Adventure Magazine Cover — page 143: what you’re looking at

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

Men of the Night with,” said Middleton as without looking at what he was doing—keeping his eyes on Cabron, with a quick glance from their corners at Burillo—he drove the point of the stiletto into a table’s top and snapped the steel. “‘Isn’t it?” No answer. “I wonder,” Middleton went on a little reflectively, “if T could guess why a man of your many matters of revenge to attend to, should concentrate on a third-rate crook like this. Is it becatise with Burillo dead and out of the way, whoever tries will have the —— of a job to prove that Javotte had a husband living at the time of her marriage?” Cabron cursed him again with quick sibilant intensity. “Don’t be so much like a serpent. I don’t like snakes,’’ Middleton told him. , ““You see, Cabron, there are no two ways about it—you have to kill Holder, don’t your Yes. Your honor demands it. He sent you to prison.” Again the hiss of anger and threat. “Yes, yes. I may have had something to do with it. But when I get ready to send you any place it will be to ——. You are going to kill Holder, that’s certain. He knows it. Very sensible man, Holder. But what he doesn’t know perhaps is that you have to kill Burillo first so there will be less chance of your niece being beaten out of her widow’s share. Have I guessed right?”’ “The devil eat you!” !? said Burillo in a kind of fright- ened prayer, getting his eyes open to the im- portance his body had in the affairs of men. ‘“‘And you feel yourself competent to take care of your niece—and her inheritance? Is it not true?” Cabron was outraged and furious. He had the pride that quivers visible under insult. His eyes burned and gleamed. “Of course there would be complications and haggling at law; but any one so com- petent as yourself and friends at framing evidence would clearly establish that the real Burillo was really dead before Javotte married again. ‘This fellow, an impostor! He ran away. Disappeared. Knew he would be exposed in court. That is why you are here tonight. “This fellow Holder, he must be taken care of pretty quick. There won’t be much left, the way he is wasting money on hos- pitals and schools for a lot of dirty foreign- ers. Is it not so?” 133 Every muscle of Cabron trembled as muscles do when held fiercely rigid. “All right, Burillo. Tie his hands. mouth—gag it.” 7 “You touch—I’ll keel you!”’ Cabron hissed furiously at Burillo; and the fellow hesitated. “Go ahead,” said Middleton with in- flectional menace; and he obeyed. Cabron’s eyes glittered with passion. “For a jailbird you are very squeamish, my friend. Is a handkerchief so very much more humiliating than handcuffs?” The answer was curses. “Put your weight to the knots, Burillo. And now the gag.’ Cabron set his teeth. He would not open his mouth. No. His hands had been tied behind him. Middleton reached out and grasped him by the hair, jerking his head back; then he thrust the muzzle of the gun between Cabron’s lips, rasping the sight of it along his teeth, running it back to the base of the jaw; and as the mouth came open the muzzle went into it as a wedge. It-was merciless, but effective. ° *‘Now, wide open, or I’ll break some teeth.”’ The mouth widened. The look on Ca- bron’s face was that of an animal being for- cibly fed something violently disliked. “Now, Burillo, poke it in. Stuff it all | His in. can see you are very anxious not to offend, but you'll have to get at least two handker- chiefs into his mouth or he’ll make a noise like a deaf-mute trying to give a fire alarm.”’ When Cabron’s mouth was stuffed and he was breathing through his nose in the jerky way of a person both angry and suf- focating, Middleton without word or sign of warning suddenly tripped him, -but let the body come without force to the floor. “Don’t kick or you'll be laid uncon- scious,” he warned, bending over Cabron; but Middleton’s face was half-turned and his eyes were on Burillo, who did not see that he was being watched. Burillo picked up the broken stiletto, — still long enough to be deadly, and in passing behind Middleton had raised it for a quick blow at the base of skull. With Cabron bound and Middleton out of the way, Burillo would have felt himself in something of the position of a con- quering hero. He could have locked his door and made enough noise to frighten every one in the house half to death and attract the police to the neighborhood, DOOLK Don’t be afraid of choking him. If (C@