Adventure Magazine Cover — page 123: what you’re looking at

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

Men of the Night visit. Here was the larger and more im- portant treasure-box. A woman was crouching before it and the man stood beside her and tilted a slender wrought-iron reading-light for her. She was on her knees and one hand was pressed against her face meditatively. The other dropped from the knob as she stared, baffled. “Can’t you do it?” the man demanded in @ suspicious whine. She did not answer. ““You’re trickin’ me. I'll get even,” he threatened vaguely, querulously. She looked up at him in a way more sug- gestive of contempt than alarm and said— “Ah, you talk beeg while Cabron he is in prison.” “Just let me tell you—— “Bah! There is nothing you can tell to me. You make so many lies yourself you do not know what is truth.” He made his voice as ugly as he could, with the cultivated sneer and harshness of the woman-bully: “You'd better get inside that safe, an’ quick. J’ll put you on the rocks, right! You don’t dare give me no double-cross.’ “TY dare what I p’ease. Eet is not for you. Eet is for my husband I would do this She gestured helplessly toward the safe. The man laughed contemptuously. “A fine fathead of a husband!”’ In a flash she was on her feet; a hand swept out, the blow of palm on cheek made a startling smack in the big room. you!”’ the fellow cried, stumbling back. He kept his hold on the light-stand. He did not seem greatly surprized or even angered. “TY can ruin you,” he snarled viciously. ‘‘An’ I can have you keeled!” “If you do “I would be happy an’ not have one tear!” She stood defiantly, chin up, glaring at him. He sicichtened the light-stand, and, moving closer, with an air of pleading said: ‘“‘Aw, Javotte, we can’t fuss. Give me enough jewels or whatever you have. [ll go away. On the level. I promise. I do” what I promise. You know that ‘““Pa-ah!”’ “But listen. If you , your hands away! Do not touch me!” ) 113 “But listen, dear. You’re makin’ a bone- head play. I’m your friend. You know that. You take care o’ me and I'll take care of youl” “Oh—— She lifted her little hands almost claw- like as if to tear him apart. “Oh-o-0, I want to say, ‘—— you’; an’, God help me, I mean eet!’’ “That don’t worry me none. to take care o’ me.”’ “Eet is not you, not me, I care about. Eet is somebody who love me much.” ‘““Aw, can the bunk, Javotte. me to come tonight—now what you goin’ do for me?” “Tam a fool,” said Javotte reflectively. The man laughed. He was not amused. You got He just laughed because he had nothing else to answer. “T tol’ you to come, but—— She gestured helplessly, looking toward the safe. “T work my head to remember what eet is you do.” She shook her head, baffled. “You mus’ wait till there is another time.” Then, looking directly at him, frankly but as if thinking aloud— “T wish I could keel you “But you won’t,” he said with energy that did not conceal his uneasiness. “No. Nev-ar. I jus’ pray somebody else do eet.” He hurried off that subject, and asked with an injured manner— “What you going to do about it?” His gesture indicated the safe, locked tight as a miser’s fist. “T do not know. Sometime I learn eet, then She threw out her hand in a gesture of indifferent generosity. “But what do you think I’m goin’ do in the meantime? Starve?” ‘‘Eet would make me happy so,” she an- swered quickly. The man seemed not to have heard. He had something of his own to say, and was preoccupiedly forming the sentence in his thoughts. He was a person of no distinctive qualities at all in appearance; rather good-looking in the commonplace way that most men of thirty-one or two are good-looking if they have not hunched their shoulders under burdens nor had their hands: spoiled by 99 DOOK You told. (C©