Adventure Magazine Cover, June 18, 1921 — page 78: what you’re looking at

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

68 her husband’s people; that she felt she could be happy in Tibet; and that she was going. I found afterward that she had told John Gay a great deal about Hurgronje’s ‘‘mys- teries.”” Gay was a superstitious fellow. He believed in “ghosts and things.’”’ What she told of Hurgronje’s wonders made Gay feverishly excited and curious, as was na- tural in an ignorant little crook who trusted in fortune-tellers and was afraid of spooks. I assured him that it took no clairvoyant nor prophetic gifts to read his fortune. “Beware,” I said, “of all flat-footed gen- themen with stars on their chests.” He snorted in high contempt, then tried earnestly to get me interested in some of the “psychic” experiences that had happened to him. It is needless to repeat them; and I do not purpose to tell the ghost-stories of other people. I myself have seen many ghosts, mostly of wire and cloth; and I have never yet seen any other kind that wouldn’t yell if it was shot in the leg. Gay, meddlesome, furtive and boiling with curiosity, had crept into Hurgronje’s house to look it over with the calculating eye of one who knows more about locks and bolts than the man who owns them. He was soon an uninvited spectator. In the course of his circus and fake-show experi- ences, he had seen and known something of the mechanics of wires and mirrors, so he was rather skeptical just at those moments when other people were most impressed. wae MADAME KRASCHENIN told us r = good-by, and said she was leaving “that evening for San Francisco. She really did not leave, but went through all the preparation of making it appear that she had done so; all of which was but a part of Hurgronje’s design to make it impossible for the police, or for any one else who might become curious over her disappearance, to connect him with her departure. What happened is that on the following evening she came, heavily veiled, about nine o’clock to Hurgronje’s house. Gay was in a corner of the Hall of Darkness, hid- den behind a long, dark curtain near the window, which was thought to have been very solidly locked. She carried a little satchel in her hand, and gave it to Hur- gronje. The room was dimly lighted; but Gay, pe- culiarly sensitive to the reflection of gold and gems, recognized them, and was made sus- Adventure picious as the trinkets dripped from Hurgron- je’s hand, which he thrust into the satchel and withdrew, letting the ornaments fall slowly from his fingers. The room was large and silent. Gay, ex- cited, feared that even his breath might re- veal his presence, consciously checked. his breathing; and he peered, fascinated, through the little slit, barely the width of two eyes, that he made in the curtain. Slender waxed tapers burned on various niches; and directly above Hurgronje a heavy blue globe, set in the ceiling, radiated a soft vague glow that made everything be- low it visible but rather indistinct. Hurgronje, tall, imposing, impressive in his long sable robe, spoke with ceremonial vagueness to the woman who stood before him. The ritualistic solemnity awed Gay. When, without warning, many dark-robed, cowled and noiseless forms emerged, one at a time, from what seemed to be a solid wall and began to circle with slow steps about Hurgronje and Madame Kraschenin, Gay, in spite of his previous skepticism, was al- most convinced that they had been conjured from thin air. Hurgronje declared, speaking sonorously, that here, moving about her, were the guar- dians who, remaining unknown to her all the while, would watchfully accompany her on her pilgrimage; that they would ward off all danger and sleeplessly attend her. He called them the Mystic Brotherhood of Seven. Suddenly through the house there sounded a deep, soft, shivering, sustained note as if many great bronze bells, some in the roof, some in the basement, some near at hand, and some far away, had been lightly struck at the same instant by the same skilful hand. The sound seemed to come-from all directions with quiet, arrest- ing solemnity. Instantly the seven robed forms stood still, and Hurgronje, with hand upraised, remained silent and motionless until the last trace of the bells’ tone had faded. Then he said— ‘The hour has come!”’ Without sound or visible propulsion there moved across the floor what appeared to bea large bronze image, fashioned something like a picture of Isis. It stopped as if animate and acting of its own will before Madame Kraschenin; then what had appeared to to be solid, opened and exposed a hollow interior, and the interior was luminous. COmicloo oN ) CO