Adventure Magazine Cover — page 53: what you’re looking at

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

The King Jeremy. ‘‘The fellow with a face like a pig’s stern is Yussuf Dakmar, and he’s my special preserve.” “T am a good Moslem. I refuse to lay hand on pig,” said Hadad smiling. We discussed Feisul and the Arab cause. “Oh, if we had Lawrence with us!” ex- claimed Hadad excitedly at last. ‘‘A little, little man—hardly any larger than Mrs. Ticknor—but a David against Goliath! And would you believe it?—there is an idiotic rumor that Lawrence has returned and is hiding in Damascus! The French are really disturbed about it. They have cabled their Foreign Office and received an official denial of the rumor; but official denials carry no weight nowadays. Out of ten Frenchmen in Syria, five believe that Lawrence is with Feisul and if they can catch him he will get short shrift. But oh Jimgrim, oh if it were true! Weallahi!”’ Grim didn’t answer, but I saw him look long at Jeremy, and then for about thirty seconds steadily at Mabel Ticknor. After that he stared out of the window for a long time, not even moving his head when a crowd of Bedouins galloped to within fifty yards of the train and volleyed at it from horseback “‘merely out of devilment,” as Hadad hastened to assure us. We were winding up the Lebanon Valley by that time. Carpets of flowers, green grass, waterfalls, a thatched hut to the twenty square miles, with a scattering of mean black tents between; every stone building in ruins, goats where fat kine ought to be; and a more or less modern railway screeching across the landscape, short of fuel and oil. That’s Lebanon. We grew depressed. Then silent. Our meditations were interrupted by the sudden arrival of Narayan Singh in the door of the compartment, grinning full of news. “They have opened the letter, sahib! They accuse Yussuf Dakmar of deceiving them. They threaten him with death. Shall I interfere?” “Any sign of the train crew?” Grim asked. “Nay, they are gambling in the brake- van.” Grim looked sharply at Hadad. ‘‘What authority have you got?” “None. Jama personal friend of Feisul, that is all.” “Well, we’ll pretend you’ve power to arrest them. Ramsden, you’ve suddenly missed your letter. You've accused Jeremy in Check 47 of stealing it. He has confessed to selling it to Yussuf Dakmar. Go forward in a rage and demand the letter back. Start something before they’re ready for it! We’ll be just behind you.” “Leave Yussuf Dakmar to me!’ insisted Jeremy. “I pay the debt of an Anzac division!” I hope I’ve never hurt a man who didn’t deserve it, or who wasn’t fit to fight; but I have to admit that Grim didn’t need to repeat the invitation. I started forward in a hurry, and Jeremy elbowed Narayan Singh aside in order to follow next, Aus- tralians being notoriously unladylike per- formers when anybody’s hat is in the ring. By the time I reached the car ahead the train had entered a wild gorge circled by one of those astonishing hairpin curves with which engineers defeat nature. The panting engine slowed almost to a snail’s pace, hav- ing only a scant fuel ration with which to negotiate curve and grade combined. To our right there was a nearly sheer drop of four hundred feet, with a stream at the bottom boiling among limestone boulders. But there was no time to study scenery. From the middle compartment of the car there came yells for help and the peculiar noise of thump and scuffle that can’t be mistaken. Men fight in various ways, Lord knows, and the worst are the said-to-be civilized; but from Nome to Cape Town and all the way from China to Peru the veriest tenderfoot can tell in the dark the difference between fight and horseplay. I reached the door of the compartment in time to see three of them (two bleeding from knife-wounds in the face) force Yussuf Dakmar backward toward the window, the whole lot stabbing frantically as they milled and swayed. The fifth man was holding on to the scrimmage with his left hand and reaching round with his right trying to stick a knife into Yussuf Dakmar’s 1ibs without endangering his own hide. But the sixth man was the rascal I had kicked. He had no room—perhaps no in- clination—to get into the scrimmage; so he saw me first, and he needed no spur to his enmity. With a movement as quick as a cat’s and presence of mind that accounted for his being leader of the gang, he seized the fifth man’ by the neck and spun him round to call his attention; and the two came for me together like devils out of a spring trap. .- DOOLK C@