Adventure Magazine Cover — page 140: what you’re looking at

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

V if a Author of ‘‘Enough Rope, EY, mister. Don’t look round.” James Barret’s hand, in the act of brushing a bit of lint from an immaculate sleeve, stopped in mid-air. The whispered words were so low as to be barely audible, but there was a tense desperation in the tone that held him rigid. Sader the pile of sacks behind you,” came the whisper again. “T’m an American in trouble. If you’re game, put your hand in your pocket.” Barret didn’t feel game. Eight months in Soviet Russia had taught him a number of things, most of them unpleasant. Above all it had taught him the unwisdom of meddling in things he didn’t understand. And yet there was something in the tone that made him impulsively slide his hand into his pocket. ‘“‘Atta boy,” came the whisper, charged with relief, and Barret, who was having disquieting afterthoughts warmed to it. “Look for a tall man with black whiskers and a fur cap. When he’s gone take your hand out of your pocket.” Glancing along the platform his gaze took in the half-dozen flat-capped soldiers of the Red Army who lounged in front of the box- car railroad station, the shawled peasant women with their innumerable bundles, waiting in stolid patience, as they had waited for the last two days, for the train to Moscow, and finally picked out the tall, whiskered man with the fur-cap. Him he watched with increasing disquietude as he Re: by y hi “9 fs Yi ( Y nage Sa £9 Clements Ripley ” “Ain't That Our Luck,’’ etc. strolled along the platform, glancing from left to right and finally disappeared behind the station. For perhaps five minutes he watched for the man’s reappearance. Then he drew his hand out of his pocket. In a flash a figure slipped like a weasel from under the sacks and stood beside him. “Talk to me,” he said swiftly. ‘Don’t look surprized. Think any one saw me?”’ Barret shook his head. They were at the far end of the platform. It was unlikely that any one had noticed the maneuver. “Listen,’’ began the other tensely, ‘I’m in a of a mess 2 Barret felt a sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach. The painful realization came to him that he had let himself in for something. A moment ago it would have been perfectly simple to have moved fifty feet up the platform and washed his hands of the whole affair, and that, he reflected, was what anybody but a fool would have done. He knew nothing about this man beyond the fact that he was dirty, generally seedy in appearance, and had a hard, sharp "face with a sardonic impudence about it that was far from reassuring. The man seemed to sense his thoughts. “Oh, if that’s the way it is,’’ he remarked casually, ‘‘there’s still time to get out of it. IT haven’t got anything on you, you know.” Barret’s broad, good-natured face flushed. There was a cynical glint in the man’s narrow eyes that roused a certain 134 oO CO MICLOOKS S|