Adventure Magazine Cover — page 48: what you’re looking at

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

34 known him for many, many years, and for most of them had been afraid of him. “T am terribly afraid of him,” she re- _ peated, looking at me in such a way that I could not very well help saying— “Any time, just send word to me through Delaney of the Hoop-la Saloon.”’ She told me more than it is necessary to repeat of how she had watched over the boy, keeping her secret from every one but him. On his twelfth birthday she had ventured to tell him the truth. “Or as much of it as my shame would let me. I said his father was dead and—’”’ she broke off chokingly. When I had first returned the letter to her she had. learned that Thrope was after it and she determined to destroy it. But she could not. It meant too much. Mr. Ellis, who had been sent to San Francisco as soon as Bryan had learned of the letter being lost, and who, guided by gossip along the Barbary Coast, had searched me out, then discovered from Mrs. Curwen that it had already been returned; and he had returned to me and generously paid the money he had been given to offer as a reward. Mrs. Curwen, afraid of Thrope, had given up the house and moved into an apartment. That was why I could not locate her. At last, determined to ease her mind for once and all, she had decided to burn the letter. Then she had found that it was gone and a blank piece of paper had been substituted. As she had read and reread it frequently, she knew the substitution had been but re- cently made. She never suspected Helen, but was thor- oughly*frightened. She did not know that Helen and Thrope had even met. Mrs. Curwen had spent a terrible week—which had its anguish greatly increased by the dis- appearance of Helen. All of her life, fear and tragedy had stalked beside her; and now she was tensely wrought up. The capacity for passive suf- fering had been exhausted. “‘Thrope will try to use that letter against my boy,” she cried, “and if he does— Oh, if he does = She broke off. For a moment the tigress that is in every woman appeared. Her hands became claws and her face changed to a harpy’s. Stir any woman—any man—to the ultimate depths of desperation, and there will appear the claws and gleaming teeth. Adventure = Anthropologists estimate that we were beasts of the clawing hands and teeth about four times as long as we of the so-called human race have been men and women. A moment of ferocious tenseness—and she was exhausted and fell back weakly into her chair. She muttered rather than said— “Oh, if the people only knew—but I can’t tell—I won’t tell! I would die first!” She said nothing more and I did not ques- tion her, but I was more moved than I shall try to express. I haven’t repeated and do not intend to repeat what she told me of how she suffered and worked and planned to help that boy, now the fine congressman; of how her heart would almost leap from her breast at men- tion of his name, and of the secret pride she felt when people praised him as fearless and brilliant; of how she hung in the agony of suspense at every election for fear he might not win—and now to think his career might be crumbled in one cowardly, shameful blow against which she could oppose no buckler! I tried to assure her that her fear was largely anxiety; but she assured me that there was no infamy to which Thrope would not plunge with pleasure; that I had no conception of what he would do—that I had no conception of what he could do, and she would not tell me, would not tell any one! Never! Never! I thought that I could understand her hysteria, but I was deeply touched by her sorrow, by her tragic situation. I again offered to do whatever I could at any time. IX V4 I SHALL say nothing of the political he) campaign, beyond the fact that it was ~~ unusually hot and bitter; and that Bryan spoke night after night and seemed to have aroused the State as it had never been aroused before against the old gang; and the old gang viciously distorted his record and attacked him. For some weeks my life went on about the same as usual. I read the papers and played cards and people let me alone. I went every time Bryan spoke in San Fran- ciso, and I liked him. He was a fighter— inspired by something more than the hank- ering for a governorship. I looked him over carefully and felt that there was a man who could not be broken Eomicbooks (E(0)