Adventure, February 20, 1922 — page 5: what you’re looking at

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

Feb. 20th 1922 ‘Vol. XXXIII-No.2 “ Z Z j LF 3 Ze CCA, “ss Caf “A, €. . ~~ ». 1 \ Wh” PF 2 os MA & oy ZA 4 "se 4 a iA \ Y \) XY S BONS. SNES, ww * * », A Fr NSS any ‘ 2 b . J 5 * SS ore Ba) , s sy : _ <7 . at =“ . SV SS \ \o.2 - \» p4 rs RQ ~~ ws SS ~’ VN ’, ak: SN \ SS by SA Ne SVS N WSIS SOON WAS. SAAS a = ~ SS ae om, : 4 . Thieves of | - 4 *. e Seventeen Ms PE ne A Complete Novel Author of “Guns of the Gods,” “Under the Dome of the Rock,’ etc. CHAPTER I “Get the vote an’ everything.” TEAM never killed Romance. It stalks abroad under the self-same stars that winked at Sinbad and Aladdin, and the only thing that makes men blind to it is the stupid craze for sitting in judgment on other people instead -of having a good time with them. “He who hates a thief Js a thief at heart,” runs the eastern proverb that nevertheless includes in its broad wisdom no brief at all for dishonesty. If you hated thieves in El-Kalil you would be busy and, like the toad under the harrow, inclined to wonder where the gaps are; you can see the graves of the men who have tried it, in any direction, from any hill-top; and Romance, which knows noth- ing of any moral issue comes at last with the liquid moonlight making even whited tombs look sociable. But it is better to be sociable while you live, if only for the sake of having some good yarns to tell the other fellows during pauses in between the rounds of feasting in Valhalla, when you get there. El-Kalil is Hebron of Old Testament “The Seventeen Thieves of El-Kalil,"’ copyright, 1922, by Talbot Mundy. fame—the oldest known city in the world, apart and aloof in the Judean Hills—dirty, delightful and without one trace of respect for anything but tradition, courage and cash. Yet it was contrary to all tradition that an American citizen should be on his way there with almost unlimited authority to up-end everything, and, after spilling all the beans, to sort out the speckled unde- sirables. We ran into lots of courage, but it was fear of an uprising and its conse- quences that set the ball rolling. And as for hard cash, it was lack of it that brought the courage out, providing only two young men and some cigarets wherewith to hold calm and lawful the most turbulently law- less city in the Near East. Grim took me along for several reasons, but the chief one was that he chose so to do. Having been commissioned in the British army as an American, he had stuck to more than one national peculiarity, of which the first and the sweetest was doing as he gosh- darn pleased as long as he could get away with it. Having made good all along the line, he could get away with almost any- thing; and by that time, having risked a. F neck or two together, we were friends. Copyright, 1922, by The Ridgway Company in the United States and Great Britain. All rights reserved. 3 ) comicboo S (E(0) ~ ae Lf y TALBOT MUNDY *