Adventure Magazine Cover, June 18, 1921 — page 80: what you’re looking at

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

of the weak, slender tapers remained. Per- haps scarcely more than. thirty seconds passed after pandemonium started; but in that time I had advanced to the table, flung away an emptied gun, caught up a casket of gems—Hurgronje’s, into which he had been placing his selection from those brought by the murdered woman—and, shooting, backed to the window, jumped out and was. gone. : What happened afterward I do not know in. detail. The neighborhood must have been:-startled, but no doubt entrance was barred until the police arrived; and if the police came at all, they were no doubt met by the plausible, suave Hurgronje, who had some kind of explanation other than the truth. Frankly I do not know what happened. I, have wondered. But Hurgronje wanted nothing to do with the police, and he was no doubt skilful enough to evade an inquiry. It would be easy to make reasonable con- jectures as to how so clever and experienced a, fellow as himself could have evaded such an inquiry, for his. organization was as well trained as any company of actors, his re- sourcefulness. very. great. ILater I went to the head of a private de- tective agency—for personal reasens I scarcely dared, had I wished, to go to the police—in whom I had some little faith, and I told him the story with certain omis- sions, particularly omitting that the jewels had come into my hands; though I disposed of enough of those to pay him well. He took the matter up. What he did I do not know. Very little, beyond informing me that there was no reason for not believing that Madame Kra- schenin had started for San Francisco, to go by way of Hong Kong to India. So care- ‘fully had Hurgronje planned that some woman, answering her description, had used her ticket and gone:as far as Chicago. It was also from the detective agency that I learned that no report of a disturb- ance in Hurgronje’s house had been received at police headquarters, but that Hurgronje no: longer occupied that house, and that he was: planning to go to San Francisco. aceon IT’ WOULD be needless, and more- Pyaomy Over that is not a part of the story “ of much interest, to tell of the vari- ous ways in which Hurgronje tried to influ- ence me. I was communicated with by let- s 2 het) ON: Adventure ter, telephone, and every way that would avoid personal contact. The fear that I had concealed the jewels probably for a time checked the effort at assassination. Gay himself thought that they were stowed in a safety-deposit vault. Every kind of concession was offered me if I returned them, every manner of damna- tion impended if I refused. Gay disappeared. Then his body was picked up off the street and taken to the morgue. Hurgronje even condescended to talk to me in person over the telephone; and he seemed to think that I was intensely obsti- nate. He said I had killed three of his men and wounded others, for which I expressed regret that the number was so few. He offered me my life if I would give up the gems, which belonged to him—all of them. He emphasized the fact that I could prove nothing; and I declined to admit the need of proof. It was curious that he never mentioned complaining to the police; and I wonder if he noticed that I had not mentioned them. He concluded by launching curses upon me. When. my room was burglarized I natu- rally thought that it had been done by one of the Hurgronje men, and really gave it little reflection beyond the inconvenience caused by carrying off my suitcases and a few papers of no great importance—or they would not have been where a burglar could: get them. Then out of Pittsburg had come the story of my death. — Then out of the night had come Zoronna: Symondi, asking for protection from be- hind a screen at an interview with Hur- gronje. I went with her. CHAPTER II T THE door of her limousine, which was waiting at the curb, Zoronna paused; and, turning to me, said that no doubt she had exaggerated her anxiety; that perhaps after all she had given way to one of the moods of fear that so many times before she had found groundless. But I only bowed and waited for her to get in. She stepped in, bending her head low so as not to strike the aigret. I followed her. The chauffeur closed the door, and we started. She put out the dome light as COmiclboo CN Wp) CO