Argosy and Railroad Man's Magazine — page 64: what you’re looking at

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

Gordon M°Creagh HE Hotel Oriental was unusually silent —no, not “ unusually ”; the word is misleading, because the thing hap- pened every so often. Uneasily, perhaps, describes the prevalent air of expectation better. Lithe, brown Hindu boys dressed in clinging white chupkuns slipped noiselessly about their business on their bare feet White guests dressed in the coolest ducks or tussur silks lolled with their feet up on long-arm cane-chairs in the far end of the veranda and sipped pale yellow fizzy drinks libelously described as Scotch while they talked in low tones and smiled with under- standing tolerance. The hotel manager, a one-fifth Portuguese from Goa, who bore the proud nume of Senhor Dom Roderigo Cardozo, peeped at intervals from one of the many curtained doorways and hoped for the best. And all this because Jehannum Smith had come back. Not from the war—he had cpme back from that some little time ago. ‘“Invalided out,” though: nobody could un- derstand exactly why, for Smith was gener- ally described as being the size of a door, and all his limbs were still where a lavish nature had placed them. There was some talk of shell-shock; but most people refused to believe that that kind of shell could be made. Not that Smith was abnormally huge; he wasn’t more than a decent six feet or so by some two and a half wide. There was something about his face, rather, which had been carved by an unskilled workman out of red granite with an ax, which gave the impression of immensity and strength and domination. That, and his ideas, which on these occasions of his coming back were colossally magnificent. All the Far East, for instance, remem- bered with joy the time when he had con- ceived the splendid notion that he was the Ameer of Afghanistan, and had gone forth to purchase the Y. W. C. A. as a suitable nucleus to his establishment. This coming-back habit of Smith’s needs an explanation. There would come periods into the great man’s life when his soul seethed within him at the sameness of things and the taste of the world was as sawdust in his mouth. Then he would become rest- less as an elephant about to go must, and his fellow men would note the symptoms with uneasiness. ““ Gorblimey,” Smith would say presently, when the urge within him grew too puissant for mortal soul. ‘ Strike me pink, but I got to go on a exploration or somethin’.” And forthwith he would go. His camp equipment consisted always of the same impedimenta: a half a dozen of whisky and a package of crackers. With these and his native boy he would disap- pear into the uncharted jungles. After the passage of days he would “ come back ”— 406 comicbooks.com