Adventure, January 20, 1922 — page 100: what you’re looking at

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

98 It was Silkeen calling up to get the lay of the land and ask for a tip as to whether to duck or play that it never happened. Middleton answered: “Comerightup,Harry. Andbringaround the car, the small one. Roadster, yes. I have a friend here. To take home, yes.” The dog snuggled its head against Mid- dleton’s hand, coaxing for attention; and after getting an absent-minded pat went wistfully to Leela, sure that she would caress him. = CHANCE once had brought Leela Nees face to face with Black Wolf in a laias café. Ever since the night when she unmasked him her eyes had been roving wherever men gathered, hoping to find him; though in the meantime she had found out more about him than he cared to have any- body know. On sight Leela impetuously discarded what arts of maidenly modesty she knew about. The haughty, fiery, cruel girl de- liberately and desperately tried to fascinate him; and Middleton, suspicious of her kin- ship with Delilah, froze up and would not be moved. He knew that the woman who would ruin a man first makes him love her; and he was not sure but that she planned with patience and depth of cruelty some sort of complete humiliation for him. It was not like her to love so flagrantly unless she could later laugh at the fool for having believed that she, Leela Cabron, had lost her head. Leela put in most of her nights and some of her days hating this Black Wolf because she loved him. For months, since that faraway dramatic night, she had been obsessed. No other man had ever treated her with a tinge of the indifference that was so deliberate in him. Part of the time she wanted to kill him. Part of the time she wondered what could make him love her. All of the time she was fearful that his eyes were longingly turned elsewhere. Leela was fierce, cruel, dangerous, a petted, pampered, hectic girl; filled with wind- blown impulses, reckless, unquestioning, jealous. She had been born into gaudy luxuries, and had no education and no morals—nothing but a woman’s heart, as elemental in its daring and passion as a barbarian princess’. She could and would dance like a drunken bacchante. Before Adventure | entering her twenties she knew so much of the world that she thought all of it was bad, and that the worst of all was what pretended to be good. But something about being humbled by this Black Wolf gave her pleasure. She might be, and was, amazed and angered that he ignored her; but, except at the continually recurring moments when suspicious that his heart was interested elsewhere, it also gave her a strange, en- dearing satisfaction. At times it thrilled her to imagine that he had struck her with his fist, though she knew very well she would kill any man who did. She loved him. She wanted him. No price was too great to pay. And she meant to have him, even if she must come wooing on her hands and knees. There was almost a flagellante’s pleasure in the pain of sup- plication; and it meant nothing to her that she knew very well, and had proved it a hundred times, that disdain was what brought men to a girl’s feet. As long as she was convinced that he loved no woman, though she was trembling- ly suspicious, Leela humbled herself in a sort of ecstatic devotion; she got a curious satisfaction out of it, partly because she felt he must be a man among men to resist her. But at the first thought of a rival she was tigerish. Her pride would let a man treat her with indifference, but was in- flamed at the idea of a woman triumphing over her. Always, or nearly so, in a love-murder the man is killed not as punishment for being faithless, but to spoil the other woman’s trophy. She saw that he was reluctant to be alone with her; and this was not displeasing, for it suggested that he might be a little afraid to trust himself. They went into the library, and when Billy would have got out of the way Mid- dleton had him sit down and stirred him up to talk. Leela was patient; the more so for being a little amused at so plainly Seeing the artifice by which Middleton seemed to evade being alone with her. Besides, what she had to tell him was more im- portant than he imagined and would come as something of a revenge for his attitude. She wanted to see him apologetic. So, as night hours meant nothing to her, she pre- tended an interest in Billy the Dude’s talk, - CORmMICLMOOOkKS (C@