that she was bending above the top of the stairs, quarreled. She had fled in tears and anger and rage © and bewilderment. She did not know where - to go or what to do, but she wanted her father whom she had thought was still in prison.’ She tumbled into a cheap rooming- house as it seemed to fit her humiliation as well as her purse. She scorned the Corn- wall money—the old fellows had not been sO very generous in spending allowance— and sent for Jack Richmond. She confided with him, and he came breath- less to repeat it to me. I called on her, but. she was a little afraid of me; yet she con- firmed to me all that Jack had reported. She had overheard terrible things. oue did not know what to do. In tears she confessed that re had trapped Jack in the restaurant with the plea of no money and brought him home. The Cornwalls had forced her to do it. She seemed at that time to owe them so much that there was nothing which she would have refused to do for them, though it made her feel ashamed to lie. I understood. I had from the first under- stood all about the craft the Cornwalls thought they were using in getting in touch with me through Jack. I am an unsympathetic person, but, having heard Cora’s story, I was a little affected. She was a fine girl. I was con- vinced of that. I joined with Jack in urging her to go into better surroundings and to let us engage a companion for her. She refused. However, I did oppose Jack’s insistence , on marrying her forthwith. My impetuous “cousin and J had an exchange of remarks. I tried to impress upon him that he would be a dunce to marry her before this trouble was over. He would have been, too. He exploded ill-temperedly and said many angry things. He wanted to marry her and have the ss See = dillis meant by the ics thing.” How _ legal right to tell the world to go hang, and = ‘