Adventure Magazine Cover — page 168: what you’re looking at

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

154 He spoke with such utter conviction that Tao Chan’s face twitched. He believed that the foreign devil might be telling the truth. He gave anorder. It was repeated back to where guards lounged on the steps of the quaintly-roofed temple. The lacquered doors opened, and the figure of Helen Rems- den appeared between two priests, who stepped back a little from her. She gave a little cry, and McNeill, whimsically conscious of the incongruity of the action, took off his helmet. Then the doors closed again. “We shall not torture you the first,”’ said Tao Chan very quietly. ‘First you shall watch us work with the girl. After that you may not care tolive. But we shall give you certain chances from time to time to bring in the claw. You foreign devil,” he continued almost in a monotone that threatened the more with its repression, “did you think you could ravish the shrine of the dragon god and go unscathed? Fung-Ti has been punished. So shall all the rest of you be punished. Your prayers for pity shall lack lips to utter them.” “Touch me,’ said McNeill, “and I shall shoot you through the belly, Tao Chan. Just one tiny touch—I have you covered now from my pocket—and you will be ex- plaining to your gods why you could not keep their claw. I give you one chance. Tell your men to fall back, bring out the girl in a palanquin borne by four priests. You and four more shall accompany me to the spot where the claw will be turned over to you. Will you do this?” For the last few seconds marked by the march of the hands on McNeill’s watch, the two men, Occidetal and Oriental, held a duel of glances. WEIN THE fissure Canfield stooped %* Nabove a little instrument of polished PSidd wood and brass. For fifteen min- utes he had been expecting to hear Mc- Neill’s whistle. Now he knew that the little lesson they had arranged was to be given, and he glanced at his own watch and looked over his adjustments with nerveless thoroughness. “No,” bluffed the high-priest. Back of them there was a muffled roar, a swift suggestion of exploding gases, a cloud of smoke that mushroomed, in which frag- ments of masonry lofted and rushed down again while the outer arch crumbled and dissolved before the eyes of Hoang Lung. Adventure McNeill had not moved a muscle. Now he put the question again. “Will you do this? Or shall I destroy the shrine?” Tao Chan thought rapidly. He guessed somewhat of the means employed to level the arch. But it had been done very cleverly, and he could not offset the terror of his ignorant underlings by a talk on dyna- mite. To them it was all magic. McNeill seemed very confident, and Tao Chan felt that the white man might use more of this magic wisdom to carry out his threat. ‘True, the girl was in the Temple, but—— He looked at his panic-stricken guards, at the uneasiness of his priests, trained as they were to avoid emotion, and he looked at McNeill, jaunty, nonchalant, all save his eyes, which were bits of steel. The white devil might sacrifice the girl. They did such things when they were desperate, to save them from torture. The claw must come back. He metaphorically tossed in his cards. He was still qualmish in the stomach that McNeill had threatened. Once more he gave an order, whereupon McNeill whipped out his whistle and sounded it twice. Canfield picked up his battery and con- nections and strolled out of his cave. “Worked like a charm,” he said to the lizards that flickered before him. ‘“‘A little bit of all right, that.”’ Eats A BAFFLED mob clustered about wage the ruins of the outer arch and * sullenly watched the palanquin borne = the priests depart under the command of the two white devils. = McNeill and Canfield walked one on either side of the chair and talked through the drawn curtains of elaborately embroidered silk to the rescued Helen Remsden. McNeill and Helen did most of the talking, Canfield noticed, and, being a goods sport, he filled in the time smoking cigarets. So they came to the camp in the hills, traveling the crest of the ridge, despite the sun, for McNeill wanted to make sure they were not followed. Amid the ring of men the priests set down the palanquin. ‘“‘Now,” demanded Tao Chan as the girl stepped out, “I have kept faith. Where is the claw?” “What did you do with it, Wilson?” asked McNeill. “I told our bloated friend here Gomicboo (E) S