Adventure Magazine Cover — page 25: what you’re looking at

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

Born to be Hanged, But— | II ~ So I went my way and wished sincerely that I had had no scruples about prying into the content of that letter. I could have kept silent and lied. Iam excellent at keeping silent, and on crucial occasions I am not likely to be called a liar—no matter whatIsay. I tell the truth more frequently than is comfortable because I have an aver- sion to lying: for one thing, I don’t like to give any man credit for being too formida- ble for me to dare tell him the truth. And then, too, there is something con- temptible about lying—except when it becomes magnificent, a thing that can hap- pen to no man more than once or twice in a lifetime, and then inevitably in connection with some woman’s fate. A poet, the one poet that I read, has said: “Tf there be trouble to herward, And a lie of the blackest can clear— Lie—while thy lips can move, Or a man is alive to hear.” My own regard for women is not that great; but my admiration for men who have such a regard for them is excessive. THOSE remarks have not led me so far from my story as may appear; “(| but to get back to that letter: Zellers waylaid me at every corner and whined for his letter. I would not explain; as well have tried to explain to a leech that it should not suck blood. Naturally he thought I was playing a lone graft, and he became something more than objectionable—a pest. He circulated whatever report of me he felt like among whatever crowd gave him a drink. I did not greatly care about that. What people think of me is their own business, and I seldom interfere except when they meddle with my business—at such times I am at pains to correct wrong impressions of me, for people who judge me aright do not often try to meddle. But when Zellers, accompanied by three men this time, two of them recognizable as liegemen of James Thrope, came at me in a body and tried to talk what they called “business,” I thought the time had come to be firm. ; I was told pointedly that Thrope had ‘it in for me,” and that of course I knew what that meant; but that Thrope was interested in Zellers’ letter, and if I would give it up, I could name my price. I suggested that Mr. Thrope’s interest could not be so very great, since he had not come in person; and I said that if I heard any more about that letter of the same nature that had been coming back to me through friends that had listened to Zellers, I might give it up on the stipulation that Zellers was permanently silenced—and that I did not greatly care how! The little malevolent rat was thoroughly frightened. He knew that the methods of obtaining silence in that quarter of the city ranged from Chinese hatchet-men to an overdose of chloral, from a blow in the dark to being pitched with tied hands and weighted feet into the bay. Thrope’s men made their bid, a some- what larger one than Mr. Ellis had offered, so I imagined that, he having failed, men thought to be more nearly in my class were delegated to try their persuasive power; and they retired with somewhat more direct threats than Mr. Ellis had sug- gested. I was under the impression that Ellis himself was a Thrope man. Zellers went with them, but he came furtively to me later in the evening. He was frightened. He whined as usual about — being a poor fellow who needed a little honest money, and declared he knew that I wouldn’t throw over a good friend like himself, According to his interpretation of our “friendship,” which on my part had never extended beyond giving him an occasional dollar or so for drugs and booze, though he always asked for the money under the euphemism of “food,” we had been rocked in the same cradle and maintained a sort of Damon-Pythian friendship. “Youse ’undn’t trow me over fer dis bunch o’ graf’ers, ’udjur” I suggested that he tell me what was behind all this effort and rumor about that letter. He didn’t know. He really didn’t. memory was none of the best and, having been drunk at the time of reading it, he didn’t know what was in the letter; but his imaginative tongue had overcome that little handicap until, by his report, the letter contained enough specific informa- tion to have convicted Congressman Bryan of compounded felony and implicated any number of other persons. He did not remember the party to whom the letter was addressed, but it was a woman and Gomicbooks.co His