Adventure Magazine Cover, December 10, 1922 — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

bold—calculating—afraid of nothing—and a lot too shrewd to take his share of the risks. That dark shade of brown that grows harder and darker as you look at it. He recognized the judge instantly, but gave no sign. The judge was not sure. There was something about the man’s de- liberate impudence that seemed familiar, but of course he had seen hundreds of the same type from the bench and he did not care to run the risk of appearing to curry favor by recognizing some one whom he was not sure he knew. He stood with his hand on his wife’s shoulder helping to support her and glanced from face to face, but always back again at the brown eyes of the under- sized man from Delhi. “You realize you are a prisoner?” asked the Delhi man. ‘You need not be afraid. We do not beat our prisoners.”’ ~ “JT am not the least afraid,” the judge answered, “but I would appreciate your providing a chair for my wife.” One or two of the committee had the grace to look uncomfortable, but the man from Delhi grinned meanly. The judge began to be very nearly sure he recognized him, and was glad he had not made overtures. She shall have a chair, certainly. Many an Indian has been made to stand at her whim, but we are not vindictive!” He clapped his hands and a boy brought a broken chair from inside the temple. The judge, who was weary almost to endurance, was left standing. Mrs. Wilmshurst sat down, speechless almost for the first time in her life. “Tf you are not afraid, your case is dif- ferent from that of the unfortunates who so frequently stand before you for sentence— unfortunates whom you punish drastically for breaking laws they had no voice in mak- ing,” said the man from Delhi; and at last Wilmshurst did recognize him. But he contrived to keep the recognition from his eyes. “What do you propose to do with us?” the judge asked. “Why should we propose at all?” the other retorted. ‘You are a prisoner. You should ask mercy.” He evidently meant to inflict as much verbal torture as possible, for he was set- tlng himself comfortably, cross-legged. Nevertheless, he did not enjoy the para- mountcy that he hoped for. There was \ : sturdy opposition from a gray-beard facing \ 44- Adventure him, who wore the white headdress of an educated man and was big enough to have made about three of him from Delhi. “They are hostages,” he said in English. “Make no error about that. I will agree to nothing else. They are hostages.”’ The man from Delhi smiled with lean lips, accepting the suggestion, but obviously reserving venom for later on. “Do you realize what it means to be a hostage?” he asked the judge. ‘For every outrage perpetrated by the British troops against us you are liable to be made to suffer in your own body!” Wilmshurst smiled, rather wryly—because his feet were in agonies—but genuinely nonetheless. He was not such a fool as to suppose that men of the type before him would. torture valuable prisoners. The suggestion was too absurd for him to answer with the obvious threat of what the British troops might accomplish in return. The point was not worth arguing. Graybeard in opposition opened fire again, laying his fist on the table manfully and forestalimng the Delhi man’s next remark. “You will write a letter,” he said. “You will say in it that your wife and you are prisoners. You will say you have been well treate = “That will depend on the facts,”’ Wilms- hurst interrupted. ‘My wife has been disgracefully illtreated, and so have I. We have had no food—no rest. If I write a letter I shall say in it what I consider true.” “Say what you like!” the graybeard answered. ‘‘You will write the letter. Your friends will know you are a prisoner, and that is what we want.” “T shall read the letter, of course, before you seal it up,” said the man from Delhi. “T am willing to write,” after a moment’s reflection. His legal mind could see no possible objection to communi- cating with British Headquarters, wherever that might be. He rather suspected a trick, because the man from Delhi was connected with it, but for the life of him he could not see through the trick, so he supposed that none existed. The man from Delhi, watching Wilms- hurst with a quizzical expression that seemed to hint at ultimate consequences foreseen as yet only by himself, pushed paper, pen and ink toward the judge, who ignored them. Gomichbooks said the judge ° (EO)