Adventure Magazine Cover — page 30: what you’re looking at

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

786 He would manage to meet the girl’s eyes. He would make her understand in that glance that, did she need a protector, she would find one in him. Slowly, unwillingly, the little mare walked up the El-Biar road. Holbrooke’s glance never wavered from the pair ahead. A moment more and he was directly behind them. Another moment and he had passed them. The girl was talking—a soft foreign intonation of Arabic. It gave Holbrooke an unpleasant, an almost repulsive sensa- tion. Suddenly the voice ceased. He turned in his saddle and looked squarely into hereyes. For the fraction of a moment their glances met. The girl turned to her companion and spoke rapidly a brief half- dozen words slurred together. He answered without raising his eyes. The two paused in their walk and, turning toward the west, stared in silence down the slope of blos- soming asphodels and daisies which led to the sea. oS To Holbrooke it was an open rebuff. His presence was an intrusion. The girl’s eyes, her quiet withdrawal, told him that as plainly as could English speech. He felt the blood mount to his cheeks. Then he did a thing strange to himself. He brought the mare to a standstill, turned deliberately again in his saddle and called out in English: “TI beg pardon. E]-Biar?” Silence answered him. The two stood immovable. But he saw upon the girl’s half turned face an unmistakable expres- sion of comprehension. The Arab turned slowly and spoke in French. “What does monsieur wish?” The words were courteous, but there was that in their tone which made the blood beat thickly in Holbrooke’s temples. _ “The way to El-Biar,’”’ he answered, like- wise in French. The Arab -pointed a lean, henna-stained finger. ‘‘Straight ahead, or, if monsieur prefers a longer route, there is a road starting from the Hotel Continental—the Chemin Romain.”’ He bowed gravely and turned his back upon the American. The girl still faced the sea. She chose, appar- ently, to ignore the man who questioned the way to El-Biar. “Thank you,” said Holbrooke. As he spoke a sudden puff of wind from the sea thrust aside the Arab’s burnoose, revealing Can you direct me to Adventure a brilliant flash of gold and scarlet. The simple robe of white woolen hid the uni- form of a native soldier—a Spahi of the Sahara. The man caught the truant folds of white together and shot a look into the American’s eyes. Then he turned and, with an air of supreme indifference, stared into the west. Holbrooke touched the mare’s quivering flanks with his heel. She sprang forward— a motion of freedom, of release—and up the El-Biar road. The American’s brain was in tumult. One question was beating there ceaselessly. What was this girl— undoubtedly English or American—doing at such an hour on a lonely African hill- road in the companionship of an Arab? il Place du Gouvernment. The white square, with its awnings, its shim- mering mosque, its great statue of the Duke of Orleans, was alive with midday bustle. To the casual observer the clean-cut, grave-eyed young American was one of that great moving army of globe-trotters whose chief business in life was the enjoy- ment of the moment. Yet he was a man with a mission. Tospend his days among, yet not with, his fellows was a conditional part of that mission. In short, Holbrooke had, upon an impulse, entered the employ of the French Government. He was a political agent—the eyes and ears of the master he served, to scent danger while it was yet a breath, a whisper. For five years the American had found an absorbing in- terest in his work. But the mission that now kept him in Algiers he had decided would be his last. America called him with many voices. And, because it was his last adventure in this land of Arabian nights, he went about his task with deepened interest. For a month a new-old trouble had been stirring. It began in the narrow, sunless alleys of the old town and communicated itself to the boulevards; it leaped across the borders, the sea, the mountains, from the towns to the desert; it communed in the brown tents, beneath the stars, along the camel-trails. It was the old, old cry of native unrest, of rebellion against foreign rule. Sitting one night in a café, Holbrooke learned of the threatened uprising. Day and night he followed up the trail of his discovery until every thread of its weaving, but one, lay gathered in his hands. The IT WAS noon when he reached the C© MICLOOKS ©