Adventure Magazine Cover — page 39: what you’re looking at

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

The King in Check CHAPTER VIII “He'll forgive any one who brings him whisky.” OU remember, of course, that line that Shakespeare put into the mouth of Puck? ‘What fools these mortals be!”’? The biggest fools are the extra smart ones, whose pride and peculiar joy it is to “‘beat the game.” Yussuf Dakmar assessed all other humans as grist for his mill. Character to him was expressed in degrees of folly and sheer bad- ness. Virtue existed only as a weakness to be exploited. The question that always exercised him was, wherein does the other fellow’s weakness lie? It’s a form of mad- ness. Where a sane man looks for strength and honesty that he can yoke up with, a Yussuf Dakmar spies out human failings; and whereas most of us in our day have mistaken pyrites for fine gold, which did not hurt more than was good fér us, he ends by mistaking gold for dross. You can persuade such a man without the slightest difficulty that you are a fool and a crook. Jeremy had turned the trick for his own amusement as much as any- thing, although his natural vein of shrewd- ness probably suggested the idea. Yussuf Dakmar, ready to believe all evil and no good of anyone, was convinced that he had to deal with a scatter-brained Arab who could be used for almost any purpose, and Jeremy’s riotous bent for jumping from one thing to another fixed the delusion still more firmly. But Lord! he had caught a Tatar. Out- side at the end of the corridor, in full view, but out of earshot of Narayan Singh, Yus- suf Dakmar made a proposal to Jeremy that was almost perfect in its naive obliquity. There was nothing original or even unusual about it, except the circumstances, time and place. Green goods men and blue sky stock salesmen, racecourse touts and sure-thing politicians get away with the same proposi- tion in the U. S. every day of the week, and pocket millions by it. Only, just as happens to all such gentry on occasion, Yussuf Dakmar had the wrong fish in his net. He jerked his head toward where Narayan Singh sat stolid and sleepy-looking on a camp-stool with his curly black beard rest- ing on the heel of one hand. “Do you know that man?” he asked. “Wallah! Wow should I knew him?” Jeremy answered. ‘He looks like a Hindu 3 33 thinking of reincarnation. IJnshallah, he will turn into a tiger presently!” “Beware of him! He isan Administration spy. He is watching me talk to you, and perhaps he will ask you afterward what I have said. You must be very careful how you answer him.”’ “T will tell him you asked me for a love- potion for the engine-driver’s wife,’ jeremy answered. ‘‘Iam listening. What 1s it you are really going to say?” “That master of yours—that Ramsden, who dismissed you so tyrannically just now a “That drunkard? There is nothing in- teresting to be said about him,” Jeremy an- swered. ‘He is a fool who has paid my fare as faras Damascus. May Allah reward him for it.” “Are you telling me the truth?” de- manded Yussuf Dakmar, fixing his eyes sternly on Jeremy’s. Your con man never overlooks a chance to put his intended victim on the defensive at an early stage in the proceedings. “How can he have paid your fare as far as Damascus? This line only goes to Haifa, where you have to change trains and buy another ticket.” “T see you are a clever devil, ” Jeremy retorted. “May Allah give you a belly- ache, if that is where you keep your brains! It was I who bought the tickets. The fool gave me sufficient money for three first class fares all the way to Damascus, and I have the change. He forgot that when he dismissed me.’ “Then you won’t need to beg board and lodging in Haifa?” -“Oh, yes. I need my money for another matter. It is high time I married, and a fellow without money has to put up with any toothless hag that nobody else will take.” “So you hope to find a wife in Damascus?” “Tnshallah,” Jeremy answered piously. “Well; I will find you a good-looking girl for wife, provided you first prove that you will make a good son-in-law. I take men as I find them, not as they represent them- selves. He who wishes for the fire must first chop wood. You understand me?” “Wallah! I can chop wood like an ax with two heads. Is the woman your daughter?” “That is as may be. “Let us talk business. I reward my friends, but wo betide the fool who betray’s my confidence!” said Yussuf Dakmar darkly. NOOK C@