Adventure Magazine Cover, August 18, 1921 — page 136: what you’re looking at

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

130 wrinkles and the semi-circular fissures be- tween the cuticle and the finger-nails were appropriately mapped with grime. Having spread open upon the dresser the slip of paper that the chief had given him, the operative, while he worked, read in typewritten brevity: Age: About 40 1gt: About 5’ 6” Build: heavy Dip Operates subway Frequents Mott St. Fyes: blue Ex Navy D. D. Hair: dk bro Gunman Ruddy The concluding word “gunman” caught the operative’s eyes. He rummaged about until he located a dirty sweater that he pulled on, well down over his right-hand hip pocket. A FIREMAN sauntered noncha- | lantly along the old Bowery. Across Chatham Square he proceeded and thence into Mott Street, where he began to mingle carelessly with Chinese, street beggars, pickpockets, bootleggers, push- cart vendors, bums, queer looking women boldly masquerading in artificial attractive- ness and all the rest of the mysterious beings that clutter society’s big back-yard. The coal-heaver strolled leisurely along, passing through a sort of dirty, Brobdignagian toy- land and apparently deep in contemplation of the bird-cage architecture around him. He appeared to be amusing himself hugely at the expense of those weird Oriental ideas upon the subject of the fortification of the inner man, as expressed by strange- looking, stringed comestibles hanging fes- tooned in the purveyors’ windows. The fireman rolled a “butt.” He puffed and prowled about with a keen scrutiny masked by seeming casualness. Across the street stood a saloon—one of the new iso- lated strongholds of the wets that had so far resisted the batteries of the advancing drys. Into this haven of his kind the fire- man made his way. With a jack-tar hitch of his overalls he rolled over to the bar with a deep-sea gait and clamped down a haif- dollar. The short, dark-skinned barkeeper glanced at the coin and then at the fire- man—at hiscap, his jumper, his smudgy face, his grimy hands. The constricting folds of teetotalism were drawing tighter and tighter around the land and men just as astute as he had already been caught napping. So the bartender -continued scrutinizing, hesitant. Adventure “Been here before—lots o’ tinies—off the ship,” argued the supplicant, twirling the coin expectantly. Appeal was in the look he directed into the bartender’s autocratic eye. He looked exactly like a thirsty coal- heaver would look when prospecting for a drink in these grim, prohibitive days. “The guy looks all right, Joe; give ’im a drink,” spoke up a short man standing at the back end of the bar and facing the door. The fireman glanced gratefully at the speaker. He was about five feet six inches in height. His eyes were blue. His hair appeared to be dark-brown, flecked with gray. dy—its ruddiness evidently enhanced by alcohol, as naturally suggested by the pres- ence of that small glass on the bar in front of him. He wore a gray overcoat. Kindli- ness sparkled in his eye. His attitude toward life seemed to be one of the utmost joviality. “Have a drink with me, pal,” was his smiling invitation to the coal-heaver. ‘I’m blowin’.” “Sure [Il drink with you, mate,” acqui- esced the fireman. The man in the gray overcoat walked over and stood beside the fireman, mean- while indifferently tossing a bill into sight upon the bar, using his left hand in the process. His right hand was hidden in the pocket of his overcoat. The bartender’s gaze comprehensively swept both back and front approaches to his bulwark and then, observing nothing disconcerting in the offing, he drew a bottle from its hiding- place and poured out the two drinks of - whisky. ‘“‘Here’s how, mate.” ““Here’s luck.”’ Both men drank. The man in the gray overcoat for this purpose used his left hand. His right hand was still in his pocket and he kept it there. He stood at the fireman’s left in such manner that his right hand overcoat pocket and the fireman’s left side were in juxtaposition. The fireman out of the tail of his eye noted this tactical ar- rangement and he mentally cursed his own tardiness, as well as the sweater that he had pulled well down over his right hand hip- pocket. Still, no hint of his interior tumult escaped from the fireman’s eyes. He gulped the whisky with evident eagerness and in just such a way as a deep-sea fireman who had importuned « bartender for a drink cCOmiclboolks His face was ruddy—very rud- . CO