Adventure Magazine Cover — page 142: what you’re looking at

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

706 missing element, and that the specimen of gum which he was sending had come out of his retort not more than half an hour before. He told me that he was exhausted and that he would retire at once, and asked me to come to the laboratory at ten the next morn- ing.” The young man paused to open a drawer, from which he took a square of a dark red substance which he held up in front of Blon- die Doyle. It was a pliable and elastic solid, which seemed to the strangler not a whit different from any other square piece of rubber. “This is what he sent me,” the speaker continued, “‘and from laboratory tests I have corroborated the old man’s statement. This rubber grew in a retort instead of a tree, and the secret of making it is worth millions. You may be sure that I went to the laboratory at ten next morning, but at first the house seemed to be deserted. After I had knocked the third time a window was cautiously lifted above-stairs and some one dropped a cylinder of paper out on the steps beside me. “T picked it up and found that it was a note addressed to me in a peculiarly irreg- ular hand. I read it through twice—and then I realized that the old scientist had lost his reason! The strain, ending in sud- den and unexpected success, had completely maddened him. “He stated that he had worked out the formule and had put them, together with my manuscripts which detailed the prelim- inary work, into a receptacle in the house and had contrived a series of electrical con- nections so that from any point in his labo- ratory or living-rooms he could press a but- ton which would ignite and utterly destroy the whole accumulation of material. He had blundered upon the perfecting link in the chain, and it was his to do with as he pleased. He would wager it against my share in the work: if I could obtain the manuscript, it was mine; but if he caught me within the house he would set off his in- fernal machine and put the discovery for- ever beyond my reach.” Again the young man paused and sat watching Blondie, his eyes, with their hint of glacial ice and of uncompromising deter- mination, narrowed and fierce. “What I want is a man with the courage and the skill to enter this house at night and get these papers. He will have this great Adventure advantage over me, that if he is caught at the work he will be taken for an ordinary burglar—and the manuscript will not suffer. He must be one built and trained for the business, cool even in danger and defeat, alert and strong and determined. And for this service I will pay ten thousand dollars, without a proviso or hitch. He will receive the money in any shape he desires to take it in, and will be free to spend it openly, without danger of protest or molestation. Now then, do you want it?” He slid close to Blondie and shot out this last question with such force that the stran- gler blinked. There was little considering to be done, however; Blondie had followed the young man’s narrative closely enough to be able to understand what was required from him. It.was in his line, and he knew that he could do it if it could be done. ‘You can deal me in,” he said, speaking eruffly and for the first time since he had been captured. ‘One thing I wants to ask, boss. Suppos’n, I tries my best and doesn’t find the stuff—what then? Does I get the coin or the boot-toe?”’ The scientist laughed. ‘Do your best and you'll not fail,” he predicted. “I can tell you just where to look, but if anything goes wrong you won’t lose your reward. The gods of this world have deait bounti- fully with me, and I deal bountifully with those who try honestly to serve me. I believe you are my man. I fished for big fish; the sight of so much money scared out the little fellows, and you, who had the cour- age to follow into so forbidding a country, should have both the courage and the ability to succeed very easily against this old man.” He was smiling into Blondie’s face, and the strangler felt his heart slow down and then start to sprint—there was something almost terrifying in that smile. iil sees WHERE Blondie crouched, in the shadow of a hedge in the out- skirts of the city, he might have beer again plunged into his own underworld of gloom and darkness. About him, however, scattered cottages were.set in squares of lawn and garden, and the fragrance of a bank of roses came to him, heavy and sti- fling as with the sodden breath of the night. CORNICLOO© <SrIGO