Adventure Magazine Cover — page 35: what you’re looking at

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

The King in Check him until after leaving Haifa. The French agent wired, and they’ll have a gang at Haifa ready for us; but Yussuf Dakmar will warn them off if we keep him hoping.”’ So we settled down into our compartment after a glance to make sure that Mabel was all right, and for about two minutes I imagined we were in for a lazy journey. Narayan Singh was on a camp-stool in the corridor, snoozing with one eye open like a faithful sheep-dog. It didn’t seem possible for a creature like Yussuf Dakmar to make trouble for us, and I proposed that we should match coins for the first turn to go to sleep. We had just pulled our coins out, and the engineer was backing the train in order to get her started, when Yussuf Dakmar arrived at our door, carrying his belongings, and claimed a seat on the strength of a lie about there being no room elsewhere. There’s something about a compartment on a train that makes whoever gets in first regard the rest of the world as intruders. Nobody would have been welcome, but we would have preferred a pig to Yussuf Dak- mar. Jeremy, democrat of democrats, who had slept without complaining between the legs of a dead horse on a rain-swept battle- field, with a lousy Turkish prisoner hugging him close to share the blanket, was up in arms at once. “Tmshil” he ordered bluntly. - But Yussuf Dakmar was delighted. The reception convinced him, if anything were needed to do that, that one of us really was guarding the secret letter; and he was one of those hogs anyhow, who glory in snouting in where they are plainly not wanted. He took the corner seat opposite Jeremy, tucked his legs up under him, produced a cigaret and smiled offensively. I'll concede this, though: I think the smile was meant to be ingratiating. He pulled out a package wrapped in news- paper and began to eat before the train had run a mile. And you know, more men get killed because of how they eat than by the stuff they devour. If you don’t believe that, try living in camp for a week.or two with a man who chews meat with his mouth open. You'll feel the promptings of a mur- derer. I know a scientist, who swears that the real secret of the Cain and Abel story is that Abel sucked his gums at mealtime. “You ought to be buried up to the neck and fed with a shovel!’ Jeremy informed 29 him in blunt English after listening to the solo for a while. “Aha! That is the way they used to treat criminals in Persia,” he answered pleasant- ly, with his mouth full of goat’s milk cheese. “Only they put plaster of Paris in the hole, and when it rained the wretched man was squeezed until the blood came out of his mouth and eyes, and he died in agony. But how comes it that you speak to me in English? If we are both Arabs, why not talk the mother tongue?” ““My rump is my rump and the land is its ruler’s,’’ Jeremy answered in Arabic, quot- ing the rudest proverb he could think of on. the spur of the moment. “Ah! And who is its ruler? Who is to be its ruler?” Yussuf Dakmar made a surreptitious face at Grim, and his little cold eyes shone like a hungry pariah dog’s. It began to be in- teresting to watch his opening gambit. “TI have heard tales,” he went on, “‘of a new ruler for this country. What do you think of Feisul’s chance?” As he said that he eyed me sideways swiftly and keenly. Grim sat back in his own corner and fold- ed up his legs, watching the game content- edly. Jeremy, intercepting Yussuf Dak- mar’s glance, put his own construction on it. He is a long lean man, but like the Fat Boy in Pickwick Papers he likes to make your flesh creep, and humor, to have full_zest for him, has to be mischievous. So he commenced by pulling out his weapons one by one. The first was a razor, which he sharpened, tested with his thumb suggestively, and then placed in his sock, studying Yussuf Dakmar’s throat for a min- ute or so after that, as if expecting to have to use the razor on it presently. As the effect of that wore off he pulled out a pistol. It was one of the kind that won’t go off unless you pull the hammer back, but Yussuf Dakmar didn’t know that, and if he had flesh and blood capable of creeping it’s a safe assertion that they crept. Jeremy acted as if he didn’t understand the weapon, and for fifteen minutes did more stunts with it than a puppy can do with a ball of twine. One of them, that interested Yussuf Dak- mar awiully, was to point the pistol straight ahead, half-cocked, and try to get the hammer down by slapping it with the palm of his hand. Most of our baggage was on the floor, COMmMICOooks (C©@