Adventure Magazine Cover, April 1916 — page 160: what you’re looking at

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

158 Colonel who commanded the Eighth District, the district to which Bulayan was attached. Colonel Bradley had never lost his head over Major Cutter’s brilliant record; in- stead, for some reason which he could never explain to himself, he distrusted this tall, dark, self-controlled man; and he had per- suaded the general to give the vacant place to the ranking major. ' “Cutter has had recognition enough; he can afford to wait. In four years he has gone up from a second-lieutenancy to his majority, and promoting men out of their turn always creates hard feeling,” the colonel had argued. Then after a speculative look at the end of his cigar, he had added: “‘Besides, Cutter has had things alto- gether too much his way so far. I should like to see how he would stand up under disappointment.” So the other man got the place; and to judge from his looks Cutter’s rage was entirely incommensurate with what he con- sidered the rebuff. To understand it, you would have to know—what no one in the Philippines suspected—that for weeks he had been tottering on the verge of a mine which threatened at any moment to explode, wrecking his career. He had joined the service in the early days when the need for officers was so great that their pasts were not minutely inquired into; and Cutter had a past, an unenviable one, which included a wife whom he had abandoned in San Francisco. That she was worthless and had helped drag him down did not palliate the fact that she was legally married to him; and when he came to the Philippines with the determination to start afresh, he made the mistake of ignoring her. The result had been inevitable. She had finally learned of his whereabouts and his success. For months he had been paying blackmail to a firm of Pacific Coast shyster lawyers, and at last they had drained him dry. With the extra pay of a leutenant- colonel he might have held out for some- time longer; but now he was finished. They would hound him out of the service. It did not occur to him to go to Manila, confess his past to the general and beg assistance in straightening out the tangle. At heart he was bad, his dominant vanity had never been broken; his failure to receive the promotion which he felt that he had earned, only confirmed him in the belief Adventure that the world was leagued against him, a belief which had governed his actions in the former crises of his career. With a gesture of rage, he tore up the letter and damned the Constabulary as a hotbed of favoritism. Then his glance, wandering about the room, fell on the clumsy old iron safe in which Lieutenant Pendelton, supply officer at Porto Oporto, kept his funds. With an involuntary impulse, he crossed to it, tried the door and found it locked. Then he stood looking speculatively at the safe. He knew that it contained an un- usually large sum of money—something more than twelve thousand pesos, part of it a relief fund for some sufferers from a recent typhoon. And into his face, as he stood gazing at the safe, there came the look of a wolf gazing from a hilltop at a wire- enclosed corral in the valley below. > him red-handed smuggling opium. We have the goods on him all right. Perhaps after a bit of grilling you can find out something about the rest of his gang.” It was Pendelton, who had entered unob- served. Cutter turned unhurriedly, and let his glance rest on the supply officer. Pendel- “T’VE got Ricardo out here; caught ton was young, the youngest first lieu-. tenant in the service. Despite the erectness with which he carried himself, his slender figure and smooth, unlined face gave him the look of a boy rather than a man, and a certain eagerness and impulsiveness of man- ner added to the impression. He was a Southerner, easily moved, and with a somewhat exaggerated and quixotic regard for what he called the code of a gen- tleman. He would not tell a lie and he made a fetish of keeping his word. For the Major he felt the intense loyalty and ad- miration of a boy for an older and successful man with whom he is thrown. Now under Cutter’s gaze he flushed slightly. ‘Did I disturb—”’ he began. Cutter caught himself and laughed. “T was only thinking of something, Pen,” he said. ‘“‘You have Ricardo out there? Bring him in.”’ , He returned to his desk and sat down. In his face there was no hint of anger or emo- tion. Ricardo shuffled in, a small, brown, © CoOMmicboooks (CO