Adventure Magazine Cover — page 33: what you’re looking at

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

Plunder looked out of Avary’s eyes and transformed his face to a demoniacal semblance. He was fat and clumsy. Avary brushed aside the table and had him by the throat as he still sat in his chair. The bony fingers sank into the flabby gullet. Avary knelt in his victim’s lap, rejoicing in the deed. The tongue of his quondam friend protruded; his eyes projected;. he breathed like a dying horse, arms hanging limp. is would have choked him had it not been for the fatness of the man’s neck and the sudden dying out of Avary’s burst of strength. Avary had him unconscious. As he stepped back, leaning against the table, shaking with reaction, Avary determined to deal no more with this go-between. He was tired of being gulled. He would go to Bristol and see the jeweler and the gold- smith. Close they might be, but not like this traitor. He rifled the pockets and found seven guineas. His friend had brought him two. Avary had small doubt but that the original payment had been ten and that eighty per cent. had been taken for commission. He was cooling off by now. He could not leave the man where he was for others to find and to tell his tale to whom he would. Bideford was a quiet abiding-place, one to be preserved. He flung some water on the other’s face and set to work to revive him. When he came to the fear of Avary was stamped upon him. “T have taken the money you robbed me of this time,” said Avary. “‘I did not finish killing you because your fat body might be hard to dispose of and I am not yet inclined to die after all while there are guineas to clink. But you are out of this deal. In- terfere again—”’ Avery showed another brief flash of hellish heat and temper—‘“‘and as sure as there is a God in heaven you will stand before him swiftly! Ill slit you as a cook prepares a rabbit.” He kept the frightened commissioner with him until dawn, when they set out together. Five miles along the coast Avary dismissed him. “T go to Bristol,” he said. t’other way; and keep going!” The other started off between the gorse and the heather. His throat was still sore, his little eyes were filled with tears of rage that blended with those of self-pity. But “You go 27 after a bit, mounting the slope of a combe, he looked back to the white ribbon of road where Avary awaited the coach and chuckled. | “Go to Bristol, will you?” he»wheezed. “I would I was there to see you when you meet with Hutton or Lindsay. And after they are through with you [ll have my turn, you , murdering pirate!’’ For Hutton and Lindsay, traveling incog- nito on hired steeds, to come to Bideford, where they were unknown, and deal with a man named Saxby, was one matter. For that same Saxby, looking like a desperate rogue of the road, a most conspicuous figure in the decorous trade-center in Bristol—for such a one to come claiming acquaintance with those honest and approved burgesses Hutton and Lindsay, men of parts, men of family, the one a churchwarden, the other an alderman—that was quite another thing. Avary had drunk just enough for bold- ness. The margin oozed out of him as he cooled his heels in the outer room of Hut- ton’s shop, calmly overlooked by the apprentices who passed in and out, ignored by the clerk in charge. An hour passed and he saw Lindsay coming across the street, entering by a private door that led to Hutton’s house, under which his shop was built. Presently he was ushered to an inner office where the two sat comfortably, dressed as became their station, very much at ease. “Ts this the man?” asked Hutton of the clerk, and looked at Avary with a gathering frown. ‘‘What business have you with us, you rogue?”’ The calm assurance took breath from Avary. “Rogue?” he cried. “You call me rogue?” “Vou look like one,” said Hutton calmly. “You now act like one. Without doubt you are one, though I know nothing of you.” He passed his snuff-box to Lindsay, who took a pinch leisurely, surveying Avary as if he were a scarecrow, the snuff an antidote to any disease he might carry on his person. “T doubt not,” went on Hutton, ‘that you have a record to suit your hangdog look. I doubt not but that the police runners would know all about you. Gad, I should be little surprized if there was not a price set upon your head for some villainy. “We do not allow fellows of your kidney COnICLOO S (C@