Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 77: what you’re looking at

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

THE STRANGER AT THE GATE. had always seemed to her—a very expensive toy. The enameling, to be sure, was beau- tifully done. And the steel was so cunningly welded together that it seemed as smooth as blown glass. The map was somewhat out of date, but it was as clear in every detail, in every printed word, as on the day when the enamel was first applied to the metal. And again doubts assailed her. It was sufficiently curious, this globe, to call for special attention. To her it was a mere nothing. Commodore Dascom had had one fondness for one among his rela- tions, and that was for her. And she had been accustomed to seeing that globe in the commodore’s cabin when she was a mere child. She had taken it entirely for granted from the first. But others, seeing it for the first time, would find it an odd work, to be sure. She rapped the steel with her knuckles. The dull and muffled sound which replied proved the thickness of the layer of steel. She turned the globe with a jerk of the wrist—it spun smoothly upon its bearings. Then, slowing the revolutions, she so turned it that her eye could travel easily from one to the other of Madras—Calcutta Singapore. And as she thought of those last words of the dying commodore, and when she saw them in their places on the ' map in the distant Orient, a chill traveled eagerly through her blood. She sat back in her chair and looked around the room. The massive furniture stood each piece in its place—so large and so massive, indeed, that a dozen men could have been concealed when she entered the room—could have remained concealed all the time she was in it! But at this point, just as panic was be- ginning to swell in her, she assured herself that she was. playing the part of a very fool- ish girl. A fresh grip on the butt of the revolver, continued until the muscles of her hand ached, helped to reassure her. And then, picking out the names one by one with her fingers simply for the sake of some- thing to occupy her until her nerves were better, she found the cities one by one— Madras, Calcutta, Singapore. 703 descended on that point, the other two cities remaining similarly covered, she felt a sud- den slip of the steel, which ae quivered back. She jerked her hand away as though it were lying on a bomb. She sprang up from the chair, and as she did so, it seemed to her that something moved on the outside of the French doors at the farther end of the room. With great eyes she stared. But there was no other motion of the shadow which she thought she had seen. And she settled back in her chair to examine the globe again. In rising she had spun it around and when she looked again at the tri- angle embraced by the three points which the commodore had named, she found the enameled surface of the steel as solid as ever. There was no crack of the panies 2 of a hair’s breadth. Again she touched the cities, one by one, keeping a finger upon each while she pressed on the next. And this time, as she touched Singapore again, the slab of metal slipped out into her hands, a perfect triangular sec- tion revealed the black hollow of the in-— terior of the globe! Olivetta, gripping the gun tight, peered once more around the room. But the per- fect silence had spread around her. Then she drew the globe back until the light from the reading lamp flooded the interior. It was by no means hollow. A number of strong steel braces went crisscross from surface to surface, and where they passed one another near the center was a sort of pocket of a green felt. She fumbled in it. It was empty to the bottom, a flap cover being unbuttoned. It was an empty mystery, then, which she had discovered. She replaced the curved triangle, and when she pressed on the three cities, the dexterously hidden springs admitted the notch back into the whole. © She rose from her chair wonderfully re- lieved and yet strangely excited. And as she was about to go back to her room, her eye caught on a bit of glistening silk on the floor. She picked it up. There was no mistaking it. It was plainly a lining fitted to that pocket of green felt which she had found ‘in the center of the globe. -- = -- . - , : | com coe ‘S.cOom