Adventure Magazine Cover — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

Yellow Treasure terrible old man in the carrying-chair, while normal themselves, glittered as if to helio- graph news of a twisted disposition. “TI think you know me, Campbell,” he said, in a voice that creaked. ‘But in case ‘you’ve forgotten—I’m Doctor Henry Par- sons, late of Kiang-su. Does that convey anything?” Campbell ceased to fidget with the arms of his chair, and leaned forward, his eyes searching the wrinkled face thrust so boldly into his own yellow mask. “You!” he said at last, in a strange hoarse voice. “Ves, I,” said the doctor cantanker- ously, ‘“‘and no subject for your yells and furies, Campbell! It’s no pleasure to me to travel on your stinking Khan-Do—es- pecially when-I’ve got my daughter with me. But this I tell you—when I’ve paid my passage-money, and there’s no other boat I can take for a month, I am going to travel in this ship, if you and your gorilla of a captain howl yourselves blue in the face!” “What are you doing here?” snarled Campbell as his adversary, balancing on his toes like a fighting bantam, turned slightly to give Captain O’Day, whocame hurrying up with Burns, the benefit of his last speech. “I’m going back to China to study lep- rosy,” said the doctor, his voice rising defi- antly, “and I’m going on this ship!” Campbell turned to O’Day. “Who sold this man and this woman passage on this boat?” he almost screamed. “Have you seen his ticket? Is everything in order? What the does it mean? You—you’re in charge here, aren’t you?” “T can have them put off, if you order it, sir,’ said O’Day, making a threatening movement which sent the listening deck- hands shuffling back to their work at the trot, “but they have authorization from the office, dated a month ago. They’re nom- inally signed on as doctor and stewardess.”’ ‘“‘And if you lay a finger on either of us,” snapped the doctor, ‘I will have you ar- rested, Captain O’Day, for assault and bat- tery, and you'll not sail. Do you under- stand that?” He turned to Campbell. “And if you say another word, you par- alyzed snake,” he said with cold venom, “T’ll speak to these underlings of yours in a way you won’t like. Who was treasurer of 9 Nanking when the Tae-ping rebels were there? Tell me that, Campbell, will you? Tell me that!” He stepped back, and Burns and I moved forward, exactly at the right second; for, his face blanched to a sickly cream color, his lips drawn back to show his tooth- less gums, old Campbell had risen from his chair for the first time in fifty years, and had flung forward his yellow hands to grasp the doctor’s throat. If he had got his grip, in the passion that seemed to possess him, it seemed there must have been a tragedy. His hands clutching empty air, the strength seemed to leave him, and with a sort of gurgling moan, he staggered back, to be caught by his servants and lowered again into his chair. ‘ He lay there breathing heavily, a fleck of foam in each corner of his mouth; and he did not move even when the doctor stepped for- ward and took his pulse. “Good for another ten years,’’ snapped old Parsons, letting the yellow wrist fall limp. He added a few crackling words in Chinese which made the bearers pick up the chair again and pad on toward the gangway; the bodyguard, his hand still on his hip, keeping between the chair and the deck- hands. “And IJ think, captain,” he went on, squinting up at O’Day, “that we may now consider the matter closed. I sail with you!”’ And, though O’Day kept the gangway down until the last possible moment, hop- ing for some outside aid which should take this complicating factor and his still more complicating daughter out of the mess already frying on the Kkan-Do, sail with us they did. Ox NOW, leaning over the bridge-rail, eA seven days out from ’Frisco, star- it ing out into the sweating purple night where a brilliantly lit liner was tear- ing south, her band playing and her passen- gers, in evening dress, just about sitting down to dinner, I was wondering how much nearer the doctor’s advent had brought us to the death that hovered around the ship. It had seemed to me, when I came aboard, that the thought of murderous conspiracy and long-cherished revenge among the cheery little yellow men padding around the decks in the San Francisco sunshine, was absurd; but my opinion had changed when the doctor had shouted forth the GO OOO S (© iin