Adventure Magazine Cover, October 30, 1924 — page 175: what you’re looking at

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

Tub Tobin Repeats rubble heap he curled up in it, first spread- ing his groundsheet over him. Immedi- ately he dozed off. : The sun was high when he sat up. He stretched his arms, yawned, and rubbed his eyes. Then he looked up. Two thousand feet above him, an enormous silver sausage, dragging heavily on its anchor cable, swayed in the breeze. ‘“‘That’s the kind of a job I want in the next war,’ mused Tobin, folding his groundsheet. That accomplished he turned his attention to his surroundings. What? There was nothing familiar about this place. Something wrong! He let his eyes again wander over the scene of desolation. Dog- gone right the place seemed strange. He crossed over to a stub of a tree from which a signboard hung. He read: THIS IS NEUVILLE VITASSE “Great Peter!” exclaimed Tub. ‘“You’d never guess it. Changed some since last I saw it. The cryin’ question is: Find the batt.” Right then he spotted the difference. spelt the name out. ‘“N-e-u-v-i-l-l-e V-i-t-a-s-s-e.” A difference? You bet! A difference of only a few letters from Neuville St. Vaast where his unit was but—oh! what a differ- ence those few letters made. In kilos and He hard walking? Only the —— knew the. difference. “FO with all Aussie bushwhackers,” muttered Tobin, sliding into his harness preparatory to moving. Way up above him where the bag of silver hung, an iron door slammed and something whistled. It was the way those balloon babies had—the slam before the whistle. Tobin who had ducked unconsciously ob- served the observers’ basket swaying like a pendulum. The crump had been pretty close. Tobin stepped out. Slam— Whee-e-e-e-e-e-e-e! Another smoke-puff near the rocking basket! Tub Tobin accelerated. He knew that the thumb screw on these heinie rubber guns often worked loose—so he’d heard—and one could never know where the next might go. Pas napoo for him. Swinging round, he collided with an ap- 165 parition in faded blue—an old Frenchman whose tattered garments and cumbersome stick on which he leaned for support spelt scarescrow to Tobin’s astonished eyes. “Say, gen’ral,” grinned Tobin, ‘“where’d you pop from?” The scarecrow waved his hands in ex- planation. ‘““‘Naw—naw,” protested Tub. “Pas com- pris. Retard—retard 3 Slam— Whe-e-e-e-e-e-e! Another crump! A 2-2-2-2-2 of jagged stuff about them. Tub Tobin saw that the old Frenchman was too feeble minded to guess what had happened; took him by the elbow and steered him to the far side of a house wall where some cover from flying pig iron was to be had. The moment they slid behind the wall the old man’s lips commenced to coo. “Te voici, le voici, le voici,” he repeated over and over, even jigging a little after dance fashion. “Don’t get you a-tall,” said the disgusted Tobin. ‘‘What is it?’ he queried in his best Sunday French. For answer his scarecrow companion pointed toward a tower-shaped thing, ap- parently the top part of the building before German gunnery settled its hash, that had plopped down fairly in the center of the ruin. “Te voila! Le Petit Casino!” sang the excited: Frenchman. By degrees Tub Tobin worked the full story from the nervous lips. ’Neath the ruins of Le Petit Casino, somewhere, lay the scarecrow’s proprietary earnings of happier hours when fame and fortune had tarried for him. Now fame had passed but fortune lay buried in a metal box under their feet. It was for this cache that the scarecrow had run the gauntlet of British Army surveillance, for this money that he’d come back all the weary way from Abbeville. One hundred thousand francs! And he would recover it, he told Tobin in his jerky manner. By the grace of . .’ he gurgled and flattened out as if he’d been knocked down by a sledge hammer. The thumbscrew! The rubber gun shell, this time away off mark, had slammed just over their heads. Tobin, nose bleeding, face scratched, comicbooks.cO in