Adventure Magazine Cover — page 52: what you’re looking at

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

38 : Adventure It was to be a busy day for Thrope and he did not know how much, if at all, before midnight he could get to the office and keep his appointment with her. Mrs. Curwen was exceedingly nervous, but she said that she was not afraid. However, she wanted me to conceal myself in the office as a wit- ness of what passed between them. “YT am afraid,” she said tremulously, “TI shall have to tell him something that no one on earth knows but myself—and—and I want you to know. I trust you—after what you did about that letter, and for Helen. And after what Mr. Ellis says.” Ellis, Edwin Ellis, I found—he was the man who had come to me offering ten thousand for the recovery of the letter and had later forced payment of that sum upon me—was a detective from Washington who had been hurried to San Francisco as soon as Mrs. Curwen had reported the loss of the letter. The first time we met he had learned that I had it, but not that I had returned it. As soon as he discovered that I had returned the letter he generously gave me the reward that Bryan had been willing to pay. The elevator ran until ten o’clock on Saturday nights in the Thrope Building. Mrs. Curwen went up at ten, and I followed a minute later. She suggested that it might be best for us not to be seen together. She opened the door direct from the hall into Thrope’s private office and left it un- locked for me—or rather held it ajar for me, and held her finger warningly to her lip. “Somebody’s in there—I heard them move!” she whispered soundlessly, indi- cating a door that opened from the private office into another room. Nobody could very well have proper ~ business in there, since no light was burn- ing—or at least none showed under the door. I tiptoed across and listened, but I heard nothing. Perhaps Mrs. Curwen had been mistaken, but the chances always were that Thrope could not be trusted; and he might have somebody there—and that somebody’s presence might be for any purpose. I looked at Mrs. Curwen. She wore a long coat and a bonnet hat. The thick veil that had covered her face was lifted so I could see how brightly her eyes were burn- ing, eyes that seemed much sunken since we last met; and how tightly thin her lips were pressed. She looked more like a figure of stately allegory than a woman come to plead with a man, for she stood erect and the long lines of the coat that fell below her knees gave her form a certain dignity such as one seldom sees. She would not flinch. much. 7 I spoke to her with lip movement rather than with sound—noiselessly. I told her to pretend to telephone that she would not wait, and was leaving; then to step into the hall and shut the door after her. She did so. I stood beside the door opening into the next room and waited. For some seconds all was quiet, then I detected the shuffling of feet. Silence again. ‘The party on the other side was listening. : The lock turned in the door. It moved cautiously, then slowly opened so that a little furtive middle-aged man blinked in the light. He was near-sighted and wore heavy glasses; and, too, he had come from a dark room into a lighted one. Mine is not a gentle hand. My fingers fastened on the back of his neck. The other hand went over his mouth and silenced the cry that he started to make. He was a weak little office-bred clerk, frightened and not even cunning. By occupation he was court reporter, very good at shorthand he said. Some woman was coming to blackmail Mr. Thrope and he had been posted there to take a stenographic record, he said; and at once admitted that he had lied. He tried another evasion or two, then admitted that he was Thrope’s stenographer. He had been with Thrope for years. He knew that a woman was coming to meet Thrope and he had been posted to take it down. A little listening-hole had been made in the wall. I might almost say that it had been built in. He showed it to me and ad- mitted that it had been used on many oc- casions. A small electric light, partly boxed in, illuminated a small shelf upon which he could rest his pad and make his notes with ease. I took a towel, fashioned a gag, and locked Mr. Stenographer in the lavatory. I took his keys from him and investigated the various doors. I thought it might be well for me to have some way out in case I wanted to leave without interrupting the interview between Thrope and Mrs. Cur- wen. Thrope’s oftices—he was at the head I could tell that f Eomiehbooks. co