Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

650 over his eyes. After a short time he faced the batman with a queer, sad smile. His hand sought his pocket. ‘“‘ Have a cigarette?” he asked, and took out a worn Capstan box from one of the upper tunic pockets, opened the flap, and then snatched it back with a flashing glance at the batman. “ That’s the wrong one,” he said, and produced a packet of Woodbines. The tall soldier held a match for him, and they smoked in silence. But the batman was thinking with a thunderous beating of his heart that it was just like this queer bloke to keep the stones in a Capstan box and in his coat pocket. The corporal called them in, and they did not meet again until just before bed- time, when they were turned out for five minutes in the wash room. The Yank was coatless. He leaned over a hand basin: with his eyes closed and covered with suds. He heard the batman’s footsteps, and said: “* Hello, mate.” “ What cheer, old chum?” The batman filled a basin on the oppo- | site side of the room and splashed in it. He washed in a manner which, while leisurely, ‘was timed to finish a full two minutes be- fore his fellow prisoner would be through. When he had wiped himself dry and rolled his toilet kit into a ball, he walked to the door of the wash room, paused for an un- hurried look down the corridor toward the exercise yard, then turned toward his own cell. At his own door he stopped, turned, and tiptoed swiftly back to Morgan’s door, The light from the gas tip in the guard room struck through and showed the tunic lying on the cot. Swiftly his thin fingers plumbed the upper pocket that held the battered Capstan box, drew it out, and opened it. | He held it up and shook it, and held his breath at the living spark that dropped into the palm of his hand. It was a dia- mond, as big as his little finger nail. There were others under his fingers, still in the box. ' Then his eyes fell on the tall soldier’s boots standing under the cot, and panic seized him. When he had entered he had _ it ‘in his mind that he would hear the first ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, step the other made away from the wash stand, but if he were stockingless the tall man could come noiselessly down the corri- dor. The batman replaced the stone in the box and the box in the pocket in a panic of fear, just as the tall soldier blotted out the light of the doorway. For a moment the two faced each other, then Morgan took two long strides into the room. A hand reached out toward the batman, then with that curious shudder which had Swept over him as he was shadow boxing in the yard, he dropped it, and stepped back. The batman spoke in a voice which he tried to make’ cool. “ T thought I’d give your buttons a shine, just to keep me ’and in. The smoke and fog tykes the shine off somethink frightful.” Morgan’s hand swept the tunic up into the curve of his arm. “You’re one of the kindest hearted chaps I ever did see,” he said, and pushed the batman out of the door. CHAPTER III. CROSSROADS, batman had been waiter, barber, and servant to a small salaried teacher at Westminster School. Never until now had Fortune come so close to him that he could feel the touch of her garment. Now that he knew what it was to have fifty quid in his pocket, with a thousand more in sight, the batman felt himself a new being, hard, determined—one who would never flinch when it came to using knife or gun. Never again would he trundle the peram- bulator up the steps of the teacher’s house. When this job was done he would drift to the Far East, Constantinople, or Cairo, or Port Said, where life could be, for a man with a little money in his pocket, unbeliev- ably Iuxurious. All night he lay on his cot while a torrent of hot thought poured through his brain. He was confident. He knew that after the war there had been a tremendous re- laxation in discipline. He had seen more than one N, C, O, checked and even broken -comick gO <SiGO in