Adventure Magazine Cover — page 22: what you’re looking at

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

8 -~ “You will come to see me? To dinner? Helen and I are alone. We have few friends.”’ T suggested that she would probably have still fewer when it became known that she was friendly with me. “You mean Thrope would do something?” “T wasn’t thinking of him but of your respectable neighbors. I am what is some- times called a ‘habitué of the tenderloin’.”’ She ignored that with a little gesture as if she knew too much about respectable people to care what they thought, and asked me anxiously if Thrope had made trouble for me since that affair. He had not. I did not go into details and explain to her that it was not an easy matter for any- body to make trouble for me unless they came to my face. I have known men and attended the funerals of some of them, who scorned the cowardly precaution of watch- ing against shots and blows from the rear. Iam not sucha one. I am very cautious. The more so be- cause, though I always have had many friends, I have never used any of them as a body-guard. They have helped me many times. I have called on them often. What I mean is that I have always gone through darkened streets alone, if there was nothing but the suspicion that somebody might be lying in wait for me. My ears are keen, my hands are quick and I seldom miss. And I am never off guard, never to be taken unawares—if tense watchfulness is a pre ventive. I have said that Thrope did not make trouble for me over the episode, then six months past; but, of course, I had no way of knowing whether the rooming-house in which I stayed had been fired because the incendiary wanted to burn me sleeping, or some one else in the house; or merely had a grudge against the proprietor. I sleep lightly, too lightly for my own comfort. A creak, a voice at a distance, a draft puffing from an opened window, almost any sort of a noise, makes me at once alert. I had no way of knowing whether it was some one who had taken Thrope’s money or who had mistaken me for another party, that sprang from a door- way one night, leaping for my back with an uplifted knife. Nothing was revealed of the man’s identity at the inquest, for though T attended I was not called as a witness. Adventure The instant I had shot I slipped into the doorway for a minute, then came out, pre- tending to be one of the scrambling crowd attracted by the report; and I did not re- main long enough to have the police get mine among the names of those who had been first arrivals on the scene. A few other little incidents of a much less menacing character than those just mentioned had happened within the six months, but I had no way of connecting them with Thrope. So I assured Mrs. Curwen that Thrope had not, so far as I knew, made trouble. She agitatedly assured me that he would. She begged me to leave the city, for a time any way: “Tf he is waiting like that—it means you won't have a chance. Please, please, listen tome. Ido know James Thrope! I know every villainous drop of blood in his body. He is the vilest man that ever lived! If that letter had got to his hands She flung her hands up to her face, and did not finish. There were tears in her eyes when her hands dropped away, but she was more composed in manner. She said that she could never, never thank me enough! And wouldn’t I please come again to see her— soon? She said one thing that stayed with me, and things of sentiment do not usually re- main long in my ears— “T know Jim Thrope so well that I want to treat you as my son!” “Helen,” she said, calling to the young girl that came past the door. “This is the young man that struck James Thrope in the mouth!” The girl’s dark eyes flashed, and I saw her body stiffen slightly. She was far different from the pleasant, smiling girl who had welcomed me at the door. “Oh!” she said, and nothing more. But she watched me steadily, her face expres- sionless but hard set; and her eyes burned strangely. It was days before I could get those people and that visit out of my mind, or rather into the background of my thoughts. There was not only mystery, but mystery compounded. At the name of Thrope, Mrs. Curwen had become a woman of almost tragic intensity. I can not, and never could, let puzzling circumstances be forgotten until [ have thought them over Gomichboo <SiiG (0) mM