Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 169: what you’re looking at

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

smuggling at Old Point the decoy letter ready to use when Mr. Hemmingway should have a large amount of bonds in his own home safe. The whole story of the Saturday morning interview was a figment of Fiske’s fertile brain, and of course Mr. Hemmingway had no suspicions of his nephew. Fiske had known of the ex- pected callers, had watched outside the house until the last one went away and then, run- ning up the steps, had stopped Mr. Hem- mingway just as he was closing the door and requested a short interview. Innocently SMUGGLING AT OLD POINT MEEPER RORKE MACLEAN turned from his desk and found me inspecting a rather queer look- ing object that I had found upon the mantelpiece. At first glance it looked like an ordinary quart tomato-can and had it not been for the strange black characters that were painted on the tin I probably should have passed it by as a receptacle for some of the Keeper’s various and innumer- able odds and ends. I looked at the Keeper inquiringly, and, answering the unspoken question, he said, “That can held somethin’ that we don’t manufacture on this side. Them fellers with the yeller skins an’ pigtails are the principal dealers in it an’ they ain’t always partic’lar that Uncle Sam gits the duty on it.” “Opium?” I ventured. III5 enough Mr. Hemmingway took his secre- tary into the library, and, while waiting for his fell opportunity, Fiske talked over some business matters. While making a memo- randum, Mr. Hemmingway broke his pencil- point, and, unthinkingly, Fiske obligingly sharpened it. “And to think,’ murmured Bayliss to Harmis, “‘that little act of ordinary courtesy proved his undoing!”’ ‘“‘Marvelous, Bayliss, marvelous!”’ said Harris. ‘‘Yes,” he said, ‘that’s it. I reckon that can held ’bout a hunderd dollars’ worth of the dope an’ there was nearly three hunderd like it put ashore within a stone’s throw of this Station.” “Why,” I exclaimed, “I hardly thought that in these days such undertakings were practised within so short a distance of the headquarters of the revenue officers.”’ “They ain’t, as a rule, I suppose, Lieu- tenant, but this looked so easy they thought they’d try it, an’ darn if it wouldn’t have succeeded except for a mishap they couldn’t help! You see it’s pretty lonely ‘long this stretch of beach the two months the crew’s off an’ there wasn’t one chance in a hunderd of any one seein’ them. All they had to do was land it here an’ carry it ’cross to the mainland in their la’nch, then ’twould be CO Gbooks C©