Adventure Magazine Cover — page 49: what you’re looking at

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

The King way of the wolves behind him. The sixth man, who had lingered near the officers, now entered by the front end as I had done and called out that there was plenty of room in the front compartment. “‘There’s only a woman in here,” he said in Arabic. And he set the example by taking the seat opposite to Mabel. It would have been easy enough to get him out again, of course. Not even the polyglot train crew would have allowed Arabs to trespass without her invitation. The trouble was that Jeremy, Grim, Narayan Singh and I all rushed to her res- cue at the same minute, which let the cat out of the bag. It was Doctor Ticknor’s state- ment in Jerusalem about not wanting to see any of us alive again if we failed to bring his wife back safe that turned the trick and caused even Grim to lose his head for a moment. When a Sikh, two obvious Arabs and an American all rush to a woman’s assistance before she calls for help, there is evidence of collusion somewhere which you could hardly expect a trained spy to over- look or fail to draw conclusions from. It was all over in a minute. The rascal left the compartment, muttering to himself in Arabic sotto voce. I caught one word; but he looked so diabolically pleased with himself that it didn’t really need that to stir me into action. I take twelves in boots, with a rather broad toe, and he stopped the full heft of the hardest kick I could let loose. It put him out of action for half a day, and remains one of my pleasantest memories. His companions had to gather him up and help him pulley-hauley fashion into the car ahead, while an officious ticket-taker de- manded my name and address. I found in my wallet the card of a U. S. senator and gave him that, whereat he apologized pro- foundly and addressed me as ‘‘colonel’’— a title with which he continued to flatter me all the rest of the journey except once, when he changed it to ‘‘admiral” by mis- take. Grim went back into our compartment and laughed; and none of the essays I have read on laughter—not even the famous dissertation by Josh Billings—throw light on how to describe the tantalizing manner of it. He laughs several different ways: heartily at times, as men of my tempera- ment mostly do, boisterously on occasion, after Jeremy’s fashion; now and then in Check 43 cryptically, using laughter as a mask; then he owns a smile that suggests nothing more nor less than kindness based on under- standing of human nature. But that other is a devil of a laugh, mostly made of chuckles that seem to bub- ble off a hell-brew of disillusionment, and you get the impression that he is laughing at:himself—cynically laying bare the vanity and fallibility of his own mental processes— and forecasting self-discipline. There is no mirth in it, although there is amusement; no anger, although immeasur- able scorn. I should say it’s a good safe laugh to indulge in, for I think it is based on ability to see himself and his own mistakes more clearly than anybody else can, and there is no note of defeat init. But it is full of a cruel irony that brings to mind a vision of one of those old medieval flagellant priests reviewing his sins before thrashing his own body with a wire whip. ‘So that ends that,” he said at last, with the gesture of a man who sweeps the pieces from a board, to set them up anew and start again. ‘‘Luckily we’re not the only fools in Asia. Those six rascals know now that Mabel and we are one party.” “Pooh!” sneered Jeremy. ‘‘What can the devils do?” ‘Not much this side of the border at Deraa,” Grim answered. ‘After Deraa pretty well what they’re minded. They could have us pinched on some trumped-up charge, in which case we’d be searched, Mabel included. No. We’ve played too long on the defensive. Deraa is the danger- point. The telegraph line is cut there, and all messages going north or south have to be carried by hand across the border. The French have an agent there who censors everything. He’s the boy we’ve'got to fool. If they appeal to him this train will go on without us. “Ramsden, you and Narayan Singh go and sit with Mabel in her compartment. Jeremy, you go forward and bring Yussuf Dakmar back here to me; we'll let him have that fake letter just before we reach Deraa, taking care somehow to let the other five know he has it. They won’t discover it’s a fake until after leaving Deraa a “Why not?” I interrupted. ‘“What’s to prevent their opening it at once?” “Two good reasons: for one, we'll have Narayan Singh keep a careful eye on them, and they’ll keep it hidden as long as he COnniclboooks (C@