Adventure, December 3, 1920 — page 148: what you’re looking at

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

138 with its Mongol character and I kept silence. Before this, I’ve found that the impossible frequently does exist and usually at the wrong time. Sir Fandi Singh said no more until he halted the car at the corner I had designated. Then he made a brief remark. “Our best chance,” he said, Death is so rotten with opium that his brain will be sodden without it. He was one of the priests. Turned traitor to them—that’s why Hat Shui was after him. They never fail to get their man. Well, good luck! Aw revoir.” I bade him good night, and he sped away. The evening was still early. I walked along California Street, the rain-coat buttoned to the throat to conceal my collarless condition, and turned into one of those hand-me-down shops that keep open for the hophead and Chinese night-trade. Having plenty of money, I bought a complete outfit from hat to shoes, then re- traced my steps to one of the modest but good hotels in the neighborhood and engaged a room. Five minutes later I was at peace with the world and indulging in a good cigar. Privacy! It tasted fine after the lurid events of this day and evening. So far as any danger from the police was concerned, I never bothered my head on this score—not for a minute. Of course, two of them had my face in their minds, and the whole crowd would get a perfect de- scription of me, but they would never know me again. I had no distinctive marks. Dress in an entirely different manner. Take charcoal from a burnt match, mix with water and apply the result beneath your lip and around your eyes, and soon. Then buy a pair of these big black horn spectacles and get a close haircut. If you do the job right, you could fool your own brother. So, as I say, I had no fear of the dicks. It was a good "gamble, and the betting favored me at large odds. Dismissing this from my mind, the next thing was to take stock. I had plenty of money of my own, and the roll of bills taken from Hat Shui was in my pocket—five hundred in that. Then, the rubies, six of the little beauties. Af- ter these, the box of opium-pellets from Death’s trunk. My own automatic pistol. The card which Sir Fandi Singh had given me: Take a bench in Union Square, near the women’s reserved section on the St. Francis side of the park, between twelve and one tomorrow. When had the Rajput scribbled this penciled instruction? Not after getting into the car, certainly. Then he must have written it im- mediately after I had left the three friends in the kitchen, immediately after calling to me that he had a car waiting. “Gad, but you’re a cool outfit!” I reflected admiringly. “You don’t take chances. You prepare for every emergency and you act like “is that James | Adventure >. ~~ a whip-crack. I’ve missed something not know- ing you three chaps before. And the way Kilgore was toting that corpse out of sight, too! No lack of money.” What were they experimenting with, and why had James Death been watching them? To this, no answer. To obey that final warning from Sir Fandi Singh, was a difficult matter. In the Gobi? Well, I had been along the fringes of it, and naturally I had heard the stories about the temple of the Ten Drome- daries. Naturally, too, I had discounted the tales as every sensible man does, particularly if he has a drop of canny Scotch blood in his veins. it sounded too dashed romantic, and well I knew the lack of romance in that accursed region, where every man carries his leather head-bag and the poor devils of camels will wear out a set of stout shoes in a week. No two people go into the Gobi and comé out with the same story—and right. No two sections of it are alike. The buried cities are there; I’ve seen them. The gravel and bare rock is there. “The sand is there. But romance? No, no! A good shaggy Bactrian will outstink anything on earth except another Bactrian, and where two or three of these are gathered to- gether, I defy any sane man to find romance. If the temple of the Ten Dromedaries did exist and the priests did exist and all the rest of it, I knew that I had better respect the warning and think about other things, So, when my cigar was finished, I shoved the whele affair out of my mind and rolled inte bed. UPON waking up in the morning it was to find myself a new man, or, rather the old Craig Day again. The temple of the Ten Dromedaries, ten priests, ten novices, ten virgins and all the rest of the farrago, flashed into my head and I broke out laughing in the midst of my bath. To think of a filthy old yellow devil, a slant-eyed Meon- golian, an ignorant worshiper of images, squatting down in the sand and pulling off mental stunts that would make the combined heads of the Royal Societies go swimming! “Nonsense!” I exclaimed cheerfully to my new shirt. ‘Nonsense! Craig, you’ve become your own sensible, sonsy self again. I must have been worked up to a nervous edge last night, and no mistake.” Cheerful? Mightily so. The stimulus of my present situation was a tonic. Not dangerous, in the least; but enough out of ordinary civilized ruts to be interesting tonic. When I was all rigged out in my new togs, I set about getting the proper shadows on my face, then went forth into the big city. Breakfast, then a haircut, then a spectacle- shop. These three enterprises kept me at work COMIC OOO K<S Gom ‘ te a adi ass p2N s oP . ‘ ie © { 25