Adventure Magazine Cover — page 178: what you’re looking at

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

164. himself plainly understood the subtle threat and his jaw set hard before he took up the reading: “Who shall stay the hand of the Reaper? Only he who hath a clear conscience need not fear him. Yet restitution may purge the soul, But the path of the perverse one shall be sown with knives. Wo, wo unto him who mocks the ghosts of a thou- sand generations! The gods are great—and awful is their vengeance! They strike, and we see not whence comes the blow, nor when. Neither do their hearts soften to the stubborn evil- oer. Terror shall go down with him into the Place of Shadows!”’ “Well?” asked Remsden. make of it?”’ “Tt is not time for me to talk yet,” said McNeill. “I want some explanations from you. To save your stepdaughter from the fanatic priests, I took back the claw to the temple, not with any eagerness on your part, at that. I saw the claw turned over to the priest and I returned with Helen—with Miss Remsden. Now, in New York, I read that you have presented the claw to the museum and now, for the second time, you tell me that she is in jeopardy on account of it, and on account of your own infernal ambition, ” he added grimly. ““Now, Remsden, you concealed from me your first depredations from the temple. Don’t hide anything from me this time. I warn you that if your stepdaughter’s life hangs by a thread, as I believe it does, yours is still closer to annihilation.” He saw in the dilated eyes of Remsden that he, too, realized this. It was not terror for his stepdaughter as much as for himself that had shaken him. She was a _ pawn seized in the game whose capture left him, the king, open to attack. “Now then,” McNeill went on, “is this claw you have given the museum another, inferior specimen that somewhere you have got hold of or is it a fake that you have perpetrated after having to restore the original. And what- cock-and-bull story have you foisted off on the museum con- cerning it? If it is so, while the princes, knowing the true claw safe and sound, have laughed at you and all America in their Oriental sleeves, you have never- theless exposed yourself as the man who “What do you Adventure ravished their sacred shrine, and now they preshadow their revenge. “Or, is there something deeper? What- ° ever it is, come clean with it. Helen, whom I love, is in danger. I am included in all likelihood. They tried to bowstring me in California. As for yourself, your death is certain unless intervention comes. And it will not be a pleasant death, Rems- den, for all your vaunt of New York police protection, for all your steel bars, I am the only one who might help you, who must help you, for Helen’s sake. But you must tell me the truth—the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” Remsden moistened his lips. Once more he lowered his voice to a whisper, took a long sip of the brandy and water and glanced fearfully about the room. “Tt is the original,” he said. in the museum, I mean.” McNeill’s jaw began to protrude and his forehead to knit. Remsden hurried on: “Tl tell you everything, McNeill. It’s due you, in a way, I'll grant that. Of course you came out all right. There was no chance of a slip, and I offered you extra compensation for the risk. “The claw “WHEN I told you in Peking that I didn’t have the claw and couldn’t aes =pet it for two days, it was because I had entrusted it to a Chinese jeweler for duplication. A wonderful craftsman, the only man in China, I think, who could have copied it, and you know what wonders the Orientals are at duplication. I had to pay him an enormous sum to overcome his superstitions—almost as much as I paid Fung-Ti in the first place—but he did it. He brought the two to me at the Im- perial “IT saw the man,” said McNeill shortly. ‘TI thought you had referred it to him for an opinion. Go on.” ‘The facsimile was perfect. I couldn’t have known them apart and I made the closest examination. I doubt if the old craftsman himself would have known the difference, once they were juggled, if I hadn’t taken the precaution to impregnate the original with ambergris. The perfume sank into the jade and the claw, and some of it still clings. The copy, of course, was unscented.” He sat back with a glint of satisfaction on his features at the cleverness he had Gomichbooks. Go