Adventure Magazine Cover — page 89: what you’re looking at

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

88 couldn’t understand it. Didn’t even know who it was written to. “But I got it, every word; and I got the warning that Hurgy ’d vowed he’d follow me to ——— an’ all over. “T never killed a man. one now an’ then, maybe. There’s just two I want ’o kill. Hurgy’s one, and you—you, you cross between a snake an’ a dead man, you are the other.” I really didn’t blame him for the way he put it; but I was thinking that it was just two hours between the time he confided with Zoronna that Hurgronje was a fraud before the ill-fated friend had warned Lord Bob that he was a marked man. That im- pressed me as rather rapid work. “And you haven’t told Zoronna yet just why you ducked from Paris? No doubt she has wondered,” I said sarcastically, myself wondering if he could really believe in her innocence. “Think I’d tell her I was accused of mur- der—of murdering a woman?” “Oh, you wouldn’t? But innocence——” “Innocence be Hf I'd done it I’d tell her, an’ say I’d been framed. She doesn’t like to talk of Hurgy. Neither do I. Not to her; she was so taken in. “She thinks I got into trouble through tipping her off. She says I’m a friend. Don’t sneer either. I got only one good arm an’ you’ve got two guns, but [ll soak you in the jaw.” I suggested that she had come to San Francisco to visit him, her one “friend.” That made him angry. He’d never written her until she had been in New York; and she answered that it was “strange” he should be in San Francisco, for she was coming out, incognito, right away. And I said to myself that Zoronna must be a real sorceress to catch at one grab two such dear enemies of Hurgronje as myself and Lord Bob within her slender little fingers. exit MENTIONED my Lord Bob’s ; “brother.” He eyed me with dis- jam dain, I seemed so stupid. He had ‘ maneuvered to give out that the man with the name he went under in Paris was dead; in fact had got hold of a body in some way, and’as the “‘brother” had actually endured the scrutiny, and presented the corpse to the scrutiny, of police agents cooperating with Paris. . . . Oh yes, Lord Bob was a fool, but not in some ways. Never. Hurt Adventure “All right, Lord Bob. Now what about Sin Chang and Hurgronje?”’ “You’ve guessed it, but I don’t sell out.”’ “Don’t sell what out?” ‘Bah!’ The idiotic stubbornness of his was in- credible. On second thought he added: “You know this much anyway: Sin Chang’s got something Hurgronje wants. Hurgronje hasn’t got anything Sin Chang cares a about.” But {Lord Bob might [not have so accu- rate an insight into the situation as he thought. “You mean that Sin Chang has some gems, I suppose,” I remarked. “You ought to know. Ill bet Hurgy steals into heaven an’ picks the diamond cobblestones out of the Golden Street. He’d do anything for money. Yes, an’ you can tell him from me that Sin Chang has that ruby—big as a hen’s egg and not a flaw in it.” “A bantam hen, a little pullet bantam’s egg?” “Bigger.” “And Sin Chang?” “Slave girls.” “That’s the only way the trade can be made?” I asked, feeling my way from ques- tion to question as one crosses a stream on unfamiliar stepping-stones. “A trade, yes. But you assassins don’t intend to do any trading. . . . What you going to do with me? Knife, bullet or the bay?” “You have a preference?” “No,” I changed the subject. “Miss Symondi knows, of course, that Hurgronje is here.” “Not till I told her. anything about it. Doesn’t even want to hear his name. And look here, you —— , don’t try to connect her up with She didn’t know me.” Again I changed the subject; and, telling him to think my question over carefully, asked what did he know that would make Hurgronje hate a man worse, be more in- furiated against him, than anything else in the world? “Knowing Hurgronje as you do, knowing his one great, mad passion, what would hurt him and enrage him even more than writing EoOmichbooks.co