Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 6: what you’re looking at

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

952 faction at having captured me, by a con- traction of all his muscles in an ecstatic shiver; humped his broad shoulders up about his ears and, with hands in pockets raising his trousers to his shoe-tops, he walked with huge bobbing strides through the grinning crowd at the transfer-station. When we had reached a clear space in the street beyond he looked down into my disgusted face benignly: ‘‘Do you good!” said he: “Stretch your hide!” I did not answer, and in silence we came to the house where he rented the third floor front, from a fat, snooping widow called Littlefield. He motioned me to wait, let himself in and disappeared. I was conscious of Littlefield peeping through the closed shutters, and of other peeping eyes in the houses adjoining, for Trainor was a godsend to the gossips of the neighborhood and they seldom peeped in vain. Presently his window opened, his head and shoulders protruded, and in his hand he waved a cattleman’s rope. When the noose opened, he twirled it circling down- ward and roped me neatly under the arms. Then he pulled in his head and braced his feet on the window-frame. Then the breath- less spectators were treated to the spectacle of a six-footer walking up Mrs. Littlefield’s house-front at an obtuse angle and pulled into the third-story window by the collar. “This is about the limit!”’ I expostulated as I scrambled aboard. ‘“‘What the Q He silenced me by clapping a hand over my mouth and jabbed a ghostly thumb over his shoulder indicating the door. I listened; there was wheezy breathing at the keyhole of that door, and Trainor rushed upon it with much stamping clatter. With hand on the knob he stopped to listen. There was a hurried retreat across the hall, a door was opened, then a jangling crash shook the floor. Trainor then broke silence: ‘‘That was Littlefield!”? Again one of his characteristic repressed shudders shook his large frame. He drew his face down soberly and met my accusing look. ‘What if I did put a washbow! and pitch- er on the floor in there? Her eyes are put in up-and-down, to fit keyholes. Anyhow, she was tempted and she fell. Just one month more and I could break Littlefield of this vicious keyhole habit. But I must leave her—I’m going to move.” Adventure Meanwhile I had noticed the closed packing-cases and the dismantled room. ‘Where are you going?” “That’s the point! That’s what’s keep- ing Littlefield and the Tabbies awake nights; though I’ve told Littlefield in strict con- fidence, and all the Tabbies can tell you, that I am going in town to live with an eccentric millionaire named Jerome Spunk as his private tutor. He lives in the Dome of the State House and his grandfather was killed by falling through an open door down two flights of stairs. So he has a vow in heaven, Jerome has, not to use door or stairway again—reaches his rooms in the Dome by rope-ladder or balloon—and o6 He listened, clapped one long forefinger against his nose with a wink of acute slyness and tilted his head toward the door. Littlefield was emerging from her lair. The landing creaked, once, twice, and once more ‘Trainor. descended upon the door savagely. This time he tore it open, just in time to admit the sounds of a fat and frantic getting-down-stairs, then of a crescendo—: “Br-r-r-rip—Thump!” as Littlefield slipped and struck bottom. Craning his neck over the banister, Train: or emitted a bass roar that made glass jingle, ““Ha-a-a-a! Foiled again!” “Narrow shave—that,” he said, with a grim shake of his big tawny head. With severe gravity he returned to his seat. “You, of course, are impersonating Spunk, the millionaire, and your entrance just now was in character.” He bent to inspect the tracks in the flour sprinkled on the bare floor. ‘‘Yep! She has been up to read the labels on the boxes.”’ One of the labels faced me—it read: John Trainor, Care Jerome Spunk, Dome of State House, Boston. ‘“‘But the expressman?”’ I asked. “‘Oh, he’s primed. I taught it to him by heart.” And he grinned the grin of modest achieve- ment. IN SUCH childish scheming he wasted the time and energy that should have earned him a degree with honors, while his standing approached the suspension-mark. But these seemingly futile plots served the double purpose of giving outlet to surplus vigor and concealing CO MICLOOKS CO