Adventure Magazine Cover — page 130: what you’re looking at

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

694 Selim was no Mohammedan teetotaler; he gulped down his brandy with as much zest and as little water as any Christian toper in all Tetino, and got drunk as oiten. His desire to justify an irrepressible craving had taken the form of a sort of fixed idea that brandy cleared his brain when he wanted to be alert and snappy in his move- ments; and this fixed idea persisted in spite of abundant proof of many a sad experience to the contrary. So when Stanko returned from his cellar Selim Effendi for a moment forgot the object of his journey to Livady. Having shaken himself up a little bit, the Effendi looked about the place. A younker, evidently Stanko’s apprentice in the ton- sorial art, was lathering some one’s face. Apparently dozing on the divan, however, his face turned toward the window, was a priest in a cassock. The beard was flowing enough. At the sound of Selim’s voice the priest had sleepily turned toward him and half-opened his eyes, then turned back and dropped into a doze again. III eS, NOT in Selim Effendi’s most opti- mistic dreams had it occurred to him that he would stumble upon the Apostle napping the moment he entered Stanko’s precincts. Now the Tipsy Bloodhound was no fool, and he knew that Apostle Boyan had equally little claim to membership in the category of idiots. That a man who knew himself to be so fiercely hounded should be so reckless as to indulge in the luxury of a public nap was hard to explain on any other supposition than, perhaps, complete physical and mental exhaustion. But, was he really asleep? For the one hasty glance the apparently dozing priest had given him before resuming his slumbers was far too keen and intelligent for a man just dis- turbed in his nap. The entire situation flashed on Selim. The Apostle was on the watch for his man from Poliany, and was simulating sleepiness in order to avoid unnecessary and unde- sirable conversations with other parties. Evidently he had full faith in the complete- ness of his incognito. The Turkish police might be on the lookout for him in Tetino, in places like Dedov Rid and Poliany, where comitajis were plenty; but not in a char- coal-hole like Livady. Adventure “You ubiquitous rascal!’ Selim thought, “if you only knew that your messenger is starving in my cellar this minute and that a copy of your letter to ‘Robespierre’ is in my pocket!”’ He sat down on the divan next to the priestly-clad figure and, absorb- ing Stanko’s intoxicants to thaw his blood, beat his brains to hatch out some scheme of making sure of the Apostle. Selim Effendi had come to Livady in the guise of an ikon-dealer. The choice of this particular form of disguise had suggested itself by the disguise dictated by the Apos- tle himself in his letter to the Poliany school- master, for it seemed to him that an ikon- dealer had natural claims on the attention of a man in cassock. And, once he could get at his man without exciting suspicion, he could trust his “twelve-shot-straight”’ revolver and the steel grip of Osman’s paw. A plan was slowly assuming definite shape in his mind—a plan that appealed to Se- lim’s sense of humor, besides being safe and effective. He had Stanko move the mangal to the corner of the room nearer the barber shop, where he could look into the street, and, seating himself @ la Turque on a cushion in front of it, went on sipping at his brandy and looking out of the low, grimy window. Then his eyes turned to the “St. George Killing the Dragon’’ which beautified the corner diagonally opposite. “Innkeeper,” he asked, “‘ who is that half- naked bully that’s trying to tickle a lizard with his goad in your picture over there?”’ “Half-naked bully tickling a_ lizard! Good Lord deliver us poor sinners!” Stanko began, crossing himself piously. ‘‘Be you a Catholic or an unbeliever, traveler, that you don’t recognize St. George and the Dragon? St. George of all saints, sir!” “Oh, it is St. George killing the Dragon, eh? Well now, innkeeper, I meant no harm by my question, but my eyes are giving out, and I just couldn’t tell what it stood for. The St. Georges J sell, to be sure, are a dif- ferent matter. You can tell my St. Georges at a hundred paces.” “So ’tis an ikon-pedler you be, traveler?” Stanko inquired. “An ikon-merchant, right you have it. My brother is the Archdeacon of the St. Panteleimon monastery in the holy Athos; his hermits paint those ikons between mid- night and sunrise, and every blessed one is blessed with holy-water from the fountain COMICOOCKKS. ECO 5}