Adventure Magazine Cover — page 182: what you’re looking at

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

172 She walked forward slowly. On her dark hair was the silver tinsel cap of a Persian dancer, and she was dressed for the sword- dance. Yet she swayed uncertainly, and her glazed eyes barely moved in their sockets. Under the rouge the woman was very pale and by this and the dark rings under her eyes the watching Moslems knew that she had been given the heavy stimulus of | drugs—probably bhang and opium mixed. Tala!” The girl looked at her father when he cried out, but her face did not change. She had been set on.her feet to do the dance that she had often given before Dom Gion. Yet, so were her faculties numbed, she could barely lift the sword or step forward. Still, she looked long at Rawul Singh. Hossein rose from the ground, his hand on the hilt of his sword. He had not im- agined that Dom Gion would allow Rawul Singh to see his daughter; the appearance of Tala, he knew, must foreshadow the blow that Dom Gion would strike. The young thug saw Tala snatched from his arms, and blood rushed to his head. For he fancied that he heard the shrill laugh of Dom Gion near him. The Rajput girl had stepped forward among the actors, until she was only a few feet from Rawul Singh, at whom she was still gazing in a bewildered fashion. Sight of his daughter painted and garbed for dancing, in the possession of his ene- mies, was like a blow in the face to the Rajput. Her indifference to him was a lash to his fierce spirit. “By Siva and Vishnu—bv the many- armed gods!’ His sword came into his hand swiftly. ‘‘Wo to you who have done this thing!” He took a step forward, his weapon raised. The actors looked at each other and their hands went under their loose robes. Malcolm caught the glitter of knife- blades, and saw the trap that had been laid for Rawul Singh. In a broil the Rajput would be slain, and every one present would swear that it was merely a quarrel over a woman. ‘The girl is mine,” observed the pofail of the village uncertainly, drawing back as he did so. Malcolm’s hand checked the Rajput be- fore another step was taken. “Wait,” he said. “It is my command.” Adventure Loyalty to his officer and fierce resent- ment struggled for mastery in Rawul Singh, so that he stood transfixed beside Malcolm. And then every head in the assembly be- came still. The hookah stems were withdrawn from bearded lips; the clamor of the music ceased. A long sigh escaped the lips of the watchers. “Tt is a trick,’’ whispered Malcolm, ‘“‘to make you attack them and to separate us.” Although they must have understood, none of the watchers moved or spoke. Their eyes were fastened on a spot a little to the right of Malcolm. Tala alone gave a low cry as if perception had pierced the numbness of her mind. A yard from Malcolm’s elbow the head of a large cobra weaved from side to side. The hood, fully inflated, showed the brilliant spectacle mark. ‘The light hissing of the snake was barely to be heard under the mur- mur of the wind in the vines of the ruined tower. 3 Rawul Singh, however, marked the sound and looked down, Malcolm following the direction of his eyes. “Sahib,” uttered the Rajput under his breath, ‘‘do not stir. .The snake has been angered.” Malcolm could not take his eyes from the reptile, whose long length coiled near his foot, the tip of the snake’s tail still within the aperture of the wall—the niche near which they had been sitting. He reflected quite coolly that if he had moved—if Rawul Singh had continued his advance to his daughter—the snake would have struck. It had appeared quite by chance—vet Malcolm had made certain in the first day of his stay in the castle that there were no snakes in the ruins. And, as if by chance, a twig fell from the air to the earth near the cobra, which seemed to swell the more thereat. “Dom Gion is devilishly clever, after all,’ thought Malcolm. et aid his officer, who stood between him and Tala and the snake. He was certain that no one in the assemblage would risk his life by slipping behind the snake and striking at it—the only chance of preventing it from striking. And the bite of the snake, Rawul Singh knew, would bring death to Malcolm sahib. The fering/:t might cauterize and bind the RAWUL SINGH was powerless to COmiclbook ©