Adventure Magazine, Mid-September 1917 — page 119: what you’re looking at

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

The Vanished Plans who for months had been carrying on casual negotiations for the purchase of a sugar plantation in northern Luzon. Atthesame moment he saw me staring at him; and with- out speaking, somewhat hastily I thought, dropped the curtain. The salesman swept the fragments into a pile, and nonchalantly dumped them into a box which he procured from under the counter. Brock drew a roll of bills from his pocket; but the Japanese, anticipating his purpose, shook his head in vigorous protest. The vase was nothing, in three weeks he would have another which the captain might buy if he felt so inclined. Meantime there were prints or perhaps a lacquered box. But Brock desired neither prints nor lac- quer ware; and after a further offer to pay, we left the shop. | Brock’s look was guileless, but my own thoughts were in confusion. He had delib- erately dropped the vase. And why had Haichi Kamura neither come into the room nor spoken? I knew him well; usually he was the acme of cordiality. But I received no enlightenment from Brock. Instead, as we paused on the side- walk, he said: “‘Now, Peel, for the test. danger, are you game?” From the expression of his face, he might have been proposing a game of chess. “All right,” I said, trying to match his tone of casualness. ee manicuring, and now, a big, black cigar in his mouth, was admiring the dexterity with which a barefooted street- sweeper always retrieved his cart just as a passing team was about to demolish it. If he saw us, his manner did not show it. At the corner of the square a narrow foot- path leads to an alley running behind the buildings on the right-hand side. Brock led the way to a low, badly lighted warehouse, midway of this alley. We stopped in the shadow of its doorway. The air, heavy with the sweetish, rancid smell of raw sugar and dried copra, and the damp, broken flagging of the alley gave me a momentary sense of depression. Evidently the surroundings were familiar to Brock, for after a brief scrutiny of the big room behind us, he loosed the lower part of his blouse, and taking from a strap about There may be THE American had finished his 117 his waist a similar revolver to the one he had given me, slipped it into his breeches pocket. My own I placed conveniently in the side pocket of my coat. 3 Five minutes passed in silence, then ten; and my nervous excitement gave way toa fear that whomsoever we awaited might not come. “Who is it, Tommy? Could he have gone another way?” I whispered. He shook his head; but before he could reply, there came the sound of steps from the direction of the Bazaar of the Rising Sun. Brock drew back more deeply into the shadow, and IJ sensed the tightening of his muscles. “Tf it is Haichi,”’ he breathed as the steps drew nearer. But it was not Haichi Kamura; it was Maxwell, Colonel Levin’s clerk, and he passed within two feet of us, his big head bent forward, as though holding it erect were too great an effort for his neck. ‘He should come in a minute now,” whispered Brock, as Maxwell turned the corner into the footpath, and disappeared. A tao passed leading a carabao, followed by a Chinese coolie at his shuffling trot, a heavy bucket swinging from either end of a long pingue stick balanced across his shoul- ders. Then a door down the alley closed, and we heard Haichi. There was no mis- taking the quick, light click of his heels upon the flagging. “Luck is with us, he’s alone.” I barely caught the words as Brock flattened himself against the doorjamb. A moment more and the man for whom we had been waiting drew abreast of us. He was unconcernedly reading a card which he held close before his face. Without a word Brock slipped in front of him while I grasped him about the waist. Haichi Kamura was a full head shorter than I, and he had been taken entirely off his guard. For an instant I felt his figure relax as I strained to pin his elbows to his sides; then, before I realized his purpose, his muscles grew taut and he dropped forward to his knee. There came a cry of warning from Brock, followed by the thud of a blow; but I was already spinning through the air. A pile of hemp sacks, providentially left in front of the adjoining doorway, no doubt saved me some broken bones. As it was the impact of the fall stretched me out for fully a minute. COmicloo C©