Adventure Magazine Cover — page 130: what you’re looking at

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

120 in dat night youse croaked dem guineas?” “Yes. Youse tol’ me. Cabron’s girl. She grabs off de Rawlinsons’ ice. It runs in dat fam’ly t’ make suckers out o’ guys. “Tisten. I’m givin’ youse de low-down. It’s not stall wit’ her. She’s bugs over Misser Middleton. On de level.” “Bu-ey,” said Silkeen unconvinceably. ‘She tells me so.” “Gwan.” Silkeen gestured as if waving away an idiot. “Aw right, have it your way. You’s a wise guy. Youse know it all. Nobody c’n tell you somet’ing. No. You got a bunch o’ brains like a lot o’ mashed raisins. But I knows Leela’s on de square wit’ » “Did you git yours out o’ dem Rawlin- sons’ jewels?” Silkeen demanded sar- castically. “Oh, dat was a joke. Youse don’t un’erstan’. She——” “T don’t un’erstan’. No. You’s right. I don’t. Dat kin’ o’ joke don’t make me laugh.” Billy the Dude, hopelessly inveigled in the wiles of Leela, believing her explanation about it being a joke, trusting her interest in Middleton, meeting her every few days and telling her everything he could think of just to make conversation, did not dare confide the whole truth with Silkeen. It was less fear of what Silkeen might think than fear that Leela would learn of his failure to keep her secret trust in him. “Say,” Billy demanded, “TI ain’t no fool, am I?” “T’ll say so.” “Aw right. Youse c’n go t? ——,” Billy the Dude, peeved. It was easier for him to break away by having a peevish air than by trying to argue or explain; besides, Billy did feel exasperated. He went away in a huff. It was nothing unusual. The enforced monot- ony of their existence in lying low caused many unembittered wrangles between them. said Each would have lied, shot or swung for the other at any time. WHEN Billy had gone, Silkeen picked up the discarded newspaper and with the slow labor of an im- perfect reader plowed his way through the story of Cabron’s sensational escape. It seemed that there had been whispered warnings from various sources that Cabron streams, Adventure would try to escape; but the district at- torney’s office had discredited these rumors and suspected that the “warnings” had been inspired by the men whom Cabron was coming from prison to testify against. Cabron, it was said, embittered by the lack of help and sympathy from his friends among the Powers-That-Be was going to turn State’s evidence. The two officers who brought him down arrived in the city about 6:30 on a chilly Spring evening. No one outside of the official circle was supposed to know when he was coming. He was handcuffed to one of the officers, and an overcoat was thrown over his shoul- ders cape-like, and fell in a way that partially concealed the irons. As they came through the station it was hardly noticeable that he was a prisoner; and he was hurried to a waiting closed car. One officer mounted the seat with the driver; and the other, to whom Cabron was hand- cuffed, sat beside him. The evening crowd swarmed with mob- like intensity and density through the streets, and the bustle, clang, hoot and dis- tant oceanic roar that a city gives off took on the shriller, more hurried, insistent, im- patient clash and rattle of some millions of people discarding the day and its work. The rush and crush of the twilight hours, with masses of people pressing in clusters, jams, swirling and twisting at corners, pouring from shadows into the glare of cold, vivid, white lights is the night- ly exodus of the Tribes of the Office. At that hour it seems as if every man and woman on earth is afoot, and that all the autos and trucks and cars have been wound up and set going. Let so small a thing as a newsboy stumble in a dash across the street and fall under the wheel of a taxi, and at once the street is blocked. People rush pressingly forward. ‘Traffic is backed to a standstill for blocks away. It was more than a newsboy that held up the traffic that night. Somewhere, a half-block or so ahead of the car in which Cabron rode, handcuffed to an officer beside him—with another on the seat with the driver—there was a smash-up, a collision between two automobiles. Each owner blamed the other. Policemen shoved their robust shoulders through the swarm that clustered about the angry men, each blaming the other. One car seemed DOOK (©