Adventure Magazine Cover, April 3, 1918 — page 161: what you’re looking at

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

The Man Who Whipped a City “Keep off!’ Peter ordered sharply, throw- ing them aside. “Hold him, I say!’’ cried Alden. At that the men, a round twelve of them this time, sprang determinedly upon Hunt- ley. There was a lively struggle, but it lasted for less than a minute. One man, especially if he be handicapped by a shat- tered finger-bone, can not hope to hold his own long against a dozen sturdy laborers. They tied Huntley’s hands behind him, and one of them struck him brutally at the enraged contractor’s command when he protested. Then they bound him hard and fast in Alden’s runabout, and Alden whisked him to Westover and to Magis- trate Gurland’s office without arousing the notice of the people. Immediately after a hastily whispered conference between Farnsworth Alden and the magistrate, Peter was given a semblance of a trial. ‘There was small need of wit- nesses, Gurland said; the contractor’s still bleeding face furnished all the evidence necessary. Huntley endeavored to present his side of the affair, but a deputy-sheriff promptly hushed him. “Assault with intent to kill,” droned the magistrate. “Eleven months and twenty-nine days.” The deputy started away with his pris- oner. Alden bent toward Magistrate Gur- land and whispered a reminder. “In solitary confinement,’ added Gur- land. “Watch him. He’s dangerous.”’ Into the dingiest, most dismal cell of the Westover jail went well-dressed Peter Huntley, and the heavy lock clicked behind him. ‘This cell was in the jail’s basement, and the only light it had struggled in through a horizontally narrow, barred window set on a level with the ground outside and facing a blank stone fence. The only furniture was a wooden box and a narrow and musty-smelling bed. On the whitewashed wall opposite the iron door some former occupant of that solitary cell had whimsically written with a piece of charcoal: NOT FEED OR ANNOY THE ANIMALS VISITORS MUST Began for Peter a series of days and nights that were full of that acute misery that any manner of confinement brings to live and red-blooded men. No privileges 159 whatever were granted him save those of going three times a day, always under the close guard that is sent with the most untrustworthy criminals, to the lavatory and then to the eating-room. He tried to buy the sheriff and the jailer, but Azs money wouldn’t touch them. He tried to tell them about the dangerous dam—for Marian’s sake he refrained from mentioning the graft scheme—but they had been warned in advance that his mind was twisted on such questions as those of power-plants and dams. Peter grew sullen, and his face became darkened with a stubby beard and lean. But never for a moment did he give up his aims or lose hope, though it required in him the indomitable courage of a superman. All along he had been wondering whether Marian knew of his incarceration. She would come to see him when she was able to be out, he was sure, if she had learned of his plight. But Marian didn’t know of it. The grafting ring had taken care that very very few knew of it. Peter had guessed too shrewdly in the figures he had presented to Alden just before the “assault.” Three weeks from the date on which the iron door swung shut between Huntley and liberty, the dam was completed and the high tension wires were connected with the distributing station. The streets and almost every house in Westover had been wired and made ready. The evening that saw the town flooded with electric light was a time of general rejoicing. The band played, speeches were made in the court- house, the populace cheered wildly. Down in his dungeon-like cell Peter heard some- thing of it dimly, and he understood. A month passed, and during those four weeks the stores stopped handling kerosene and most of the people foolishly threw away their oil lamps and used the oil they had for building fires. Also during that month, a scourging epidemic of typhoid struck the town. There is nothing on earth, I think, quite so uncertain as Tennessee’s weather. On the last day of July it began to rain hard and steadily. For hours upon hours it rained, and the river began to rise. Peter Huntley began to rave about the dam. It was enough, considering the wear of his solitary confinement, to.drive him insane. The jailer refused to listen. Peter then (C@ COnnicloookxs