Adventure Magazine Cover — page 143: what you’re looking at

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

sled Wheeler and the Nameless Order forty at a time—all dressed in pink coats and riding-breeches,’ Brendon urged. “That will fetch me—if anything,” Dan soberly. Nobody was doing much laughing for some reason, even as a bluff. Wheeler himself seemed to see something in the eyes of her ladyship that made it hard to turn away and follow Lu Yan to the gangplank. Dan did not refer to the Secret Order That Is Not in any way after that night, even to Lu Yan or to the Senator, who became his most loyal friend next to Drake and the Chinese merchant. But on the way to Lu Yan’s home Dan broke his silence. ‘And all the time I was carrying that stone in the handle of the gun! You remem- ber you said the green-eyed guy that carried one bore a charmed life?” “T told you that such was the belief of many,” Lu Yan answered. “Hm!” was Dan’s only comment at the time. But later, in the fragrant peace of Lu Yan’s apartments, Dan lay on a couch lazily staring at the Buddha on _ his pedestal; while Lu Yan serenely read from his endwise book that folded like an accordion. “T’d like to know what he thinks of this business.” At this first break in a long silence Lu said 133 Yan looked up—from Dan to the eternal - Tathagata—and asked— “What business?” “These Twins and the stories about them —whether I'd have let go that pole in the canon if I hadn’t had the stone along—and —some other things.” He was thinking of the Brahmin’s warn- ing, and the protection the prince spoke of, but he did not say anything about a Name- less Order. It was hard to talk of a thing that had no name or any distinguishing feature. Moreover he was pleasantly tired and comfortable. “Doubtless it is a part of the Noble Truth as seen and known by him.” Lu Yan turned to a certain passage. “Let me translate for you—very poorly— a brief passage.” He had read for only a few minutes, in a low and steady monotone, when he stopped and looked over his shell-rimmed spectacles at the prone figure on the couch. There had come to his ears a sound sus- piciously resembling a gentle snore—very like a snore. So Lu Yan, after carefully covering the relaxed figure on the couch, returned to his serene perusal of the Noble Truth, but he no longer translated. For a snore was what it was. The seated Buddha kept right on; con- tinued his everlasting Emancipated Con- templation. THE END COmiclbook S CO@ iin