Adventure Magazine Cover — page 21: what you’re looking at

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

The King in Check door, tossed the letter to Grim, and crept back again to bear a hand in case of need. Grim said nothing, but Jeremy followed me, and two minutes later the Australian and I were crouching in darkness below the veran- da. This time I don’t think Narayan Singh was aware of friends at hand. His eyes were fixed on the slightly lighter gap in a dark wall that was the garden gate but looked more like a dim hole leading into a cave. There being no other entrance that we knew of, Jeremy and I doubled up on the same job, and a rat couldn’t have come through without one of the three of us de- tecting him. If we had had our senses with us we might have realized that Narayan Singh was perfectly capable of watching that single narrow space, and have used our own eyes to better advantage. However, we're all three alive today, and two of us learned a lesson. aa we) minutes—before a man showed him- self outside the gate, like a specter dodging this and that way in response to unearthly impulse. Once or twice he started forward, as if on the point of sneaking in, but thought better of it and retreated. Once his attitude suggested that he might be taking aim with a pistol; but if that was so, he chose not to waste a shot or start an alarm by firing at a mark he couldn’t see. What he did accomplish was to keep six keen eyes fixed on him. And that gave three other men their chance to gain an entrance at the rear of the wall in the garden, and creep up un- awares. It was probably sheer accident that led all three of them along the far side of the house, but it was fortunate for Jeremy and me, for otherwise cold steel between our shoulder-blades would likely have been our first intimation of their presence. We never suspected their existence until they gained the veranda by the end oppo- site to where we waited; and I think they would have done their murder if the man outside the gate hadn’t lost his head from excitement or some similar emotion and tried to make a signal to them. All three had brought up against the end window, where a shade torn in two places provided a good view into the room in which Grim, Mabel and the doctor were still sitting. Each of them had a pistol, and their inten- tion didn’t admit of doubt. IT WASN’T long—perhaps five I5 ‘Are you there, sahib?”?. Narayan Singh whispered. But Jeremy and I were aware of them al- most as soon as he, and rather than make a noise by vaulting the veranda rail, we took the longer route by way of the front steps. Jeremy, who was wearing sandals, kicked them off and, not having to creep so care- fully, moved faster. Of course, the obvious question is, why didn’t Narayan Singh shoot? I had a pistol too; why didn’t I use it? Well, I’ll tell you. None but the irresponsible criminal shoots a man except in obedience to orders or in self-defense. . You may argue that those three mone prowlers might have shot Ticknor and his wife and Grim through the window while we aired our superior virtue. The answer to that is, that they didn’t, although that was their intention. Narayan Singh, already once that night in danger of his life, and a ‘godless, heathen Sikh,” as I have heard a missionary call him, pocketed the pistol I had given him before proceeding to engage, he being also a white man by the proper way of estimating such things. Jeremy was first on the scene of action, with Narayan Singh close behind him, and I was quite a bit behind, for I tripped against the top step in my hurry. The noise I made gave the alarm, and the three Arabs twisted round like cornered scorpions. I guess they couldn’t see us well at first, hav- ing been staring through the torn shade into the lighted room. Their pistols were cocked, but Jeremy’s fist landed in the nearest man’s face before he could shoot, and he went crashing back- wards into his friend: behind, whose head disappeared for a moment through the window-pane, and the only blood shed on that occasion came from the first man’s nose and the back of the second man’s neck where the smashed glass slit a gash in it. The third man fired wildly at me, and missed, a fraction of a second before Nara- yan Singh landed on him with hands and feet; whereat the man in the street emptied his pistol at me and ran away. I was in two minds whether to give chase to him, but made the wrong decision, being heavy on my feet and none too fond of running, so the big fish got away. But even with my help added, the three less important fish still gave a lot of trouble, for they fought like wild-cats, using teeth COMICLOOokKSs Cc C@