Adventure Magazine Cover — page 183: what you’re looking at

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

She RN we eons : >” aes bet : ON "4 ye MIN. ss ¥ bd ; eee % Sa Ba ery ~ laa 8 hy walls topped by masses of geranium. The steps twisted to the left; the width between the walls narrowed; trees met overhead. It was dark and difficult to see. He walked slowly on, exasperated by his own stupidity. The steps turned sharply to the right and became a level pathway, paved with flat stone slabs. Mr. Westcott paused at a tall iron gate in the wall on his right. Steps led down into a garden overgrown with shrubs and tall weeds. By the light of the nine- day-old moon he could see a white villa half hidden among trees. No lights were visible. The place looked forlorn and deserted. He wondered uncomfortably who lived there. After a while he moved on again, knowing that he ought to turn back and yet unwilling even now to disobey the strange promptings that had drawn him from the road. The garden wall bent back at nght angles to the path which was now an earth track that led across a narrow, grassy ter- race on the side of the hill toward a small pine wood. Mr. Westcott paused once more at the corner of the wall. Beneath him he saw the city of San Asensio: its lamplit streets and plazas and wide boulevards, the bay December 8, 1926 12 We Tow og 5-4 A teak or surrounded by high hills, the lights of the shipping harbor, and the red and white flash of the lighthouse at the point four miles south. The night was cooler; a breeze blew inland from the Pacific; the air was heavy with the scent of cedars and flowers, roses and heliotrope and freesia, and orange blossom. Somewhere far down the hill some one wasstrumming a plaintive little air on a guitar. He wondered why music he had loathed so in that café on the Calle Valencia should here seem so sweet. He seated himself in the low fork of an olive-tree at the corner of the garden wall and a man emerged from the wood on to the terrace in front of him and stood con- templating the view, bareheaded, his arms folded across his broad chest. Presently he turned and approached leisurely, and to his amazement Mr. Westcott saw the hard, brown face and heavy eyebrows of the captain of the Lockborough Inlet. He passed the tree in which he sat and stopped at the tall iron gate and gazed through the bars into the garden. Then, with a kind of growl distinctly audible to Mr. Westcott, he walked briskly away, down the path that would take him to the flight of stone steps and the dusty road and San Asensio. 177 MICLOOOK C©