Adventure Magazine Cover — page 38: what you’re looking at

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

24. Adventure “Yes, Thrope, you’ve guessed it,” I said, stepping inside and closing the door without taking my eyes from him. Perhaps he wanted to fight, but he is not greatly to be blamed for not attempting it. I offered no menace, except such menace as he may have read in my face; but if he read anything there his eyes were better than my effort to show no expression, unless an inscrutable lack of feeling and purpose may in itself be called an ex- pression. The tips of my fingers were in the side pockets of my coat; there was no threat in face or manner. “You, you were—arrested?”’ He half asked it, half declared it; that is, he was having difficulty in reconciling the conflicting evidence between his ears and his eyes, between what he seemed to have heard and what he seemed now to see. “Arrested? What for?” I asked inno- cently. “They told me they had you—or would have—or = Then suddenly, anxious to charge me with a great crime— “You killed a man!” “Oh, did I? Thrope, you seem to have me mixed with some one else.”’ I was not playing; I was tormenting him. The realities of the world, the things one knows and has heard, on land, take on almost misty distance, a sort of nebulous mirage, if their existence is contradicted at night in mid-ocean, when the ship is devoid of human sounds; particularly when the ship groans and wails—and a woman has just flung herself overboard or, which is just as effective, is thought to have done so. “You did!’ he shouted at me, saying it loudly to convince himself. “You killed Smith. Delaney was crazy because—be- cause—”’ His voice trailed off indecisive- ly. ‘Then, strengthened by a new idea, he added—“Because it happened at his place!”’ I understood. Thrope did not want me to know that Delaney was indignant, furious, because a frame-up had _ been planted against me—and especially so be- cause it had been pulled off in his place. No Thrope would not want me to know that. He would not want to believe it himself. Delaney was a power, .a political power. He led the underworld to the polls. It was Delaney who knew best how to stuff and steal in a doubtful election, and Thrope was anxious to be governor. He would not want Delaney to be angry, even though he could shake much of the profit out of Delaney’s business and graft. Still who could handle votes like Delaney? It I had known precisely, as I did then where Delaney stood and how angry he was at the frame-up, I might have lain low and remained in San Francisco, not putting much faith in Delaney, but, so to speak, less distrust. But that was all behind me. Thrope and I were together on the high seas. I looked the cabin over admiringly. It was capacious and beautifully furnished. So the Jessie Darling was something of a pleasure yacht. A bottle of whisky and a piece of paper were on the table at which Thrope sat. ‘“How did you get here?” he demanded. Then quickly—‘“‘Won’t you have a drink?” I read his thoughts—not his thought either, but his intonations and expressions— as plainly as if he had put them into precise words. Between asking how I got there, and the proffer of a glass of whisky, it had occurred to him that if deftly managed I could be arrested on the ship, stowed away and carried back to stand trial. The main thing, of course, in his mind was to keep me from shooting before help could arrive. I think that he was almost beginning to believe that fortune had played into his hands. As he turned to pour out whisky for me his eye fell on the piece of folded paper. With a movement intended to be un- obstrusive he placed his hand over it and with a very awkward effort at doing nothing suspicious was carrying it to his pocket. ‘Something I would be interested in?’ I inquired innocently. ‘““Whate” And again and blusteringly, as he rammed it into his pocket—‘‘What!”’ Thrope was given to blustering. He seemed to think noise was strength. The world would be full of Samsons were it true. “Let me share your confidence, Thrope,” I said, extending a hand of which the fore- finger beckoned slightly. “Of all the——”’ “Impudence. Yes. paper!”’ “It’s personal. I—I—it’s personal.” I replied that I didn’t care if it were intimate, or what it might be; that I was a very curious individual. Let me see that com (@) ibooks.co mn