Adventure Magazine Cover — page 163: what you’re looking at

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

In the Noon into the long darksome sitting-room with its heavy ancient furniture, its thick, faded hangings. The coal fire had long ago died out. The grate held only gray clinkers and white ashes. Henry followed, more slowly, at a dis- tance; but Abijah, with the instinct of the worker, went into the guest-chamber. Later, after he had prepared the old men’s break- fast, he would have to put this room to rights. In the middle of the sitting-room floor old Peter Hemming’s hold on the chauffeur’s sleeve suddenly relaxed. His eager stride ceased. Gasping, he stood still, his lips and hollow cheeks white as his snowy hair. The door of the new fireproof safe was wide open, the polished steel of its lining reflecting the pale light which fell upon it from the near window. The floor about it was strewn with tarnished silver forks and spoons and other pieces of plate; and amid this litter were scattered leather, silk-lined jewel-cases, open for the most part, and empty. “Vou see! You see!” he cried, at length, tremulously, his poise but half recovered. “Tt is as I feared. The person you brought here was a thief!’’ And he laid agitated hands on the young man beside him. But the young man shook him off with scarcely an effort. “Let go of me!” he commanded, smiling cynically. ‘“‘You’re crazy! That’s what you are. Why, she’d no more think of doing that sort of thing than the Pope himself would! She’s got more money and jewels than she knows what to do with. You’ve been robbed, my friend, but Mrs.—that’s to say, the lady I fetched here, didn’t do it. Your house has been broken into. Burglars! That’s it. They frightened her, and she’s still hiding somewhere. In the garret, maybe, or in the cellar.” Peter listened, dazed, confused. Out of the welter of his thoughts at length emerged a question that spurred him to instant ac- tion: Had the thief found the secret drawer —the drawer containing the hoarded cur- rency, the thousand-dollar treasury notes, forty-three of them? Another moment and he was on his knees before the open safe, his nervous forefinger pressing a spring. At the pressure a steel slide receded and an oblong steel panel came into view. In its center was a countersunk steel ring. Palpitantly, every nerve tense, d1 of the Moon 727 he slipped his finger within it—-drew out the drawer. The bills were there. As he deftly restored the aperture to its original masquerade he breathed quickly. The jewels could probably be recovered. Little, if any, of the silver, so far as he could see, had been taken. He wondered why. And wondering, he rose. The chauffeur was still standing in the room’s center, his head bent thoughtfully forward, and behind him, creeping stealthily upon him, his face hideous with murderous craft, in his upraised hand an iron grate- bar, was Henry! Peter Hemming, weighted by three score and ten years and further hampered by a whirling succession of emotions to which he was unaccustomed, found now in his emer- gency that he was utterly voiceless; found, too, that he had lost the last ounce of power from his flaccid muscles, and so stood gazing, in a torturing agony of waiting, unable to warn, unable to move. In the eternity of the ensuing second he could only pray with all the fervor of his spirit that to the man in danger might come even yet a saving impulse. And even as the madman was upon him this prayer was answered. The chauffeur discovering a gold trinket on the floor almost at his feet, all at once stooped down to recover it, and the blow, aimed with crushing intent at his head, fell with deflected and diminished force on his bent back. In the struggle which ensued, Henry Hemming, although evincing a strength and agility quite marvelous considering his years, was easily overpowered, his adversary throwing him, finally, unarmed, weak and panting, into the depths of his own worn leather chair before the hearth. There Peter, now restored, distressed lest his brother should have been harmed, came to him and bending solicitously over him murmured soothingly, as might a mother to a hurt child. ‘Poor boy! Poor boy!” he crooned com- fortingly. ‘‘Youare not hurt, lad, are you? Tell me! Do you hear? You are not hurt? Tell me you are not hurt!” He took one of the imbecile’s thin, knob- knuckled hands in his own and began to stroke it, while the chauffeur smiled sneer- ingly and muttered, as he balanced the heavy grate-bar of which he had disarmed him. conniclo@ol< (C@