Adventure Magazine Cover — page 132: what you’re looking at

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

I22 do when they yield to the blandishment of the Peruvian siren—not sniffing and sniffling like a kid with a bad cold. Silkkeen propped himself up in the bed with the tray on a little table beside him and dexterously turned the spatulate needle in the small, greenish flame of the alcohol lamp. One, two, three pipes he smoked, and lay soothed in meditative drowsiness. Another and still another. The afternoon wore on. He lay in a state of rosy lassitude, at peace with the world, floating in glittering, pur- plish fancies, not asleep and not awake, but smiling wistfully like one who remembers pleasant things that have nothing to do with the present. Sweet laziness suffused him. He would not have moved for the world—he scarcely could have moved. But he floated, or seemed to—and there is no difference be- tween fact and fancy to the dreamer while he dreams; and he floated on billowy fragrances amid the splendor of Arabian-like fancies. He did not sleep. He dreamed. Familiar objects that he knew as well as a man knows his own features took on the extravagant shapes and hues of grotesque lavishment; and he was not deceived but pleased. The door opened violently and closed with a bang. A girlish figure peered through the pur- plish smoke set astir and swirling by her sudden entrance. She was breathing hard and coughed. The thick, sweetly acrid smoke went into her throat stranglingly. She gasped a hopeless, blasphemous little phrase of unconscious prayer, ‘‘Sweet —— help me!” as she started through the thick, veil-like traceries of smoke that stirred and moved as if alarmed by her presence. She ran to the bed, bending down ex- citedly. He saw her; he recognized her. He tried to smile and to lift a welcoming hand; but the effort was too great; the charm of las- situde too heavy. The pipe was cold. He tried to mutter something. Another pipe—she should cook it. She did not understand. She did not hear. She was too faraway. He wasn’t sure whether she wasn’t a thousand miles away. She was talking. Her voice sounded as if it was coming faintly from afar. It didn’t matter. No. Nothing mattered. It was a fragrant, beautiful, dear old world. Adventure “we have to duck. Matty Murdock picked me up an’ I ain’t sure I shook him. Oh, Harry—Harry, come out of it! Mur- dock, Matty Murdock, I tell you. He says . to me, ‘Still with Cat-Eyed Harry, huh?’ ”’ Silkeen hated the word “cat-eyed.” But it left him unmoved. Also Matty Murdock was one of the people Silkeen thought wholly unfit to live, - not only because of his profession, which was that of private detective, but because Murdock was stupidly in love with Silkeen’s Dolly. . The message that Dolly brought was of the highest importance. And she had the mingled thrill and dread that a woman feels when bearing news that will make trouble; but Silkeen was doped, helpless; that is, indifferent. She swore at him and said: “You fool! I hate you!” She stormed and called him bitter names, jeered and taunted; but nothing would stir him into life, though his was the most savage of tempers. He heard with the tolerant, far-away smile of one serenely above the irritations and trifles of that huge mudball, the earth. Dolly had the hectic beauty, the almost forced, hothouse beauty of the feverish city. She was little more than a child; but the withered, wrinkled old Sybil knew less of life. Crime heats the blood and hot blood ripens children. It is easy to cheat a calen- dar, but the heart keeps count of its beats; and sleepless nights, worried days, the thrills and tensity of the crime game, keep the heart hopping. Old age waits just where youth leaves off. She was slender and blond, with hair that curled of itself, and she wore it bobbed. She was gifted with a lightness of step, movement and touch that gave her a whimsy charm as well as made her one of the best pickpockets in the business. Many men offered themselves to her, partly through love, but mostly out of thrift, for she was a good worker and made big money. She preferred Silkeen Harry, perhaps fascinated by his strange ugliness and flattered by his reputation. Rivals respected her choice. Silkeen Harry would shoot, and their respect pleased her greatly—as the superior prowess of the killer that wears her colors has from the Crusades down delighted the woman. DOOLK (C©