Adventure Magazine Cover — page 108: what you’re looking at

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

102 her lips close-pressed into a line of smiling cruelty; she waited with serpent-like pa- tience for him to be tortured utterly into submission. She knew the signs, and now was the time. He, usually so indolently listless, now seemed almost to writhe even in standing; his yellow face was sunken, his eyelids twitched; he scratched and rubbed himself, with one hand or the other, always rubbing at the back of his neck. “Madame! Madame, for God’s sake let me have it! It’s like breath—breath to me! I’ve told you [ll do anything, anything! Whatever you want—anything!”’ “Zut! Anything means nothing. And why is it you make of yourself such a pest? It is overboard, the filthy pipe. I have told you so. I threw it there to remind you it is not safe to forget such a good friend as I. Take yourself off!” “This has happened before, and you lied then the same way. There is something you drive me to do. Tl do it! Oh Pll do anything! But quick, or I’ll be useless— have no strength—be dead! You see—”’ He held out his trembling hands for her to see how badly shaken and weak he had become. “‘Ho, if it is that you so want to please me—ah then, let me think. That Po-Shu is a wicked girl. She told lies on Lianfo. Because of her we have suffered much. One must not escape so easily. And so to please me, what would you do, eh? Kill her?” Denasso, quite as if tottering, stepped back, blindly shook his head, face down, rubbing his face with writhing fingers: “No, no, no—not that! You don’t mean that! Anything else, not that—I won’t! Pll die, but not that—I won’t!” “How you talk! It is like a man! ‘Oh Madame, I would do anything for you!’ Then [ say what pleases me, and you make the sick groan, and say, ‘Oh not that! ” “But she is a woman and I—”’ “Oh Isee. You are not yet long enough without opium to hurt a woman. But a man, eh? Let me think. That rat of a Raeburn, I do not like him.” Denasso looked at her with much the ex- pression of a man who is being crucified; he was thin as a skeleton, and so much did he tremble that his bones seemed quivering as the bones of an articulated skeleton do when shaken. GORDON YOUNG “No, Madame, you devil, no! I will die, but he has been my friend!’’ “Oh so, eh?” said Madame coldly. “Then go away from me and come again only when you have more need than now of what I can give you!” “But this, this murder!” He gasped, swallowed hard. ‘You would never think of murder, but now—oh, —— you!” “This is not Paris. And here one must do what one can when one has enemies—ah, and friends like you that will help!” ‘So I, I have come to this,” said Denasso. “Tt was for fun, a boy’s curiosity—I went with friends to an opium den. I, that had the promise of music in me and was praised by masters! But that night in the haze of smoke I saw all my dreams come true, all without having to go through the years of work that make a musician great. Ah, I was cursed! My friends who smoked that night were sickened, but I, I had the dreams. I, miserable fool, chose to smoke instead of sweat and win to dreams. A wasted life! Now I even talk of killing friends to get a bit—” ““Pestel” said Madame. “TI too was young, but what is done is best forgotten. Po-Shu, she is a woman. Well, so am I, so that is something I pardon. The time will come soon when I shall give attention to her myself. The rat Raeburn isa friend. Very well then. We must not harm friends.” Then, leaning forward with a hard stare, she asked quickly: “But that Heddon, who despises you, eh? What of him?” “For just one pipe, first?”’ Denasso begged. NT G2? “A half pear’”’ (OW. “One little whiff, Madame? one!” sie ad “But how can I? You see, lam weak. I can hardly stand and—” “Nothing first. Ah, I know you. You have coaxed the smoke from me before. It will be easy. He sleeps like a drunk man.” “My throat is on fire. Pain runs through me like lightning. I have not slept for two nights. Let me have merely the pipe—I will scrape the bowl and—” “No. I let you have nothing!” ‘She said it firmly, and looking him up and down began to suspect that opium smokers Oh, just COMICOooks (C©